The Queene’s Christmas (28 page)

As they sleighed gaily past the rest of the fair, then under London Bridge, waving up at people who spotted them, the queen tried to relax and enjoy herself. She kept her eyes on Robin’s hand-some face rather than the Tower, where her sister had once imprisoned her and her mother had been beheaded. After following the broad curve around St. Catherine’s Dock, they were out in the country. How often in the early years of her reign she had wished to be off with her dear Robin, alone—or nearly alone—like this.

But perhaps, she mused, not so near the Isle of Dogs. In a way, she would like to
visit
her kennels of hunt hounds there as she had several years ago, but the ghost tales of the place Kat and Simon MacNair had told on the fox hunt had stayed with her. The two lovers, who supposedly drowned near this spot in the river while their hounds bayed, had haunted her. She shook her head to cast off her sense of deep foreboding.

As they made the next turn and spotted Greenwich Palace upon its snowy hill, her stomach cramped. Perhaps she should not have switched from suckets to eating so much sallet, hoping that would stop her ailments and her nightmares. Just as her hounds were kept in their kennels, poor Ned was prisoner in that east wing she could see emerging from the trees,

Ned could not believe his eyes, which were aching from staring out at the sunstruck snow. The queen was coming. Coming here, to Greenwich! With only a group of mounted guards—Jenks among them—in a sleigh, the Earl of Leicester at the helm.

His insides cartwheeled. Could she be coming to see him? Release him? Perhaps that lone rider he spotted the other night was sent ahead by her to make sure it was safe for her to visit during this dangerous holiday season.

Their backs against piles of pillows, Leicester sat close to the queen on the narrow length of seat. He held the reins with one hand, for his other arm rested behind Elizabeth’s back as if he embraced her. They were covered to their hips by the same lap robe as if it were a blanket on the bed they shared.

Suddenly, Ned recalled something he had overheard Leicester tell Sussex last month, something he had not told Her Grace at first because it would have made her angry, and then it had quite slipped his mind. Ned figured it was just more of Leicester’s bravado, but maybe it had meant more.

Ned had eavesdropped on the earl’s bragging to Sussex that Elizabeth had elevated him to the peerage and promoted him as Queen Mary’s betrothed because she wanted the world to know he was good enough, not for the Scots queen, but for the English queen, to wed.

“She’ll have me yet, man, you’ll see!” the earl had said smugly to the irate Sussex. “She’ll come around the first time something really goes wrong to shake her plans and she realizes she couldn’t bear to see me hurt or to lose me. Once Kat Ashley dies, but for Cecil, I’ll wager you a kingdom no one will be her confidant and mainstay—and who knows what else?—but me.”

No. Oh, no! The sleigh had stopped on the river. They weren’t coming up onto the lawn or to the palace. Leicester was getting out and carefully walking the ice to talk to the queen’s mounted guard while Elizabeth herself bent over something in the sleigh. Was she heartbroken? 111?

Ned shouted and beat on the thick windowpanes until his fists turned cold and bruised.

As Robin walked away to speak to her guards, the queen quickly pulled Meg’s note from her muff. He had proposed taking her just a little farther down the river, without the array of men behind them. The idea had seemed both romantic and foolish to her. Actually, she told herself, she would have insisted he head back immediately to the city had she not been eager to read Meg’s note and needed him to get out of the sleigh for a moment.

I should have told you yesterday, but Earl of L’s foot, just like that of Earl of S’s fit the bootprint of H’s murderer. I didn’t think a thing of it earlier, since we never suspected L’s of anything. But he did say someone hit him from behind while he was going up the back stairs. But to hit him from behind, the person would have had to be so tall, and the earl’s already tall. Forgive me, Your Grace, to implicate one you love dearly as a friend, but I swear by all that’s true, if your loyal Ned could be at fault, could not someone else close to you need watching too?

