by Olivia Waite
“I was thinking about a short run of Joanna Molesey. That first volume always sold well. And it’s close to the Romantics people love these days, without the scandal.”
Downes made a face. “You sure people will buy it, without the scandal?”
“Hmph.” Agatha pursed her lips, but the corners crept up in spite of herself.
Downes grinned, the inevitable ink swipe on his cheek looking extra dark against that flash of teeth.
Agatha nodded, making the decision final. “We can advertise it as a cure for the ills of this decadent age, maybe.”
Downes went back to supervising the print queue, and Agatha crooked her finger at one of the Ashtons, then strode through the door and into the cavernous space of the warehouse proper.
At once several pounds of tension dropped away from her shoulders. This was familiar. This was comforting. This was home.
The high, narrow windows let sunlight fall on the maze of shelves filling the rest of the space. Each shelf was made of sturdy oak, reinforced at the joins, braced in copper as much as possible to carry the weight of the lead stereotype plates. Any printer who ran more than a jobbing press soon amassed their own collection of these, given time: setting type every time you wanted a new edition of something popular was both slow and expensive—with stereotyping, you made a clay or papier-mâché cast of the type, then poured molten type metal into that, and when it cooled you’d have a perfect ready-made plate to hand whenever you needed more copies of a book or print or poem. You could even make corrections and change typographical errors, if you were clever about it. Griffin’s had been in the printing business for nearly a century, passing from father to daughter to son and so forth, and for at least the past fifty years they had been storing plates in this same warehouse.
Agatha was a Griffin by marriage, not birth, but her father had been a printer, and this place always took her back to her childhood and made her feel pleasantly nostalgic. Letters large and small marched backward across the plates as they leaned against one another—rather like tombstones, but tombstones that were certain of their resurrection.
That was the comfort in being useful: it saved you from becoming neglected, or discarded.
Agatha flipped through the ledger on the shelf by the door. Molesey: Poems, 28. Far back corner, apparently. Agatha beckoned to the one young Ashton—really, she ought to learn to tell which was which at some point—and led the way back into the maze.
The hum of the river grew louder the farther she walked. It really was sounding quite angry, with an alarming, persistent kind of whine on top of it . . . then Agatha reached aisle 28 and realized that wasn’t the river she was hearing at all.
Her heart seized and her blood ran cold.
Bees. Hundreds of them, it looked like, in a mass on the edges of one shelf of plates. Buzzing, darting about, flashing in the sunlight like tiny winged arrows. Wriggling, crawling, even over one another—as though they weren’t individual creatures at all, but rather some nebulous, amorphous blob of insect awareness.
Beside her young Ashton gasped and began to move forward.
Agatha seized him by the shoulder before he could get himself stung. “Not too close,” she warned. “Who knows what could set them off?”
She kept her grip on him tight, even as she peered forward. Yes, of course, as luck would have it, there was a broken window at the end of aisle twenty-eight. The bees must have found their way in through that.
They had been making themselves comfortable here for . . . Agatha didn’t know how long. Long enough to have started several honeycombs, obviously—the folds of them hung from the plates for Molesey’s Poems, long glistening golden curves.
One of the insects buzzed closer, as though scouting for threats; Agatha stepped back, dragging young Ashton helplessly with her.
Agatha reminded herself to breathe, sucked in a fear-chilled lungful, and belatedly worried she might breathe in bees. But the insects seemed mostly interested in their own business, adding more comb little by little to secure their hold upon Molesey territory.
Agatha had had books stolen and pirated before—what printer hadn’t?—but to have a book colonized by bees? It was absurd.
No, more than absurd: it was flummoxing, is what it was. Agatha was flummoxed. Bewildered, confounded, and absolutely discombobulated. She had no experience to guide her over this obstacle.
Carelessness she could reprimand. Accidents were bound to happen sometimes. But . . . bees? What on earth did a printer do about bees?
Agatha chewed on her lip and told herself to use her brains. When you didn’t know the answer to a question, the first thing was to find out who did.
