The Queene’s Christmas (27 page)

“So am I,” Elizabeth admitted, spreading her cards on the table, only to be beaten by Rosie’s hand. The young woman squealed and scooped up the small pile of silver shillings as the queen rose. “Meg, come over here,” Elizabeth said, and motioned for her to sit beside her on the pillows in the window seat.

“Yes, Your Grace?” She obeyed but looked poised to flee.

“There was much circumstantial evidence against Ned, and I have exiled him from court for his own good right now. If he is locked up at Greenwich and more dire events occur here, such as the box of flagons last night, then I shall know he is innocent and release him.”

“Pardon, Your Grace, but what box of flagons?”

“Ones which may include the murder weapon used against Hodge.”

“Oh, then you can call Ned back if they appeared last night.”

“I choose to wait a bit longer to be very sure.”

“No one told me about flagons,” Meg said, lowering her voice. “Was it two of them in a velvet drawstring bag?”

“No—
six
, nestled in velvet. Why did you say two?”

Meg mouthed the words. “Because that’s what Lord Sussex bought at St. Paul’s Walk that day he met with Giles Chatam. You know, when I was following Sussex, and Ned was trailing Giles.”

“Ladies, I thank you for a lively game of cards,” the queen said, rising, “and would be alone for a few minutes but will rejoin you soon.”

“Is aught well with you?” Kat asked, rising and coming closer. “I know that look, lovey, and it means you're fretting.”

“Nonsense. We’ve all just had too much Christmas and New Year to boot,” Elizabeth teased as she hugged Kat, then shooed her women from the room. When the door closed, she said, “Meg, come over here and look at these flagons.”

“Yes, much the same,” she said, examining the one the queen handed her. “At least it’s the general style and pattern of those displayed on the shelves of the pewterer at St. Paul’s.”

“And you and Ned witnessed Sussex buy two of them, then whisper to Giles?”

“These exact ones, I’m not sure. But, Your Grace, if Ned could be brought back, he could help to identify them, too, as I’m sure he got a much better look at them, so—”

“For his own good, Ned stays where he is right now, but you have indeed helped his plight. Meg, just as Kat can read my expression, I warrant I can read yours after all our years together. There is more that you would say on our investigation, is there not?”

“No, Your Majesty. I’ve said it all, and you have every right not to take my advice about Ned.”

They stared each other down a moment, as if Meg were an equal who did not deign to drop her gaze. The queen felt they were fencing, but over precisely what, she was not certain. If only she could recall where she had seen plateware or drinking vessels with a design similar to what these flagons bore. She’d had Harry and Anne traipse down to the storage room and look through all her New Year’s gifts to no avail.

“Then you are dismissed, Meg, and have Clifford fetch Sussex to me immediately.”

“Ah, yes“ Sussex said, turning one of the flagons in his big hands, “I’ve seen their like. Works of art, every one of them.”

“Seen their like where?” Elizabeth asked, trying to keep both her excitement and temper reigned in.

“Fine work done by a, ah, Master Vincent Wainwright, who has a portable booth in St. Paul’s Walk. Works at night, sells during the day, I’ve heard, and don’t know where he lives.”

“Are you his patron or some such that you know his name?”

“Merely a customer, Your Grace, but then so are others of your court and no doubt many in the city. Wainwright was in fact indirectly recommended to me, ah, by Leicester.”

“What? Considering that you two cannot communicate without nearly coming to blows, am I to believe you were speaking civilly with Leicester, and he kindly suggested you buy from Master Wainwright?”

“No, rather, I heard him suggesting to Queen Mary of Scots’s man at your court—MacNair—that he send some to her because they were fine work.”

“Yes, I believe Leicester still has a soft spot for that other queen in his heart,” she muttered and began to pace. After all, she fumed silently, she had not yet forgiven the wretch that he had Queen Mary’s portrait closer to his bed than the one of his own queen. And who knew but that Leicester had told MacNair where to get an artist for those miniatures that made the Queen of England look sour next to the charming Scots queen.

