The Queene’s Christmas (12 page)

The old man sank back flat on his pallet. He sucked in a ragged breath and stared straight up at the lofty, soot-stained ceiling. Tears tracked from his eyes, but she sensed he was both relieved and grieved.

“Forgive me for asking such a thing now,” she went on, trying to keep her voice controlled, “but Giles Chatam from Wimbledon—you and Hodge knew him, and you sent him to your son?”

She waited while he composed himself. He struggled to sit, so Cecil and Harry stepped forward from the shadows to help him off the table and into the only chair. Elizabeth sat on a bench facing him. Again, the old man looked stunned at her proximity.

“Aye,” he whispered at last, after a swig of the mulled cider Cecil fetched him. “Friend of the family, Giles’s parents were. His father a glover, kept the whole town in gloves.” Wills sniffed hard, took another sip of cider, and went on, “I thatched their house, and the lads ran about together for years. Both of them had a fanciful side I could never fathom…”

“Take your time, Master Thatcher. So Hodge and Giles were longtime friends?”

“Aye, 'cept when they both fancied the same girl. Had a bad row over that, and she up and wed someone else. Then Giles’s parents perished in a house fire—don’t know how it started middle of the night.”

“A fire? His parents were trapped and died in a fire, but he was safe?”

“He got out somehow, that’s all. Took it terrible they were both lost in the blaze, he did.”

Elizabeth looked at Cecil, but he merely raised his eyebrows; Harry remained unmoved, but she didn’t expect him to follow all this as her brilliant secretary evidently had. Besides, Harry had not almost been roasted alive last night.

“Go on, please, Master Thatcher,” she urged.

“After the fire, we took Giles in for a few years. Hodge had already gone to make his fortune in London. Then Giles left with that acting troupe to wander far and wide. But, aye, I had the sexton write a letter to the inn where Giles sent a note he would be in London. Always wanted to see London, that boy. I had the sexton write Giles to go visit Hodge here, try to patch things up—for him and me. I never should of sent that cruel letter, and it was Christmas…”

“So all should be forgiven at Christmas,” the queen said, rising with a sigh. “Master Hodge, I shall see that you have food and a warm place to stay until your friends can take you home. But one blow more, I’m afraid. We stored Hodge’s body in the royal boat-house on the river, and a fire struck there, too. I regret to tell you that Hodge’s body burned with the edifice last night, but we have carefully collected his remains, and you shall have them in a box to take home with you to bury in holy ground near his mother’s grave.”

Wills had slumped, then straightened his shaking shoulders. “I thank you for doing your best for him, Your Majesty,” he said, his lower lip trembling. “Is—is there anything else?” he asked, and she could almost see him cringe.

“Only that your son left you a purse of coins to keep you well. How much was that Hodge had lovingly saved from his wages working for me and my family, Lord Hunsdon?” she asked. She almost quoted to the old man from his spiteful letter about her family ruining the true church, but she held her tongue. After all, it was Christmas, and that’s what had melted old Wills’s heart.

“I’m not certain, Your Grace,” Harry managed with a straight face, “but he’d saved a goodly amount.” Cecil nodded solemnly.

“Then you must see to it,” she told Harry, “that Master Thatcher receives Hodge’s purse before he goes home on the morrow. I am sorry for your loss, Master Hodge, and wish you well.”

She walked from the room back to her own problems, but not before she heard the old man say in a choked voice, “No wonder my boy served the Tudors so well. Aye, God save that queen!”

Elizabeth gave orders for Wills to be tended to and, with Cecil in her wake, cut back into the corner of the hall. The mystery play had ended, and everyone was eating and milling about again. Occasional laughter pierced the buzz of a hundred conversations.

“Harry,” she said, “please send Ned Topside to me at once, over there in the corridor, then rejoin your lady and the others. I rely on you to help keep people happy and to keep me apprised if they are not My lord Cecil,” she said, turning to him as Harry bowed and departed, “we shall see what our new player Master Chatam has to say about his visit to Hodge yesterday—and about the fire that evidently trapped his parents while he himself escaped. Some people, I’ve heard,” she said, rolling her eyes, “are fascinated by fire, and right now, I am, too.”

