The Queene’s Christmas (15 page)

“Your Grace, will you grace us with a graceful memory of your own?” Robin asked, and everyone chuckled at the way he’d put that. As the room grew hushed again, the crackle of the flames and hiss of sap from the huge log whispered to them all.

Elizabeth cleared her throat. Thank God, Christmas was
not
ruined this year. The good times were still within reach, and she felt protected here, despite the fact that in this friendly company could be the one who wanted to do her and Yuletide dreadful harm.

“I treasure the memory of the time my father went in a sleigh with my brother—Prince Edward—and me at Greenwich,” she said. She hesitated, surprised that the long-buried memory had just lain in wait for Robin’s invitation. She must have been barely six or seven then, Edward even younger. “The sleigh was a gift from the ambassador from Muscovy, where they have feet and feet of snow, my father said, and we laughed and sang, and then got out and made snowballs, but Edward and I knew better than to hit him hard with one.”

Everyone laughed at that, the warm memory of a father merging with the reality of the huge, tempestuous king they recalled. But Elizabeth caught Vicar Bane’s baleful gaze as he stood by the screen in the corner of the vast hall. The other day he’d claimed throwing snowballs was near sacrilege, so she glared back. “Someone else’s turn,” she said, her nostalgic mood now marred. “My lord envoy from your queen in Scotland,” she went on, turning to Simon MacNair, seated at the end of the row, “will not you favor us with a memory of Christmas?”

“I shall be honored,” Sir Simon said and stood, though no one else had done so. “Just last year,” he began, “at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, it was, actually on Twelfth Night. One of Her Majesty’s maids of honor, Mary Fleming, found the bean in the Twelfth Night cake and so was declared 'Queen of the Bean.’ Her Majesty ordered Mary decked out in a gown of silver and jewels, while the queen herself was appareled in mere white and black with not a ring or necklace or pin, so humble is our queen, so confident in any comparison with others. And how dearly her lowest servants love her for it—that is all of my memory.”

As he dipped a little bow in Elizabeth’s direction and sat again, she felt her dander rise. The man was subtly criticizing her for her elaborate dress. And did he imply that her own servants did not love her? ’S blood, how she hated all the mincing and maneuvering of court life when she would like to just have this jackanapes banished, along with anyone else who might wish her and her people harm.

“Thank you for that picture of your humble Scottish queen,” she replied sweetly. “Rosie,” she went on, turning to Lady Radcliffe, sitting two chairs down the other way, “pray tell us your story of how you came to court”

“I was a Yule gift fit for a queen,” Rosie said, “the most lovely, gracious, and grand queen in all the world. My uncle, the earl,” she went on with a nod and smile at Sussex, “said I should serve our new young queen and plucked me from my parents to meet the monarch—and here I am and likely to remain so, for who, high or low, would not be loyal to our queen?”

“I could not do without you. But tell, then,” Elizabeth prompted, “the story of your parents, a great love story, and Christmas is the best time for those, both the sacred and profane.”

Blushing now, Rosie began, “During the reign of Her Majesty’s father, King Henry, the Earl of Sussex—the previous earl, this was—rode out of London to take part in a tournament. As the cavalcade passed the little village of Kensington, people hurried to windows to see the parade. A beautiful merchant’s daughter, Isabella Harvey, leaned out so far she dropped a glove just as Sir Humphrey Radcliffe, younger son of the earl, rode by. Sir Humphrey dipped his lance, picked up the glove, and returned it to Isabella most gallantly, so who dares say chivalry is dead in these modern times?”

“The Radcliffes yet cherish chivalry and loyalty,” Sussex put in as if he’d been given leave to speak. “Well, continue, niece.”

“The entourage rode on,” she said, her eyes alight, “but Isabella had entranced Sir Humphrey. He doubled back and, calling himself a squire of the earl, made himself so agreeable that he was invited by Isabella’s father to supper.”

“I knew we’d get to food,” Robin put in with a hearty laugh. “After all that dancing, let’s have some pastries here—and suckets,” he called to the hovering servers. “Marchpane and comfits! Go on, then, Lady Rosie.”