She knew someone who knew bees. Thomas’s elderly mother, Eva Ladler Griffin Stowe: a woman who had given three husbands back to God but kept their names. She also kept a few hives of bees in her garden.
It was somewhere to start, anyway.
Agatha hauled young Ashton back to work, gave Downes instructions to let nobody near aisle 28, and was out the door.
Agatha liked her mother-in-law a great deal, but the time they had briefly shared a home after Thomas’s death had been difficult. It had been a relief for both of them when Mrs. Stowe announced her intention to move back to Melliton. Now Mrs. Stowe shared a small house with a spinster friend on the west edge of town. Miss Coningsby managed the house and Mrs. Stowe the garden, so they each had their kingdom.
Agatha didn’t bother to knock at the door but simply let herself in through the side gate and walked around to the small walled plot at the back.
There Mrs. Stowe sat, as she always did in fine weather, watching her roses slowly spread their petals.
Her hands were crawling with bees.
Agatha had seen this trick before, but it never failed to make her shudder a little. “Are you sure you should be doing that?”
“Their stings help with the aches.” Mrs. Stowe turned her head and the delicate parchment wrinkles of her face folded into a grin. “They don’t sting me often, of course, but I appreciate the sacrifice when they do.”
She lifted her hands and shook them gently, and the bees detached themselves and flew back to the hive against the low wall at the back.
“So you might enjoy a gift of more bees?” Agatha said, moving closer and dropping a kiss of greeting on the older woman’s proffered cheek. “I happen to know of some that are in need of a new home.”
“You’ve seen a swarm?” Mrs. Stowe brightened. “Were they flying or had they settled somewhere?”
“Very settled—they’re colonizing the back corner of my warehouse.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Stowe laughed. “Then they need rehiving. You’ll be wanting to talk to Mrs. Flood.”
“I’ll talk to anybody who knows how to get rid of bees.”
“Mrs. Flood knows everything about bees.” Mrs. Stowe’s voice was emphatic with conviction. “What’s more—she’ll know if someone’s in need of a new colony. And she’s kind. A little too kind for her own good, probably.”
Agatha huffed. “What does kindness have to do with it?”
Mrs. Stowe clucked her tongue, as though Agatha were a stubborn child avoiding her lessons. “Because you don’t know anything about bees, and you’re asking her a favor.”
“I could pay—”
“Don’t you dare.”
Agatha snapped her mouth shut.
Mrs. Stowe’s smile broadened. “This isn’t London,” Mrs. Stowe went on, more mildly. “We don’t usually send invoices around when we help one another. And Mrs. Flood has money enough that she doesn’t worry about getting more.” She raised her elbows to the arm of the chair, steepling her fingers. “You might have to be in Mrs. Flood’s debt for a little while, is all. Until you find a way to pay her back in kind.”
Agatha shrugged, though even the mention of the word debt made her itch between the shoulder blades. She skated too close to that edge too often, and the anxiety of it was rarely far from her thoughts.
> But she couldn’t just leave the bees in the warehouse. It was untenable. That meant the bees would win.
There was only one decision to be made. Agatha steeled herself, and made it. “Where might this Mrs. Flood be found?”
Chapter Three
The Four Swallows tavern stood where Melliton met the river Ethel, and it was the custom for some of the local beekeepers to take their nuncheon together there on the small pier that stretched out into the water. Penelope had walked her usual southern circuit in the morning, and would circle around the cottages and farms to the north in the afternoon, checking on everyone’s hives, but the summer days were long and left plenty of time for a leisurely midday meal.
A willow overhanging the bank offered some shade, its fluttering leaves making the light shimmer in a way that would have been much more pleasant had Mr. Painter not been clouding the air with tobacco smoke from the pipe he was huffing into.
Mr. Koskinen shook his head and took an aggrieved draught of his beer, blowing smoke away from the surface of the liquid before bringing the pewter tankard to his lips.
Mr. Biswas was laughing silently, gray whiskers shaking against his brown skin.
Penelope had started to laugh, too, but it had turned into a cough that left her breathless, with tears leaking from smoke-reddened eyes. “Enough, Mr. Painter! It makes me dizzy.”
