Eliza went allover pink. “Those are just tunes. Easy enough to learn by ear.”
He shook his head. “Doubt any of your music critics have learned half as many.”
Eliza’s eyes were lowered, but the curl at the corners of her lips showed how pleased she was. Sydney went back for more paper, the tips of his ears turning red.
Behind the drying broadsheets, his mother rolled her eyes and hid a smile.
At one hundred sheets, Agatha declared the work enough for now. Eliza sponged the ink from the form and then the glass, while Sydney tied the forme up again and set it in a drawer for tomorrow night’s work. They’d have to wake early to pull the dried pages down and bundle them up before the workmen arrived.
As Eliza had said, it wasn’t technically sedition—but this was not an argument Agatha was prepared to make in any official legal capacity. Better to avoid the authorities’ notice altogether.
They trooped up the stairs, and to bed. Agatha diplomatically took no notice of her son’s hand, straying briefly toward Eliza’s for a single soft touch, a silent good-night.
They all went separately to sleep—or so she hoped.
Chapter Nine
The summer sun beat down on the Melliton high street. Agatha fancied she could hear the flagstones of the main square sizzling, and had a sudden anxious vision of the stack of broadsheets in her hand bursting spontaneously into flame.
“It’ll be cooler in the woods,” Flood assured her. The hives had been well tended for the past few months and any damaged skeps replaced, so the wheelbarrow was no longer an everyday necessity: today, Flood carried slung over her shoulder a bundle with the smoker and its fuel, and a few other small tools of the beekeeper’s trade.
Agatha shifted her grip on the lyric sheets to let the air cool her hot palms. “Then let’s hurry, after we stop at Nell Turner’s.”
The Turners lived one turn off the high street in a cottage ancient as the hills, whose venerable thatch was almost entirely moss. The lane passed the door as if reluctant to linger, and spent itself in a wheat field behind a low fence; the crop stretched to the foot of the hill beyond, silky and yellow-green as newborn envy.
Agatha expected Flood to knock, but instead the beekeeper went past and around to the garden at the back of the house. This was a functional potager, worlds away from either the ornamental labyrinth and extensive kitchen garden of Abington Hall or even Mrs. Stowe’s cozy cottage roses. Cabbages, onions, radishes, lettuce, and celery, with smaller patches of various herbs, climbed up everywhere out of the dark earth. And in the middle, on a small stool just like the one behind Agatha’s print-works, a new skep hive, straw gleaming like gold, young worker bees entering and leaving as they went about their tireless honey production.
Mrs. Turner was defending the onions ruthlessly against the encroaching weeds, and looked up with a start as the two women approached. “Mrs. Flood! Mrs. Griffin!” she exclaimed, springing to her feet and brushing the earth from her hands. “Is there something amiss?” She glanced at the hive, then back at Flood. “I haven’t been doing anything wrong with the bees, have I?”
“Not since I checked yesterday afternoon, Mrs. Turner. We won’t keep you long.” Flood’s cheery voice allowed no room for embarrassment, and Mrs. Turner’s hands lowered. “We were just stopping in on our way up Backey Green.”
“Do you have somewhere I could set these?” Agatha hefted the bundle of broadsheets she carried: a second printing of “Inexpressibles,” plus two other new ballads specially selected for Melliton tastes.
Mrs. Turner wiped her hands clean on her apron and led them into the house.
Inside was all low ceilings and dark wood beams, and the heat from the hearth where that evening’s bread was baking. The furniture in the main room seemed as old as the house, but the bread smelled wonderful and the wood of the floor had been scrubbed within an inch of its life. A tumbled pair of beds, one large and one small, could be seen through a doorway in the next room—Mrs. Turner hurried over to pull the door shut with an embarrassed squeak of the hinge. “So,” she said, “they’ve been selling well in London?”
“Faster than most,” Agatha confirmed. She set the new broadsides down on the long central table, paper and ink covering the scars in the wood. “I’ve been told by Griffin’s resident ballad expert that you probably already know melodies for the other two?”
Mrs. Turner cast an eye over the two new sets of lyrics, and nodded. “I have something that will suit.”
Agatha clasped her hands, trying not to sound too eager. “I was also wondering if you had any more original songs I could persuade you to let me print.”
“It would be a pleasure,” Mrs. Turner said affably. “Just as soon as you deliver the latest payment.”
Agatha was confused. “But... Mr. Turner came by and collected it earlier this week. Eliza mentioned it.”
Flood’s sunny smile faded, and Mrs. Turner set down the broadside with a small, pained sigh. “I see.” Her mouth had gone tight, her eyes anxious. She smoothed her skirts over her knees, and folded her hands. “I would ask you to deliver any payments to me personally in the future, Mrs. Griffin. If that is possible.”
“Of course...” Agatha said faintly, cringing internally. How foolish she’d been not to have considered before that Mr. Turner might not have been the most reliable custodian of the money his wife had earned. Even if he did have a right to it, according to the common law. At least he had not received the total sales amount, only the most recent quantity. Agatha cleared her throat. “You have my word that all future monies will be put directly into your hands, Mrs. Turner.” Mrs. Turner nodded but still looked tense and wary; Agatha couldn’t blame her one bit.
“What song are you working on now, Nell?” Flood asked.
Mrs. Turner’s expression softened as she looked at Penelope Flood. “I’m fiddling with something about Jack Calbert’s ghost.”
Flood chuckled in delight. Agatha’s ears perked up. “Whose ghost?”
“I suppose it’sghosts, plural,” Mrs. Turner said, and some of the warmth came back into her golden skin. “Since there’s a whole shipful of them.”
