The Queene’s Christmas by Karen Harper
They had found Robin naked, tied, mocked, and apparently almost dead, but he could have had one of his servants or grooms from the stable tie him up. Perhaps it was not truly as bad as it had looked. He’d showed no signs of the blow to the head he claimed; his welts and marks quickly healed. Then, indeed, she’d realized she loved him. ’S blood and bones, she’d nearly climbed into his bed! She’d taken him back into her heart and her protection and trust as she had not in years.
And now he was coming toward the sleigh, closer and closer while her guards wheeled about and headed away.
And the most damning clue? Although she could not picture Robin as a murderer, some still believed he had arranged for his wife, Amy, to be killed four years ago so that he could wed Elizabeth. She had banished him from her court and life, but he’d been exonerated and fought his way back into her heart.
But when she’d tried to offer him as consort to Queen Mary and was so furious with him over heading that off, perhaps he’d gotten desperate again and decided on something brazen and bizarre to make her take him back in her arms and life for good.
True, she’d named Robin Lord of Misrule, but he had begun to presume, to order her around beyond those bounds. He’d kissed her before the court, as if he were a husband who had rights over her, as if he were the king.
Damn the man! He was to be trusted about as much as her father had been! She was tempted to stab him with his own gift of gold fork.
Just as Robin lifted his leg to climb back into the sleigh, she seized the reins and flapped them on the horse’s back. “Ha!” she cried and turned the sleigh to go after her guards.
“Your Grace! Elizabeth!” Robin cried.
Jenks looked back and saw her. Her men turned.
“Jameson,” she called to one of her guards as she reined in and climbed out carefully, “I want your horse. I will ride back, so you will go in this sleigh with the earl. Jenks and one more man, follow me, and the rest escort the earl back, coming behind. And Jameson, you are to stay with the earl to be certain he arrives safely back at Whitehall and remains in his chamber.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said and dismounted. “But you usually don’t ride so tall a horse, and on the ice, and never astride with this sort of big saddle …”
She should have been touched at his concern, but he was just another man ordering about the woman who was queen. “I can ride anything in Christendom, man,” she said, “sidesaddle or astride. Just give me a boost up. Jenks, to me, and bring another guard,” she called, cursing silently as she realized her skirt would make her ride sidesaddle anyway.
She ignored Robin’s frustration and fury as he walked mincingly toward her on the ice. Refusing to look back, she urged the big horse up on the bank along the river path toward London. As she did, she remembered something else that could incriminate him. The flagon she’d held to Robin’s lips after his ordeal had been of a similar style to the flagon that had hit Hodge.
Though she had to ride on the ice again when she approached the city, trailing her two guards, Elizabeth set a good but safe pace back toward Whitehall. She felt even sicker than she had before, for she could not bear it if Robin had made a fool of her and staged all this to force her to openly care for him again. The contingent at court who hated him would be baying for his blood this time, even if the one murdered was a kitchen worker and not his own wife of noble rank.
Elizabeth left the river along the eastern edge of the palace boundaries and rode back to the stables. No more time could be afforded to keep things secret, to coddle reputations, or to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. Even if she panicked her court and word got out to the city and kingdom, she was going to question the royal stable’s grooms, curriers, and smithies immediately. She must know if Robin, her Master of the Horse and former master of her heart, had been spotted anywhere the afternoon Hodge was killed. Maybe one of his men had overheard or seen something.
“Shall I take your horse back to the stables for you, then, Your Majesty?” Jenks asked as her guards came to ride abreast.
“I need to see my stables,” she said curdy. “I’ve visited the chandlery and the kitchens lately, but not the stables.”
She was surprised to see the wide stable doors closed, but it made sense with the weather. Seldom had she come back here this time of year, and never had she approached the stables from the side walls of the palace boundary. Nor had she ever noted the circle lined with benches and knee-high watering troughs between the back of the building and the walls that ran along the Strand.
