The Queene’s Christmas
She walked from the room back to her own problems, but not before she heard the old man say in a choked voice, “No wonder my boy served the Tudors so well. Aye, God save that queen!”
Elizabeth gave orders for Wills to be tended to and, with Cecil in her wake, cut back into the corner of the hall. The mystery play had ended, and everyone was eating and milling about again. Occasional laughter pierced the buzz of a hundred conversations.
“Harry,” she said, “please send Ned Topside to me at once, over there in the corridor, then rejoin your lady and the others. I rely on you to help keep people happy and to keep me apprised if they are not My lord Cecil,” she said, turning to him as Harry bowed and departed, “we shall see what our new player Master Chatam has to say about his visit to Hodge yesterday—and about the fire that evidently trapped his parents while he himself escaped. Some people, I’ve heard,” she said, rolling her eyes, “are fascinated by fire, and right now, I am, too.”
“Oh, Your Grace,” Meg Milligrew said as she came down the hall behind them, “there you are. I went upstairs to get a few more sprigs of mistletoe. Someone’s been taking not only the berries but the entire little branches out of the kissing balls, probably intending to use them privily later. I wish it was Jenks, just lying in wait for me!” she said, and laughed. Her face flushed; she looked happier than the queen had seen her lately. In the new year, perhaps there should be a marriage, Elizabeth thought, and not that of the queen, the one her people and Parliament would like to see.
Ned appeared, still in kingly costume, holding his tin crown, and out of breath. “Your Majesty, you wished to see me?”
“Rather I need to see your mystery angel.”
He looked surprised, then alarmed. “Giles Chatam? Why— what’s he done, if I may ask?”
“Hopefully nothing, but it turns out he not only grew up with Hodge Thatcher, but they both loved the same girl.”
She saw Ned’s eyes dart to Meg, then back to his queen. “But he was with the players. You aren’t going to ask him if he killed Hodge like some jilted, lovesick swain, are you?”
“Not directly, but Hodge’s father has just informed us that he asked Giles to visit Hodge, and who knows it wasn’t yesterday afternoon?”
“My uncle would know, the other players, too,” Ned countered, his usually controlled baritone voice rising.
“Precisely, so you are to circumspectly and individually question them about Giles’s whereabouts yesterday and anything else they might know of his doings, including whether there have ever been fires set near where they’ve been traveling with him.”
“I’ll do all you ask, of course, Your Grace,” Ned said, turning this mock crown round and round quickly in his hands, “but I would not have brought the troupe to court if I could not vouch—at least my uncle will, I’m sure—for the whereabouts …”
“Ned,” Meg cut in so stridently that everyone turned to her, “you know people can slip out sometimes and not be where they're supposed to be, and no one knows it”
Ned glared at Meg and spun back to the queen. “You’d like to see Giles first thing tomorrow,” he asked, “before everyone leaves for Greenwich for the fox hunt?”
“I want to see him first thing right now. See that your friends are settled in for the night, then bring him up to my presence chamber—and don’t tell him why.”
Ned bowed and hastened to obey, but his words floated back to her. “This will go to his head, really go to his head.”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black,” Meg muttered.
“And to what were you alluding,” the queen asked, “about Ned’s not being where he should have been?”
“It was just what Ned calls a figure of speech,” the girl said, looking quite caught in something.
“Meg, tell me now.”
“I don’t mean to tattle,” she blurted, “but he slipped out last night from your chambers when he felt sick over something he’d eaten, that’s all.”
Robin could have been right, the queen thought. She had to have her food watched. She’d had a bad stomach, and evidently Ned had, too.
“How long after Her Grace and I left did he depart,” Cecil asked Meg sharply, “and how long was he gone?”
Now Elizabeth stared him down. What was he thinking? “Don’t exactly know,” Meg said, tilting her head and looking thoughtful. “He just ran to the jakes. Later he said he threw up his food, then stepped outside to clear his head. Came back up out of breath and looking all windblown and feverish after maybe a quarter of an hour, so I dosed him with a bit of the chamomile I keep for you, Your Grace, for your stomach upsets and to soothe your temp—I mean, in case you get upset—an upset stomach. And if you let on I told you all that, Ned’ll skin me sure.”
