The Queene’s Christmas (30 page)

Frowning, he rose to look out the window again. The man on the ice was gone. When Lemuel returned with that chamber pot, he’d just ask him if it was someone from this palace, Whitehall, or the Frost Fair, and what in heaven’s name he was doing out there.

“The Earl of Leicester is demanding to talk to you to convince you of his innocence,” Cecil told the queen the moment he entered her apartments. “He’s making quite a fuss.”

“Then see that he is informed of two things. Firstly, I do not parlay with those who think they can usurp my authority. And secondly, if he does not just sit there quietly and wait until I have time to see him, he will be trussed and gagged, and I know he is quite familiar with the arrangements for that'”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Cecil, I thank you for not gloating,” she said as he turned away to deliver her command.

“Gloating?” he echoed, obviously surprised. “Whatever I think of Leicester privily, I can hardly relish that he might indeed have murdered, or ordered murdered, two men who serve you, even as I serve you with great pride and care.”

She pressed both hands to her head as if to hold her wild thoughts and fears in. “Cecil, I think I’m turning lunatic. It can’t be Robin behind all this any more than it can be Ned, yet I am constrained to keep them constrained, and all because some demon is amusing himself by serving up my people as Yuletide food!”

“And here we stand, as at the first, waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“No, I have had enough of that. I am not taking a defensive position but am going on the offense. It’s the way Sussex says he tried to fight the wild Irish, but they kept just disappearing into their bogs and fens. But this enemy will not elude me, I swear it!”

“Other than interrogating Leicester personally and hoping Clifford returns with that pewterer to question, what do you intend?”

“Come with me, my lord. It is in the kitchens that it all began, so perhaps we can find some answers there. These events have put me off food, and I’ve been avoiding the place like the plague, but no more. The battle is enjoined!”

Cecil hurriedly gave a guard her order to keep Leicester quiet, then followed her—she already had Jenks with her—down the servants’ staircase and through the back corridor to the Great Hall. Now empty, it had already been decked out for the play and feast tonight.

The queen noted that the painted backdrop for the allegory had been turned to the wall. She started at a good clip toward the kitchens again, then turned back so abruptly Jenks almost smacked into her.

“What is it, Your Grace?” he asked.

“I am sick to death of surprises and of someone perverting our beloved holiday traditions,” she said as she hurried between set tables across the hall toward the scenery with Cecil and Jenks hustling to keep up. “Move this backdrop out, will you, Jenks? See, it’s all on little wheels, Ned’s idea and a good one.”

“We all miss him, Your Grace,” Jenks said as he complied, and Cecil helped him move the set out a bit from the wall. Again, as ever, she was touched by Jenks’s loyalty, not only to her but to her Privy Plot Council members when she was certain he would like Ned out of Meg’s life.

“Ugh,” Cecil muttered, “the backdrop is still wet—and rather sloppily painted.” He held up his hand, green as grass under his smeared cuff and sleeve.

“But that was finished three days ago, and prettily done, too,” she protested and, holding her skirts tight, stepped between the wall and the backdrop to gaze up at the entire expanse of it.

Her mouth dropped open, and her pulse pounded like fire-works exploding. The scene had been hastily painted over: The fir tree symbolizing her now looked drooped and tattered and was ready to topple into a hole crudely painted in the ice. Her stomach churned, for she recalled that gaping cavity in the Thames ice with the dark current of water beneath.

“ ’S blood and bones, he’s struck again!” she cried.

“You don’t think Giles …” Cecil began.

“I don’t know what in Christendom to think. Jenks, see that the play is canceled and this backdrop taken down. Indeed, I may halt the rest of the Twelve Days so this marauding murderer cannot keep getting the best of me. Cecil, there is one more thing I must examine to keep chaos from tonight’s feast.”

“What?” he cried, then just hurried to keep up with her again.

