She tugged open the gate and made her way through the grounds toward the bee garden.
Instead of a modern apiary, the bee garden had six hives in boles—small hollows set into the stone of the ancient wall, each just large enough for the straw dome of a single skep. A fountain in the center of the longest wall sent a burbling jet from a stone face into a larger basin beneath, and provided water for thirsty bees to drink. The grounds were planted with a riot of flowering trees, herbs, and blossoms: apple and lavender and hyssop, cowslips and yarrow and honeysuckle.
The gold-and-black-velvet bodies of honeybees danced from blossom to blossom, bearing their harvest back to their home hives. Insect wings caught the morning sunlight, tiny flashes of film and filigree that dazzled the eye and gentled the spirit.
That gentleness was deceptive, however: in a month or so, summer’s bounty would make the bees as lazy and languorous as dowager duchesses, but in spring they were still sharp with winter’s hunger and liable to sting anyone threatening their growing stores of honey and comb.
The trick was to be respectful, but not fearful. Bees could smell panic. So Penelope ambled from one hive to the next, knocking softly on the straw coils to get the bees’ attention, then murmuring condolences on the passing of their mistress. Each knock set the hives buzzing softly, a small cloud of worker bees twirling up from the hive entrance to see who dared disturb their home in swarming season—but Penelope kept her movements slow and smooth and her voice low, and the bees soon settled again.
When she’d told the news to all six hives she stood by the fountain for a while, pulling the gloves off and tucking them in her pocket.
“Can you check that first hive again, Mrs. Flood?” Isabella asked. The elderly woman was wrapped tight against the winter wind, but her eyes were bright and her mouth set in a stern line that brooked no opposition. “I swear I saw a moth emerge from there the other morning.”
It was still quite cool for wax moths, but they could do a lot of damage to a hive if they weren’t caught in time, and Penelope didn’t want Isabella to worry. So she did as commanded, puffing a little more smoke into the first hive and tilting the skep up so she could peer into the folds of comb inside.
“I see no larva, none of their webs,” she called, “and the colony seems strong—plenty of ladies here to fight off intruders.” Some of them were hovering around her head and hands as she worked, but the smoke had made the bees sleepy enough that she didn’t fear their anger. She murmured an apology for disturbing them anyway—it paid to be polite to bees—and set the hive back down. Carefully, so as not to squash anybody.
As Penelope stood and turned back, Isabella hurriedly put down the edge of the skep, the sixth one, and stepped back as if she’d been caught stealing sweets from the kitchens.
Penelope clucked her tongue. “You know you should let me do that,” she chided. A hive was heavy even at the start of spring, and Isabella’s strength had been waning all winter.
Not that the sculptress was prepared to admit it. She shook her head back haughtily even now, those dark eyes that had enchanted an emperor flashing with defiance. “Never you mind,” she said. “When I can’t see to my own hives, you will know I am not long for this world.”
And so it had come to pass, as though that proclamation were a prophecy: the chill Isabella had caught at Christmas moved into her lungs, and by April she had been too weak even to leave her bed. Penelope had taken over caring for the hives then, and intended to do so until Abington’s heir relieved her of the duty.
She would miss her friend, who’d had so many stories from her travels around the world, but who’d never seemed to scorn Penelope for having stayed so timidly close to home. Penelope had given her extra wax for modeling, and Isabella had let Penelope borrow liberally from her library, never telling a merchant’s daughter it wasn’t seemly or useful to be interested in mathematics, or Roman history, or wild romantic poetry.
Penelope was still frozen, listening to the buzz of the bees and letting the tears fall beneath the crepe, when someone coughed politely behind her.
She wiped her eyes and raised her veil to find the vicar Eneas Oliver nodding at her solemnly. His black broadcloth looked very black indeed against the tender spring greens all around them.“Nec morti esse locum,”he intoned,“sed viva volare sideris.”
Penelope smiled. “Nor is there any place for death, but living they fly to the stars.”
The vicar nodded approval, his white-blond hair floating gently around his ears. “Virgil’s fourth Georgic. Of course, my aunt always preferred Ovid. But no one would dare quote lecherous Ovid for a funeral.”
“Not even the last books of theTristia?”Penelope protested. “He was so poignant in exile.”
Mr. Oliver ignored this, glancing from Penelope to the hives. “Were you reviving that old pagan superstition, Mrs. Flood? Telling the bees?” He shook his head, amused and superior.
“Your Virgil was a pagan, too, sir,” Penelope retorted, then immediately regretted it. This was no day to be drawn into old arguments—especially not with the man who’d taught her her first lessons about bees. Her next words were softer. “Miss Abington will be much missed.”
“Thank you,” the vicar murmured, his voice thickening.
Penelope looked politely away, and for a moment the only sounds were the burbling of the water and the humming of the hives.
Eventually Mr. Oliver said, “I used to come here as a boy. At first for the apples, but later, more and more, for the bees. Old Mr. Monkham was the gardener in those days—he showed me how to approach the hives safely, and how to harvest the honey when autumn came. Every time I talk about sulfur on Sundays, I remember his lessons.”
Penelope remembered Mr. Monkham, too. He’d had her older brother Harry soundly whipped once for stealing a handful of strawberries. “Fewer beekeepers are using sulfur these days,” she murmured. “It’s so wasteful, killing all your hives every year, when there are other methods for getting honey.”
“None so traditional, though. And none so in harmony with the ultimate fate of human souls.” The vicar brushed aside one golden lady, buzzing curiously around his pale hair. “We mortals end in sulfur, too, don’t we? While the best fruits of our labor are gathered elsewhere, by more illustrious hands than ours. And our lives are bounded by larger powers beyond our comprehension.”
“Are you saying you like bees because they make you feel like God?” Penelope asked tartly.
Mr. Oliver laughed indulgently. “It helps keep my mind fixed on eternal rewards, if I am in constant contact with creatures so ephemeral as these,” he said. “Though there are certainly ways in which tending a beehive and tending a parish are startlingly similar. Both prosper best under the guidance of an educated mind.”
They prosper if you keep them, not if you kill them, Penelope thought, but only bit her lip. The fate of the Abington hives was out of her hands.
The vicar heaved a sigh. “But speaking of duty... May I escort you back to the house, Mrs. Flood? I believe my sister has laid out a luncheon for the mourners.”
