The Queene’s Christmas (33 page)

Yet Jenks had pulled him out.

“How’d you get through those flames?” Ned rasped.

“They weren’t big then—caught the carpet.”

It was the Turkey carpets of the corridor that burned, belching flames and smoke, though fire also devoured the draperies and danced toward the ceiling. It must have been a carpet jammed under his door that was set afire to suffocate him.

“About Meg—I… “ he tried to tell Jenks.

“Stow it Let’s get out of here.”

Jenks thrust a piece of cloth at him, covering his face with it For one moment, Ned thought he meant to smother him, but then he would have just left him to roast in his room. The cloth was cold and wet—melting snow packed in it, a wet cloth to breathe through, maybe to rub along skin so hot it seared the very soul.

“We’ll leap through it together,” Jenks told him, dragging Ned to his feet and grappling him against his side by an arm like an iron hoop. “Clear the carpet, then roll. And hold my shirt to your face, lest we're trapped by flames or smoke again.”

His shirt, Ned thought. He’d tried to take Meg from him, treated him like a dunce all these years, and he’d given him the shirt off his back to save him, maybe save him for Meg.

“Ready?” Jenks asked, coughing. “If we fall, roll!”

Ned tightened his arm weakly around Jenks’s shoulder, hoping he knew it was meant as a hug.

“Now!” Jenks cried and lunged at the flames, dragging Ned off his feet with him.

“You’ve killed him!” Elizabeth accused and tried to break Robin’s fall, though his weight took her down with him as MacNair dismounted.

“Merely hit over the head,” he told her as he kicked at Robin. “My final Yuletide gift to you is his company, such as it is. Stubborn ass, he wouldn’t die when I had him all trussed up, but I’ll be sure of it this time.”

When she was certain that Robin yet breathed, she rose slowly to her feet to face the wretch. “And all because I offered him as consort and husband to my cousin, your royal mistress, and you took offense to that?” She must stall for time. Someone would come. Sussex from the forest, Jenks from the palace, someone.

“
I
took offense at it, indeed, as do all braw, loyal Scots who know Mary Stuart is but a breath away from your throne—and that breath is yours.”

“I suppose you think you’ve been terribly clever. But why murder innocents?”

“You’ve no right to a happy holiday—or happy realm, not the way you treat my dear queen,” he claimed, crossing his arms over his chest and ignoring her question. “You cannot hold a candle to her.”

“You said once her servants adore her. Meaning you?” Keeping Robin’s prone form between them, she took a slow step out to clear the tree, though she was certain, even with the snow and ice, she’d never outrace him.

“To answer your first question,” MacNair said, “your servants were eliminated to mock you and Leicester, though you owe me dearly for ridding you of Bane’s Puritan presence. My poor queen is ever harassed by his like, John Knox, for one, and a host of priggish Protestant lords. Actually, Bane got in my way, preaching I should not serve a Catholic queen—popish, he called her. And then I saw how he could be part of the game.”

“So once you killed Hodge Thatcher, you decided to make the most of mocking Yuletide traditions.”

“Silly antics and fancied-up foodstuffs everyone fusses over,” he muttered darkly, as if it were a curse. “I’ve always hated Christmas. In the charming chats you and I have had, I believe I forgot to tell you that my father was the master cook in King James of Scotland’s kitchens at Holyrood. Like Hodge Thatcher, he thought he’d gone to heaven to work for royalty. My father ruled his kitchen realm, just as he lorded it over his family. Not a charming, warm bone in his body, not even at Christmas,” he ranted on as his voice rose. “No sense of humor or tolerance of those with a clever tongue,” he added and spat into the snow.

“But, somehow, under your father’s tutelage,” she surmised, “you became familiar with the way the royal kitchens worked.”

“He insisted I follow in his steps when I found it all dirty and dull.”

“But if your father served Queen Mary’s father, you have followed in your sire’s steps to serve her now. Do you not want to break free of his control over you by—”

“King of the kitchens, Father privily dubbed himself,” he went on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “I started as a wood and fire boy, then a pot scrubber. I knew nothing, he said, nothing. He wanted me to learn all he knew, but I observed things only to find a way out.”