“I’m finally learning to outthink him, I vow I am,” she threw back over her shoulder as she rushed toward the kitchens. “Evergreen Day it is, and he’s tried to twist the scenery of a play to mock me. It’s me he’s after, Cecil, not just my servants or even Leicester.”

“Then you think the earl’s not to bl—”

“Whoever is behind this could have help.”

“From someone in the kitchens?”

“I don’t know yet, but what’s the other tradition of this day?” she asked, not breaking stride as the delicious mingled smells from the kitchen block assailed them.

“You mean pies?” he asked, sounding out of breath. “Especially the large one you cut open with the humorous surprises in it?”

“Exactly! Just as I lifted the platter from over the boar’s head only to find a fox with a gold snout, what am I to find when I slice into that pretty pie?”

They did not have far to look for the masterpiece that the pastry chefs had cooling on a wheeled cart in the hallway by Hodge’s old workroom. The outside door was ajar to cool the pie as big as a card table and perhaps also to air out the smoky kitchens. Master Cook Roger Stout, evidently told she was here, soon appeared at her side.

“And what is being placed inside the queen’s pie this evening?” she asked him as he rose from his bow.

“Are you certain you want to know, Your Majesty?” the man asked, repeatedly wiping his hands on his apron. “After all, for it to be a surprise …”

“What will it be?” she shouted, only to have the man and several pastry cooks who’d followed flinch as if she’d struck them.

“Doves, Your Majesty,” Stout told her. “Twelve doves to symbolize not only peace, the Earl of Leicester told me several days ago. He said it also stands for God’s approval on the kingdom, even as a dove flew down to give the Lord God’s holy blessings at His own Son’s baptism in the River Jordan.”

Her thoughts scattered, and she tried to grab them back. How sweet of Robin to have planned that. He could not be behind this. If something were amiss in this pie, would it not clear him as well as Ned?

“Your Grace,” Cecil said, taking her elbow, “you are not going to faint?”

“Of course not!” she declared, turning to Roger Stout again. “When you introduce the doves into the pie, you don’t need much of a hole, do you, Master Cook?”

“No, Your Majesty, as they ate carefully inserted one at a time, just over here, in this large vent atop the crust.”

“Which,” the pastry cook closest to her added, “is then stopped up with a decorative piece of crust.” She ignored the fact that the two pastry cooks were muttering something about giving all their secrets away.

“Then why,” she asked, “does it look as if there is a section already cut out over there by the door, a larger piece than the vent, one which looks as if it’s been fitted back in place? See there?” she demanded, pointing.

Stout rose and hurried around the pie, but the pastry cooks beat him there. “I—don’t know. What happened here?” he demanded, turning on his underlings.

“So skillful, it’s nearly invisible,” one said.

“Someone’s been tampering with the best work we’ve done all year!” the other protested.

Elizabeth strode to the section she had seen in slanting light from the open door. Though she intended to demand a knife to cut into it, Jenks arrived just then.

“Jenks, hand me your sword.”

“Your Majesty,” Cecil said, “let me do it lest something dire leap out”

“I’ll be careful,” she insisted, taking Jenks’s proffered sword. She cut carefully into the pie along the lines already there, while Roger Stout leaned close to support that piece of pastry from falling in and the pastry cooks wrung their hands. Everyone crowded close.

“You are in my light,” she told them, and all but Stout and Cecil moved back.

She peered into the pie that would soon hold the flutter of doves. Within lay the two dolls that had been used to mimic her and Robin on Feast of Fools night. This time it was not Robin who was mocked, for tied to the queen doll’s wire crown was a pair of authentic ass’s ears.

Chapter the Sixteenth

Pancakes

Take 2 or 3 eggs, break them into a dish, and beat them well; then add unto them a pretty quantity of fair running water; then put in cloves, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and season it with salt; make it thick as you think good with fine wheat flour. Then fry the cakes thin with sweet butter, make them brown, and so serve them up with sugar strewn upon them
.