Meg

Elizabeth crumpled the note and stuffed it in her muff as Robin started back toward the sleigh and her guards turned to ride away toward the city. She almost screamed at them to stop.

For suddenly, certain clues fell all too perfectly into place. Robin had not only been hurt but had benefited from the recent dreadful events. The bizarre display of Hodge’s body obviously mocked Robin, but could he have set that up to get her sympathy? She had felt protective of him but had not drawn him into the investigation, so perhaps he’d decided to make himself look even more threatened.

They had found Robin naked, tied, mocked, and apparently almost dead, but he could have had one of his servants or grooms from the stable tie him up. Perhaps it was not truly as bad as it had looked. He’d showed no signs of the blow to the head he claimed; his welts and marks quickly healed. Then, indeed, she’d realized she loved him. ’S blood and bones, she’d nearly climbed into his bed! She’d taken him back into her heart and her protection and trust as she had not in years.

And now he was coming toward the sleigh, closer and closer while her guards wheeled about and headed away.

And the most damning clue? Although she could not picture Robin as a murderer, some still believed he had arranged for his wife, Amy, to be killed four years ago so that he could wed Elizabeth. She had banished him from her court and life, but he’d been exonerated and fought his way back into her heart.

But when she’d tried to offer him as consort to Queen Mary and was so furious with him over heading that off, perhaps he’d gotten desperate again and decided on something brazen and bizarre to make her take him back in her arms and life for good.

True, she’d named Robin Lord of Misrule, but he had begun to presume, to order her around beyond those bounds. He’d kissed her before the court, as if he were a husband who had rights over her, as if he were the king.

Damn the man! He was to be trusted about as much as her father had been! She was tempted to stab him with his own gift of gold fork.

Just as Robin lifted his leg to climb back into the sleigh, she seized the reins and flapped them on the horse’s back. “Ha!” she cried and turned the sleigh to go after her guards.

“Your Grace! Elizabeth!” Robin cried.

Jenks looked back and saw her. Her men turned.

“Jameson,” she called to one of her guards as she reined in and climbed out carefully, “I want your horse. I will ride back, so you will go in this sleigh with the earl. Jenks and one more man, follow me, and the rest escort the earl back, coming behind. And Jameson, you are to stay with the earl to be certain he arrives safely back at Whitehall and remains in his chamber.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said and dismounted. “But you usually don’t ride so tall a horse, and on the ice, and never astride with this sort of big saddle …”

She should have been touched at his concern, but he was just another man ordering about the woman who was queen. “I can ride anything in Christendom, man,” she said, “sidesaddle or astride. Just give me a boost up. Jenks, to me, and bring another guard,” she called, cursing silently as she realized her skirt would make her ride sidesaddle anyway.

She ignored Robin’s frustration and fury as he walked mincingly toward her on the ice. Refusing to look back, she urged the big horse up on the bank along the river path toward London. As she did, she remembered something else that could incriminate him. The flagon she’d held to Robin’s lips after his ordeal had been of a similar style to the flagon that had hit Hodge.

Though she had to ride on the ice again when she approached the city, trailing her two guards, Elizabeth set a good but safe pace back toward Whitehall. She felt even sicker than she had before, for she could not bear it if Robin had made a fool of her and staged all this to force her to openly care for him again. The contingent at court who hated him would be baying for his blood this time, even if the one murdered was a kitchen worker and not his own wife of noble rank.

Elizabeth left the river along the eastern edge of the palace boundaries and rode back to the stables. No more time could be afforded to keep things secret, to coddle reputations, or to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. Even if she panicked her court and word got out to the city and kingdom, she was going to question the royal stable’s grooms, curriers, and smithies immediately. She must know if Robin, her Master of the Horse and former master of her heart, had been spotted anywhere the afternoon Hodge was killed. Maybe one of his men had overheard or seen something.

“Shall I take your horse back to the stables for you, then, Your Majesty?” Jenks asked as her guards came to ride abreast.

