The Queene’s Christmas by Karen Harper
“It’s more than what we’ve had. My lord, let’s go down to see the river and watch Jenks set out I’m feeling cooped up in here. Besides, I want to see how a stud-shoe horse does on the river ice. I may be a fine horsewoman, but this may be something different When I ride out to see the Frost Fair, I’ll not have my horse go down to its knees, nor,” she added, emphasizing each word, “but for praying for divine help, shall I go to my knees in this chaos of Christmas!”
Meg had to hustle to keep the Earl of Sussex in sight. He was on foot and alone, not even a servant or guard with him. If he’d been ahorse, she’d have lost him sure, for banked snowdrifts on one side of the narrow streets made for rough going. Some well-trod spots were slippery, and each breath of cold air bit deep inside her. At least the city seemed not as crowded as usual, since many folks had gone down to walk on the frozen Thames.
If she’d known Sussex would take off like this, she would have donned a better cloak than this thin one. She had no gloves and only the stout shoes she wore about the palace instead of the fine Spanish leather boots the queen had given her last New Year’s Eve. Now Meg’s stockings were wet, and her toes tingled.
But Sussex’s foot fit Cecil’s sketch so well she just had to take this chance. It was not at all like him to be leaving the comfort of the court, not after all he said he’d suffered in the chill bogs of Ire-land, which had given him the ague. Unlike some courtiers, he doted on his lady wife, so Meg didn’t think he was stepping out for a tryst. The proud, stern Earl of Sussex was in love with his family name and honor and possessive of his closeness to the queen.
Down the Strand, past her parents’ old apothecary shop she’d finally sold after she was widowed, through Temple Bar, Meg kept the tall, thin earl in view. As she crossed the slippery humped bridge over the frozen River Fleet and trudged through Ludgate, St. Paul’s Cathedral loomed straight ahead, and she wondered if he was going there. After all, many people did for many reasons.
Although religious services were held on a regular basis in the choir before the high altar, the vast outer nave of St. Paul’s had become a marketplace. So much traffic moved past the many trading stalls set up around the cathedral’s tombs and font that the covered nave had become known as St. Paul’s Walk, an extension of nearby Cheapside Market. Lawyers received clients there, and horse fairs were held, though probably not at Yule. “See you at St. Paul’s” was a common cry. But why was the Earl of Sussex, who had servants to do his bidding, evidently headed there?
As she neared the cathedral, looking up, Meg again felt awed by the magnificence of this sentinel of the city, though, after the fire, the roof had been rebuilt without the spire. The massive morning shadow of this largest building in all England swallowed Sussex and then her, and that chilled her even more.
Yes, Sussex was indeed heading into the precincts of the cathedral. She hurried past St. Paul’s Cross, where speakers of any ilk were permitted to give sermons of their choice, as long as they did not slander church or queen. Cloaked with snow, it stood alone in the cold. The Bishop of London’s house was a stone’s throw away, and she wondered if Sussex had come to see Bishop Grindal. But Vicar Bane was always around the palace, so the earl could simply have done business with him.
Sussex, slowing his strides, passed the bishop’s house and went directly in the great west door of the cathedral. So as not to lose him in the crowds, pressing her hand to the stitch in her side, Meg hurried even faster.
The queen and Cecil donned warm cloaks and hats and went down the privy staircase to face the buffeting winter wind on the frozen river. “It feels good,” the queen insisted as her cloak flapped like raven’s wings. “Cecil, I’ve been praying to God for a clue to save Christmas.”
“A clue like a star in the sky hanging over the culprit, or angels singing to point the way to his next outrage?”
“I am still not in the mood for jesting. Tonight, as Lord of Misrule overseeing a raucous mumming, Leicester will do enough of that.”
Squinting into the wind, she looked upriver to the charred ruins of the boathouse. It would be rebuilt when the weather turned warmer, but she knew she should soon order the clearing of the debris and ashes. Her eyes watered and her cheeks stung, but it was a bracing cold. Out on the ice the wind had swept clear of snow, men were cobbling together crude booths for the Frost Fair. Children and adults alike were sliding and falling and laughing on the solid white river as if they had not a care in the world.
