The Queene’s Christmas (26 page)

During the gift giving, while the dishes had been cleared from the banquet tables and whisked by in the corridor between the Great Hall and the kitchens, Meg had easily lifted the remnants of figgy pudding off a passing tray. Morosely, she had shuffled into the kitchen and sat alone on the hearth and picked the figs out. She was expected to be in the Great Hall for the first footing, but no one would miss her in that crowd, and it wasn’t Ned at the center of attention this year. He was as good as the queen’s prisoner, sent to exile from court and Christmas, and Meg was both furious and fearful about that.

“You not going out for the ceremony, then, Mistress Meg?” Roger Stout asked her as he hurried past. “I’m going up to watch from the back of the musicians’ gallery. It’s in less than five minutes, I’d wager.”

“Oh, yes, I’m coming,” she lied and didn’t budge, though she figured she was probably getting her lemon yellow best skirts smudged, perched on the bricks like this. But the silvery embers gave off a steady warmth that felt good. Since Jenks had told her Ned was taken away, she’d been as cold as ice, and she and Jenks had had an argument over that.

So she wasn’t just moping over Ned’s predicament but over her own. Meg felt half of her had been ripped away, and she’d never felt like that before, not even when Jenks disappeared into plague London earlier this year. He was always kind and sweet to her, which Ned seldom was, so why didn’t she feel the same sweeping way for Jenks as she did for Ned? What in heaven’s name was wrong with her?

One of the sturdy-legged dogs that ran in cages to turn the hearth spits somehow got back inside from the small kennel out back and slumped at Meg’s feet.

“You too, eh?” she muttered and fed it sopped pieces of bread she fished out of the pudding. Though apparently exhausted, the dog devoured each morsel. “Least you're not one of those howling dogs the queen’s been having nightmares about.”

“Want a meat tart?” the sergeant of the pastry, who used to ogle her, asked. She figured he couldn’t see the dog at her feet as he rushed by, so he must mean it was for her. “I’ve got some leftover fancies here much better than those cold puddings, sweetling,” he said with a wink.

“I’d count it a high favor,” she said listlessly. “Just leave it there on the table.” The man picked one off a shelf in the shadows, left it where she’d said, and darted out, probably to see the first footing, too.

The thing was, Meg thought, as angry as she was
with
Her Majesty for sending Ned to Greenwich when Meg was sure he was innocent of any part of the attack on the queen’s Christmas, she did know one way to maybe help him out. If she did, though, she’d probably get the queen vexed at her, and she didn’t need that, especially if she had to plead with her to keep Ned on. And the Earl of Leicester would have her head, too, if she told the queen what she knew about him.

Sighing heavily, Meg got up and took the meat tart off the table. When she bent down to give it to the spit dog, he leaped up so fast she nearly tripped over him and had to grab the edge of the table to keep from falling. As the dog devoured it, Meg went out to watch Her Majesty open the Great Hall doors to the first footer.

In the sudden hush in the Great Hall, the single knock echoed. At least it sounded, Elizabeth thought, relieved, as if Sussex was not only present but right on time. She opened the doors herself, and there he stood, safe and alone, holding the covered silver salver. Though Sussex was sure of foot and in fine physical form, Elizabeth held her breath as he stepped into the hall itself without hesitation, or stubbing his toe, or falling.

Amidst the swelling cheers and corporate sigh of relief, he went down on one knee and delivered his little speech. “Ah— a New Year’s gift for—Your Majesty, though the Lord of Misrule—asked me not to, ah, gaze upon it.”

Elizabeth could only be grateful his stumbling words did not count as a curse for first footers.

“Robin?” she said, turning to him. “Is something special on that salver?”

“Very,” he said only.

Yet after Sussex’s presentation of the cutoff fox’s head the other night, she was fearful of what lay beneath. As she reached for the handle of the cover, she could see, distorted and bizarre, her reflection in its polished dome. Holding her breath, she lifted it to reveal a fresh sprig of mistletoe. And before she knew Robin would move—or before she could give him the permission he did not ask for—he kissed her in front of them all.

