The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows

by Olivia Waite

  Mr. Oliver scowled into his teacup. “My poor sister can hardly bear to show her face out of doors, for fear of that devil’s chorus.”

  Penelope was not quite quick enough to turn her laugh into a cough.

  Mr. Oliver narrowed his eyes.

  Penelope quickly stuffed half a piece of toast between her lips, hoping the marmalade would at least give her mouth something better to do.

  Mr. Oliver fixed her with his gravest expression. “It verges on slander, Mrs. Flood,” the vicar warned.

  The toast went gritty and dry in Penelope’s mouth, marmalade notwithstanding. It scratched her throat as she swallowed it down. “Surely not,” she rasped. “If memory serves, the lyrics are very clear about all the things that the fictional Lady S does not indulge in.”

  “A nefarious dodge,” the vicar declared.

  Penelope was either going to laugh or cry. She wasn’t sure which.

  Mr. Oliver set his teacup down and leaned forward, lowering his voice to a confessional mutter. “My sister is considering laying a formal charge against the author. As the local magistrate, I’d be forced to investigate. Possibly even to have the writer arrested. Or—since the writer is hiding behind anonymity—we might arrest the performer.”

  Penelope was suddenly painfully aware of the weight of the cutlery in her hands. Silver and pewter—cold, heavy metal. She clutched her fingers around it so the silver wouldn’t fall and make too loud a clatter against her plate.

  Mr. Oliver’s voice lowered still further. “It might be best if Mrs. Molesey were to spend some time in London. Getting a few new gowns or trinkets, perhaps, or taking a change of air before the winter snows set in and muddy the roads.”

  “You’re sending her away?” Penelope blurted.

  “I’m saying she might find the metropolis a more congenial environment at the moment,” Mr. Oliver said. He leaned back, nose and chin high, a tight, false smile twisting his mouth.

  It was the same solution he had for every problem, Penelope realized. Send the troublemaker somewhere else. Keep Melliton comfortable. Sending Mr. Turner to London for work, paying to move the Marshes to St. Sepulchre’s workhouse when their harvest failed . . .

  And of course, the conversation that had sent Harry away, semipermanently, and which made it so awkward on the rare times he and John returned home.

  Regret burned low in her belly, a sickly ember that never went entirely out.

  She had tried to argue with Harry, when her brother had told her what Mr. Oliver had said to him. What he’d implied, rather than saying outright. Penelope had protested that Harry must have been mistaken, that Mr. Oliver had always been so friendly, that he couldn’t be so friendly to Penelope and so cruel to her brother. It didn’t add up. It couldn’t be true.

  She knew better now, but it killed her a little that she ought to have known better much earlier.

  At the time, Harry had laughed harshly, and then had been on an Arctic-bound ship by the end of the month.

  And now it was Joanna Molesey who was to be pushed out. Even though she’d lived here for decades, and was one of the most accomplished poets in the country.

  A flare of rebellion licked up within her soul. Isabella would never have stood for this.

  Penelope raised her head. “All Joanna wants is the Napoleon snuffbox,” she said. “It’s hers by right, according to Isabella’s will.”

  Mr. Oliver spread his hands. “I must be honest with you, Mrs. Flood: the snuffbox is missing.”

  Penelope’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “Missing?”

  The vicar’s mouth was a prim, hard line. “Nobody has seen it—and they have searched, no matter what Mrs. Molesey thinks. It is an unfortunate circumstance, to be sure . . . but no good can come from so much anger and hostility. We should extend more grace to one another, so these petty, worldly divisions do not foster deeper wounds in the soul of our little society.” His pale eyes were steely, unflinching. “My sister has been very insistent that the snuffbox is not in her possession. It would take only a very little convincing for her to make a formal complaint of theft.”

  “Theft?” Penelope sucked in a harsh breath.

  “If Mrs. Molesey took the snuffbox before the will was read, it could indeed be construed as theft under the law. How could she be sure it was really her property, after all, until she had heard it from Mr. Nancarrow?” He steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, a schoolmaster with an intractable pupil. “It would be so much easier—for everyone—if this didn’t become a matter for the petty sessions.”