“There he is, my lord,” she said, pointing to Jenks as he rode out onto the ice and headed east “The horse looks a bit nervous, but they're managing.”
“And with you as our queen, so shall we all,” he said.
As they turned to go back in, she glanced after Jenks again, half wishing she could stay outside on some adventure and not be closed in with her thoughts and fears, waiting for the other shoe—or boot print—to fall. Her gaze caught the rough stone foundation of the palace, rising from the frozen riverbanks just before the brick facade began, now all etched with driven snow. Had God indeed answered her prayer?
“Cecil, look, there,” she said, pointing again.
“He’s almost disappeared into the growing crowd on the ice”
“No, look at the very foundations of the palace. Down that way, toward where the boathouse stood—that rough hole in the lower wall that’s pockmarked and has caught the snow. I want to look closer at it, for I swear it wasn’t there before.”
They crunched through the carpet of snow toward the spot On the corner of the foundation, almost directly under the royal apartments, someone had hewn out pieces of gray stone—twelve of them.
Meg had been right about no horse fair today, but, despite the lure of the frozen Thames for the first time in years, many Londoners were in the nave of St. Paul’s. Hawkers screeched to buyers, selling everything from books to plateware to expensive sugar, which was imported on Venetian galleys when they could navigate the river. She heard cries for roasted pig’s trotters, gingerbread, even lemon suckets. Like the queen, Meg loved those, but she hadn’t brought a farthing with her and could snitch all she wanted off the queen’s trays anyway.
She watched Sussex make his way toward a vendor of pewter and silver goods. “Oh, no,” she whispered to herself in the echoing hubbub under the vast roof.
Her spirits fell. She’d braved the cold and got her hopes up she was onto something in this search for a murderer, and this powerful peer of the realm had merely come to buy a gift for his lady wife or even the queen? Though the wind didn’t blow through here, she shuddered. Now she’d have to head back all the way to the palace to tell Her Grace she’d come up with nothing but a numb nose and toes.
She stayed to the side of the nave, keeping one of the elaborate tombs between her and Sussex. Yes, he was looking at what appeared to be a fine pair of silver filigreed flagons with a raised design. She bet those cost a pretty penny. On a crude plank cup-board behind the vendor were displayed tankards and ewers, pitchers, flagons, and rows of plates all flaunting designs in relief. She sighed. Though she and Jenks would share a room in the servants’ wing of the queen’s palaces over the Corning years, would she ever own something as fine as those?
She gasped. Standing at the side of the cupboard as if waiting for Sussex stood that new actor, Giles Chatam. And if he was here, could Ned, who’d been told to keep on his tail, be far behind?
Ned almost shouted for joy. Now he could report to the queen that Sussex, who hated Leicester, was here whispering to Giles when, if his business had been on the up-and-up, he could simply have spoken to him in the palace. Ned’s mind raced through all the possibilities: He could suggest to Her Grace that, although Sussex would not dirty his own hands to disgrace Leicester or ruin the festivities over which the peacock presided as Lord of Misrule, he could have hired Giles to murder Hodge and ruin Christmas. And Giles could have wanted to get rid of his old rival Hodge, so Sussex could have told him about making him look like the peacock…
But no, Ned realized, he’d never convince the brilliant queen that those men had by chance found each other early enough to connive to kill Hodge. Still, anything to muddy the water to take her and Cecil’s scrutiny off himself.
Then, to his surprise, he saw Meg Milligrew, peeking around the corner of one of the tall, ornate tombs, looking the part of a skulking grave robber. Had he taught her nothing about trying to blend in with the surrounding cast of characters? She looked flushed, disheveled, and windblown, but it was somehow beguiling.