“I need to see my stables,” she said curdy. “I’ve visited the chandlery and the kitchens lately, but not the stables.”

She was surprised to see the wide stable doors closed, but it made sense with the weather. Seldom had she come back here this time of year, and never had she approached the stables from the side walls of the palace boundary. Nor had she ever noted the circle lined with benches and knee-high watering troughs between the back of the building and the walls that ran along the Strand.

“That’s a training ring for spring and summer foals when they're first weaned, Your Majesty,” Jenks told her when she reined in and stared at it “Hardly ever used this time of year.”

“I can see that from so few footprints in the snow. Go inside and tell all present I have come to wish them a good new year. I’ll follow in a moment.”

But when her other guard dismounted and stepped forward to help her alight, her horse shied away and bumped into one of the stone drinking troughs. “There, boy, there,” she said and patted his neck to calm him.

As she did, she glanced down at the bench and trough beside her. Jenks was right in saying they were not used this time of year, for the seat was covered with blown snow and the thigh-high trough held not water but ice. And the ice of the one closest to her looked a strange blue-gray hue, as if it reflected the sky.

Still mounted, she brushed a bit of snow off with the toe of her boot and peered down, wondering
if
she would see her reflection. She gasped and nearly fell off the horse. Staring up at her was a man, wide-eyed as if in surprise, encased in solid ice as if he lay in a stone and glass sarcophagus.

She had found Vicar Bane.

Chapter the Fifteenth

Rye Pie Crust

Rye crust is best for standing dishes, which must be stored or keep their shapes, for it is thick, tough, coarse, and long lasting, mostly for show and not for digestion. Also, dough made with boiling water will hold better for shaping. This is ideal for display pastries at court, even large ones, namely those which contain live birds to delight the ladies when the pie is opened and the birds begin to sing and take wing. How many pockets full of rye measured for the crust depends upon its size. Such crusts can be baked, then slit open with care to introduce doves, blackbirds, or larger surprises. A rye pie can bring much merriment, especially during the Twelve Days of Christmas
.

SO AS NOT TO ALARM THE COURT, ELIZABETH ORDERED
Martin Bane’s body to be hewn whole from the water trough in one large piece of ice, wrapped, and carried by her guards into the chandlery to be thawed in a vat of water over a slow fire. When she saw it would take too long to clean wax from the vats, she sent for the largest old kettle in the kitchens.

She had realized there were only two possible places to thaw out Bane’s body, and she was starting to fear the palace kitchens. After she sent the chandlery staff away, only Jenks, Meg, and the queen kept watch over the fire melting the block of ice in water in the biggest iron soup kettle the men could drag in. Perhaps it had not been cleaned well, for leaves and pieces of vegetables floated to the surface, or else the particles were from fodder spilled into the horse trough and caught in the ice, too.

Her orderly world was turned upside down, Elizabeth thought, as she personally oversaw the gruesome thawing. Robin, who had authority over her stables, where the drowning must have occurred, was being detained in his bedchamber. Cecil, whom she wanted at her side, had been sent to interrogate him, while Cecil’s men had been assigned to thoroughly question workers in the stables. Vicar Bane, whose realm should have been the chapel, was dead in the chandlery. Ned, who had always been able to lighten her heart, was exiled to Greenwich.

“Of course,” Jenks said as they huddled near the kettle, “the vicar could have tumbled into the horse trough, hit his head, and drowned. Still,” he added, obviously, Elizabeth thought, when he saw her frown, “however slippery one of those benches might be, why would he be standing on it?”

“Precisely,” Elizabeth said, frowning at the debris floating in the water.

“So,” Jenks went on, “the same someone as knocked Hodge and the Earl of Leicester on the head could have done this. In that case, he meant for him to drown and become a block of ice.”

“He was a block of ice anyway, if you ask me,” Meg put in.

“We did not ask you,” Jenks replied.