The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows

by Olivia Waite

  Flood’s expressive lips twisted. “Bacchus has no need of heirs, though, does he? A mortal monarch does.”

  Agatha sobered. England had too recently lost the heir to the throne, the much-loved young Princess Charlotte. She had died giving birth to a stillborn son, only a few scant weeks after Thomas’s heart had given out; in Agatha’s personal anguish the country’s prolonged, widespread grief for the young someday queen and mother had been both a comfort and a torment.

  Comfort, because it had given Agatha a very handy excuse for tears when she was in a most fragile state.

  Torment, because it turned the world into a ghastly mirror, showing a mother and son being mourned when she was a mother with a son, in mourning. There had been no escaping, no recourse from reminders of loss. Even now, looking up at another lost queen, it cut too near the bone for Agatha’s comfort.

  She reached out and grasped Flood’s elbow as if it were a lifeline. “Show me a different one,” she said.

  Flood looked down at Agatha’s hand, then up again with a smile. “This way. My favorite is in the center of the maze.”

  Flood’s favorite statue was a pairing: a dryad and a water nymph. The dryad was mostly tree below the waist and in one arm high above her head. The other stretched down as she leaned toward the water nymph—whose own legs vanished into waves and froth, though her arms reached up, eager to twine with those of the dryad.

  The figures were almost, but not quite touching: fingertips inches from grasping, lips parted for a kiss but still a breath away from meeting.

  That sliver of space cut through Agatha like a knife. “Oh,” she gasped, and pressed her hand against her heart. “That’s Joanna Molesey, isn’t it?” For the water nymph’s long nose and hungry eyes were the absolute mirror of the poet’s.

  Flood nodded once, sharply. Her voice was reverent, as though they stood in a cathedral. “The dryad is a self-portrait. Isabella sculpted this when she was much younger—right after she’d met Joanna and Mr. Molesey for the first time.”

  “Did her husband . . . ?” Agatha had to stop and clear the roughness from her throat. There was so much hopeless yearning in those figures that it made her want to weep. “Was he very angry about it?”

  “According to Isabella, Mr. Molesey looked at it and said: ‘Oh, how sweet, the nymph and the dryad want to be friends even though they abide in different elements.’”

  Agatha looked at those reaching hands, those parted lips, and back at Flood. “Friends?” she blurted, and pointed at the water nymph. “This statue does not embody friendship, Flood. That nymph is literally melting below the waist, and the dryad is doing the opposite of whatever Daphne does whenever Apollo catches up to her. Honestly,” she said, folding her arms, shaking her head, “you could not come up with any clearer signal of sensual encouragement than opposite-Daphne.”

  Flood was laughing at this helplessly, silently. At length she gasped, “You are an artist, Griffin: you’re fluent in this language. The late Mr. Molesey was very much not.”

  Agatha made a rude noise for Joanna’s deluded, departed husband and turned back to the statue. “It’s lovely of course—and rather scandalous—but what makes it your favorite?”

  Flood got herself under control with a final chuckle. “Partly that it is so beautiful. And I love the curl on that wave, and the bend in the branches. It makes me think of the best kind of pastoral poetry. But also . . .” She paused, biting her lip. “This is going to sound horribly sentimental.”

  Agatha waved this aside. “You’ve already mentioned poetry. We might as well bring sentiment into it.”

  Flood’s eyes creased at the corners, whether from the bright sunlight or from the difficulty of putting her thoughts into proper words, Agatha didn’t know. At last she said: “Isabella sculpted this because she fell in love with someone she shouldn’t, and she couldn’t act on her feelings even if they chanced to be returned. Art was her only way of grappling with the situation. It’s a moment of perfect hopelessness, captured in stone—but it’s not the end of the story. So when I look at this statue, I can almost . . . look past the pain and see beyond to all the years and the happiness they had together. They had no idea they had all that to look forward to. So the statue, you see, means something more, something better than what the artist originally put into it. And that strikes me as a sort of miracle.”

  She cast Agatha a shy smile, knowing she had offered something tender and fragile, ready to laugh at herself if that’s what Agatha chose to do.

