The Queene’s Christmas (10 page)

“We must run!” she cried. “I wager someone’s lit a fire under us!”

Jenks dropped the body and vaulted from the wherry. Grabbing a lantern, he ran to the door and rattled it. “It’s locked or barred from outside!” he shouted. “We’re trapped!”

Chapter the Fifth

Mince Pie Mangers

This Yuletide variation of mincemeat pie should be baked in a rectangular crust, in the shape of a manger to recall the birth of the Savior. But the following recipe for the filling must be made months ahead so it can ferment. Mixtures of spices and liquors well preserve perishable meats and fruits
.

Grind or crush (some use large stones for this mincing)
1½
pounds boiled beef
½
pound suet. Combine with 4 cups beef broth and the following:
l½
teaspoons salt; 2 pounds apples, peeled, cored, and chopped; 3 cups brown sugar, tightly packed; 2 cups raisins;
l½
cup currants; 2 tea-spoons powdered cinnamon; 1 teaspoon each of powdered mace, cloves, and nutmeg; 2 cups finely chopped candied rinds; 2 lemons with rind, ground up; 3 oranges with rind, ground up;
l½
cups cider; 2 cups of red or white wine, such as Rhenish or sack. Seal and age at least 3 months
.

“
WILL ONE OF THESE SMALL OARS FIT BETWEEN THE
doors to lift the bar?” the queen asked Jenks as she and Cecil rushed to join him at the entrance to the boathouse. “I doubt if someone has the other key to lock us in. It’s probably just barred.” But she saw that the crack between the doors would take nothing wider than a sword, and such would never lift that heavy piece of wood.

They could smell smoke now, curling through the floorboard cracks; they could hear the crisp crackle of flames. Surely, the queen thought, on the open riverbank in the cold of night, a fire had not been set by vagabonds trying to keep warm.

“Someone will see the blaze and come running!” Cecil cried, then began coughing in the thickening pall of smoke.

“But maybe not in time!” Jenks shouted. “I can break the window, but it’s high up from the ice.”

“Yes, break it!” Elizabeth ordered.

The men lifted a large oar from the state barge and smashed the window. Cold air and smoke belched in but, God be thanked, no flames so high yet The men ran the oar around the small window, knocking out the panes of thick glass and their diamond-shaped metal frames.

“I’ll drop down first to be sure no one’s waiting,” Jenks said, ripping off his surcoat. She thought he would discard it to keep it from catching fire, but he laid it over the jagged sill of the shattered window. Just behind their feet, tongues of flames flicked through the floorboards.

Drawing his sword and using only one hand to drop, Jenks went lithely out the window.

“All clear!” he shouted up. “No one!”

“All at tables and revels,” the queen muttered, but she sucked in smoke and began choking, too. Her skirts and cloak burdened her, so she threw the cloak out first, then divested herself of layers of petticoats and heaved them out. With Cecil’s help above and Jenks’s below, she climbed out, dangled, then dropped the short way. Jenks half caught her, but the bank was slick with frozen mud; she sat down hard and sprawled out onto the river ice. Jenks came sliding after her, but she told him, “I’m fine. Help Cecil!”

He was soon out the window, too. “ ’S blood,” she cursed as the two men helped her climb the banks with her gown hems dragging, “I’ll have the head of whoever set that blaze. And, I war-rant, we’ll find it’s a villain who’s as adept with nooses as with fire-brands.”

Even the voices of the boys’ choir from St. Paul’s, echoing so sweetly in the chapel at Whitehall, could not calm the queen the next morning. At the beginning of the Christmas service, as she had requested, a prayer had been offered for Hodge Thatcher’s soul, though it had not been announced that someone—perhaps someone here in the congregation—had killed the man.

Not only did Elizabeth have a murder on her hands, but she was blessed to still be alive herself. Last night, Jenks had summoned help to fight the fire while she and Cecil had beat a hasty retreat back to the privy staircase. But with the river frozen, water to douse the flames had been slow coming. The building, with Hodge’s body inside, had burned to its footers. Only the state barge had been saved, rolled out at the last minute because it sat so near the doors.

A hue and cry had gone out for the vagabonds who were supposedly to blame, but the queen believed Hodge’s murderer had set the fire, at best to warn her, at worst to roast her like the Christmas peacock or suckling pig. Unfortunately, the press of people trying to put the fire out had trampled any other boot prints they might have matched to the one Cecil had sketched.

Elizabeth shifted in her seat. The service had gone on for nearly an hour already, most of it with Bishop Grindal’s droning sermon.

“The holy scriptures of this blessed morn are, of course,” he intoned, “readings of the nativity of our Lord.”

His shrill voice roused her from her exhaustion and agonizing. However did this man come so far with that voice, she wondered. There were many fine, deep-voiced ministers she had known, but this one had talents and powers to rise above his greatest weakness.

As if he were a politican and not a prelate, the silver-haired, portly bishop had a habit of seeming to smile no matter what he said; sometimes it seemed his plump face would crack open like a porcelain ball. It was ironic that Grindal always looked quite smug and jolly compared to his chief aide, Martin Bane. Thin and black-garbed as a raven, Vicar Bane stood beneath the pulpit as if he were some sort of enforcer of whatever his earthly master might decree.

Elizabeth felt hemmed in with the Earl of Sussex on her right hand and the Scots envoy, Simon MacNair, on her left, though she had invited both men to those seats. Margaret Stewart and Lord Darnley were also in plain sight, across the aisle in the front row. Behind her sat Kat and Rosie. Robin, fuming at not being asked to sit next to her, was on MacNair’s other side. She must tell Robin, at least, what had really happened to Hodge. He and everyone else here today knew he had enemies at court, but not that one particular person had stooped to both mockery and murder—and perhaps even attempted a fiery assassination of the queen.