“Oh, Your Grace,” Meg Milligrew said as she came down the hall behind them, “there you are. I went upstairs to get a few more sprigs of mistletoe. Someone’s been taking not only the berries but the entire little branches out of the kissing balls, probably intending to use them privily later. I wish it was Jenks, just lying in wait for me!” she said, and laughed. Her face flushed; she looked happier than the queen had seen her lately. In the new year, perhaps there should be a marriage, Elizabeth thought, and not that of the queen, the one her people and Parliament would like to see.

Ned appeared, still in kingly costume, holding his tin crown, and out of breath. “Your Majesty, you wished to see me?”

“Rather I need to see your mystery angel.”

He looked surprised, then alarmed. “Giles Chatam? Why— what’s he done, if I may ask?”

“Hopefully nothing, but it turns out he not only grew up with Hodge Thatcher, but they both loved the same girl.”

She saw Ned’s eyes dart to Meg, then back to his queen. “But he was with the players. You aren’t going to ask him if he killed Hodge like some jilted, lovesick swain, are you?”

“Not directly, but Hodge’s father has just informed us that he asked Giles to visit Hodge, and who knows it wasn’t yesterday afternoon?”

“My uncle would know, the other players, too,” Ned countered, his usually controlled baritone voice rising.

“Precisely, so you are to circumspectly and individually question them about Giles’s whereabouts yesterday and anything else they might know of his doings, including whether there have ever been fires set near where they’ve been traveling with him.”

“I’ll do all you ask, of course, Your Grace,” Ned said, turning this mock crown round and round quickly in his hands, “but I would not have brought the troupe to court if I could not vouch—at least my uncle will, I’m sure—for the whereabouts …”

“Ned,” Meg cut in so stridently that everyone turned to her, “you know people can slip out sometimes and not be where they're supposed to be, and no one knows it”

Ned glared at Meg and spun back to the queen. “You’d like to see Giles first thing tomorrow,” he asked, “before everyone leaves for Greenwich for the fox hunt?”

“I want to see him first thing right now. See that your friends are settled in for the night, then bring him up to my presence chamber—and don’t tell him why.”

Ned bowed and hastened to obey, but his words floated back to her. “This will go to his head, really go to his head.”

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black,” Meg muttered.

“And to what were you alluding,” the queen asked, “about Ned’s not being where he should have been?”

“It was just what Ned calls a figure of speech,” the girl said, looking quite caught in something.

“Meg, tell me now.”

“I don’t mean to tattle,” she blurted, “but he slipped out last night from your chambers when he felt sick over something he’d eaten, that’s all.”

Robin could have been right, the queen thought. She had to have her food watched. She’d had a bad stomach, and evidently Ned had, too.

“How long after Her Grace and I left did he depart,” Cecil asked Meg sharply, “and how long was he gone?”

Now Elizabeth stared him down. What was he thinking? “Don’t exactly know,” Meg said, tilting her head and looking thoughtful. “He just ran to the jakes. Later he said he threw up his food, then stepped outside to clear his head. Came back up out of breath and looking all windblown and feverish after maybe a quarter of an hour, so I dosed him with a bit of the chamomile I keep for you, Your Grace, for your stomach upsets and to soothe your temp—I mean, in case you get upset—an upset stomach. And if you let on I told you all that, Ned’ll skin me sure.”

“Those of us in the Privy Plot Council must not keep secrets, at least not from your queen,” Elizabeth said, patting her arm. “Best go tend to that mistletoe now.”

Meg looked as if she’d say more but obeyed. “Cecil,” the queen said as they started down the corridor toward the main staircase and her yeomen guards fell in behind, “what are you thinking about Ned Topside?”

“The same thing you should be thinking, Your Grace,” he dared, “but probably won’t admit”

“That he left the palace by the kitchen porter’s gate the after-noon Hodge was killed, and so passed directly by Hodge’s work-room?” she parried. “That he left Meg alone when he was bid stay with her last night about the time the fire was set?”