  Agatha did not feel like laughing. She felt lightning-blasted, rooted to the spot. Mr. Flood’s old coat felt stiff and brittle, like a layer of bark that had encased her tense shoulders and awkward arms.

  Someone else’s wife, she reminded herself. Someone else has already claimed her hand, so yours must stay at your side.

  But oh, it was all she could do not to reach out.

  “Did you ever show Mr. Flood this statue?” she asked instead—then silently cursed her too-sharp tongue.

  If Penelope Flood thought the question too probing, it didn’t appear to trouble her. “I did. ‘Very Greek,’ he called it.” Flood’s smile widened, two dimples winking into view in her cheeks. “And now, whenever I look at it, I am going to recall the phrase ‘opposite-Daphne.’ Which I never could have predicted before, either. So you see: truth, as well as beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”

  Agatha managed a choked laugh, but beneath her borrowed coat an unspeakable thorn had burrowed into her chest, and she knew it would ache for some time yet.

  Chapter Eight

  The Four Swallows was buzzing on the night of 6 July, and it was all on account of the news. Penelope shouldered her way through to the bar to get a round for herself and Griffin, then squeezed up next to the printer on a bench to hear Mr. Biswas read aloud from the latest edition of the Times.

  A secret report had been presented in the House of Lords: the summation of two green bags’ worth of evidence against Queen Caroline’s fidelity and character, collected without her knowledge by spies for the king and his government. Naturally, since it was a secret report, everyone was talking about it.

  The Queen had composed a petition to the Lords asking that she be permitted to speak in her own defense; instead, Lord Liverpool had presented a Bill of Pains and Penalties.

  “Adultery,” Mrs. Koskinen murmured, translating the legalisms. Her plump white hand squeezed her husband’s arm in distracted outrage, and her red curls bobbed as she bounced. “He’s been accusing her of being unfaithful for a decade now.”

  “If she is, it’s no wonder,” Mrs. Biswas grumbled. “Not like George has ever done anything to endear himself to his wife. He didn’t even write to tell her when the Princess died. Her own daughter!”

  “She’s a wicked woman,” mutter Mr. Painter, huffing out clouds of smoke from his pipe. “The whole thing is an embarrassment to the nation.”

  Mr. Biswas continued to read from yesterday’s paper in a clear, carrying voice. His eyes went wide as he scanned ahead and reached the heart of the matter: “A Bill to deprive her Majesty, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, of the title, prerogatives, rights, privileges, and pretensions, of Queen-consort of this realm, and to dissolve the marriage between his Majesty and the said Queen.”

  “Dissolve the marriage!” Mrs. Koskinen gasped.

  “Divorce,” Mr. Painter confirmed, in heavy tones. “Though it’s not the usual way such things are done.”

  “Can he force one through like this?” Mrs. Koskinen demanded. “Surely the Church will have strong objections—and the people won’t allow it—there’s been one mutiny already in the King’s Mews on her behalf—if the army rises up to defend her—”

  Her husband put his large hand over hers, and she bit her lip and subsided.

  “The Lords are responding now,” Mr. Biswas went on. “Earl Grey said that it must appear to be a very great disadvantage to the Queen to have allegations made against her by the committee, and a bill after
wards laid on their lordships’ table, and placed before the public, for a considerable time before she was allowed to be heard.”

  “Quite right,” Mr. Kitt responded. “Any other criminal on trial has the right to speak in his own defense. Should not our Queen, if she is to stand accused?”

  “The King will never permit it,” Mr. Biswas responded. “Nor his friends in the Lords. It would give Caroline a chance to describe George’s even worse failings—under oath, in the public record, ready for any and all scribblers to put into tomorrow’s caricatures.” He caught himself and his brown cheeks went ruddy. “No offense intended to present company, of course.”

  “None taken,” Griffin replied pleasantly, toasting him with her ale.

  Mr. Biswas continued reading the argument from the Lords, Mrs. Koskinen hanging on every syllable.

  Mr. Kitt leaned over to speak to Mr. Thomas, Griffin, and Penelope. “It’s an absolute godsend for the radical press—they’re now free to attack the King all they like under cover of defending the Queen’s good name.”