“Those of us in the Privy Plot Council must not keep secrets, at least not from your queen,” Elizabeth said, patting her arm. “Best go tend to that mistletoe now.”
Meg looked as if she’d say more but obeyed. “Cecil,” the queen said as they started down the corridor toward the main staircase and her yeomen guards fell in behind, “what are you thinking about Ned Topside?”
“The same thing you should be thinking, Your Grace,” he dared, “but probably won’t admit”
“That he left the palace by the kitchen porter’s gate the after-noon Hodge was killed, and so passed directly by Hodge’s work-room?” she parried. “That he left Meg alone when he was bid stay with her last night about the time the fire was set?”
“The truth is,” Cecil whispered out of the side of his mouth so even the guards would not hear, “we must suspect everyone in this.”
“Ned? Ridiculous!” she cracked out. Motioning her yeomen to stay back, she turned to face Cecil halfway up the sweep of garlanded staircase. “You have always preached such rampant distrust to me, my lord. From the first, during the poison plot, you told me to trust no one. But haven’t we learned the hard way that we must have faith in people like Meg, like Ned? When everything went wrong at Windsor the year Robin’s wife died so strangely, you warned me not to trust Robin, either, but he was surely innocent of her death!”
“So it seems.”
“Seems? And everyone thought I should suspect my dear Kat just last summer when the maze murderer stalked my gardens. Ned has been with us through thick and thin.”
“Your love of and loyalty to your people are ever admirable, Your Grace. But remember what I taught you, the legal term cui bono?”
“Who profits for himself—who has a motive?” she translated before he could. “Do you really believe Ned would be so vexed by my replacing him with Leicester as Lord of Misrule that he would kill an innocent privy kitchen dresser of his queen to ruin the holiday season?”
“Hard to fathom, but I know one thing. Ned’s a consummate actor—probably this Chatam you're about to question is, too. At this season of the year when love and good cheer should fill our hearts, it’s hard to accept that bad blood could course through some, but that may very well be the way of it.”
“I know,” she said angrily as they started to climb the stairs again. “Curse it, but don’t I know.”
“But I never received Old Wills’s message to visit Hodge,” Giles Chatam told her. Unlike Ned when he talked, the young man stood very still with a minimum of flourishes and gestures to detract from his facial expressions. Somehow, that made him seem more sincere than Ned.
“May I not tell Master Thatcher so myself lest he blame me for not delivering it?” he cried.
“I believe he is departing at first light for Wimbledon tomorrow,” Elizabeth told him, “but, of course, you may explain to him.”
“I overheard whisperings about a servant’s death but had no notion it was Hodge,” he said, his voice earnest and his face crest-fallen. “I was hoping to look Hodge up tomorrow—I just didn’t think it could be him.”
“Have you called on him when you were in London other times?” she inquired. Cecil sat at a table in the corner, supposedly abs
orbed in his own business but, no doubt, taking notes. She had sent Ned out of her presence chamber, much to his obvious dismay, so she had kept her yeoman Clifford in the back of the room as a guard for this interview.
“In truth, there were no other times, Your Royal Majesty, for this is my first visit. That’s why I go out and about every spare moment I can. It’s a wonderful city, and I want to see all the sights—London Bridge, St. Paul’s, the Abbey. But to perform for you and see Whitehall from the inside—it’s more than I ever dared to dream.”
His eyes were clearest blue, his forehead flawless. His demeanor was deferential yet not menial, polite but refreshingly un-political. She liked him very much, his talents, too.
“I understand you have been an orphan for years, the result of a tragedy.”
“Sadly, yes,” he whispered. His gaze, linked with hers, did not waver. “As Master Thatcher may have told you, a fatal fire broke out, the result, I fear, of my mother’s carelessness with the Yule log embers. That is why I thought you had summoned me here, Your Majesty—I mean, that I was nearly crying when the play began in the Great Hall, because everyone had fussed so over the log being brought in, and it reminded me of my Christmas losses. I thought you would tell me I did a wretched job tonight as the Lord’s messenger angel when I was in truth so distraught…”
Those crystalline blue eyes teared; he bit his lower lip and sniffed once hard. She ached to comfort him. To have each joyous Christmas bring memories of tragedy was tragedy indeed. Especially considering how things were going during this Yuletide, she sympathized with this poor young man completely.
Elizabeth felt safer out among crowds of cheering people the next morning than she had inside her own palace. She had covertly appointed both Roger Stout and her cousin Harry’s wife, her lady in waiting Anne, to keep a good eye on the preparation and presentation of royal food and drink. Just after daybreak, her gaily attired entourage set out for the traditional fox hunt for this December 26, St. Stephen the Martyr’s Day.
They made their own music, for many had strung bells on their reins. The queen, riding sidesaddle on her white horse, had jingling rings on her gloved fingers and bells on the toes of her boots. Even the crunch of the hundreds of hoofs on a dusting of new snow and their mounts’ snorting of frosted air seemed musical.
Twenty of her mounted guards with flapping pennants on poles preceded her, and twenty brought up the rear of the parade. Down the Strand, through Cheapside, and across London Bridge, the yeomen shouted, “Make way for the queen! Make way! Uncap there, you knaves!” When she heard the latter, she sent immediate word for them not to order her people to uncap today, for the wind was chill. Yet most men did, and women cheered, and everyone huzzahed her passage.
Robin rode just behind her bedecked horse, then Sussex and her other earls and counselors—though Cecil had stayed behind to work—then barons like Harry, mingled with her maids of honor and ladies who had chosen to brave the brisk day. Simon MacNair and, unfortunately, Martin Bane were in attendance; Margaret Stewart and her son Darnley, too. Kat had come along, though the queen feared she’d catch the ague and had ordered the old woman bundled to her nose. Her dear former governess was enjoying each event of the season, and that warmed Elizabeth as had little else since Hodge’s corpse was found.
She had brought none of her servants this day, but for Jenks. Of course, some kitchen help had been sent with Master Cook Stout ahead to Greenwich with supplies to pitch tents and pre-pare food and mulled cider for after the hunt.
Elizabeth loved Greenwich, the palace where she had been born, and visited it often, especially in the summer. Graced by two hundred acres of pasture, wood, heath, and gorse, and stocked with deer and other game, the Tudor redbrick edifice lay but a short barge ride east of London on the Thames, or a longer, harder ride ahorse.
But for a few green firs, the trees of Greenwich Great Park stood bare branched, all the easier to ride through and see one’s prey. For some reason, the fox was the traditional St. Stephen’s Day quarry. Perhaps, someone had mused once, that was because its coat was Christmas red and easier than deer or boar to spot against the snow. And, in the tradition of goodwill at Yule and in honor of the martyr, unless the hounds had mauled the beast, the St. Stephen’s Day fox was always let go.
“Were the packs of hunt dogs sent ahead, too, Your Majesty?” Simon MacNair asked, suddenly riding abreast with her.
“The royal packs,” the queen said, pointing back across the river at an island, which was completely iced in, “are kept in kennels directly over there, Sir Simon, which, in this weather, are even warmed. The place is most aptly named the Isle of Dogs.”
“Ah,” he said, squinting into the sun off the snow. Robin and Sussex rode closer on her right side, perhaps to eavesdrop on what the Scots envoy and their queen could be discussing. “But, Your Majesty,” MacNair went on, “to prepare myself for my stay here, I’ve been reading far and wide about your realm, and I believe I saw the Isle of Dogs was named for the ghosts which haunt it yet.
Elizabeth shook her head, but Kat’s voice cut in. “I’ve heard that tale, too, a sad one of lost loves and lives. A young nobleman and his new bride drowned in a marsh there, and their hunting dogs kept barking, barking until their bodies were found. And even now, years after, the hounds still bay, and the ghosts still call them to the hunt”
“There, you see!” MacNair said.
“Kat, I did not think you’d be a purveyor of such stories,” Elizabeth chided. “The night howls people hear on this stretch of river are my hunt hounds, not some phantom menace.”
“But a better story, you must admit, Your Grace,” MacNair said, and she noted that, for the first time, he had used the more familiar form of address for her. Fine, she thought She wanted to win this man over, but even if she did, she knew his loyalties lay with his Scottish queen.
“Since you seem to have a fanciful nature, my lord,” she told him, “after the hunt, I shall show you the old Saxon graveyard in the forest, for small mounds still mark the site. You and my dear Lady Ashley can keep an ear cocked for what those spirits have to tell us.”
They all managed a laugh, and soon the hunt was on.
The hounds, which had been brought across from the Isle of Dogs in small caged carts over the ice, seemed to scent the fox at once. They took off in a brown streak of tails and barks with the hunters’ horses following.
Fox hunts were truly about the ride and the chase, not the capture. Elizabeth loved to ride fast and free and all too seldom did so anymore, especially in the winter. How this custom of fox hunting on the day named in honor of the first Christian martyr, who was stoned to death, had gotten started she’d never know. But at least it got everyone out of the palace for the day. She was even hoping it would clear her head so she could decide whether to dismiss the Queen’s Country Players or keep them around with Giles Chatam under close observation. Why not, since the others she suspected of trying to mock Dudley, burn her to bits, and ruin Christmas were all her guests?
She leaned forward, urging her mount on as others tried to stay with her through the trees. If she or someone just ahead— and few dared ride ahead—bounced branches, little cascades of snow flew in their faces. Her horse’s hooves beat faster, her bells rang madly as she pursued the fox and hounds.
Her thoughts pounded just as fast and hard. The murderer and would-be murderer was surely someone who hated Robin and perhaps her, too. The Stewarts did, of course, and MacNair wanted Mary of Scots on her throne. Sussex hated Robin but surely would not want her or Cecil dead, though he could want to throw a good scare into her so that she would heed his advice to marry and produce a Protestant heir.
She could not believe that a churchman like Martin Bane would traffic in murder, though it was obvious he and Grindal wanted to warn her to stop her celebrations at any cost. They might think she was a bit of a pagan herself, but they could never stomach the Papist Queen Mary if Elizabeth were gone. And the handsome, talented Gil
es Chatam? He might have a motive to harm Hodge, but to sneak out and try to kill his queen, who just might make his career? Or had he learned where the body was and, without realizing they were inside, tried to incinerate even the remnants of his rival forever?
“There!” someone shouted. “There it goes! It’s circling, trying to lose the pack!”
The hunters wheeled about and thundered back toward the river through thicker trees. As they burst into a clearing, they were nearly to the pavilion tents where food and drink were waiting. The fox charged right through, and, though most of the horses were reined in, the hounds and several mounts snagged tent ropes and upturned tables and food. Servants screamed and scattered, then all was silent once again but the distant baying of the hounds.
Elizabeth could not decide whether to laugh or cry. She pulled up and surveyed the chaos,
“It seems even your portable kitchens are in disarray this season,” Harry said, reining in beside her.
“Oh, oh, Your Majesty, sorry, just so sorry!” Roger Stout called to her. The man appeared to be actually pulling his hair out while others bent to retrieve roasts or bread loaves that had rolled into the snow. “And here the gift that boy left for you took a tumble, too!” Stout cried.
“What gift and what boy?” she said, urging her horse closer.
“A special holiday gift for the queen, that’s what he said. Ah, here, a heavy box it is, too, over here where it fell off the table.”
Elizabeth dismounted before Harry could help her down. Jenks suddenly appeared and slid off his horse; Robin on foot, Sussex, and MacNair came closer. Across the way, still ahorse, Vicar Bain watched at a distance as if he were hiding behind trees. Margaret Stewart and Lord Darnley reined in. Snow pockmarked from the headlong rush of fox, hounds, and mounts crunched under the queen’s jingle-belled boots as she walked slowly over to the box, a plain wooden one, bound with a leather belt. It looked the mate to Meg’s herb box she’d given up for Jenks to use as a place for Hodge’s mortal remains.