  Penelope trembled, and felt that rebellious little flame flicker and snuff itself out. She wasn’t Isabella—she hadn’t the nerve, or the social weight, to make the vicar yield to her will. Bitterness filled her mouth like smoke as she said, “I’ll speak to Mrs. Molesey, Mr. Oliver.”

  His smile returned like the sun cresting the horizon. “Thank you, Mrs. Flood. I know I can always count on you to do what’s right.”

  Half of Penelope’s soul basked in the praise, even as the better half withered with shame.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Agatha stepped out of the workshop into the store to find Joanna Molesey, dramatic as ever in a crimson coat with touches of black, bent over the front counter beside Eliza and Sydney. The trio had a paper spread out in front of them, which the poet was quickly filling with lines in her fluid, hasty hand.

  “Now then, what did you say the prosecutor replied—?” Mrs. Molesey looked up and straightened. “Ah, Mrs. Griffin! How lovely to see you again.”

  “Mrs. Molesey,” Agatha replied, with a nod. She’d known the poet was leaving Melliton for the city, thanks to a letter from Penelope, but . . . “What brings you to our humble premises this lovely morning?”

  Mrs. Molesey spared one brief glance for the gray drizzle outside the front window, then fixed her eye on Agatha and set her shoulders. “Rage, my dear woman—sheer rage, which must be expressed or it will poison me down to my very bones.”

  “Mrs. Molesey came to see our selection of ballads,” Eliza hurried to explain.

  “Your apprentice was extremely helpful,” Mrs. Molesey added. Confidence poured from every line of her fine clothes, and nodded with the plumes on her rain-dappled hat. “I was just on the point of asking how much it costs to have a small batch of broadsides made up?”

  Her smile was portrait-formal, all assurance and serenity and lofty condescension.

  It didn’t fool Agatha for a moment. “If you’re thinking of printing that one about ‘Lady S,’” she said repressively, “you’ll have to find another shop.”

  Mrs. Molesey cocked her feathered head. “You don’t need the work, in these uncertain times?”

  “There’s no payment you could offer that would balance out the distress such a job would cause Penelope Flood.”

  The poet smiled, and there was a knowing gleam in her eyes. “You are a very ardent friend, though you’ve known her but a little span of time.”

  Agatha crossed her arms and said nothing.

  The poetess sighed gustily, as one long-suffering and much maligned. “Well, it speaks highly of you to refuse on such a principle—but I must do something. I am full up of fire and riddled with words like arrows, and no pleasing target to shoot them toward. At least, until now.” She plucked up the paper from the counter, and flourished it. “One of the ballads Eliza showed me. I was intrigued by the subject but disappointed by the composer’s expression, and sketched a few lines based on some other popular tunes.”

  “It’s really quite good,” Eliza added. “Better than most of the ones going around.”

  “And it’s about the witness testimony in the Queen’s trial,” Sydney put in. “You know how well Queenite ballads have been selling for us—especially with the Lords on recess while they prepare final arguments. Everyone knows that now is the time to speak as powerfully as they can in Queen Caroline’s defense.”

  Mrs. Molesey smoothly put in her oar. “Things at home have bee
n far too quiet; it’s bad for my nerves. If you’d like to bring these two young people to dinner tonight in Gower Street, I’m sure we could work out a few more verses.” She widened her eyes, her expression all innocent hopefulness. “Perhaps even one or two more songs, to sell as a set?”

  Three earnest faces beamed at Agatha, afire with purpose and the determination to engage in a war of words.

  The printer sighed, recognizing a losing battle before she bothered to fight it. “As long as we don’t print the ‘Lady S’ piece.” She pursed her lips in resignation, while Sydney whooped and Eliza beamed. Mrs. Molesey’s knowing gaze awakened her suspicious soul. “Would you be publishing this under your own name, Mrs. Molesey?”

  “Heavens, no.” The lady’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline as she pretended shock. “A sophisticated lyric poet like Joanna Molesey, publishing common tunes for the unlettered public? What would Mr. Wordsworth say?”

