The Queene’s Christmas (31 page)

“Did you ask him about who bought at least six flagons from him?”

“Oh, aye, Your Grace, but you won’t like what you hear.”

“Just tell me, man.”

As he spoke, he ticked off about twenty names on his big fingers, including, “The Earl of Leicester, the Scots envoy MacNair, Lord Northumberland, Lord Knollys, Countess of Lennox— for her son, she said. Also, he said the Earl of Southampton, and several other courtiers whose names he didn’t know all bought from him. Sounds as if he’s caught folks’ fancies for gifts this year.”

“ ’S blood and bones!” she cried, smacking her palms on the table. “It seems, Cecil, we are still in the same stew, though this testimony might help clear Sussex, if he only bought two flagons. Clifford, my thanks. Take what respite you can, and I shall summon you if I need to go out”

Clifford accepted that with a bow and quick retreat, but Cecil had barely closed the door before he remonstrated, “Go out where?”

“I would speak with Ned Topside and then release him.”

“But we can send someone to return him here in a trice. It’s but an hour before the early dusk, and it’s cold out there.”

“I know the hour and the weather, my lord! It’s just that I do not know the answers I must have, and the walls of the palace are closing in on me as if I were inside that dark crust of pie just waiting to fly! You see, now this wretched mess has me speaking in terms of food, when even that has been ruined for me lately.”

Cecil, arms crossed, still leaning against the door as if he would block it, jumped away as another knock resounded. The queen indicated he should answer it.

“It’s Master Cook Stout,” Cecil said, not even closing the door behind himself this time. “He’s most distressed at something he’s found.”

Her pulse pounded in foreboding. “Megs, Jenks, stay where you are,” she called to them. “Harry and Anne, remain with me. Cecil, let the man in.

“What is it, then, Master Stout?” she asked as he nearly bounded past Cecil. “Something else about the pie?”

“I’ve tried to keep a good kitchen!” he burst out after a hap-hazard bow. “But since poor Hodge’s death, it’s all been topsy-turvy, and now this!” he cried, waving a piece of parchment.

The queen jumped up and moved around the cluttered table to snatch it before Cecil could. She held it up to the window light “Yes, St. Paul’s steeple!” she cried, which she saw only perplexed poor Stout more.

“Bane’s hardly back from the dead,” Cecil muttered.

“It’s a recipe,” Stout said, wringing his hands as if he were washing them. “Someone’s been tampering with my recipes!”

“Indeed, Master Stout,” the queen said, trying to keep calm, “someone’s been tampering with your recipes and all our well-laid plans. When and where did this appear?” she asked as she bent to read the small script in good light.

“Don’t know exactly, but since last night. I have my book of them in my office, known by heart, for can’t see taking them into the fray to get them splattered and stained. I didn’t write it, and few of the cooks can write. It’s a mockery, I tell you that, but not in my hand or anyone’s I know!”

“But it’s just about pancakes, Master Stout.”

“My recipe is labeled 'Pancakes,’ not 'Christmas Pancakes for the Queen.’ Read it, then, just read it, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, I see!”

“What is it, Your Grace?” Cecil said and came to look over her shoulder as she read in a voice that went from wary to enraged:

Christmas Pancakes for the Queen

Take eggs from a wall and give them a fall, then beat them again and again. Add fast running water, spice as you ought to, then pieces of peacock or boar in their turn. Stir in wheat flour and butter fresh-churned, then fry the cakes car fully lest the topside burn. For all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men can’t put Christmas or court back together again
.

“I’ve never, never,” Stout protested, “put meat in pancakes!”

“A recipe for disaster,” Elizabeth cried. “It’s from him.”

“It’s from Hodge’s murderer?” Stout asked, his voice now a mere squeak. “He’s tampered with our peacock, boar, pies—and now this? But what are eggs on a wall?”

