The Queene’s Christmas (29 page)

The queen noted how the two of them snapped at each other lately. Usually when they’d disagreed, it had been with calm respect, not bitter bile, though Meg and Ned had often fought with passion. She sighed and thrust such personal problems away for now.

“Meg, it’s bad luck,” Jenks added, “to speak ill of the dead.”

“Which,” Elizabeth said, holding her hands out not only to halt their bickering but to be warmed by steam escaping the vat, “is why I have sent Baron Hunsdon to explain this as pure mischance to Bishop Grindal and the city coroner. Grindal has every right to know his vicar is dead, but we shall call this an accident until we prove otherwise, and we must do so soon.”

“A sad way to mark the vicar off our list of possible killers,” Meg said, as Cecil came in from outside and stamped snow off his boots.

“Well, my lord,” Elizabeth said, striding to greet him, “did you turn up any evidence against Leicester?”

“In questioning him, I did not,” he said, walking over to peer into the kettle, then moving away again to join her nearer the door while Jenks and Meg watched over Vicar Bane. “The earl seems to have an answer, such as it is,” Cecil said for her ears only, “for every question or accusation. He says he
is
outraged that I would suggest he did anything to coerce favoritism from you, for 'Her Grace is ever mindful of me as a man and subject and her adoring servant,’ or some such wild words.”

She shook her head and bit her lip to fight back tears. “Have your men finished questioning Leicester’s men in the stables?” she asked in a louder voice.

“According to what they have discovered so far,” Cecil reported, removing his gloves and no longer whispering either, “Leicester was in and out the afternoon Hodge was killed. Unfortunately, of course, it is not far from the stables to the back kitchen entrance near Hodge’s cubbyhole.”

“It can’t be my lord Leicester,” Jenks insisted, coming closer. “I’ve served under the man all the years you’ve been queen, Your Grace. He’s smooth and wily and wants his way, but—”

“That he does,” Elizabeth muttered.

“—he’s not a murderer. Can’t be.”

Can’t be
echoed in her mind. Can’t be Robin, can’t be Sussex, can’t be MacNair, can’t be Darnley and Margaret, or Giles Chatam. This was all becoming a hideous nightmare in which she felt she slid and slipped upon the icebound river, edging nearer a huge hole of wild, dark water, which haunted her dreams.

“Let’s go over exactly what we do know about the time of Bane’s death,” Elizabeth said. “Vicar Bane was alive at least until last Friday, when I saw him rip off his mask and stalk out of the Feast of Fools banquet Did any of you see him thereafter or speak to anyone who did?”

“Not I,” Cecil said. “But you received that epistle from him rebuking the court’s Christmas festivities on Saturday.”

“No, on Friday, but I didn’t show it to you until Saturday. I believe he wrote it—at least dated it—Friday. I sent men to arrest Bane on Saturday,” she went on. “They say they scoured the palace and inquired at both of Bishop Grindal’s homes, but Bane was at neither place nor had been recently.”

“So,” Cecil concluded, stroking his beard, “he must have drowned, or
was
drowned, between Friday and Saturday.”

“I have independent evidence,” Elizabeth told them, as each turned her way, “that it was indeed on Friday, between four in the afternoon and eight in the evening.”

“Of course, the water!” Cecil said, snapping his fingers.

“What about it?” Jenks asked.

“The one question,” Elizabeth explained, “I asked the grooms before you and my other guards carried Bane away from the stables was when they last filled that watering trough. Obviously, Bane fell in or was put in when it held water and not ice. When the stable lads refilled it at four that afternoon, Bane was not in there yet, but was soon after, for he lay deep in the water and it iced downward from above. The grooms were sure the trough nearest the doors was solid ice by eight that evening, but they hardly went around in the dark peering into all of them.”

“Brilliant, Your Grace,” Cecil muttered.

“Once I realized my horse and those of my guards had stamped through whatever footprints might have been in the snowy circle,” she added, “I had to make amends—discover something.”