“The truth is,” Cecil whispered out of the side of his mouth so even the guards would not hear, “we must suspect everyone in this.”

“Ned? Ridiculous!” she cracked out. Motioning her yeomen to stay back, she turned to face Cecil halfway up the sweep of garlanded staircase. “You have always preached such rampant distrust to me, my lord. From the first, during the poison plot, you told me to trust no one. But haven’t we learned the hard way that we must have faith in people like Meg, like Ned? When everything went wrong at Windsor the year Robin’s wife died so strangely, you warned me not to trust Robin, either, but he was surely innocent of her death!”

“So it seems.”

“Seems? And everyone thought I should suspect my dear Kat just last summer when the maze murderer stalked my gardens. Ned has been with us through thick and thin.”

“Your love of and loyalty to your people are ever admirable, Your Grace. But remember what I taught you, the legal term
cui bono?
”

“Who profits for himself—who has a motive?” she translated before he could. “Do you really believe Ned would be so vexed by my replacing him with Leicester as Lord of Misrule that he would kill an innocent privy kitchen dresser of his queen to ruin the holiday season?”

“Hard to fathom, but I know one thing. Ned’s a consummate actor—probably this Chatam you're about to question is, too. At this season of the year when love and good cheer should fill our hearts, it’s hard to accept that bad blood could course through some, but that may very well be the way of it.”

“I know,” she said angrily as they started to climb the stairs again. “Curse it, but don’t I know.”

“But I never received Old Wills’s message to visit Hodge,” Giles Chatam told her. Unlike Ned when he talked, the young man stood very still with a minimum of flourishes and gestures to detract from his facial expressions. Somehow, that made him seem more sincere than Ned.

“May I not tell Master Thatcher so myself lest he blame me for not delivering it?” he cried.

“I believe he is departing at first light for Wimbledon tomorrow,” Elizabeth told him, “but, of course, you may explain to him.”

“I overheard whisperings about a servant’s death but had no notion it was Hodge,” he said, his voice earnest and his face crest-fallen. “I was hoping to look Hodge up tomorrow—I just didn’t think it could be him.”

“Have you called on him when you were in London other times?” she inquired. Cecil sat at a table in the corner, supposedly absorbed in his own business but, no doubt, taking notes. She had sent Ned out of her presence chamber, much to his obvious dismay, so she had kept her yeoman Clifford in the back of the room as a guard for this interview.

“In truth, there were no other times, Your Royal Majesty, for this is my first visit. That’s why I go out and about every spare moment I can. It’s a wonderful city, and I want to see all the sights—London Bridge, St. Paul’s, the Abbey. But to perform for you and see Whitehall from the inside—it’s more than I ever dared to dream.”

His eyes were clearest blue, his forehead flawless. His demeanor was deferential yet not menial, polite but refreshingly un-political. She liked him very much, his talents, too.

“I understand you have been an orphan for years, the result of a tragedy.”

“Sadly, yes,” he whispered. His gaze, linked with hers, did not waver. “As Master Thatcher may have told you, a fatal fire broke out, the result, I fear, of my mother’s carelessness with the Yule log embers. That is why I thought you had summoned me here, Your Majesty—I mean, that I was nearly crying when the play began in the Great Hall, because everyone had fussed so over the log being brought in, and it reminded me of my Christmas losses. I thought you would tell me I did a wretched job tonight as the Lord’s messenger angel when I was in truth so distraught…”

Those crystalline blue eyes teared; he bit his lower lip and sniffed once hard. She ached to comfort him. To have each joyous Christmas bring memories of tragedy was tragedy indeed. Especially considering how things were going during this Yuletide, she sympathized with this poor young man completely.

Elizabeth felt safer out among crowds of cheering people the next morning than she had inside her own palace. She had covertly appointed both Roger Stout and her cousin Harry’s wife, her lady in waiting Anne, to keep a good eye on the preparation and presentation of royal food and drink. Just after daybreak, her gaily attired entourage set out for the traditional fox hunt for this December 26, St. Stephen the Martyr’s Day.