She tried another tack, uncertain whether to try to provoke or placate him. “Unless he was a trickster and murderer, you hardly followed in his steps, Sir Simon.”

“I preferred magic, not daily drudgery, you see.” He was speaking boldly and grandly now, as if he had a vast audience. “You liked my sleight-of-hand, I know you did. I learned that, too, at the Scots court, from a traveling magician and necromancer who slept in the kitchen. It turned my stomach to do the tricks for you which delight Queen Mary, so it was my pleasure to also abscond with other things under your people’s noses.”

“Bane’s writing parchment?”

“And some of that stack of gold foil on your privy dresser’s table. Not to mention these lovely fireworks for my special farewell display for you this evening,” he gloated with a broad circular gesture toward the trees.

“And my emerald and ruby bracelet?” she prompted, desperate to keep him talking. Why didn’t Sussex return? Whoever was shooting off those rockets—perhaps MacNair’s man Forbes— must have accosted him too.

“And a lovely piece of jewelry, that it is,” MacNair went on, his voice almost teasing now. She noted he’d let the rougher Scots burr back into his speech. The man was a chameleon in every way. No wonder he had been promoted rapidly for his fluency with languages and other talents, sadly gone wrong.

“So I can call you thief and murderer as well as magician,” she said, still trying to gain his confession without vexing him over-much.

“Your bracelet will soon be en route north to Queen Mary,” he explained with another laugh, “as a belated New Year’s gift with another set of flagons I bought, but then, those things will pale to the other news I’ll be sending her—the ultimate gift. News that the Queen of England has sadly, accidentally drowned in the river with the very whoreson she publicly suggested Mary wed and make King of Scots, so— “

She threw herself sideways and tried to dart away. Thank God she wore man’s garb and not heavy skirts and a tight corset. The bank was slick, and she went down, then scrambled on hands and knees as he lunged at her. He hit hard atop her, grinding her face into the snow. He yanked her to her feet, she kicked him, and they rolled down to sprawl onto the hard ice. He seized her again, wrapping hard arms around her and bending one of her arms up behind her back. She almost blacked out from pain as he hauled her to her feet again.

Did he intend to wait until dark to take her and Robin back to the fishing hole in the ice by the palace? To drown them near the Frost Fair among her people, near the site of the boathouse he had burned, even as he or his lackey Forbes must have set the wing at Greenwich afire?

She opened her mouth to scream, but he jammed something in it.

“One of my handkerchiefs to keep coins plucked from the air in,” he told her and laughed harshly. “Here I praised you for your impressive intellect and how your head commands your heart, but I have thoroughly outsmarted you, Queen of England. And so you lose the game. You forfeit your place—your throne and crown—to my Scots queen, and so ends the Yuletide entertainment.”

MacNair held her in a rough embrace and dragged her out onto the frozen river; at last, to her horror, she saw what he intended. As four rockets went off quite close to them in the forest, four blasts went off on the river ice to blow a hole there nearly as big as the one at the Frost Fair.

She fought desperately as the inky, cold river water surged, then frothed wildly through the hole he shoved her toward. It was her worst nightmare, drowning with Robin in the icy water, for the hulk-shouldered Forbes had appeared and was dragging the yet unconscious Robin. With a splash, Forbes threw him into the hole.

“I told ye, mon,” Forbes shouted to MacNair, “I ken how to rig the fuses just right. The wee ones went off the same time in the forest as the long ones out here, so’s no one would hear the hole blasted in this bonny ice! And I smashed her other man’s skull!”

Sussex! He would not be coming to save her. These demons had shot off the fireworks hoping to lure her men, perhaps her, into the forest. They had lain in wait for them. MacNair had sprung more than one trap, and he had won the game indeed.

“Don’t fret, lass,” MacNair said, his tone mocking, “for by the next Twelve Days of Christmas, Cecil will be serving Mary Stuart here in London, and everyone will adore her. England will be Catholic again, and your whoreson father’s divorce to wed your mother and the Protestant experiment will be mere memory— more stories of the past to tell by the Yule log.”