“The friendship between Sir Humphrey, alias Squire Humphrey, and the maid Isabella, daughter of a mere merchant, grew to love. She came to marriage well dowered, but indeed they were wed for weeks before Sir Humphrey told her who he truly was, that her husband was the son, not the servant, of the Earl of Sussex, once Lord High Chamberlain of England. And I am their first child.”

The courtiers applauded the charming tale. The queen noted even Simon NacNair looked pleased. But to everyone’s surprise, Kat cried out, “It just goes to show you can’t trust men!”

“What?” Robin said, looking half annoyed and half amused. “All present company, no doubt, excluded.”

“To carry on like some player on a stage,” Kat went on, “to mislead Rosie’s mother so! For a Radcliffe, brother of our earl, to pretend to be something he was not is—”

“Is not something we shall discuss this night,” the queen concluded for her, rising.

“Time indeed for the bringing in of the boar’s head,” Robin added. “And yet,” he whispered for Elizabeth’s ears only, “Lady Ashley probably only spoke what she’s heard you say more than once in private.”

“Perhaps she only spoke the truth,” the queen countered with a tight-lipped smile. She raised her voice to the crowd. “Let us all move back to the table, where the Earl of Sussex, surely a man to be trusted, has the honor of the presentation of the boar’s head.”

“Because I allowed him to do so,” Robin groused.

Evidently, Sussex heard that as he walked on the queen’s other side. “Don’t you know?” he muttered to Robin behind her back, “that, ah, the point of lotteries is that the Lord God can actually choose who wins or loses, Leicester? In a lottery no man is rigging the results, though I suppose you’d like to try.”

“Rigging?” Robin replied. “Rigging like that which tries to hold in the big-bellied sail of a ship, a ship which should take you right back to Ireland so you can cool your heels in the bogs there—”

“Leave off your slurs!” Sussex demanded. “Your vile temper is like the gunpowder you produce and then charge all of us outrageous prices for to match your sense of inflated importance, and—”

“Enough!” the queen commanded. She jerked Robin’s arm and glared at Sussex. “Perhaps Kat was right about men being like actors in a drama. They may seem charming and chivalrous, but underneath they carp and cavil and can ruin more than my mood or even Christmas!”

A pall of unease hung over the company as everyone was seated. The queen took a deep breath to steady herself. To the blast of trumpets, in came four tall pages bedecked in red and gold taffeta, carrying the heavy platter with the silver cover over the traditional boar’s head. For the first time, Elizabeth was aware Ned Topside was here, for his voice rang out to start the familiar song:

Tidings I bring you for to tell

What in wild forest me befell,

When I in with a wild beast fell,

With a boar so fierce …

Elizabeth smiled, though she felt on edge from Robin’s and Sussex’s arguing—and from Vicar Bane still staring from the corner as if branding them all pagans in need of strict Puritan salvation. Margaret Stewart, pippin red with anger, evidently that she had not been asked for a Yuletide memory, was whispering to her frowning son Darnley. MacNair looked maddeningly smug after his flaunting of Queen Mary. But at least, thank the Lord God, it had escaped Kat that she’d caused a row, and she looked happy.

The boar’s head in hand bear I

Bedecked with bays and rosemary.

I pray you all now, high to low,

Be merry, be merry, be merry.

When the dish was set before the queen, the Earl of Sussex stepped forward to do the honors of uncovering the boar’s head. With a smirk sent Robin’s way, the earl swept the cover from the platter with a flourish.

Kat screamed. Robin cursed. The queen stared agape not at the head of a boar with an apple in its mouth but at the decapitated head of a red fox with its snout adorned in gold foil.

Chapter the Eighth

Suckets

Take curds, the paring of lemons, oranges, pome-citrons, or indeed any half-ripe fruit, and boil them in sweet wort till they be tender; then make a syrup in this sort: Take 3 pounds of sugar, and the whites of 4 eggs, and a gallon of water, then swing and beat the water and eggs together, then put in your sugar, and set it on an easy fire, and so let it boil, then strain it through a cloth, and let it seethe again till it fall from the spoon, then put it into the rinds of fruits. One of the queen’s favorite delights, especially the orange, all the year round, but for their hue, use limes at Yule
.