Ned scanned the crowd around her and then the booth where Sussex was paying coin for something he’d bought, which had now been placed in a velvet drawstring bag. The pewterer had taken off his cap to reveal such a bright red head that he looked more Irish than English. Carefully, being sure Giles didn’t spot him, though the young man was craning his neck to look up at the lofty ceiling like some rustic cowherd who’d never seen a big building, Ned worked his way over to Meg and came around the tomb behind her.
“If you came to meet a lover,” he said low, “I hope it’s me.”
“Oh, Ned!” she said, spinning toward him. “You scared me near to death, even though I was looking for you. When I saw Giles here waiting for Sussex, I thought you might be near.”
“If there wasn’t a connection between the two of them before Hodge was killed, there is now. I think we can make some hay with that”
“But can we get close enough to overhear what they say?”
“In this noise? Best just keep an eye on them. Look,” he said as he took her elbow and propelled her around the next tomb with its stone figure of a knight staring eternally upward, “Sussex is not one whit surprised to see him and is giving him a slip of paper.”
“With his new orders on it, I wonder?”
“Be sure to tell the queen that’s what it looked like to you.”
“And now he’s paying Giles!” she cried as Sussex extended coins to the handsome young man, just as he had to the redheaded pewterer before.
“Seeing is believing.”
“And so, I’ll stay with the earl and you stick to Giles, but not together.”
Her cheeks were roses, and the excitement of the chase seemed to make her usually pale beauty bloom, even in this big barn of a place.
“Why not together?” he challenged and squeezed her waist. “We’ll be careful.”
But their quarries separated, and Meg went her way, probably back to the palace, behind the Earl of Sussex. With Ned shadowing him, Giles walked out of the cathedral and strolled down the bitterly cold, broad and windy Cheapside, gazing at the ornate swinging signs of goldsmiths’ shops as if it were the mildest June day. Giles had told his fellows in the actors’ company that he wanted to walk the city whatever the weather, and that seemed to be the truth. Hell’s gates, but Ned had no intention of gawking at this man while he gawked at London. He was heading home.
But as he strode back through the nave, then out into the wind again, as if it were a sign from heaven that he’d been ignoring Meg too long, there she was again, huddled behind the big gray hulk of St. Paul’s Cross.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, making her jump again. He took off his cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders, how-ever much he was trembling, maybe not only from the cold, but the closeness to her again.
“You won’t believe it,” she said, pulling him behind the cross, “but Sussex went inside to see Bishop Grindal, and that croaking raven Vicar Bane met him at the door to let him in. I’ve never seen Bane as much as smile, but he out-and-out grinned, and they started whispering right away!”
“The plot thickens,” Ned said, “and plotting they must be.”
Chapter the Ninth
A Christmas Fool
The curdled custard called “fool” is an excellent dish for all the year, but with the dates and caraway comfits, fit for a special Yule dinner for young or old, poor or rich or royal: Take a pint of the sweetest, thickest cream, and set it on the fire in a clean scoured skillet, and put into it sugar, cinnamon, and a nutmeg cut into 4 quarters, and so boil it well. Take the yolks of 4 hen’s eggs, and beat them well with a little sweet cream, then take the nutmeg out of the cream, then put in the eggs, and stir it exceedingly, till it be thick. Then take fine white manchet bread and cut it into thin pieces, as much as will cover a dish bottom. Pour half the cream into the dish, then lay your bread over it, then cover the bread with the rest of the cream, and so let stand till it be cold. Then strew it over with caraway comfits, and prick up some cinnamon comfits, and some sliced dates, and so serve it up.
“I’VE BROUGHT YOU A STURDY MARE WITH STUDDED shoes for the river ice,“ Robin told Elizabeth as he bowed before her in her presence chamber early that afternoon. “I know, consummate horsewoman that you are, you would appreciate a grander mount, but this one’s closer to the ground, and I’m sure you don’t want your usual horse chancing a fall and broken leg.”
“His or mine? Well, Robin, as you are Lord of Misrule by my own hand this season, I had best ride out with you to see how my people are doing. I believe it will do me good.”
