“It wasn’t easy,” she admitted when he asked. She explained how she’d tied him to the wheelbarrow and he was dumbfounded.
She handed him a spade. “Can you dig a hole over there, please? I’m going to bury the hives.”
Dig her a hole? He’d dig her a dozen.
By the time the children woke and came looking for their breakfast, Maddy and Nash had cleared away most of the ruined plants. The stone alcoves where the hives had stood were cleaned out, stained with ash and still a bit sticky, but empty.
The blackened mess of hives had been tossed into a hole, but Maddy stopped Nash from covering it with soil. “We will have a ceremony,” she told him. “The children will want to say good-bye.”
The children wandered through the garden, exclaiming distressfully over the vandalism, but they took their cue from their older sister and started repairing trellises and replanting seedlings almost immediately. The girls counted the hens—all present and correct—and collected the eggs as usual, white-faced and shocked.
Maddy gave them time to absorb the destruction, then fed them a big breakfast of porridge with cream and honey, followed by a toast and honey for those who still had space.
After that they held a small simple ceremony for the bees. Nash had never attended a funeral for any animal, let alone bees.
Each child brought a flower of the sort that bees were known to like. They lined the grave. Maddy said a few words. “Dear bees, we’re so sorry for the evil thing that was done to you. Thank you for the honey and wax you have given us, and for being part of our family, as always. We will bring your sisters from the forest here to make a new colony. Rest in peace.”
Each of the children then said a few words and threw in their flower, even John, who told the bees he forgave whichever of them stung him that time and that even so, they made very nice honey.
Nash had no idea what to say. He couldn’t quite believe their feelings for insects—stinging insects at that. He liked honey, but still . . .
He filled in the hole. Solemnly.
As they walked back to the house, he asked Maddy, “Why will you only bring the bees’ sisters from the forest? Why not their brothers?”
Behind him the girls giggled. “Because it’s the girl bees who do all the work,” Jane told him. “The drones—that’s what you call the boys—they don’t workat all.”
“Except for defending the hive,” Nash said.
Jane made a scornful sound. “Drones don’t fight, they can’t even sting! The girls defend the hive, collect the honey, clean the hive,everything.All the drones do iseat.”
Nash and the two boys exchanged glances. “They must be good for something,” he said, feeling the need to find and uphold some masculine virtue in the little creatures.
Maddy waved the children ahead, then turned and gave him a mischievous glance. “Reproduction. It’s their sole purpose in life.”
Nash kept a straight face. “Well, there you are then. Noble chaps, one and all. Doing their duty for king and country.”
She shook her head. “For the queen,” she said. “There’s no king, it’s all for the queen.”
At lunch, which was the inevitable soup and cheese on toast, she said to Nash, “You think it’s peculiar that we had a ceremony for the bees, don’t you?”
“No, not at all,” he lied.
“It’s because of Grand-mère, you see. The bees saved her life.”
His brows rose. “How so?”
Maddy’s mood lifted. “By a very clever trick.” The children exchanged knowing glances and settled down to listen to what was obviously a well-loved tale.
Nash knew his duty. “Tell me.”
“You know how I told you that Papa had helped Mama escape from the Terror, while Grand-mère remained behind? Well, some days later Grand-mère heard people coming for her, just a handful, but nasty. They knew she’d been a beloved servant of the queen. So—”
“She hid herself among—” Lucy began.
“Hush, Lucy, let Maddy tell it,” Jane said.
Maddy smiled and continued. “Grand-mère was at the queen’s little farm,le Hameau de la Reine, at Versailles. The queen and her ladies like to play at being peasants, and they would dress as shepherdesses and milkmaids and milk the cows and so on. And Grand-mère kept the bees that made the queen’s honey.”