“I THANK GOD NOTHING DIRE HAPPENED ON HOLY
Innocents Day,” Elizabeth told Cecil as she paced in her presence chamber two days later. She was eating orange suckets as she walked, for they seemed to give her the physical strength she desperately needed. “At least there was an entire normal day after the shock of that fox’s head on the platter.”

“If you call it normal,” Cecil said as he stood at the window, sometimes glancing out, sometimes at her. “The upheaval of searching the kitchens and questioning the staff about how the switch from boar’s head to fox’s head had been made, and coming up with naught—”

“Naught but the discarded boar’s head in Hodge’s old work area,” she said as she tossed her fruit and spoon back on the silver tray with a clatter. She stopped to look out the window, too. A swirling snowstorm had blanketed London with a good half foot of huge, heavy flakes yesterday. “You know,” she went on, her voice calm at last, “Ned suggested that nothing happened yesterday because the culprit lives outside the palace and was snow-bound, but I don’t think so.”

“I’m afraid I don’t either.”

“Even Vicar Bane has a chamber here when he wishes it,” she went on, reasoning aloud, “and he’s been here more than he’s been with the bishop lately. The fact that nothing happened yesterday could be because our tormentor is matching his wretched surprises to each day. The human peacock was killed and displayed just before the presentation of the peacock on Christmas Eve, the box of stones came on St. Stephen’s Day because the saint was stoned to death, the fox after our fox hunt… ’S blood, I don’t know, Cecil,” she cried, banging her fist on the windowsill. “If that’s the pattern, can we predict what’s coming next?”

“I thought the fox’s head might be as if to say, ’The fox may be traditionally freed on the Yuletide hunt, but I killed him, because I’m breaking or damning all your traditions.’ “

“Yes, but more than that, I think. Death, past or present, is suggested by each outrage, but what about the threat of a future death? It worries me that the fox
is
redheaded. Remember when we tried to solve the poison plot, a dead red fox was left in my bed with the note ’The red-haired fox is next,’ meaning me? At least I am taking even more care than usual not to eat or drink anything that isn’t guarded from start to finish or tasted first.”

“That is wise, Your Grace, but you don’t think there’s a threat of poison here? The culprit seems obsessed with food as symbols, not as weapons.”

“Oh, Cecil,” she cried, covering her eyes with both palms, “I said I don’t know what I think anymore. Perhaps nothing happened yesterday, even on a day that commemorates the biblical slaughter of young children by King Herod, because the name of the day is Holy Innocents. Because we have no babes at the court to harm, our tormentor gives us the day off, so to speak. But tonight—the Feast of Fools—I’m fearing something more bizarre than what we’ve yet seen.”

“You could cancel everything.”

“For what reason?” she demanded, smacking her skirts and starting to pace again. She took another sucket off the tray, a lime one. “Shall I announce to my court and city—so to all of Europe—that some specter, some phantom, stalks our court, and the queen is sore afraid and too stupid to stop it?”

She talked with her mouth half full as fear and anger—and sugar—bolstered her passion to solve this plot to kill Christmas. “Should I arrest all those we suspect, and on what grounds?” she railed. “Shall I send the powerful Earl of Sussex, my military commander from Ireland, to the Tower? Lord Darnley, whom I intend to send to tempt Queen Mary? Should I put some poor, possibly innocent itinerant actor on the rack? Imprison Vicar Bane, of my Church of England, however much I’d like to have his scowling face out of my sight? I won’t have him and Bishop Grindal preaching that our traditional ways and my Christmas decrees are cursed. The river’s frozen over, and the building of booths for the Frost Fair I’ve promised has begun, so I can hardly halt the holidays at the court or in the city!” In utter frustration, she heaved the half-eaten sucket and spoon at the tray. Both missed, and the sucket spun away on the floor.

“It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill,” Cecil muttered calmly, staring at her discarded lime. She saw he was so used to her out-bursts he hardly flinched anymore. “But, Your Grace, we shall find who is behind it all, I know we shall.”