“That’s a training ring for spring and summer foals when they're first weaned, Your Majesty,” Jenks told her when she reined in and stared at it “Hardly ever used this time of year.”
“I can see that from so few footprints in the snow. Go inside and tell all present I have come to wish them a good new year. I’ll follow in a moment.”
But when her other guard dismounted and stepped forward to help her alight, her horse shied away and bumped into one of the stone drinking troughs. “There, boy, there,” she said and patted his neck to calm him.
As she did, she glanced down at the bench and trough beside her. Jenks was right in saying they were not used this time of year, for the seat was covered with blown snow and the thigh-high trough held not water but ice. And the ice of the one closest to her looked a strange blue-gray hue, as if it reflected the sky.
Still mounted, she brushed a bit of snow off with the toe of her boot and peered down, wondering if she would see her reflection. She gasped and nearly fell off the horse. Staring up at her was a man, wide-eyed as if in surprise, encased in solid ice as if he lay in a stone and glass sarcophagus.
She had found Vicar Bane.
Chapter the Fifteenth
Rye Pie Crust
Rye crust is best for standing dishes, which must be stored or keep their shapes, for it is thick, tough, coarse, and long lasting, mostly for show and not for digestion. Also, dough made with boiling water will hold better for shaping. This is ideal for display pastries at court, even large ones, namely those which contain live birds to delight the ladies when the pie is opened and the birds begin to sing and take wing. How many pockets full of rye measured for the crust depends upon its size. Such crusts can be baked, then slit open with care to introduce doves, blackbirds, or larger surprises. A rye pie can bring much merriment, especially during the Twelve Days of Christmas.
SO AS NOT TO ALARM THE COURT, ELIZABETH ORDERED Martin Bane’s body to be hewn whole from the water trough in one large piece of ice, wrapped, and carried by her guards into the chandlery to be thawed in a vat of water over a slow fire. When she saw it would take too long to clean wax from the vats, she sent for the largest old kettle in the kitchens.
She had realized there were only two possible places to thaw out Bane’s body, and she was starting to fear the palace kitchens. After she sent the chandlery staff away, only Jenks, Meg, and the queen kept watch over the fire melting the block of ice in water in the biggest iron soup kettle the men could drag in. Perhaps it had not been cleaned well, for leaves and pieces of vegetables floated to the surface, or else the particles were from fodder spilled into the horse trough and caught in the ice, too.
Her orderly world was turned upside down, Elizabeth thought, as she personally oversaw the gruesome thawing. Robin, who had authority over her stables, where the drowning must have occurred, was being detained in his bedchamber. Cecil, whom she wanted at her side, had been sent to interrogate him, while Cecil’s men had been assigned to thoroughly question workers in the stables. Vicar Bane, whose realm should have been the chapel, was dead in the chandlery. Ned, who had always been able to lighten her heart, was exiled to Greenwich.
“Of course,” Jenks said as they huddled near the kettle, “the vicar could have tumbled into the horse trough, hit his head, and drowned. Still,” he added, obviously, Elizabeth thought, when he saw her frown, “however slippery one of those benches might be, why would he be standing on it?”<
“Precisely,” Elizabeth said, frowning at the debris floating in the water.
“So,” Jenks went on, “the same someone as knocked Hodge and the Earl of Leicester on the head could have done this. In that case, he meant for him to drown and become a block of ice.”
“He was a block of ice anyway, if you ask me,” Meg put in.
“We did not ask you,” Jenks replied.
The queen noted how the two of them snapped at each other lately. Usually when they’d disagreed, it had been with calm respect, not bitter bile, though Meg and Ned had often fought with passion. She sighed and thrust such personal problems away for now.
“Meg, it’s bad luck,” Jenks added, “to speak ill of the dead.”
“Which,” Elizabeth said, holding her hands out not only to halt their bickering but to be warmed by steam escaping the vat, “is why I have sent Baron Hunsdon to explain this as pure mischance to Bishop Grindal and the city coroner. Grindal has every right to know his vicar is dead, but we shall call this an accident until we prove otherwise, and we must do so soon.”