Yet she felt torn as she went into her privy chamber to don warm boots, cloak, and hat. She wanted to stay here until Jenks reported from Greenwich and Meg returned from following Sussex. Cecil was down on the riverbank with her guard Clifford, ascertaining that the twelve stones were indeed hewn from the foundation of her palace. Kat was napping while everyone else went hither and yon, preparing gifts for the New Year’s exchange or arranging their fantastical costumes for the mumming this evening.
But the queen refused to be kept prisoner in her own palace, and she did want to be out with her people and with Robin. She was taking no chances she would be made to look the fool or put herself in danger. She rode out between Robin and Harry with Rosie and three other ladies in her wake. Four yeomen guards were mounted, and ten others walked the ice, keeping their distance but also keeping her in their sight.
The cold and the thrill of riding on the river invigorated her. After yesterday’s storm, the sky was a shattering blue, and the sun-light off the expanse of ice was almost blinding.
“It’s like another world,” she told Robin as they slowly walked their horses straight out from the palace. Her sometimes sooty, dirty city seemed to sparkle, as if she rode the gold, gem-studded streets of heaven. When the Thames was water, she thought, it never looked as wide as this. From the palace to the broad bend that hid distant London Bridge, she could see her people as busy as ants, working to build their Frost Fair. However cold, they looked happy and so festive that her oppressive mood lifted even more.
“Needless to say,” Robin told her, “the closer you get to the city proper, the more activity there is. Oh, by the way, with your gracious permission, my queen, I thought I’d plan something special for New Year’s Eve. I’ve ordered my men to explode small bits of gunpowder on die ice—much noise and flash to bring in the new year. We’ll save the rockets and fire wheels for Twelfth Night.”
“As Lord of Misrule, you are in charge of all that.”
The wind whipped their words away in puffs of breath. “Good day to you,” she called to a group of men hammering to erect a stall. Amazed it was their queen, they cheered and huzzahed, which made others come running and sliding. Elizabeth saw that some citizens had built bonfires on the ice and were cooking food; one enterprising lad had cut a hole through and was fishing.
“Robin, look at that plug of ice he’s pulled out. The river has frozen to at least a foot thick here! I don’t think even your gun-powder blasts could break that ice.”
Their gazes caught and held. Robin sucked in a deep breath, and his nostils flared. He was, she mused, like the powerful gunpowder he believed was the future of warfare. Like her, he was of volatile temperament; together they were match to saltpeter in a blast of heat and light. But gunpowder could blow everything apart.
Not wanting to be seen lurking outside the bishop’s house, Meg and Ned hied them
“At least we’ve discovered something to pursue,” Ned said.
“It will be your best defense if you think Her Grace and Cecil believe you could have been involved,” Meg tried to encourage him. “Dreadful how being part of the Privy Plot Council soon has you suspecting everyone. Next, we’ll be thinking poor Kat’s in on this, and then I’ll know we’ve taken leave of our senses.”
“Let’s stop off at this tavern to get warm,” he urged and steered her toward the Rose and Crown.
Despite how she was enjoying her time with him, she almost panicked. This was hardly like old times when Ned taught her to carry herself like the queen, to talk properly, and to read in those heady days she came to care for him. So much had changed.
“But we're almost back,” she protested.
“Just for a few moments. To warm up.”
“I should return this cloak you so sweetly—generously,” she amended, “loaned me. I can’t be walking into Whitehall in it anyway.
“Jenks would understand.”
“He wouldn’t understand us spending time in a tavern, now would he?”
“But this is the very place my uncle’s troupe played for a day or two, so I thought we’d best ask a few questions here, to be able to report to Her Majesty how Giles behaved then. Actually, if we weren’t so chilled, we ought to visit the inn where I found them and inquire there, too. Meg, this won’t take long,” he wheedled. “Jenks will understand, as he’s always devoted at any cost to Her Majesty’s best interests.”
Despite her better judgment, she went.
Shading her eyes in the blaze of sun on ice, Elizabeth turned her horse reluctantly toward the palace. Cecil and Clifford were no longer outside by the palace’s foundations. Rather, a mounted man who looked familiar was there on the snowy bank.