“He’s using that old nursery rhyme, where the eggs are people,” she started to explain, then realized she had no time for that “Go back to your kitchens and lock the doors, Master Stout,” she said, still staring at the recipe, “especially the one by Hodge’s workroom that is near the back door.”

“And near my office where this appeared.”

“Go, now. I will send guards to help you.”

“But the feast tonight? Is it still on?”

“You must prepare it as if nothing had happened, even put the birds in the pie, for I vow I shall be back by then to cut it”

“You're not still going out to release Ned yourself?” Cecil asked as Harry hustled Stout from the room and Meg and Jenks ran back in.

“I’ve felt guilty all along that Ned was locked up at Greenwich and Robin here, though someone’s been making them seem guilty,” Elizabeth explained as she threw the recipe atop the other evidence upon the table and hurried toward her bedchamber door with Meg behind her.

“Your Grace, I think they’ve done a good enough job of that themselves,” Cecil protested.

“Read that recipe again, Cecil,” she ordered, turning back at the door. “Read the words
lest the topside burn”

“Oh, no! Oh, no!” Meg cried, and Elizabeth put a steadying hand on her arm while Jenks stood yet dumbfounded. “The killer’s going after Ned!”

“I fear so,” Elizabeth said. “Our clever murderer, who has not only walked on eggs at court but has broken and beaten them, has killed Hodge and my court vicar and tried to kill Robin—my servants all. The bastard no doubt lit the boathouse with me in it, unless he thought he was just attacking you and Jenks that time…

The queen let her voice trail off. The killer had spoken in symbols before, so it didn’t actually mean he would burn Ned, though she would make certain no harm came to him and warn her staff at Greenwich. But Meg, who had gone to school too long listening to both her sovereign and Cecil, blurted, “Your Grace, what if the killer’s going to try to burn Greenwich with Ned in it?”

“We will ride there, to capture and stop him. I don’t like the way the Christmas killer obviously knows the grounds of Greenwich to be able to poach a fox and leave a box of stones. Meg, stop sniveling, for I need you to help me into my man’s riding garb. Jenks, fetch Clifford and saddle five horses ready to run the ice and have them brought below to my privy staircase immediately.”

“I’m going, too!” Meg insisted.

“You are staying here with Cecil to play queen busy at her desk,” Elizabeth commanded.

“But five horses?” Cecil said.

“Myself, Jenks, Clifford, Harry—and Leicester. Cecil, spring the earl from his room and say his queen has immediate need of him—if he can keep his mouth shut on this ride so we can catch this Christmas killer.”

“But it could be a trap,” Cecil insisted.

“But one he himself will be caught in this time,” she vowed. She glanced at her dear people as she turned into her room. Cecil looked both frenzied and furious; Anne hugged Harry good-bye; and Jenks looked only at the distraught Meg with tears glassing his eyes.

The queen scrambled into warm hose and trunks, wool shirt, leather jerkin, cape, and riding boots. She grabbed two of the gold forks Robin had given her and slid one inside the top of each boot. Meg, who must now don the queen’s garments, hastily handed her a pair of gloves, hat, and muffler.

“You're not thinking the killer’s someone in the household at Greenwich?” Meg asked, blinking back tears again. “I mean like someone who comes and goes here through the back kitchen door, perhaps bringing in fresh game for the table from the forests there? If so, Ned could have been harmed long before this!”

“He’ll be free within the hour. Meg, I’ve been wrong about Ned.”

“Mayhap we all have.”

Elizabeth had no time to pursue that. She squeezed Meg’s shoulder and went to open the door to the privy staircase while Meg lit a lantern.

“It’s been a while since you went out like this—and never for a better cause,” Meg said as she rushed down the stairs behind the queen, holding the lantern aloft to light her way.

“We need Ned back here,” Elizabeth vowed as her voice cracked with emotion.

“Yes, we need him here,” Meg echoed as the queen opened the door to find Jenks waiting with the others.