“A sad way to mark the vicar off our list of possible killers,” Meg said, as Cecil came in from outside and stamped snow off his boots.
“Well, my lord,” Elizabeth said, striding to greet him, “did you turn up any evidence against Leicester?”
“In questioning him, I did not,” he said, walking over to peer into the kettle, then moving away again to join her nearer the door while Jenks and Meg watched over Vicar Bane. “The earl seems to have an answer, such as it is,” Cecil said for her ears only, “for every question or accusation. He says he is outraged that I would suggest he did anything to coerce favoritism from you, for 'Her Grace is ever mindful of me as a man and subject and her adoring servant,’ or some such wild words.”
She shook her head and bit her lip to fight back tears. “Have your men finished questioning Leicester’s men in the stables?” she asked in a louder voice.
“According to what they have discovered so far,” Cecil reported, removing his gloves and no longer whispering either, “Leicester was in and out the afternoon Hodge was killed. Unfortunately, of course, it is not far from the stables to the back kitchen entrance near Hodge’s cubbyhole.”
“It can’t be my lord Leicester,” Jenks insisted, coming closer. “I’ve served under the man all the years you’ve been queen, Your Grace. He’s smooth and wily and wants his way, but—”
“That he does,” Elizabeth muttered.
“—he’s not a murderer. Can’t be.”
Can’t be echoed in her mind. Can’t be Robin, can’t be Sussex, can’t be MacNair, can’t be Darnley and Margaret, or Giles Chatam. This was all becoming a hideous nightmare in which she felt she slid and slipped upon the icebound river, edging nearer a huge hole of wild, dark water, which haunted her dreams.
“Let’s go over exactly what we do know about the time of Bane’s death,” Elizabeth said. “Vicar Bane was alive at least until last Friday, when I saw him rip off his mask and stalk out of the Feast of Fools banquet Did any of you see him thereafter or speak to anyone who did?”
“Not I,” Cecil said. “But you received that epistle from him rebuking the court’s Christmas festivities on Saturday.”
“No, on Friday, but I didn’t show it to you until Saturday. I believe he wrote it—at least dated it—Friday. I sent men to arrest Bane on Saturday,” she went on. “They say they scoured the palace and inquired at both of Bishop Grindal’s homes, but Bane was at neither place nor had been recently.”
“So,” Cecil concluded, stroking his beard, “he must have drowned, or was drowned, between Friday and Saturday.”
“I have independent evidence,” Elizabeth told them, as each turned her way, “that it was indeed on Friday, between four in the afternoon and eight in the evening.”
“Of course, the water!” Cecil said, snapping his fingers.
“What about it?” Jenks asked.
“The one question,” Elizabeth explained, “I asked the grooms before you and my other guards carried Bane away from the stables was when they last filled that watering trough. Obviously, Bane fell in or was put in when it held water and not ice. When the stable lads refilled it at four that afternoon, Bane was not in there yet, but was soon after, for he lay deep in the water and it iced downward from above. The grooms were sure the trough nearest the doors was solid ice by eight that evening, but they hardly went around in the dark peering into all of them.”
“Brilliant, Your Grace,” Cecil muttered.
“Once I realized my horse and those of my guards had stamped through whatever footprints might have been in the snowy circle,” she added, “I had to make amends—discover something.”
“But how about outside the circle, then?” Cecil asked. “The murderer’s prints inside it might have been obliterated by your horse’s hooves or even yesterday’s wind, but what if Bane were killed elsewhere and then carried or even dragged to the trough?”
“You will yet keep me humble, my lord,” she admitted. “Jenks, it’s getting late, but take one of the torches from the wall and carefully search about where my lord Cecil suggests. Look for footprints or drag marks, and if you find such, ask the lads in the stables if they’ve been pulling sacks of grain or whatever.”