Silence stretched out at first, then cheers and laughter bubbled up, no doubt from Robin’s supporters, while Sussex—and Rosie, standing beside him now—looked quite vexed. The queen felt she was two women, the one who had long loved this irrepressible man and the queen who could afford to love and trust no man.

“And now,” Robin hurried on, perhaps fearful of which woman would speak, “your Lord of Misrule commands you all on to the Waterside Galley for the fireworks.”

“Seen a few of those here already!” a male voice in the crowd called out as, once again, her courtiers parted for her to pass through to lead the way. With a tight smile on her lips, which still tingled from Robin’s kiss, she ignored his proffered arm and walked back into the heart of the hall alone.

Her usual retinue swiftly fell into step behind her; the others surged forward. But as she passed her now empty throne, she saw a wooden box upon it.

“What is that?” she whispered as her gaze swept past Robin and sought Cecil. Where were Harry and Jenks when she needed them? The box greatly resembled the one that had held the stones.

“And who leaves a gift without waiting to receive one in turn?” the queen asked, her voice ringing out to quiet everyone.

“Does no one come forward to claim this gift?” Cecil asked, blessedly stepping from the press of people to help her. “Did anyone see who placed this here during the first footing?” No one spoke up; hardly anyone, she noted, so much as moved. “Then,” Cecil said, “we shall take it with us, and you may open it later, Your Grace.” He picked it up before Robin could get to it.

At the top of the great staircase as she led her shifting, swelling entourage upstairs, Cecil appeared at her elbow, carrying the box.

“Is it heavy?” she asked, turning her head toward him, for Robin walked on her other side and Sussex with Rosie and Kat behind.

“Not quite as heavy as stones. I’ll take it into your apartment and look lest it be something that would harm y—”

“I’m going, too,” she cut him off. “Lady Anne,” she called to her, “you and the Lord of Misrule may escort everyone to the windows in the gallery, where I will join you shortly. I bid you, Robin, stay your signal for the fireworks until I arrive. Rosie, as ever, keep near Lady Ashley.”

Taking only Harry with them, then admitting Jenks, who came and knocked on the door, the queen and Cecil placed the box on the table in her presence chamber.

“Now that I see it closer and in better light,” Elizabeth said, “I fear it is a very similar box to the one which held the stones.”

“A box we erroneously thought held a murder weapon,” Harry added.

“Stand back, Your Grace,” Cecil urged, “and I will open it.”

Harry stepped forward to block her from it as if it might explode. Cecil lifted the lid.

“Well?” she demanded, stepping out from behind Harry. “What?”

“Perhaps we’ve been too on edge,” Cecil observed. “It looks to be just another normal New Year’s gift”

“But no one claimed it,” she noted, peering down at six heavily molded and embossed flagons resting in nests of red velvet. “Oh, a lovely set, though rather heavy and masculine.”

“Perhaps a man picked them out,” Cecil surmised.

“Best I lift them out for you,” Harry said, and Elizabeth let him, touched by the concern they all showed her.

“All made from the same mold, I’d wager,” Cecil said. “Expensive, too. Someone must have forgotten his gift or been tardy with it, then stepped out after the first footing and didn’t hear you ask who had left these.”

“Ha,” Harry put in. “A gift this fine, someone will want to take credit for it.”

Elizabeth picked up the first of the flagons and examined it closely, including the maker’s hallmark on the bottom, a
V
set in the middle of a
W
, so it almost resembled one of those imported Eurasian flowers called tulips. The molded design on the exterior of the deep cups did not look like something recognizable but more like a swirling river current. The design was vaguely familiar, but after handling all the gifts tonight, she could not recall where she’d seen such.

“Ugh, this one’s not been washed,” Harry said. “Dried grape juice or red wine on one entire side of it.”

“Wait,” she said, still staring at the design. “Clean or dirty, I’ve seen this pattern before.”

As Harry set each flagon on the table, others took them, turned them, tipped them, and peered inside. Elizabeth put hers down and seized the encrusted one.