“But how about outside the circle, then?” Cecil asked. “The murderer’s prints inside it might have been obliterated by your horse’s hooves or even yesterday’s wind, but what if Bane were killed elsewhere and then carried or even dragged to the trough?”

“You will yet keep me humble, my lord,” she admitted. “Jenks, it’s getting late, but take one of the torches from the wall and carefully search about where my lord Cecil suggests. Look for footprints or drag marks, and if you find such, ask the lads in the stables if they’ve been pulling sacks of grain or whatever.”

“All right,” he said, “but one other thing, then, Your Grace. Long as I’ve worked in those stables, the troughs are not used in the winter, so why did the water get changed at all that afternoon? You want me to inquire about that, too?”

“It seems,” she answered, trying to keep her voice steady, “that my Master of the Horse decided that the weight of that much ice might crack the stone troughs, so he ordered the water changed, though more than one lad said they had a tough time chipping all the ice out.”

“Oh, no!” Meg cried. Elizabeth turned, thinking Meg would insist that proved Robin was guilty, but she was pointing into the kettle. “He’s thawed, and will you look at this!”

They rushed to the kettle. Bane’s head had floated to the top of the water, though he’d turned facedown with his pale hair waving like sea grass above him. One thin hand had risen to the surface, the fingers curled as if they had just released the folded piece of paper that bobbed in the water.

The queen took it out and carefully opened the sodden piece of stiff parchment. Fortunately, it was folded tightly inward, or the water might have washed off the ink of the printed words.

“Is it in the same hand as his letter cursing the queen’s Christmas?” Cecil asked.

“It’s in block letters, hastily formed ones, not in script, more like the mocking signs tied to Leicester when he was trussed like a roast boar,” she said and read aloud:

To all who truly worship the lord High God—forgive me for stooping so low to physically fight the sinful frivolities which degrade true Christmas. I should not have taken things so into my hands, for “ ’vengeance is mine’ sayeth the lord“ and not that of a mere vicar in His calling. I have sinned, but then so did the queens privy dresser, the peacock and boar Leicester, and, most of all, the queen. “In the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow“ Amen
.

Martin “Bane

“It’s turned treasonous now,” Cecil whispered.

The queen gawked at the note, her mind racing.

“But it’s over!” Meg cried, gripping her hands together. “Bane was behind it all! Ned can come home, and it wasn’t the earl to blame!”

“But,” Cecil said, “who left that package of flagons on the throne New Year’s Eve, then—after Bane must have died?”

“Maybe he planned for that before his death,” Jenks said. “You know, as part of his confession to the crimes. A servant could have left it there for him, Your Grace. He could have decided to give up the murder weapon, then drown himself in remorse.”

“To atone,” Cecil whispered. “Yes, the guilt could have eaten away at him as it did Judas Iscariot when he rushed out and killed himself. Your Majesty, are you quite well?” he asked and touched her elbow to steady her, for he must have noticed how hard she was shaking.

“I think,” she said, her voice trembling, too, “that Vicar Bane would be less likely to commit the sin of suicide than Hodge Thatcher, let alone murder another. But if he were in that desperate state of mind to drown himself, would he trust his confession note to a trough of water? Yet, it is on the paper to which he would have access.”

She stooped and held the note toward the fire as if she would toast it. They saw clearly that the familiar watermark on the parchment matched the earlier ones.

“But the wording sounds like him,” Cecil argued. “The quote is from the Bible.”

“It’s from Revelations,” she said, standing. “And, however much I want to believe this nightmare is over, my revelation is that our murderer has struck again, even more cleverly so. Meg, help me lift the poor man’s head just a bit. There!” she cried.

Although Bane’s silvery blond hair had hidden it at first, he had been hit hard on the back of his head. They saw no blood or scab, but a livid goose egg of flesh had raised there, and the ice had preserved it perfectly.

“Just like Hodge was hit—and maybe the Earl of Leicester, too!” Meg cried.

“Nor do I think,” Elizabeth said, as she and Meg let Hodge sink into the water again, “that the leaves floating in the ice with Bane are from an unscrubbed kettle or horse fodder, especially not those which are common seasonings like sage and basil.”