Jenks and Meg simply stared at each other. He helped the queen mount. God help us, Elizabeth thought, to solve not only the murders but the mess Ned, Jenks, and Meg were in.

Having exhausted himself pacing and agonizing, Ned had begun to sleep irregular hours. It made the time pass and temporarily obliterated his fears. At least Elizabeth of England had consigned him to a prison with a fireplace, food, and warm bed. He snuggled down in it now, the counterpane and covers tight around his hunched shoulders.

As he inhaled deeply and sighed, he realized the ashes on his hearth, which he’d let burn down, smelled too strong. He’d just shovel them into his chamber pot and send them out the next time Lemuel came. The friendly lout seemed only good for carting food trays and emptying chamber pots, for the man hadn’t even known who that could have been, both by day and night, down on the frozen river.

Ned sniffed again,
for the
scent was sharper now. It bit into his nostrils and his head so bitterly that his eyes watered and his throat felt sore. If he took sick here, he’d miss Meg’s healing hand for certain.

He sat up and opened his eyes. Was it dusk already? It was as if fog, thickening, settling, had permeated his chamber. He saw a gray film of smoke creeping under the door, swirling and rising.

Only silvered embers lay in the grate and had sifted through onto the hearth. Yet a fire must be nearby, and he was locked in.

“Lemuel!” he shouted and began banging on his door. “Let me out’ There’s fire somewhere! Fire!”

This time, unlike the other day, the queen rode astride, bundled and muffled so no one would know who she was as she passed her people’s Frost Fair. Harry and the newly freed Robin rode abreast, the two guards behind. Robin had evidently decided to obey her for once, since he said naught but to whisper he would guard her with his life. Their eyes had met, she had nodded, and that seemed to be enough for him right now. The queen quickened their pace as they passed under the arches of London Bridge.

As she did, she thought of the childhood refrain Kat used to sing for her:
London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady
. But worse, the innocent nursery rhyme the Christmas killer had perverted kept taunting her:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again
.

There was no king in England, but a queen—who must be stronger than any man to hold her throne and keep her kingdom safe. Granted, her realm was ever threatened from without, but she must not have it threatened from within. She must right things. She must.

Now that they were away from people, Elizabeth was about to address her men. She intended to order them to free Ned Topside, warn her small Greenwich staff of danger, then accompany her and Ned back to Whitehall before darkness set in. And above all, to beware of tricks and traps.

But she could be too late, for she smelled something acrid on the wind.

Smoke! Dear Lord in heaven, not smoke! Fire and smoke had prepared many a dish for the table, so would suit a murderer who had a bizarre taste for displaying his kills.

Ned was appalled when he realized that burning material of some sort had been wedged under his door. It not only smoked but began to burn the door to his room.

He splashed his remaining ale and a ewer of wash water on it, but that changed nothing. Trying to keep low for the best air, through the thickening smoke, he glanced wildly about the room for something to shove the burning debris away.

He broke his wooden food tray into long pieces and poked, almost blindly now, through burgeoning smoke and the first flames, trying to dislodge the material jammed under his door. He was hacking so hard and his eyes were stinging so—he’d never get a breath to shout for Lemuel again.

It crossed his mind that the mysterious riders he’d seen outside might have come to survey the palace and set a fire. But why? Fires in palaces were usually the result of someone careless with a hearth or candle at night, or more likely an accident in the kitchens.

He was going to have to change his tactics here, he realized as his eyes streamed tears. His solid, narrow window would probably not break, and he was on the second floor, where a drop could cripple or kill him. He’d have to try to break down the door. If it was only weakened enough by the flames by now… if he wasn’t too weak to lift this chair to pound at it…

The single chair in the room seemed to have the weight of the world atop it. Dragging it toward the door, thinking how distraught Her Grace would be if she lost Greenwich, for she had been born here and loved the place … thinking how he loved the queen and loved Meg but could never tell Meg so and hug her hard…