  “My son Sydney nearly had an apoplexy about it yesterday morning,” Griffin said wryly. She was looking rather regal herself, to Penelope’s eye, in a dress of lilac linen, the light fabric a concession to the summer heat. It made the gray in her hair gleam and her eyes shine like jet in the firelight. She tilted her head thoughtfully. “As for myself, I feel terribly uneasy about the whole business. Too many people are calling for too many others to take up arms.”

  “Do you believe the Queen is guilty, then?” Mr. Thomas asked.

  Griffin snorted. “As if half the Lords haven’t done everything they’re accusing her of, and more. As if the King himself hasn’t been parading mistresses all up and down the country since long before his royal father died. What does guilt even mean, in such a context?”

  “You’d think the King would have better followed his father and mother’s example,” Mr. Kitt added gently. “They were the very picture of a happy English marriage.”

  “This can’t be only because they are unhappy,” Mrs. Koskinen said. “He was content to leave her alone when she was in Italy.”

  “He sent spies!” Mr. Biswas cried.

  Mrs. Koskinen folded her arms. “It seems to me that what he wants even more than a divorce is to not share the power of the Crown.”

  Arguments multiplied. Volume doubled. Mr. Biswas and Mrs. Koskinen traded words at impossible speed, while Mr. Koskinen’s brow grew more and more craggy with dread. Mr. Kitt and Mr. Thomas were leaned close together, whispering blond hair against brown, barely enough space for a breath between them, both men’s faces troubled and pale.

  Her friends had always argued in the Swallows, but this was more than friendly teasing. People were becoming actually angry. Penelope leaned against the back wall of the tavern, seeking comfort from the wall’s sturdy bulk.

  After a moment, Griffin angled toward her, firelight licking across her face. “Everything alright, Flood?”

  Penelope bit her lip and shook her head. “It shouldn’t have to come to this. It should be easier to sever a union when the parties make one another so evidently miserable. Even if she was tired of Italy—why can they simply not live apart, as so many couples do?”

  “Because he’s King and she’s Queen,” Griffin said grimly. “And they both want everything that means.”

  “So he has to brand her publicly as faithless and depraved, and the Lords have to all vote on whether they agree. And for what? Spite and pride.”

  “And power,” Griffin countered. “Even if she’s not crowned, as long as they’re married, she can be used as a cudgel against his ministers. Good English loyalists who wouldn’t pick up a radical paper to light their kitchen fires with will champion Caroline, because they can do so without feeling it makes them disloyal. You heard Mr. Kitt: the radical press will support the Queen because they oppose George, not necessarily because they believe the Queen to have done nothing wrong in Italy.”

  “Who cares what she did in Italy?” Penelope burst out. “If George doesn’t want her, why should it matter that somebody else does?”

  Griffin’s dark eyes were hot as coals as they pinned Penelope in place. “Would it have mattered to you? If you had someone who—who wanted you, and your husband was an ocean away, would you have taken any happiness you were offered, no matter how illicit?”

  Penelope laughed painfully, for that struck too near the bone. Griffin wasn’t to know how Penelope dreamed of unbuttoning the high prim collar of John’s coat to press hungry lips against the printer’s neck; how often she imagined Griffin’s slender form trapping her against a tree in the heart of the wood, while Penelope’s hands shoved that blue coat off the dark-haired woman’s shoulders.

  Even now, hearing Griffin’s voice turn stern and steely like that made Penelope want to fall to her knees and do anything the woman commanded her to do. The more licentious the better.

  Her friend wasn’t offering anything like that, no matter how much Penelope wished she would. Agatha Griffin was far too respectable for that sort of dalliance.

  Penelope turned her tankard around on the table, leaving dark wet rings on the wood. “I would have to think about the consequences of any indiscretion,” she said. “How many of my friends and servants have been paid to inform on me? How many eyes are watching me, prepared to exploit any errors or sins or moments of weakness?”

  Griffin sucked in a breath so sharp it sounded as though she’d been stabbed. Slowly, she leaned away, both hands clutching her cup hard enough that her knuckles shone white against the pewter. “Indeed,” she said, refusing to meet Penelope’s gaze. “A husband’s power knows very few limitations, even when he is not a king.”