“Why, yes,” Meg whispered. “That’s what herbs they are.”

“Our kitchen killer,” the queen went on, “is amusing himself again by presenting a murdered man—one who served me—as food. I don’t care what this cleverly worded note says, I don’t think the killer is Martin Bane. He’s just another victim.”

“And so,” Cecil whispered, “it’s as if the murderer has given us a cryptic recipe and forced us to make vicar soup.”

“Exactly,” Elizabeth exclaimed.

The next morning, Ned saw that a man—one he didn’t recognize—was doing something on the ice, near where the queen and her men had been yesterday. He was quite bundled and muffled up. It must be someone from the meager winter staff at Greenwich, but why would he have ridden a horse out there when he could have just walked?

Ned reckoned he might be pounding small stakes or spikes in the ice for some sort of sliding race. Yes, that must be it, for he was laying ropes from those stakes along the ice toward this river-bank. Would it be, Ned wondered, games only for local folk of the small village nearby, or would the city or court people be coming, too? At least he’d have a fine seat.

He smiled grimly as he pictured again how the queen had driven the sleigh away from the Earl of Leicester and forced him to ride back with a yeoman guard while, mounted, she’d left him in her dust—or scattered snow. If he had not seen that she knew to mistrust her Robin, Ned would have written a note telling her what he’d overheard between Leicester and Sussex and insisted it be delivered to Whitehall. He shook his head and sighed. It had always amazed him how the queen and Leicester fought, yet still loved each other. Now, it had come to remind him of how he felt about Meg.

All these years he’d spurned her, but he admired her deeply. She’d been only a girl who’d lost her memory and her past until the queen had given her a future. When he’d been ordered to teach Meg to walk and talk correctly so she could emulate the queen if need be, how quick she’d been to learn royal demeanor and delivery. He’d never told her that, though, told her quite the opposite. But through Meg’s tough times, Elizabeth had cared for her, Jenks adored her, and Ned Topside …

“Hell’s gates, it’s just because she resembles the queen I adore, a form of the queen I can touch and possess,” he gritted out, hitting his fist on the wood-paneled wall.

The thought amazed him. Could it be that loving Meg was the only way he could have a bit of the volatile, brilliant goddess Elizabeth? Or did he love Meg for being Meg?

He jumped at the knock on his door. “Stand back, then, Master Topside,” his guard, Lemuel, bellowed. Ned heard the familiar latch lift and the key scrape in the lock.

“Evergreen Day on the calendar, then,” Lemuel said with a broad smile as he came in. “Traditional meat pie day, my mother always said,” he went on as if Ned could care about his family or his damned good mood. “Capon pie, it is, still hot, too, so’s hope you’ll eat better than you been so far.” The big-shouldered man, one of the groundskeepers here, not even a real guard, put Ned’s noontide tray down. It also bore bread, some sort of pudding, and a fresh flagon of beer.

“Hand me that chamber pot, then, so’s I can dump it and bring it back,” Lemuel told him, and Ned sullenly did as he was bidden.

This single guard who came and went wasn’t much security, Ned mused, so Her Grace must believe he wasn’t really guilty. Or she thought him such a milksop she didn’t worry he’d manage an escape. If he tried disobeying her again, he was done for good with her—was guilty—that must be her thinking.

When Lemuel went out, Ned sat down and began to eat the meat pie, a good one, though all food tasted like sawdust to him here. He wondered how the large, hollow, fancy pie at court this evening would look and what would pop out of it when it was cut He’d seen everything from doves to blackbirds to frogs jumping all over the table, making the ladies laugh or scream.

Two years ago, Ned had hidden in the pie himself and leaped out to deliver a lengthy paean to the queen. This year, if he were in charge, instead of Leicester—unless she’d replaced him, too — he’d have something inside it to tie into the play the actors were going to present to her wherein Elizabeth of England reigned ever green and fresh as a fir tree in the snow and ice.