They would need only a few hands for the work: Harry and John were happy enough to offer help, and Mr. Thomas and Mr. Kitt were high on Mrs. Koskinen’s list of reliable troublemakers. Agatha distributed code-marked ballads using the same system Nell had, and nobody was any the wiser. Penelope’s list of equipment gave way to hasty preparations—wheelbarrows and makeshift bee veils and a truly alarming number of heavy gloves—and the next evening Penelope kept a careful eye on the sun as it sank, and the moon as it slowly but steadily rose in the sky like heaven’s benediction on her plans.
Harry only grinned when she pointed out it was full, and would help light their way. “You sound like Mother used to, when her blood was up.”
Penelope preened beneath the compliment.
They waited, in separate homes, while the bells of St. Ambrose’s tolled eight, nine, ten. At half-past eleven, the conspirators all gathered behind the churchyard: Agatha and Penelope, Harry and John, and Mr. Kitt, all in dark clothes, lower faces masked, muslin veils bundled high on hats and heads. They looked oddly ornate and festive, as though the ancient Melliton dead had risen from their graves for an eldritch moonlit picnic among the headstones.
Silently, Penelope waved her friends to follow, and they crept up the long, high hill.
When the bells struck midnight, the sound covered the noise of the Abington Hall garden gate squeaking open.
The smoker hissed like a miniature dragon as Penelope wreathed all six hives in soothing pine-and-lavender smoke. Half the garden’s plants were dug up already, she noted with affronted fury: the rows of strawberries and hyssop were gone, and the honeysuckle torn up by the roots and left stretched out on the ground like a bevy of lovesick maidens.
When the smoke had taken effect, Penelope waved the others forward, and they went about stealing the hives.
One slumbering skep went into the bottom of each wheelbarrow, a straw cover placed over its open base to protect the drowsy bees dozing in their combs. A board went over the top of the barrow, and another skep could be balanced on top of that, with twine quickly lashing it in place so as not to tip over on the journey.
The six hives were loaded up in silence, and the thieves wound their silent way back through the labyrinth and to the garden gate. Penelope caught Agatha’s eye, and saw her grinning silver in the dimness. For one glorious, moonlit moment, Penelope’s heart soared with triumph.
Then a shadow loomed in a window, and a cry went up from the house.
They were discovered.
“Go!” Penelope hissed.
Harry took off with the first barrow, bounding down the hill and into the woods, where it would take a bloodhound to trace him. Footmen and gardeners poured out of the Hall, carrying any handy weapons and shouting “Thieves! Burglars! Murder!” indiscriminately into the night. Mr. Kitt, steering the second barrow down the hill as skillfully as if it were a ship under sail, made it safely to the wood line, with Agatha and Penelope pelting after and ducking beneath the dark protection of alder and pine.
Penelope clutched the rough bark and turned frightened eyes upon her husband, who was doing his best with the third wheelbarrow. But he was so tall, and the barrow tilted more boldly forward in his hands, and as she watched with bated breath, the front wheel of the barrow hit a rock and staggered, dumping the top skep from its hasty ties and sending it bouncing over the ground.
Penelope would have rushed forward, but Agatha’s hand clamped around her wrist and held her back.
Men, at least a dozen, poured over the crest of the hill. John scooped puzzled bees and broken comb back into the skep, andshovedthe whole apparatus the last ten feet, to where his wife and her lover stood in the shadows.
Penelope lunged forward and dragged the barrow into the trees.
John waved at her to hurry, then took off running—but not toward them. Sidelong, parallel to the wood, pulling the muslin from his head and waving it like a banner as he made for the bright ribbon of the open road. “Never catch me!” he sang out, with the full force of his sailor’s lungs.
The pursuers spotted him, sent up the cry, and turned as one.
“Come on,” Agatha hissed, as Penelope’s throat ached with unvoiced shouts and pleas. Each woman took one side of the wheelbarrow, and together they hurried it bumping down the track in the wood, toward Mr. Thomas and Mr. Kitt’s house. There they found the others, sitting tense around the faint embers in the kitchen hearth.
Harry bounded up and wrapped one arm around them both. “Thank god,” he muttered—but Penelope pulled back, heartsick, as he asked: “Where’s John?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her fear clogging her throat.
“The barrow fell, and he got it to us, then drew the pursuit away,” Agatha said.
Harry laughed, half knowing, half bitter. “He’s too chivalrous for his own good, that man.”
“Maybe they didn’t catch him?” Mr. Kitt hoped.
“They’ll catch all of us, if we’re not careful,” Agatha replied.
One by one, they split off: Mr. Kitt heading toward the Four Swallows where he’d spent the first part of the evening, and where Mr. Thomas had remained, buying rounds very visibly and giving them both something of an alibi. The others kept to the darkest spots, avoiding the open roads and holding their breaths, listening for the sounds of pursuit.
The hue and cry was just starting to spread through the town when Agatha and Penelope reached Fern Hall; Harry, who arrived a few minutes later, unusually pale and out of breath, informed them that the Four Swallows had been shouting about thieves and villains when he’d slipped past beneath the curtain of willows along the riverbank.
But by the time dawn rose, all of Melliton was awake and aware of the news:
