The Queene’s Christmas
“Ned!” his uncle cried, rising, when he saw him coming. “Well, I’ll be hanged! My boy, it’s been far too long!”
Ned felt his throat tighten. He’d come far from his rambling actor’s days, but those times had not been all bad. He hugged his uncle and even shook hands with Rand Greene.
“I hear you did Cloth of Gold today,” Ned told them and struck a pose as his voice rang out. “ ‘And can our dear English King Henry not make France’s Francois Roi look the very shell of a man?’ ”
“ ‘For our fair English shall e'er outmatch any man with French blood in his veins,’ “ his uncle picked up the next line, and they clapped each other on the shoulders.
“And the lads?” Ned asked, referring to Rob and Lucas, who had played the girls’ parts.
“This is young Rob grown from a stripling,” Uncle Wat said, indicating a curly-haired young man, stuffing himself with bread sopped in gravy.
“No stripling but a strapping lad,” Ned said, reaching over to ruffle his hair.
“Lucas left us when his voice changed, but we have a new lad, Clinton, from Coventry, who’s always sleeping, that one. But how and why did you find us, my boy?” Wat asked, shoving over on the bench so Ned could sit, too. “Still in Her Gracious Majesty’s Ser-vice, her principal player, are you not?”
“I am and more. These past six years she’s held the throne, I’ve been her Lord of Misrule, too, though I’ve agreed to counsel my Lord of Leicester on how to handle the task, just for this year. So as not to humble his lordship, I’ve agreed to dub myself his aide, but the major decisions are all mine.”
He looked from man to man as he spoke, trying to assess if they were following him—and believing him. They were the most rapt audience he had ever seen. And now, he thought, for the end of this little play, where he would summon the deus ex machina from heaven itself for their small-encompassed lives.
“And so, I’ve told Her Majesty—just for this special Twelve Days of Christmas—I’d like to try to work my old troupe into an entertainment or two for the court”
Amidst the smiles, cheers, and backslapping, Ned nearly cried. He knew how they felt. He recalled the elation of that day the queen, then princess, had invited him into her household because she favored his voice, wit, and charm. She always was one to take a fancy not only to talent but to form and face, so at least he felt safe asking these men to court—excellent players but no genius or Adonis here to usurp his place.
“Shall we come with you right now?” Uncle Wat asked. “We have but one more performance on the morrow, and they will surely understand we must leave by royal command.”
“Come tomorrow after the play, uncle, and by then I’ll have found a cubbyhole or two for you in the servants’ wing. You understand, the palace is quite full up at Christmas. You must come to the servants’ door off the street near the kitchen-block porter’s gate.”
“We will be there with bells on,” Uncle Wat declared and stood, wmdmilling his arm to someone in the crowd. “In the excitement of seeing you and this thrilling invitation, I almost forgot.”
“Forgot what?” Ned asked and followed his uncle’s gaze to see a tall, square-jawed, blond man with clear blue eyes shouldering his way to them through the crowd. He was one of the handsomest men Ned had ever beheld, and at that moment, with a sinking feeling, he discerned who he must be.
“A new player in the troupe?” Ned asked, his voice catching. He’d learned, last time he’d heard from them, that they were searching for someone well turned out to take his place, but…
“Giles Chatam,” his uncle said, talking out of the side of his mouth, “our new man from Wimbledon. All the ladies love him, and he’s the consummate actor, too, if a bit ambitious. You know, refuses to be kept in his place.”
The smile and welcome Ned gave the man was some of the most difficult acting he had ever done.
“But what’s the dreadful message here?” William Cecil asked as he gazed up agape at the hanging corpse decked out in a fowl’s coat and feathers. “Do you plan to summon the coroner, Your Grace?”
“I must, if only to have poor Hodge declared officially deceased and, on the official examination of the body, get a second opinion about whether this could be foul play.”
At her inadvertent pun, the queen’s gaze caught Cecil’s. He shook his head as if in warning; she bit her lower lip.
“A second opinion?” Cecil said only. “Then you mean that in the midst of all your public activities, you, with our help, intend to investigate this? Your Grace, we have the Scots envoy MacNair hovering so he can report your every move to his Catholic queen, several ambassadors in town who will be at court, Bishop Grindal coming tomorrow for the service, a feast and public celebrations on which hangs the goodwill of the court and people…” His voice trailed off before he added, “In short, this seems a dreadful joke indeed, and much more than poor puns on hangings and foul play are afoot here.”
“I’ll fetch the coroner forthwith, Your Majesty,” Jenks said so loudly behind his betters that they startled.
She had almost forgotten Jenks was here, but she could hardly ignore the fact that surely word of this would spread. They must act in haste to gather evidence before they sent for public officials. And she had an appointment soon with the ever disgruntled Earl of Sussex, which she wanted to keep. She intended to tell him she expected him to get on well with his rival, the Earl of Leicester, at least during this holiday season.
“You may send someone to fetch the coroner, Jenks, but not forthwith,” the queen said. “We may eventually have to summon the constable, too, though their investigations aren’t worth a fig unless they can find eyewitnesses to interrogate. They seem to trample some clues and ignore or misinterpret the rest.”
“Which, I warrant,” Cecil put in, “we’ll need to search out should you decide to pursue this, or perhaps to summon the Privy Plot Council.”
“When you came in, you, as usual,” she told her trusted Cecil, “asked the right question first, my lord. What indeed is the message here? Though it is a mortal sin to take one’s own life, and I am deeply regretful if Hodge was somehow so desperate he did so, I pray, despite the bizarre trappings, this can be proved self-slaughter. If not, the message, at the very least, is that someone dangerous and demented has come to spend Yule with us.”
“These back chambers are close to the porter’s gate and street door,” Jenks said. “I suppose some stranger could have come in.”
“We’ll question the porter, of course, but random chance is highly unlikely. Jenks, fetch more lights in here,” she said, and he hastened to obey. “Cecil, I have promised an audience to the Earl of Sussex and must keep that appointment. Besides, it will allow me to see how quickly news of this has flown about our court.”
“Should I not be at your side with Sussex? His festering hatred of Leicester has made him difficult to keep in line lately. Military men like our illustrious Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, don’t know when to keep quiet or calm. They think life must be all assault, attack, and violence,” he protested before his eyes darted to the corpse again and he shuddered.
“Ordinarily, I would take you with me, my lord, but I need you to oversee this dreadful situation. While I am gone, fetch Roger Stout back and have him survey this cluttered worktable. I pray you make careful notes of what is here and, more important, what may be missing. See that the coroner is summoned, then clear the table so he can examine the body here, while you are still in the room, silently making your own observations. After the banquet tonight, I will hold a Privy Plot Council meeting in my quarters, where you will report all you—and Jenks—have learned.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Cecil said. “Leave it all to us, unless you can send Topside to help, too.”
“He should be back by now, but I hardly intend to do nothing until the meeting. I will later summon Stout for more questioning. With his information and your close observances from this site—best send Jenks to speak to the porter, t
oo—we shall decide whether to pursue the matter further or let the conundrum be buried with Hodge.”
Jenks came back in with Roger Stout, each carrying two lanterns; the small room filled with light Though the queen edged toward the door, she thought of two things she could not bear to leave unasked and went back to stand under the corpse again.
“Master Stout, what is that gritty material on the floor?” she asked, pointing. “I stepped in it, but I see other prints there, which I want well noted and drawn to size. It is not sugar or ginger, as you suggested before, for in this new light the grains look too dark.”
Stout took a lantern closer and squatted to sniff at the fine reddish dust “Yet it looks like a spice—cumin, I warrant, Your Majesty,” he reported. “It’s what the peacock’s innards are always dusted with before it’s served.”
“And this stack of gold leaf?” she asked, moving away to lift from the table a thin slab of marble as big as her palm, upon which lay an inch-thick stack of fine sheets of beaten gold. She had seen it before even in the muted light of the single lantern but had been too distracted to pay it heed. Now it shone like a small, square sun.
“He must have stopped—or been stopped—in the very act of dressing the bird for your banquet table,” Stout said, as he glanced at what she held. “You recall, Your Majesty, how the bird’s beak is always covered with gold foil for Yule.”
“So,” she said, “whether or not Hodge killed himself, we do have another mystery. When such a small amount of gold leaf is needed for the beak, why did he have here enough to cover a rich man’s effigy? And if someone killed Hodge, why was this pure gold not stolen?”
“Perhaps because, if a man kills himself,” Stout ventured, “he is too distraught or despondent to care for worldly wealth. Or Hodge himself was going to abscond with it but in self-loathing at his planned evil—and for other reasons—took his own life.”
“Or,” Jenks put in, “the gold wasn’t taken because the killer was in a rush to flee once he spotted it. He’d already taken time to hang the corpse and deck it out. And he didn’t want to get caught with stolen royal property on his person.”
“Or just the opposite,” Cecil said. “Mayhap it was a murder well planned ahead of time, and the killer’s motive has everything to do with the message, so he did not want to distract from that with what would be petty theft—petty not in what was stolen but petty compared to the murderer’s true intent. Discern that and we have our killer.”
The queen sensed her clever Cecil would say more, but he did not. Perhaps his deductions were for her ears alone. She too feared that this death did not just strike at Hodge but that, indeed, someone diabolically devious had killed the messenger in order to send the message.
Chapter the Third
Hippocras (Used as a digestive or to sweeten one’s stomach. A worthy potion for after feasting.)
From the cellar take 2 pints red or white wine. Place ½ teaspoon each of ground cloves, nutmeg, and ginger and 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon all bruised together in a mortar, and 1 cup of sugar into a conical bag of felted woollen cloth (in the shape of the sleeve of Hippocrates, the brilliant Greek physician, for this is as much elixir as drink). Add some rosemary flowers and let the concoction sleep all night. Pour 2 pints of wine through the bag, for as many times as it takes to run clear. Pour wine into a vessel. If it be claret, the liquid will be red; if white, then of that color also. Seal down the drink until called for.
ELIZABETHS STOMACH FELT KNOTTED LIKE THE NOOSE that must have choked away Hodge Thatcher’s life. With her Lord Chamberlain and other household officers trailing behind her, she beat a retreat from the kitchen block back into the corridors of the palace. The scent of suspended green garlands permeated the vast place, and servants were setting up the Great Hall for tonight’s feast.
She was no doubt late for the audience she had promised the Earl of Sussex, but it wouldn’t hurt to let him cool his heels. She was hardly in the mood for his rantings about Leicester’s growing power at court and his influence over his queen. Had she not proved time and again that even those she favored would not be trusted overmuch?
“Oh, Your Majesty,” came a woman’s voice as Elizabeth ascended the grand staircase toward the royal apartments, “there you are!”
Margaret Stewart, Countess of Lennox, waited at the first landing, so she was trapped. That smiling face always looked like a mask to Elizabeth. Beneath it, the queen imagined, lurked the countenance of a woman who was at heart a treacherous harpy. Though Margaret was fifty, her former beauty still haunted her plump face, but now everything about the woman seemed overblown: her big body, broad mouth, large teeth, prominent nose, even the hint of red in her graying tresses, which peeked from her velvet cap—and her ambitions. Yet Elizabeth tolerated her, for the older woman was niece to King Henry VIII and so another of the queen’s female cousins who were her cross to bear.
Margaret and Matthew Stewart, the Countess and Earl of Lennox, were Lord Darnley’s parents, covert Catholics, and rapacious relatives of both the English and Scottish queens. Elizabeth knew the Stewarts were plotting to wed their heir to Queen Mary in defiance of her own apparent plans for Dudley. She had promised to let Darnley go to Scotland to join his Scottish father, then changed her mind more than once. At least that was how this web of intrigue appeared to everyone but Elizabeth and Cecil.
“Cousin, how are you on this Christmas Eve day?” Elizabeth asked, nodding but not stopping. Margaret lifted her skirts and charged, puffing up the stairs after her. Elizabeth waited at the top and held out her hand to stay Margaret where she was, four or five steps down. When Elizabeth was a girl and out of favor with her royal father, more than once Margaret had gloated to take precedence and to keep the younger woman in her place.
“Oh, did you wish to speak to me?” Elizabeth inquired.
“I will be brief, Your Majesty. May not my son go north after these holidays to visit his father in Edinburgh? You had said before that he could go. My dear husband is petitioning the Scot queen’s council for the return of our lands, and Lord Darnley would be of great help in this endeavor.”
Oh, yes, she’d wager, Elizabeth thought, that Darnley would be of great help there. Not only with those dour Calvinist Scots lords but with the pliable Queen Mary herself. Indeed, Elizabeth was planning on that very thing, but she wanted to be certain both the bait and the big six-foot fish were hungry for their reunion when the English queen finally let him go, apparently under duress.
But she said only, “I shall consider it, Margaret You must excuse me, but we shall speak more of this later.”
“I heard there will be no peacock on display at the feast,” Margaret said as Elizabeth turned away. “That is, none but the one Leicester’s rivals call by that sobriquet, ’the peacock.’”
In the shock of realization, Elizabeth could have tumbled down the flight of stairs. She was hardly surprised that word of her privy dresser’s death was out and about, not even that Margaret too must hate Leicester, whom she perhaps still believed to be her son’s rival for Queen Mary’s hand.
A new thought struck the queen with stunning force. If Hodge Thatcher had been murdered and was intentionally decked out with peacock garb, the mockery and threat could be aimed at the controversial Earl of Leicester.
“If you intend to rant about my heeding Lord Leicester’s advice upon occasion,” Elizabeth began with Sussex moments later in her presence chamber, “I do not wish to take my time. You are beginning to sound like your own echo, my lord, but I would ask you one thing about that.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” he said. “Anything I can ever do to help with, ah, anything …”
Sussex was hardly an orator, but that did not keep him from commanding a large faction at court. And did the man not realize that his hand perched on his ceremonial sword always rattled it in its scabbard, and to a regular beat? It was like listening to a ticking timepiece until one became a lunatic. ’s bones, but the ache in her belly was
growing, and in these precious holiday times.
“I am ever at your beck and call for all service,” Sussex plunged on, sweeping her a bow with the offending sword lifted so it wouldn’t scrape the floor.
Thomas Radcliffe, third Earl of Sussex, had been her Lord Deputy of Ireland and had led and fought bravely there if with little ultimate success, though it seemed no one made much headway in the Eire’s fens and forests. His health had suffered, and he had petitioned to be brought back to court, a request she had granted. But since he’d returned, he’d spearheaded the anti-Leicester group more zealously than he had ever fought the Irish rebel Tyrone. If the queen had not been so fond of his kin, her lady Rosie Radcliffe, and had not had a soft spot, too, for his wife, Frances Sidney, he just might be heading back for another tour of duty.
Once bright blond but now graying and balding, Sussex still had fine military bearing at age thirty-eight. She did trust the man to keep state secrets and would not usually mind having him nearby—if he would only stop that damned sword rattling!
“Instead of your asking me whether I am heeding Leicester’s words on such and such an issue,” the queen said, “I wish to ask you some questions about him, and I ask you tell me true.”
“About the earl—ah, of course,” he said, hardly managing to cloak his surprise.
“As to those who speak ill of him—and I shall not mention nor request names—by what nicknames might they call him?”
“You don’t mean like 'Robin? I’ve heard you call him that”
“Hardly, my lord.”
“Ah, I believe Your Highness knows he used to be dubbed ’the gypsy’ because of his dark hair and eyes.”
“And for his tendency to mesmerize certain people, namely me, I have heard.”