THE QUEEN, WITH CECIL, HARRY, ANNE, JENKS, AND MEG
in attendance, paced her presence chamber, trying to decide what to do next. She knew she must act, and not just continue to rant. On the table where she often took her meals lay the pieces of paper with the murderer’s mocking missives, which, she was certain, included Bane’s so-called suicide note. Cecil’s sketches of the boot print and the blow to Hodge’s head lay there. The box of flagons and the box of stones, gold leaf from Hodge’s death scene and from the beheaded fox’s snout, the stub of torch, and the dolls with the peacock feathers and ass’s ears also sat upon the table as if they could tell her who had used them to ruin lives and Christmas.

“At least, I believe I know where our clever culprit got those ass’s ears,” the queen said as she turned to walk past her friends, who lined her path. “When Robin and I were out in the sleigh yesterday, we heard that the donkey for the Frost Fair mystery play had fallen through the ice and drowned.”

“Amazing he wasn’t trapped under the ice,” Harry put in.

“I think not,” she said with a shudder. “I have no doubt the carcass was hauled off the ice, and our murderer saw the opportunity for more mayhem.” She sank into the chair at the head of the table and covered her face with her hands.

“Are you ill, Your Grace?” Cecil asked.

“Only sick to death of all of this,” she said as she heard the others slip into the chairs around the littered table. “I just recalled that Leicester made a joke of it, a pun. He said something like those too near the hole in the ice—which he admitted his fireworks caused— were ’safe enough unless they made an ass of themselves.’ “

She nearly cried. Although she’d seen many courtiers watching that play who could have heard about the donkey’s death, Robin had also jested earlier about peacocks and boars. Yet he was being held in his room, so he must have someone else working with him who had placed the dolls and ass’s ears in the pie.

But Jenks was the only one she knew upon whom Robin had relied closely and continually over the last six years. She used to think that was because she favored Jenks so, and Robin saw the man as a bond between them. Since Jenks’s wit was for horses, could Robin have used him somehow to pull the wool over her eyes?

She spread her fingers to stare at Jenks. He looked brooding, but no doubt only with concern for her. Unless she had suspected Meg or Kat herself, as she had Rosie, no one was more loyal to her than Jenks, and yet it had just crossed her mind to mistrust him. Who would she turn against next? She could not—would not— live in a world where she could not trust anyone.

At that moment Elizabeth Tudor could not bear her loneliness. How could she think that those dearest to her, who had been through hell to help her get her throne and protect it, would betray her? No, she would not let the whoreson bastard who was killing Christmas kill her trust of those she valued and loved.

They all startled when a knock rattled the door. The queen nodded to Cecil, who stepped out quickly and closed the door so that no one could see the mix of persons huddled in such familiar fashion around her table.

“Your yeoman Clifford’s returned, Your Grace,” Cecil said as he stuck his head back in.

“I have often thought we must add him to our little council, but until then, best we keep up appearances,” she said with a nod to Meg and Jenks, who rose from the table and hurried out into the next room. “And leave that door cracked so you can hear,” she called after them, then nodded at Cecil to admit Clifford.

Her favorite yeoman looked worn and windblown with beard stubble shadowing his cheeks, but then he’d been looking for the pewterer Vincent Wainwright for nigh on two days.

“Did you track him down, Clifford?” she asked as he rose from his bow across the table while Cecil stayed by the door as if guarding it.

“First I tried St. Paul’s,” he reported, sounding out of breath, “but saw no one, then found out the tradesmen had all gone to set up booths at the Frost Fair. He wasn’t there, so looked high and low near Cheapside where he was supposed to live, folks saying he’d been around, that he was here or there. But finally learned he’d gone home for a few days, to his parents’ home, that is, to South-wark, so finally found him.”

“And brought him back with you?”

“Wainwright’s sicker than a dog, Your Grace. I know you don’t want someone like that here. His mother says he just ate too many Yule sweets, but he says it’s the gripes, so— “