“Giles Chatam told you, didn’t he?” Sussex interrupted her agonizing. “I mean, ah, that I bought some of these flagons? But what is the import of all this, Your Grace? Yes, I bought two of them from the same pewterer—and sent them both to my heir for a New Year’s gift Those flagons greatly resemble this one of yours, but, ah, the pattern is different, God as my judge, it is.”

Elizabeth sank into a chair at the head of the long table in her presence chamber. She felt she grasped at straws again when she’d thought at last she had a handhold on all this. But she still wasn’t ready to have Sussex or anyone else arrested for murdering either Hodge or Christmas.

“You sent them to your heir,” she asked slowly, “who is not at court, so you do not have those different ones in your possession?”

“Exactly, Your Grace.”

It smacked too much to her of Sussex’s earlier far-fetched claims he’d hired Giles to recite a poem he’d written. But he had told her he could produce that, at least, and she’d not made him do it.

“Describe this Vincent Wainwright for me,” she said.

“Oh, easy as, ah, pie to spot in a crowd when he uncovers his head, Your Grace. His hair is brick red, real russet in the sun, brighter than your own or even that herb mistress of yours.”

“But it’s hardly sunny inside St. Paul’s, even if he did doff his cap to you, my lord. Have you seen him elsewhere in the bright winter sun, perhaps when you bought from him some other time?”

“I have not. Sorry if my—ah, explanation didn’t suit, but smoothness of tongue is not my strength, as truth and loyalty are, Your Grace.”

Elizabeth always felt safe and happy among the common folk of her realm. The next day—Snow Day, it was dubbed on the holiday calendar—dawned brisk but sunny, and the bitter wind had spent itself. At midmorning, driven by Robin in his makeshift but comfortable sleigh, and followed by her entourage of eight mounted yeomen guards, the queen went sleighing on the frozen river. She regretted only that her most trustworthy yeoman guard, Clifford, was not with them, for she’d sent him to locate and bring in the St. Paul’s Walk pewterer, Vincent Wainwright, for questioning. She needed a list of the man’s clients and news of anything he might have overheard. At least the ever faithful Jenks had taken Clifford’s place in her retinue.

Cheers and caps thrown aloft saluted her. She smiled and waved back, called out greetings and questions, and patted the fat cheeks of babies tilted toward the sleigh by awestruck, beaming parents. Where small crowds gathered, the queen gave short speeches wishing her fellow Londoners and Englishmen a prosperous and happy new year.

Booths, which had hastily been put back shipshape after yesterday’s gales, were strung out for nearly half a mile. She graciously turned down offers of drink or food but admired wares for sale. The royal sleigh stopped at some booths for her to shop; she passed purchased gewgaws and trinkets back to her guards until their saddle sacks bulged. Though her men kept close, she felt freer than she had since Christmas Eve, when all the chaos had begun.

“Look at that big fishing hole they’ve chopped in the ice!“ she cried over the noisy chorus of huzzahs as Robin reined in the horse pulling the sleigh. Bundled up to their eyes, men and boys stood or sat fishing around a hole in the ice the size of a banquet table, through which the cold, black-green Thames lapped roughly.

“I have a confession to make,” Robin said, tugging one of her gloved hands from her muff and squeezing it in his.

“What sort of confession?” she cried, turning to him on their single seat piled with pillows.

“My fireworks the other night—some were embedded too far into the ice and blasted that hole open. And, evidently, these fishing folk have kept it that way.”

“But someone could fall in! The current’s fierce, and that hole could weaken the strength of the ice”

“Your people, as you can see, my queen, deem it a great favor to be able to get fish for their holiday tables. Don’t fret now, for the Bible says it only causes harm.”

Robin, instead of Bane, she thought, quoting scripture, and about causing harm. “Of course I’m fretting,” she argued, “because I don’t like being so near that big hole in such a heavy vehicle. Horses especially should not get close. Drive on. Look, over there, not far, some sort of performance.”

Near the site of the burned boathouse, someone was staging a drama before a makeshift set surrounded by a crowd of at least a hundred souls. As the sleigh drew closer, the queen realized the scene was the skeleton of a stable and the performance a mystery play, one depicting the Christ child’s birth, for several sheep had been brought out near a manger filled with straw. The poor beasts were all having trouble standing.