“So it was while they were in Bethlehem, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger
.

“That humble manger,” the bishop continued, looking up from his text, “must be a reminder to us of humility. It is wrong to pursue overly lighthearted practices at this season. For instance, I speak to those who allow your mincemeat pies to be fashioned in the shape of the manger and brought to your feasts and who then celebrate with great abandon. And is it not pure, pagan superstition that a person will have as many happy months in the upcoming year as mince pies one tastes?”

Mince pies, Elizabeth thought Bane had called snowballing profane yesterday, and now Grindal was scolding about mince pies? Did they not see the important things in this holiday season? Did they not know the large political and social as well as religious issues she faced, which made snowballing and pies mere trifles?

“Have not some of you,” he plunged on, “even decorated that pie with springs of holly or the pagan mistletoe? Have I not heard that some have placed upon such a pie the pastry form of a babe, which was then devoured with said pie?”

Elizabeth had given him no leave to scold her people for age-old traditions of the day. He and his spokesman Bane presumed far too much of late. Not daring to look her way, Grindal continued reading,

“Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of judea, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.’ “

Though she was tempted to stand and order Grindal to stick to such readings and not his own rantings, the queen settled back in her seat again. She wanted nothing to ruin the beauty or sanctity of this day. Already the season had gone awry with Hodge’s death and the Christmas Eve tradition of the Yule log being postponed until today. Still trying to find a compromise between mourning for a death and rejoicing in the Lord’s birth, she had asked that a religious mystery play be performed tonight and had postponed the Lord of Misrule’s antics yet again.

“That star was a sign to the wise men of that day,” Grindal said. “And today, do not those who are wise read the signs of the times, too? When lightning struck the dome of St. Paul’s three years ago and caused the fire, some said it was a sign that God Himself was displeased with the indulgent, extravagant way that some ornate, Catholic practices were yet clung to in this land while it is claimed such things are purged and purified.”

“And,” the queen muttered only loud enough for those around her to hear, “some said that fire was God’s displeasure with a radical, Puritan-leaning bishop who can do naught but criticize and carp!

Simon MacNair, despite the fact he represented the Catholic queen of Scotland, murmured his approval of her words.

“And have we not now had a like sign?” the bishop went on, while Vicar Bane nodded as if his head were hollow and set on a stick. “The fire which destroyed the royal boathouse last night seems a warning against too much levity or frivolity at court this time of year. And the death of the man in the kitchens who was to decorate the peacock—one wonders if we are not harkening back to the pre-Papist church days of yore when the pagans had a human sacrifice—”

“What?” Elizabeth cried. “We harken back to no such thing!” Pews creaked and satins rustled as heads snapped her way. Bishop Grindal seemed momentarily cowed, though his lackey Bane looked furious at her interruption.

“I’ll not have my London bishop prophesying or pronouncing judgment on the court and Christmas!” she went on. “You are not here to cast a pall but to give your blessing. Choir, another song, something for a recessional. Let us have 'Good Christian Men Rejoice,’ for that is what we should all do on these Twelve Days, beginning with the bringing in of the belated Yule log to the Great Hall forthwith. Though there will be no mumming this evening, we shall view a mystery play by a visiting troupe called the Queen’s Country Players. Bishop, will you dismiss us with your blessing?”

Elizabeth of England stood, glaring at Grindal and Bane. Everyone else rose. His voice still defiant, Grindal pronounced a blessing on them all. The queen barely let him get out his
Amen
before she bade Robin escort her out.

Elizabeth cheered with her courtiers and servants as six men dragged the huge Yule log into the Great Hall. It vexed her that Bishop Grindal—who had, she’d heard, hastily departed the palace, leaving Bane to oversee things—had been right about one matter: She’d read in some history book that in olden, pagan days, this part of the festival had included a human sacrifice.

The log was actually a tree trunk, marked a year before, on last Christmas Day. Though the lengths of logs varied by the status of households and the size of hearths, any of the queen’s palaces could take one of ten feet. Her arm around Kat’s shoulders, Elizabeth watched it drawn along the floor to impromptu singing and some dancing to carols played by the musicians in the gallery overhead.

“Oh, prettily decorated!” Kat cried in her excitement and clapped her hands like a child. “I haven’t seen one that gaily done with garlands and ribbons for years!”

“I am happy that you are happy, my Kat,” Elizabeth told her.

Everyone followed the log as it was rolled and lifted onto andirons; burning brands were thrust under its middle.

“Wait'” Robin cried. “Who has the piece of it kept to light next year’s log? As Lord of Misrule, it is my duty to keep it safe.”

“I see you have studied your duties well,” Elizabeth called to him over the hubbub. He did not look so angry at her now. Robin had always liked being the center of attention, and she did not mind sharing that with him today. It warmed her to see everyone so merry, though the smell of smoke and the sight of flames recalled too well her nightmare in the boathouse last night.

“I have indeed studied my duties well, Your Majesty,” Robin said, suddenly kneeling at her feet. Sussex, evidently not to be surpassed by his nemesis, knelt, too, only to have his wife, Lady Frances, giggle and hook some holly behind his ear.

“All right,” Robin said, rising and clapping, “let’s hear more singing, not from the fine boys’ choir this time, but the likes of you revelers!”

With Robin himself leading, the crowd broke into “The Yule Log Carol.” Even Kat’s trembling voice swelled, Elizabeth’s bell-clear one, too, and several fine ones she did not recognize until she turned and saw Ned had brought his band of players into the hall with him. They were singing out strong from the dais that would soon serve as their stage:

Part of the log be kept to tend

The Christmas log next year.