  “Or his sister,” Eliza said with a snort.

  “Tempting as it is to try and shock the pair of them, we’ll need a pseudonym,” Mrs. Molesey went on, gaze growing distant. “Something—irksome, but not fatal. Feminine. Caustic. Irrepressible. A spur, not a sword or a spear.”

  “Mrs. Mordant?” Eliza offered.

  “Grandmother Gossip,” Sydney added.

  Mrs. Moseley shook her head. “Too gentle. We want something sharper.”

  Agatha thought of bees, and stings—but bees put her in mind of Penelope Flood and her kind heart. Yet there was another creature that could work . . . “The Widow Wasp,” she blurted out.

  Mrs. Molesey’s head snapped around at once. “Yes,” she said, like the voice of an oracle. “Yes, that will do.”

  The poet took the three of them to Walcott’s for dinner, and by dessert there were three more absolutely vicious ballads and parodies of popular tunes for Sydney to begin setting type for the next day. Eliza worked up a few small illustrations: the Queen herself, London as a wasp’s nest, a very sharp-limbed wasp-lady with lacy wings that folded around her like a shawl, and striped skirts that belled below the waist before narrowing to a knife-like stinger. Agatha set aside a few reams of paper and had the whole set made up as a chapbook.

  She’d expected it to sell; it was perfectly pitched to the tenor of the times.

  She had not expected it to sell out the first day. They scrabbled to print more that evening: those sold. They printed a third run, twice that of the first—people bought that, too, and before long you couldn’t walk more than one mile in any section of town without hearing one of the Widow’s songs being sung out on a street corner or from a patron-filled tavern.

  Pirate editions sprang up like mushrooms from the less ethical presses, to Agatha’s grim resignation and Sydney’s blazing indignation (“How dare someone copy Eliza’s woodcuts!”).

  He was mollified somewhat when some of his favorite radical philosophers and thinkers began dropping the Wasp’s lyrics into the pages of Medusa and The Republican (“Carlile quoted my line about the green bags!”).

  Even Catherine St. Day, Countess of Moth, had heard the ballads. She had come by Griffin’s to arrange the printing of her foundation’s next volume, a treatise by a lady chemist. “Lucy will not stop singing them! Particularly the one that made use of a tune Mr. Frampton had composed,” she relayed, eyes twinkling. “He found himself on a walk through Westminster, surrounded by people singing his melody, but with lyrics he’d never heard before!”

  “I hope it wasn’t too disconcerting—I didn’t realize he was composing now,” Agatha replied.

  The countess nodded. “He works up one or two songs a year: they supplement the income from his teaching and working on his mathematical—”

  She was interrupted when Eliza burst into Agatha’s office without knocking. “Ma’am, there’s soldiers—”

  Agatha was up and around the desk and striding into the storefront before she had time to reflect on the prudent course of action.

  Eliza was right: there were three soldiers, their red coats blood-bright in the sun spilling in the windows. “Mrs. Agatha Griffin?” said the one in front, whose coat was a more vivid officer’s scarlet, rather than the thick madder dye sported by the other two.

  “That’s right,” Agatha said, sending an anxious glance at her son.

  Sydney was standing behind the counter, rigid and tense as a piece of metal under strain. His eyes were as cold and angry as Agatha had ever seen them.

  The soldier flourished a piece of paper at her; Agatha took it and discovered a writ of seizure.

  It was very official: signed and sealed. Her gut twisted, and sweat broke out on the back of her neck.

  She was so shaken she missed most of what the officer said next—except for the words seditious libel, which made her snap painfully back to awareness. “We aren’t here to harm anyone. We have orders to take away everything by the Widow Wasp,” he said.

  The officer’s eyes stayed on Agatha, and his face was manfully expressionless—but not so the other two. One was eyeing the window glass with gleeful intent; the other was letting his gaze roam across the many watercolors, scenic prints, and loose manuscripts stacked everywhere in the shop.

  Everything here could either break or burn, Agatha realized with a chill. She was surrounded by destructibles, her body the only thing between these soldiers’ weapons and the roomful of vulnerable people behind her—and the men in front of her looked weathered enough to have seen action during the war. They’d know a thing or two about destruction. About violence. About hurt.