“Aye,” the man said, between puffs on the pipe, “but it makes the bees dizzy, too, doesn’t it? Goes to show: tobacco smoke beats wood smoke for tending hives.”
“Unless the tobacco makes the beekeeper so disoriented she stumbles and knocks over the skep,” Penelope countered with a wheeze. “Besides, it adds a bitterness to the honey. Give me a good base of pine needles and vary the aromatics: lavender for spring, dried roses in summer, orange peel for fall.”
“I find puffball mushrooms are best, myself,” Mr. Biswas offered.
Penelope was horrified. “Miss Abington always warned me that would kill the bees!”
“No, not if you’re careful.” Mr. Biswas pursed his lips and confessed, “If you’re truly careful, you wrap some linen around your mouth when you use it. For caution’s sake.”
Mr. Painter went back to smoking normally, and the air soon cleared again. His mouth worked thoughtfully around the pipe stem. “What do you use, Timo?”
Timo Koskinen tilted his shaggy red head and considered the question. He’d been a sailor before his marriage, but now he was perhaps the most learned beekeeper in Melliton: his octagonal glass observation hive was a marvel of engineering, and he’d read just about everything there was to read on the subject.
Perhaps the weight of all that knowledge was a burden, because Timo Koskinen could never, ever be rushed when someone asked him a question about bees.
A swallow darted by, flirting with the surface of the river. Beneath the willow branches a trout appeared, snapping at mayflies that hovered just out of reach.
Mr. Biswas twisted a section of his whiskers idly between his fingers.
Mr. Painter tapped the ash out of his pipe and refilled it, tamping the brown leaf down into a sturdy pack. Likely his own product, imports of which had bought him one of the finest houses in Melliton.
And still Mr. Koskinen considered. Lazily he raised one calloused finger and scratched his weather-reddened chin.
Penelope’s attention wandered, caught by the ripple of wind on water and pulled downriver by the speed of the current. So she happened to be looking in the direction of the print-works and the old military barracks when the woman appeared.
She was in close-tailored gray, with streaks of silver snaking through her dark hair and a flush of agitation blooming in her pale face. Her eyes sparkled with irritation; her mouth was a stern slash. Penelope knew at once that when she spoke, her tone would be sharp, and her patience with waywardness thin.
Beneath the collar of her shirt, Penelope felt her neck grow hot.
Oh. Oh, dear.
The woman came to a stop, hands on hips, eyes on Penelope. “Are you Mrs. Flood?”
Penelope knew what she must look like: a round, graying woman in trousers and a man’s coat, skin dusted with tan and freckles, hair cropped at her ears, battered old boots, rather plain and potato-shaped in all. Sitting—and drinking—with a group of weathered former sailors in the middle of the day. “That’s me,” she said cheerfully.
The woman narrowed her eyes. “I am Agatha Griffin. My husband’s mother said I might find you here.”
“I know plenty of husbands,” Penelope replied, and grinned. “Even more of their mothers.”
Mr. Biswas sputtered out a surprised laugh, but subsided under the blade of Mrs. Griffin’s gaze.
Penelope cocked her head. “It would be Mrs. Stowe who sent you?”
The woman’s gaze slid back to Penelope. It had lost none of its steel in the journey. “I need your help with some bees.”
All four beekeepers sobered. Penelope drained the last of the ale in her tankard and rose to her feet. “Gentlemen,” she said, with a nod of farewell. “Let me know what Mr. Koskinen’s answer was.”
Mr. Biswas chortled and Mr. Painter gestured regally with his pipe.
Mr. Koskinen swallowed his feelings along with another pull of his beer.
Penelope turned to Mrs. Griffin. “We’ll have to stop by my house first to gather a few things. I live on the edge of the wood, just west of town.”
Mrs. Griffin nodded, and Penelope shouldered her pack and began leading the way.
It was a fine day for a stroll, but no matter how sweet the breeze or how cheerfully the birds swooped and sang, Mrs. Griffin’s mouth stayed in that set, irritated line.
