“It is justice when the law does it, Mrs. Flood.” Mr. Oliver’s cordiality slipped, and he scowled openly. “You said you had only a single question—that was two, by my count.”
“Indulge me one more time,” she said softly. “Is there nothing I can say, to make you change your mind on this subject?”
He shook his head, pale hair floating on the air.
Penelope sighed. “Then I’m sorry, Mr. Oliver.” She pulled out a sheet of paper, scribbled over with a spidery hand. “This is a letter from Mr. Oglevey, a London antiquary who specializes in art with certain... carnal tendencies. He was quite happy to tell me all about the deals he’s brokered on behalf of Lady Summerville, for several high-quality works by the late and much-admired Isabella Abington. Andhere,” she said, laying down another sheet, “is a list of everything I could find that Lady Summerville has spent money on since the founding of her virtuous moral society. Handbill printing, special constables’ wages, informants’ bounties—even the rectory glass, after your windows were broken during the Queenite agitation. I’ve spoken to every artisan and tradesman on the list, to confirm that the sums are accurate and verifiable.”
Mr. Oliver’s eyes were coals now, hot and luminous in the dimness. “What are you getting at, Mrs. Flood?”
Penelope leaned forward. “Simply this: what would the good people of Melliton think, if they knew the Mendacity Society was almost entirely funded by the selling of obscene art?”
The silence wasexquisite. Penelope let it flow around her, thick and sweet as honey.
“There is nothing illegal about what my sister has done,” the vicar said at last.
“Of course there isn’t,” Penelope said breezily. “Those statures were her inheritance, to dispose of as she wished. But I remember when the will was read: She wasn’t precisely eager to show them off to her friends, was she? Did she even tell anyone they now belonged to her?” She sat back, clasping her hands tightly in her lap to keep them from shaking. “It’s not about what’s legal or not legal, Mr. Oliver. It’s aboutwhat’s right. The Mendacity Society does exist to fight obscenity, does it not?” She tilted her head. “And if memory serves, yours is an auxiliary branch—imagine what the national organization would say if they were to find out...”
The vicar’s teeth ground together so hard Penelope could hear them from where she sat. “Blackmail is a crime, Mrs. Flood,” he sputtered.
“Then bring me up on charges,” she replied cheerfully. “But you’ll need a second justice for that—perhaps Mr. Theydon, with his ‘Hundred Godly Lessons,’ could join you on the bench.”
Mr. Oliver blanched a very springlike greenish.
Penelope leaned forward again. “Let the villagers keep their bees, Mr. Oliver. Or else you’ll be at the center of the kind of scandal that gets talked about everywhere in England. Imagine your name in the hands of the caricature artists, or on the lips of every gossipy housewife from here to Scotland. I can hear the ballad lyrics now: ‘Mr. All-Of-Her, the Vicar of Vice.’”
Mr. Oliver shook his head, as though he could shake off her threats so easily. Penelope waited, while he attempted to stare her down. But she knew his weakness, and it was this: hemustbe thought to be virtuous. It was as crucial a need for him as breath.
He made the only decision he could, and slumped heavily in his comfortable chair. “Very well, you harpy,” he said. “You may have your bees.”
“You’ve made a very prudent decision,” Penelope said, and gathered up her letters. “In fact, since so many hives in Melliton are to be left in their proper place, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Abington hives found their way back to Melliton.”
“And just how will that miracle be accomplished?” Mr. Oliver asked bitterly.
Penelope only smiled. “The Lord works in mysterious ways, Mr. Oliver.”
It was all she could do not to skip on the walk home.Thiswas the kind of feeling she’d been chasing, that she hadn’t gotten from the bee bombs. Not a single act of violence, sharp and sudden as lightning, but a shift in the way she moved through the world.
Penelope had gone up against Mr. Oliver, and she had won. The vicar would not forget this. She had taken back a little bit of ground for her own, and she intended to keep it.
It made her want to see what else she could have, if she were only bold enough to ask for it.
One hope came instantly to mind.
Chapter Twenty-Five
You ought to have seen his face!Penelope’s handwriting was rushed and flourished with triumph when she wrote to Agatha next.It felt like I’d gotten back all the years of my life I’d spent worrying about offending him, or disappointing him, or being too improper, or too obviously myself. An embarrassment of riches, though not without some pangs of grief. I thought we were friends, and he thought he was my superior. We are not friends any longer—not that either of us will ever admit that aloud—but at least we are now something closer to equals, in both his eyes and my own.
Perhaps it’s not about overthrowing the whole towering edifice of bad government in one fell swoop. Perhaps you can thwart one small tyrant at a time, and get the thing done piecemeal. I don’t have too much in common with the radicals at the Crown and Anchor, but I like to think they’d approve of the general tenor of what we’ve done.
Agatha smiled fondly, and traced her fingertips over the spikes and swirls of her beloved’s handwriting. She could all but hear Penelope’s voice in those words, as if touching the ink were like strumming the string of some instrument. The results set her heart singing like music.
Penelope was still buoyant when Agatha went down to Melliton three days later. She pulled Agatha into an embrace before she’d hardly stepped off the stage.
Agatha hugged her back rather anxiously as Penelope’s arms tightened around her waist. The other woman was laughing, silently, joyously—but Agatha felt too many Melliton eyes on her to enjoy it as she wanted to.
“I’ve got something to show you,” Penelope said, and as soon as they arrived at Fern Hall she brought out a small wrapped bundle. “Open it,” she urged, with a knowing grin.
Agatha unwrapped the cloth to find—honeycomb? Mostly honeycomb, but an odd formation, some of the cells capped, others standing empty. They were misshapen because they’d been built around something else: a small enamel box, brilliantly colored, with a ring of sparkling stones and the shockingly familiar face of an ex-emperor...