  Penelope knew she’d said something hurtful, but couldn’t think what. They sank into a private, awkward silence for two, while all around them people argued over adultery.

  Inevitably the Turner boy came around, hawking caricatures and cartoons about the scandal.

  Mr. Painter turned up his nose at the whole set, and went outside to smoke in peace. Mr. Biswas set aside the Times to buy a sheet of the cheapest paper, splashed with the brightest colors. The image showed Queen Caroline as a luxuriant, fluffed-up chicken, the feathers of the headdresses she favored carrying down to clothe her squat, round shape. Beside her a towering rooster in Italian costume bowed chivalrously over her hand, while in the background various foxes in Liberty caps pilfered the henhouse of all its eggs. Scrawled names of radical writers floated above their heads like smoke from revolutionary bonfires: Cobbett and Carlyle, Hone, Brougham, and Hunt. Lord Sidmouth was written above a turtle in a constable’s costume, but it was clear he’d arrive too late to apprehend the thieves.

  A COCK IN THE HENHOUSE, read the caption.

  Mr. and Mrs. Biswas snickered; Mrs. Koskinen rolled her eyes and resumed whispering anxiously into her husband’s ear about possible legal wrinkles in the coming debate.

  Penelope put her face into her tankard, drinking deep to hide her disquiet.

  “That’s one of Thisburton’s cartoons,” drawled Mr. Kitt, peering over Mr. Thomas’ shoulder to look. “You put out a lot of his work, don’t you, Mrs. Griffin?”

  “Some, though not this one,” Griffin admitted. She looked less pained now, but she still wasn’t meeting Penelope’s eye. “I’m not sure any one house could print all of them—he’s rather prolific.”

  “He spends himself all over the place,” Mr. Thomas added.

  Mr. Kitt elbowed him; Mr. Thomas squawked out a laugh, and Griffin rolled her eyes.

  Mr. Kitt groused, “It’s easy to be prolific when you draw satires for both sides of any question. Doubles your audience in one stroke: you draw something pro-Parliament, then something just the opposite.”

  “That doubled audience is perhaps what makes him so valuable to work with for us printers,” Griffin put in, with a wry twist of her lips. “Or so I keep telling my son, whenever he makes that same point.”

 
“Kitt would prefer the man confine his talents to the reformers’ side of the argument,” Mr. Thomas explained.

  “Quite so,” Mr. Kitt confirmed. “As it is, Thisburton seems to have more fondness for money than political convictions.”

  “Perhaps because one cannot eat political convictions?” Griffin suggested.

  Mr. Thomas chuckled into his ale, as Mr. Kitt made noises of mingled amusement and outrage.

  Penelope thunked her tankard down on the table. Beer sloshed over her wrist, but she didn’t care. “I agree with Mr. Kitt,” she declared.

  “I’m a little surprised,” Griffin said at length. “I’d have thought you’d be more likely to appreciate a pragmatist, when it comes to the question of putting food on the table.”

  “I daresay Mr. Thisburton is in no danger of starving, or even running short of work,” Penelope bit out. “And I think it’s certainly practical to say that his playing both sides of an issue might hinder our progress. The man has a great talent, and through his work he has the power to influence opinions in such a way as to sway the people to one belief or another. He ought to be deliberate about how he applies that influence, if he cares about the fate of his fellow countrymen. He treats it like a game—but one only he can win, while the rest of the nation loses.” She shook the liquid from her wrist, and folded her arms with finality. “You cannot get a ship to go anywhere by blowing on both sides of a sail.”

  “Hear hear!” Mr. Kitt said.

  Griffin’s smile was slight but sincere. “Trust a sailor’s wife to think of it in nautical terms.”

  “Trust a sailor’s wife, full stop,” Penelope replied, and felt the tightness in her chest ease a bit when Griffin laughed in response.

  The whole country had already been stirred up by the Queen’s return. Now the introduction of the Bill of Pains and Penalties struck the island like lightning, inflaming the populace to new flashes of fury. Agatha could barely keep abreast of what was happening. Revolution was called for in the taverns, while in marble halls, titled lips whispered the same word as though it were a curse to conjure with. Everyone had an opinion, but nobody knew anything. Anxiety clouded the air more than the fog ever had.