Penelope liked a friendly silence, but this was not that, and her nerves soon got the better of her and set her talking: “So, where is the swarm?”
Mrs. Griffin didn’t answer right away.
Penelope held her tongue and bided her time, step by step.
Wind rustled the grass at the edge of the road.
Finally the woman burst out: “How on earth did you know?”
The mix of surprise and anger was deeply satisfying. Penelope wondered if magicians felt like this, after a particularly mystifying trick.
But unlike the magicians, she didn’t mind giving away her secret. She settled her pack more firmly on her shoulder and began to explain. “If it was advice you needed for a hive you kept, Mrs. Stowe could have given it. She’s a perfectly capable beekeeper. Not much of a walker, though, these days. And if someone had been stung badly enough to send you running—well, you’d have run for the physician, wouldn’t you? But you look vexed, like there’s something of an emergency. And you’ve been sent to find me by name. So that means there’s a swarm somewhere it shouldn’t be, and you need me to find a better home for it. Simple.” She whistled a little, to keep from grinning at the affronted look on the other woman’s face. “And you never answered my question.”
After a moment, Mrs. Griffin gave a decisive nod, and Penelope’s chest went allover warm at this tiny sign of approval. “Some bees have got into my warehouse,” Mrs. Griffin confessed.
Ah, yes, the print-works in what had been the old Huston mill. Penelope’s curiosity pricked up its ears. “There’s a swarm among your books?”
“No—among the printing plates.”
“Which plates?”
Mrs. Griffin blinked, evidently considering the question odd. “An old book of verses by Joanna Molesey.”
“Oh, how marvelous! Which poem of hers is your favorite?”
Mrs. Griffin snorted. “I am far too busy to indulge in poetry.”
This answer stopped Penelope’s tongue dead as a landed fish.
She was saved from concocting an answer, however, as they were now mere steps from her house. She loaded a few things into a wheelbarrow, along with the everyday tools she’d already had in her pack, and turned down the road that led to the print-works.
The load made it more difficult to carry on a convers
ation, so Penelope clamped her mouth shut and told herself that if the other woman grew uncomfortable with the silence, that was no fault of Penelope’s.
But she felt guilty about it, all the same.
Mrs. Griffin frowned down at the wheelbarrow. “All that just to kill a few bees?”
Penelope stopped dead and dropped the wheelbarrow handles. The wooden legs hit the dirt of the road with an angry thunk. “We are not killing them.”
Mrs. Griffin slowed and halted, her gray skirts swirling around her ankles. “We aren’t?”
“No. We are rehiving them.” Penelope tapped meaningfully on the curve of the straw skep hive that filled most of the wheelbarrow—much easier to lift and tote around right now than it would be once it was full of comb and honey and slumbering brood. “If you want your bees killed, you will have to find someone else to do it.”
“I don’t necessarily want them killed,” Mrs. Griffin retorted. She jerked her head to toss a loose lock of hair out of her eyes. “I just assumed it would be necessary in order to get them out of the way.”
“It’s not.” Penelope took a deep breath, trying to tamp down the anger flaring up in her throat. She felt like Mr. Painter’s pipe, pouring out smoke and heat. It wasn’t Mrs. Griffin’s fault; she just didn’t know. “Some bees may die in the rehiving process—they might sting someone, or get crushed. It happens, no matter how careful a beekeeper tries to be. But the colony will survive. And that’s important.”
“If you say so.” Mrs. Griffin waited, then frowned harder. “Can we get on with it, then?”
Penelope folded her arms. She wasn’t the one in a rush this fine summer’s day. “Not until you agree we’re not going to kill the bees.”
“Fine!” Mrs. Griffin threw her hands in the air. “Though I don’t see why it matters, one way or another.”
“It matters to me,” Penelope said quietly.
The woman shot her a look so searching that Penelope nearly stepped back from the force of it.
Then the anger seemed to go out of Mrs. Griffin all at once, like a lamp being blown out. “Alright,” she said, and blew out a long breath. “My apologies, Mrs. Flood. You know your business, of course.”