“Maybe it’s like a set you already have,” Harry said when all six flagons were out and he had searched beneath the velvet on which they rested to find nothing else.

“No,” she said. “I think we're looking at the pattern Cecil drew, the pattern of the crushing blow to Hodge Thatcher’s skull.”

“One of these is a murder weapon?” Cecil cried. “Then that dried stuff…”

“Hodge’s blood,” she said as chills swept her. “The Christmas killer is mocking us, daring us again by giving us the murder weapon we could not find nor figure out. That’s his gift to me for New Year’s, and I’d bet a throne he’s not finished with us yet.”

Chapter the Fourteenth

Winter Sallet

Indeed a good Yule sallet, fit for winter months, as it does not demand lettuce or spinach leaves, which may well have rotted in the cellar ere the holiday season. Mix together 2 ounces each of blanched almonds (with your shredding knife cut grossly), raisins of the sun, thinly sliced figs, capers, and currants. Dress them with 6 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons wine vinegar, 2 ounces of sugar, and a few leaves of sage in a deep dish. Cover the mixture with slices of 1 orange and 1 lemon, peeled and sliced cross-ways and laid in a circle. Put a thin layer of red cabbage leaves on top in a circle, then olives, all arranged in circles. Excellent sundry forms of such sallet may also include parsley, sage, garlic, leek, borage, mint, fennel, and rue, but be sure they be washed and picked clean
.

YOUR UNCLE, THE EARL OF SUSSEX, SAYS THAT WINDS
howling like a banshee out there, Lady Rosie,” Meg said as she entered the queen’s presence chamber with fresh strewing herbs the next day. At least, Elizabeth thought, Meg’s eyes weren’t red this morning, and she was evidently no longer avoiding her.

Elizabeth looked up from her card game of primero with Kat, Anne, and Rosie, annoyed that Meg had come up with a word she did not know. But since Sussex had said
banshee
, she’d best pursue the comment.

“That must be Irish Gaelic,” she told Meg. “What did he understand it to mean?”

“Overheard Lord Cecil ask him the same, Your Grace,” Meg replied, coming closer, “but the earl claimed the word is Scots.”

Anne discarded and said, “Funny that your military man sent to Ireland comes back with Scottish words.”

Elizabeth frowned, wondering if Sussex, like Robin and, of course, MacNair, had been in communication with the Scottish court “Perhaps Sussex heard it from Simon MacNair,” she said, glaring at Rosie, who had yet neither found the missing bracelet nor convinced the queen she wasn’t her uncle’s spy. “Meg, did he say what the word means?”

“Oh, yes. It’s something about a female spirit whose wailing warns a family that one of them will soon die.”

“How dreadful a thought on this first day of the new year,” Kat said.

“Especially with all we’ve been through,” Elizabeth agreed and glared at Rosie to warn her not to defend her uncle. Could Sussex be intending that as a warning he was planning another murder, the queen agonized, or was it mere chance he said such?

Elizabeth frowned down at her hand of two queens—hearts and diamonds—and her lower-count cards. She would surely lose this hand. Worse, she’d tossed and turned all night and felt exhausted, so it was just as well her official visit to the Frost Fair and ride in Robin’s sleigh was put off until tomorrow. The so-called banshee wind was buffeting the booths and scouring snow off rooftops to cascade it down as if it were snowing again.

At least the stiff wind had come up after the fine fireworks display Robin had presented last night, so it had gone off without a hitch. Ignited gunpowder had sent rockets, firewheels, squibs, and pikes of pleasure vaulting into the air from the frozen river. Folks at the Frost Fair had been able to enjoy it as close as the court, while others from the city crowded the banks of the Thames to cheer and clap. There had not been as many fireworks as last year, but she had not complained, for, with all that had been happening, she thought it best not to make a pompous show.

“Was there something else you wished to say, Meg?” Elizabeth asked, looking sharply up from her cards again as the girl hovered.

“I was just wondering if you have heard from Ned—I mean about him. Jenks and I are most concerned, that is.”