“All right,” he said, “but one other thing, then, Your Grace. Long as I’ve worked in those stables, the troughs are not used in the winter, so why did the water get changed at all that afternoon? You want me to inquire about that, too?”
“It seems,” she answered, trying to keep her voice steady, “that my Master of the Horse decided that the weight of that much ice might crack the stone troughs, so he ordered the water changed, though more than one lad said they had a tough time chipping all the ice out.”
“Oh, no!” Meg cried. Elizabeth turned, thinking Meg would insist that proved Robin was guilty, but she was pointing into the kettle. “He’s thawed, and will you look at this!”
They rushed to the kettle. Bane’s head had floated to the top of the water, though he’d turned facedown with his pale hair waving like sea grass above him. One thin hand had risen to the surface, the fingers curled as if they had just released the folded piece of paper that bobbed in the water.
The queen took it out and carefully opened the sodden piece of stiff parchment. Fortunately, it was folded tightly inward, or the water might have washed off the ink of the printed words.
“Is it in the same hand as his letter cursing the queen’s Christmas?” Cecil asked.
“It’s in block letters, hastily formed ones, not in script, more like the mocking signs tied to Leicester when he was trussed like a roast boar,” she said and read aloud:
To all who truly worship the lord High God—forgive me for stooping so low to physically fight the sinful frivolities which degrade true Christmas. I should not have taken things so into my hands, for “ ’vengeance is mine’ sayeth the lord“ and not that of a mere vicar in His calling. I have sinned, but then so did the queens privy dresser, the peacock and boar Leicester, and, most of all, the queen. “In the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow“ Amen.
Martin “Bane
“It’s turned treasonous now,” Cecil whispered.
The queen gawked at the note, her mind racing.
“But it’s over!” Meg cried, gripping her hands together. “Bane was behind it all! Ned can come home, and it wasn’t the earl to blame!”
“But,” Cecil said, “who left that package of flagons on the throne New Year’s Eve, then—after Bane must have died?”
“Maybe he planned for that before his death,” Jenks said. “You know, as part of his confession to the crimes. A servant could have left it there for him, Your Grace. He could have decided to give up the murder weapon, then drown himself in remorse.”
“To atone,” Cecil whispered. “Yes, the guilt could have eaten away at him as it did Judas Iscariot whe
“I think,” she said, her voice trembling, too, “that Vicar Bane would be less likely to commit the sin of suicide than Hodge Thatcher, let alone murder another. But if he were in that desperate state of mind to drown himself, would he trust his confession note to a trough of water? Yet, it is on the paper to which he would have access.”
She stooped and held the note toward the fire as if she would toast it. They saw clearly that the familiar watermark on the parchment matched the earlier ones.
“But the wording sounds like him,” Cecil argued. “The quote is from the Bible.”
“It’s from Revelations,” she said, standing. “And, however much I want to believe this nightmare is over, my revelation is that our murderer has struck again, even more cleverly so. Meg, help me lift the poor man’s head just a bit. There!” she cried.
Although Bane’s silvery blond hair had hidden it at first, he had been hit hard on the back of his head. They saw no blood or scab, but a livid goose egg of flesh had raised there, and the ice had preserved it perfectly.
“Just like Hodge was hit—and maybe the Earl of Leicester, too!” Meg cried.
“Nor do I think,” Elizabeth said, as she and Meg let Hodge sink into the water again, “that the leaves floating in the ice with Bane are from an unscrubbed kettle or horse fodder, especially not those which are common seasonings like sage and basil.”
“Why, yes,” Meg whispered. “That’s what herbs they are.”
“Our kitchen killer,” the queen went on, “is amusing himself again by presenting a murdered man—one who served me—as food. I don’t care what this cleverly worded note says, I don’t think the killer is Martin Bane. He’s just another victim.”
“And so,” Cecil whispered, “it’s as if the murderer has given us a cryptic recipe and forced us to make vicar soup.”