  She froze, unable to protest or call out a warning or even move. One droplet of sweat slithered from her neck down beneath her collar. She fought not to shiver, painfully aware of the light, ticklish movement.

  “I beg your pardon,” came an icy voice from behind her.

  Agatha turned her head stiffly and saw the countess standing in the doorway, one hand braced gracefully on the doorframe. She was not a tall person, but the fineness of her clothing and the steel of her posture could not have said aristocrat any clearer than if she’d had it written on a placard and carried above her head by a troop of liveried servants.

  The lead soldier bowed and regarded her warily. “We are here on the King’s business, ma’am.”

  The countess was looking down her nose at the officer, despite being the shortest person in the room. “I am the Countess of Moth, and of course you must carry out your orders,” she said smoothly. “To the letter—and no further.”

  “Yes, my lady.” The officer’s mouth went thin, and his two subordinates shuffled themselves slightly more upright.

  The countess turned to Agatha. “Where are the Wasp’s songs?”

  Agatha pointed at the central table, full of what broadsides and lyric sheets and chapbooks they still had.

  “And are there any in the back?” the countess asked.

  “Only the plates,” Agatha replied. “We’ll fetch them for you.”

  “Would you be willing to let one of us walk around to check that we have everything, ma’am?” the officer hurried to inquire.

  Oh, suddenly it’s asking permission instead of barking orders? Agatha thought, but out loud she only said, “Sydney, please show the officer around the workroom. To prove to him we are holding nothing back.” She couldn’t leave while these men were here. She was rooted to the spot, heart racing.

  Sydney’s eyes glittered dangerously.

  Agatha tried to use her own eyes to transmit silent, urgent motherly messages. Please, she begged wordlessly, please don’t.

  Her son came around the counter, looking grim. “This way, sir,” he said, and led the officer through the door into the workroom.

  The two subordinates began gathering up the Wasp’s songs, piling the paper in a handcart they had brought with them. The countess moved to stand beside Agatha, a silent, supportive presence.

  Agatha kept one hand relaxed at her side, but hid the other in her skirts, so as not to show the soldiers her clenc
hed fist. Heavy hands grasped smooth pages, crinkling them. Chapbooks piled up in the handcart, covers bending, pages creasing, the rustling of all that paper being occasionally broken by the occasional sound of a single page tearing.

  It made Agatha flinch every time.

  One of the soldiers noticed, and broke into a grin.

  Agatha took a slow, deep breath and prayed for endurance.

  The countess cleared her throat pointedly, and the soldier returned to his task.

  Hours or seconds later—Agatha found it impossible to tell—Sydney returned with the officer. Eliza followed them, eyes wide and cheeks pale.

  “That appears to be everything,” the officer said, avoiding the Countess of Moth’s stern gaze. Instead he turned to Agatha. “I sincerely hope we won’t have cause to visit you again, Mrs. Griffin.”

  His eye flicked to Sydney, and then back.

  As a looming, unspoken threat it was wildly effective: Agatha felt the mettle of her soul buckle like cheap tin. Promises, apologies, defensive words bubbled up on her tongue like the froth from a dose of poison.

  Before she could choose any of them to speak aloud and damn herself forever, the soldiers turned and marched out, carrying fifty pounds of Griffin’s most profitable stock with them.

  The countess pressed one hand against Agatha’s arm. “I’m so sorry, my dear. Lord Sidmouth is determined to make trouble for everyone—the Polite Science Society has had more than a few lectures cancelled for lack of a permit, under the new laws. If they come again, send Eliza for me at once.” She nodded to the apprentice, and slipped out of the shop.

  Agatha still couldn’t find her voice.

  Sydney could. And did. He cursed, so loudly that beside him Eliza started and shook. “We can have another fifty broadsheets made up by this evening,” the young man began. “The chapbooks will take a little—”

  “No!” Agatha cut him off. “Out of the question. We’re not selling any more of the Wasp’s work.”

  “What?” Sydney yelped. “Why?”