The Queene’s Christmas
“I’m certain those fireworks are coming from back in the trees and not being shot from afar into them. Can you ride back in to see who is setting them, get behind him, perhaps snare the wretch? It may be the killer—”
“My would-be killer. They told me about Bane’s death, and to think it could have been me. Yes, I’ll go, I’ll get the whoreson murderer, if you’ll swear to stay right here.”
“I will, and send others who might come.”
“I’ll be back with the culprit who took my fireworks, at least!” he vowed and spurred his horse up the bank into the trees.
Elizabeth dismounted because her horse kept shying wildly at each blast and perhaps at the smoke smell, too. It was all she could do to keep from charging in to help oversee fighting the fire or from going after the villain in the forest herself.
She tied her horse to a tree so he wouldn’t keep jerking her arm while she held the reins. It was lonely out here as darkness fell, but her anger overcame her anxiety for her own safety. Until she heard the baying of the hounds. And the nightmare of her drowning with Robin in the river came back to her.
“A pox on it!” she muttered aloud. She and Robin weren’t together, and the river was frozen solid. Those foolish nightmares were the least of her troubles.
For she was sick over worry about Ned. If he died from this, she’d blame herself. And Meg would blame her, too.
Pacing to keep warm, Elizabeth counted three more rockets in the sky and heard the dogs roused again. She tried to reckon how long it would take people to come from the village or the city— or would they just think it was more of the Twelve Days celebration and merely gaze up into the sky in awe? The smoke was not drifting toward the nearby village. Would it dissipate before it brought someone from the city? The flames had not yet been visible from the roof of the east wing.
She was certain she heard hoofbeats. Too fast for Robin returning through these thick trees. No, the sound was that of studded hooves on ice, not on snow, and coming from the direction of the city.
She stepped back into the cover of the bankside trees. Though the twilight had nearly bled to night, she saw it was the Earl of Sussex, mounted and alone. But now that she was certain she knew who the killer was, she need not fear Sussex. What if he brought word of something amiss at Whitehall? She suddenly feared all this could be a diversion, and she had fallen for it. What if the Christmas killer had struck again?
“My lord Sussex!” she called out, and he drew his horse up sharply.
He looked shocked to see her, although that might be because she was in man’s attire. His dismount was nearly a tumble as he came closer to stare at her.
“Your Majesty? I heard Leicester got out of his room and rode off in this direction with some men. I wanted to bring him back, could not summon my men in time, but I never thought to find you here—ah, like this.”
“I remember you said we must learn to fight like those we fight, my lord,” she said, coming back onto the ice. “A killer has been stalking me, so I am stalking him.”
“Pray God, he doesn’t disappear into the trees like the Irish into their infernal bogs and fens, but I’ve never seen them shoot rockets to call attention to themselves. I believe you no longer think I am to blame?” he asked, coming closer and gesturing as yet another rocket shot skyward. “Ah, those have caught something on fire at Greenwich, haven’t they?” he asked, looking now at the demonic glow in the east wing. “Are you sure it’s not Leicester behind this, then?”
“I am. I did think it might be you for a while, because the culprit so obviously hated Leicester.” She realized then why she should have eliminated Sussex from the list of possible culprits long ago: Sussex was intelligent but not clever and had no sense of humor, perverse or otherwise, and the killer did. “But,” she went on, “since you are going to vow to me now that you will not attack the Earl of Leicester anymore when we have foreign enemies we must fear, I will trust you.”
“Enemies like your Catholic cousin Queen Mary?”
“And her minions who adore her. So will you vow to me as I have said?”
“Yes, Your Grace, most heartily, and, ah, pray you’ll tell Leicester the same.”
“I shall indeed. He’s in the woods to hunt the man who has been shooting off those fireworks, and I’d like you to put aside all animosity and help him. Watch for the next rocket and try to trace its projection point As for Greenwich, I’ve sent men to rouse the staff and put the fire out”
“I cannot leave you alone, Your Grace.”
“Then I must help Robin myself.”
“No, I’ll go at once. And you have my word on, ah, peace on earth between me and Leicester.” He mounted swifitly and urged his horse off the river ice to disappear between the black bars of tree trunks into the snow-laden forest.
As the night swallowed him, she heard again the distant, eerie baying of dogs from the isle across the river, like the fabled evil omen of hounds from hell. Yet they were her own animals, well fed and fit for the hunt. Perhaps she should have them loosed on the marauders in Greenwich forest She recalled that Simon Mac-Nair had recounted the strange story of ghostly hounds when he was new to his position and in London for the first time and would have no cause to know of her kennels unless he’d been out in this very area. Or perhaps his messenger, Duncan Forbes, who was his link to Mary of Scots, had told him.
She pictured again MacNair’s brilliant sleight-of-hand tricks that could pull coins from the air or make them vanish, just the way Robin’s fireworks had disappeared, and her bracelet. Had the canny Scot smiled and snatched it somehow off her arm so cleverly she did not notice it was missing? Had Vicar Bane found a stack of parchment missing one day and had no notion when it had gone—as well as a red, unscented torch? Yes, she knew now whom she must capture and imprison when she returned to Whitehall.
She startled as she heard a horse—no, at least two—coming at her from the forest Robin and Sussex returning? Jenks with Ned? She had been about to mount and ride toward Greenwich to be certain Ned was safe.
Robin’s distinctive black stallion broke from the bankside trees first, with him sitting tall in the saddle. Her shoulders slumped in relief. Back already, he must have met with success, but had not another rocket just raked the treetops? Since the second horse was being pulled behind, he must be leading someone out, though not Sussex, for he’d been on a mount with white fetlocks.
“Robin!” she called, relieved. “You’ve brought me either Forbes or MacNair, have you not?”
“Indeed, I’ve brought you MacNair,” the man, not Robin, said with a harsh laugh. “And dare I guess I now address the Queen of England, the one who follows her head more than her heart?”
She saw that, though the man wore Robin’s hat, his shoulders were broader. MacNair! It was MacNair. She had guessed it earlier but far too late.
“Happy holidays, Your Grace!” he said, his voice mocking. “And for the last course at the final feast of the Twelve Days, here is your Robin, fallen off his wall with a great fall, just as you tried to dump him on Queen Mary.”
Elizabeth gasped and stepped back only to bump into a tree. Robin was slumped either unconscious or dead on MacNair’s horse, for the Scot shoved him and he toppled limply to the snowy riverbank.
Ned knew now that it was Jenks who had dragged him out of his smoky room. It was somewhat easier to breathe here in the corridor, but now they faced worse than smoke. Crackling red-orange flames barred their escape in the only direction they could flee. He realized he’d called for Meg and Jenks had heard. Now Jenks knew how he’d felt about Meg and that his dying thought was of her.
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 unde
r 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 s
ame 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.