“They’ve apparently just started, because here comes the holy couple toward Bethlehem,” Elizabeth noted as Robin reined in. The lad portraying the pregnant Mary was bent over and helped along by the older man playing Joseph. When the crowd saw the queen, they whispered and elbowed each other, then parted to give her a clear path to see.

Elizabeth noted that quite a few of her courtiers had found the performance. Giles Chatam stood in the crowd with other members of the Queen’s Country Players. She saw Sussex standing a bit apart with his wife, and Simon MacNair whispering to a burly-looking man.

“Who’s that with MacNair?” Elizabeth asked Robin, pointing.

“Duncan Forbes, the courier he sends to Edinburgh with messages for Queen Mary and
vice versa”
he said, then looked so glum she realized he wished he hadn’t answered.

“Oh, yes, the messenger you supposedly never used for your own privy letters to the Scots queen.”

“As your Master of Horse, my queen, and I’ve seen Forbes at the stables, that is all.”

“He returned from Edinburgh in all this weather rather quickly, did he not?” she asked herself as much as him.

A man wearing cleric’s garb under his cape ran, then skidded, toward them on the ice. At first Elizabeth thought it might be the missing Vicar Bane, but it was someone she did not know. Robin began to draw his sword, but Jenks stopped the man a few yards from the sleigh.

“I’m in charge of this drama and honored to see Her Majesty here,” the cleric called out, and she nodded for Jenks to let him pass. Trying to bow, he nearly went sprawling again.

“Though Christmas itself is past, Your Gracious Majesty,” the man said, evidently so excited he forgot to
give
his name, “we will deliver the message of this holy season every day here and are so honored by your visit. Far more souls are in attendance than in St. Paul’s Walk, where we gave it other years with no Frost Fair.”

That rather pleased her. Vicar Bane had insisted that no good could come of such frivolity as a Frost Fair.

“I certainly hope,” Robin said with a chortle, “you don’t intend to have wise men ride in on camels, or they’ll look rather foolish sliding all over.” All three of them glanced at the meager herd of three sheep huddled together to keep from going down, spread-legged.

“Those sheep and a turtledove later for the feigned temple sacrifice is all, my lord,” the cleric said. “You did hear the donkey Mary and Joseph should come in with slipped in that big hole at dawn and drowned 'fore we could get him out, didn’t you?”

“I’m so sorry, for the animal and you,” Elizabeth said and took one of MacNair’s magical gold crowns out of the pocket in her muff to give him. She caught her glove on the gold fork she’d for-gotten she carried there, because it had been a gift from her dear Robin and seemed a weapon easy to conceal. “You see,” she told Robin, after the man hied himself back to overseeing the mystery play, “holes in the ice can be deadly!”

“They're safe enough unless one makes an ass of oneself,” he said and boomed a laugh that made heads turn just as the angel appeared, straddling the peaked roof of the stable to hold up a star in one hand and a trumpet in the other.

“Robin,” Elizabeth said, thoroughly angry with him now, “drive on!” He turned the horse away, and her clattering contingent followed. They had just begun to wend their way eastward on the river when the queen saw a young woman, red-haired like her-self, out on the ice waving and shouting. Meg. It was Meg.

“Robin, pull over there.”

“What then, Mistress Meg?” his voice boomed out as she came closer. She was hardly bundled against the cold but flapped a pair of gloves in her hand. With an obviously uneasy glance at Jenks, Meg came around the back of the sled to the queen’s side, instead of reaching over Robin.

“Your new ermine-lined gloves, Your Majesty, the ones Kat gave you for New Year’s,” Meg said. “Those you are wearing are not half so warm.”

“What the deuce, girl, stopping us for that!” Robin cried. “Her Grace has a fox-lined lap robe and me to keep her warm.”

If that was a jest, no one laughed. Elizabeth frowned but saw in Meg’s gaze that the gloves meant something. Yes, when she took them from her, one crinkled. She gave Meg her other pair, and, as they pulled away, she managed to extract from the new one a folded piece of paper. She thrust it into her muff with her coins and fork until she could find a chance to read it without Robin seeing, then pulled on the new pair of gloves. As she glanced back, she saw Jenks doff his cap to Meg and Meg wave at him forlornly.