His tirade stoked her strength. Even if he snapped her arm off, she was not going in that black hole, not letting Robin drown or her kingdom go to Mary. Her nightmare flashed at her again, where she and Robin struggled only to sink as the dogs bayed at them. No! She would not allow it!

“I’ve never enjoyed a bonny Yuletide more,” MacNair crowed to Forbes. “Ambassador Melville was wrong, for the English court was anything but wearisome this winter!”

MacNair’s voice was triumphant as he slid her across the ice to the gaping maw of frothing white water as the Thames current roared under the ice. She went to her knees and managed to get one of the pitifully small gold forks out of the top of her boot She wished she did not wear gloves, for it was delicate and she wasn’t sure she had a good grip on it Swinging the fork upward, she jabbed at MacNair’s face behind her. Then she twisted her body away, jerked, and, with her back on the ice, kicked up at MacNair’s crotch as hard as she could.

He shrieked and, covering his face, doubled over. Forbes came at her, but he slid past Ripping the gag from her mouth, she began to scream, trying to dart away from him.

Cursing, bleeding, half blind, MacNair too stumbled toward her. She tried to change directions again, but Forbes snagged her hair, spilling it loose and nearly pulling it from her scalp. Robin, she had to save Robin. She had to keep from going in, but Forbes and MacNair together dragged her toward the freezing water where Robin, conscious now, flailed but kept going under.

As in her dream, she heard the dogs coming closer, closer. Was she in the water already, drowning, dying?

When the first dogs leaped at MacNair and Forbes, she knew it was no dream. The entire pack of them, yipping, snapping, twenty at least, attacked the two men, but they knew their mistress and did not harm her. Backing away from the onslaught, Mac-Nair and Forbes tried to kick the hounds away, but MacNair’s face was streaming blood, and he couldn’t see. Forbes tried to help him at first, then seemed to slip in MacNair’s dark blood on the graying ice.

With a shout, Forbes fled toward the Greenwich forest with dogs in hot pursuit. With a massive splash, MacNair fell into the hole. At that very moment, Elizabeth saw the first of her huntsmen among the hounds.

“Oh, pardon, milady,” the man cried when he saw her, “but the fireworks drove them to distraction, an somehow they got loose. That a hole in the ice? Back, my boys, back!” he cried to the dogs, which circled it now, barking into it.

“Fetch a board or some rope!” she screamed, shoving her hair back from her face to see better. “We must get the men out of the water!”

Both huntsmen stood among their yapping charges, staring at her. “Your Majesty?” one said.

“Yes. Quickly, do as I say!”

“We’ll fetch him out,” the second man cried, “ 'cause there’s only one.”

Still standing amidst the remains of the writhing pack, the queen turned and gasped. Only one man was in the water. She fell to her knees and, trembling, crawled to the edge of the ice.

Robin! Thank God, it was Robin!

“Where did he go?” she shouted, lying down flat amidst the dogs and reaching a hand to him.

“Tried to hold to m-me. I hit him of-f-f,” he said, through chattering teeth. “W-w-went under.”

She held on to him while the keepers of the pack fished him out with a tree limb. “Despite the darkness,” she told the men, “I want you to follow the hounds on the trail of the one who fled.”

“Oh, aye, Your Majesty, we’ll fetch a coupla lanterns, and he’ll not get far, not with a few of the lead dogs on his tail. They musta had the scent of wild animal on their persons for the dogs to act like that.”

“Yes, wild animals indeed, unless the pack just came to rescue their queen,” she muttered, offering silent thanks to the Lord for her deliverance. The moment Robin was out of the water, she swirled her cape around him and carefully led him toward Greenwich.

“T-that f-f-ire will f-feel good,” he told her. “Look, it’s almost out But w-what h-happened?”

“MacNair and his man were behind it all.” She tried to stay calm, to help him walk quickly toward the shelter of the palace. But she stopped in her snowy tracks when she saw who walked toward them from Greenwich—and the single man approaching on foot from the forest.