The Queene’s Christmas Read online

  She glanced down at Kat. For once, she seemed avidly intent, excited, almost young again.

  “This year, by order of your queen,” she continued, “London shall have a Yuletide festival of old, even with mummings, setting aside the more recent strictures. And when these sodden skies turn to crisp, clear ones, we shall have a Frost Fair again, if, God willing, the Thames freezes over. Then all may frolic, wassail, give gifts, and cast off their common trials and woes for a few days, rejoicing in our Lord’s coming to the earth to save our souls.”

  In the silence, she heard a man’s mocking voice behind her, a courtier she could not name, hiss, “At least we’ll have that, because we’ll never frolic over Dudley’s coming to the peerage, damn his soul.” If anyone else heard or said aught, it was drowned in the shout of the crowd and patter of new rain.

  Elizabeth saw how happy Kat looked, as if her queen had already given her an olden Yule with all its golden memories. She would simply hang the naysayers, the queen told herself, right along with the mistletoe and holly. Surely no one, in court or out, could argue with a good old-fashioned Christmas.

  Chapter the First

  To Make a Kissing Bunch

  The size depends upon the span of the two hoops, one thrust through the other, which form the skeleton of the hanging. Wrap the hoops in ribbon, lace, or silk strips. Garland the hoops with holly, ivy, or sprigs of other greens, even apples or oranges. If at court, for a certain, string green and white paper Tudor roses from the hoops. Lastly, a sprig or two of mistletoe must needs be centered in the bunch for all to see. In the spirit of the season, hang the bunch where folks, high and low, may kiss beneath. Include enough mistletoe that men who kiss under its greenery and claim a berry for each kiss do not denude the bunch and ruin all the fine preparations.

  DECEMBER 24, 1564

  WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON

  “NOTHING BETTER THAN A YULETIDE HANGING,” MEG Milligrew, Elizabeth’s Strewing Herb Mistress and court herbalist, said as she came into the queen’s privy chamber with a basket of white-berried mistletoe.

  “The decking of halls is not to begin until the afternoon,” the queen remarked, looking up from her reading. “I want to be there to see it, mayhap to help.”

  “It is to be later, but your maids were trying to snatch these to make a kissing bunch when I need them for Kat’s new medicine.”

  In the slant of morning light, Elizabeth sat at the small table before a Thames-side window, frowning over documents Cecil had given her to read. She could hardly discipline herself to heed her duties, for the palace was already astir with plans and preparations. This evening began the special Twelve Days of Christmas celebration she had promised her people, Kat, and herself, though December 25 itself was always counted as the first day.

  “Kat seems to do well with that mistletoe powder in her wine,” the queen observed, sanding her signature. “Using it has been worth the risk, and heaven knows the royal physicians haven’t come up with anything better.”

  “I’ll never forget the look on your face, Your Grace, when I told you that taking too much of it is poison. But just enough has calmed the heat of Kat’s heart’s furnace and given her new life.”

  “I knew to trust your knowledge on it, and pray I will always know whom to trust,” Elizabeth said as if to herself. She rose and turned to the window. Scratching the frost off a pane with her fingernails, she gazed out. Though a small stream of open water still flowed at the center, the broad Thames was freezing over from both banks. She took that for a fortuitous sign that a Frost Fair on that vast expanse was a good possibility.

  As the queen returned to her work, the mistress of the herbs worked quietly away, and the mistress of the realm was content to have her here. Since before she was queen, Elizabeth had gathered about her several servants as well as courtiers she could trust. She and Meg Milligrew had been through tough times together, and Meg was a member of what the queen dubbed her Privy Plot Council. Should some sort of crime or plot threaten the queens court or person, Her Majesty assembled her covert coterie to look into it and work directly with her to solve the problem.

  Meg greatly resembled the slender, red-haired, pale queen and so could stand in for her, at least at a distance, if need be. Kat Ashley had been a valued member of the secret group before her faculties began to fade, and the brilliant, wily Cecil had ever served his queen as well privily as publicly. Stephen Jenks, Meg’s betrothed and a fine horseman, had been the queen’s personal bodyguard in her days of exile and now was in the Earl of Leicester’s retinue, though ever at the royal beck and call.

  The queen’s cousin Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon, a courtier she relied on, had served in her Privy Plot Council, too. Edward Thompson, alias Ned Topside, a former itinerant actor and her Master of Revels at court, was invaluable whether working overtly or covertly. Ned, the handsome rogue, was a man of many faces, voices, and personae and rather full of himself at times. But how-ever witty and charming the blackguard could be, she would scold him roundly for being late this morning.

  The queen had sent for Ned to hear of his preparations for the holiday traditions and tomfooleries. For the six years she had been queen, Ned had served as Lord of Misrule, the one who planned and oversaw all Yuletide entertainments, both decorous and raucous. She wondered if Meg had appeared because Ned was coming. Elizabeth knew well that the girl might be betrothed to the quiet, stalwart Jenks but had long yearned for the mercurial, alluring Ned.

  “It’s a good thing for you,” the queen clipped out the moment Ned was admitted, “that the Lord of Misrule’s whims can gainsay all rules and regulations in these coming days, for your presence here is long overdue, and I must leave soon.”

  Ned swept the queen a deep, graceful bow. “Your Most Gracious Majesty,” he began with a grand flourish of both arms, “I will be brief.”

  “That will be a novelty. Instead, write out what merriments we shall see each night, for I want no surprises. As penance for my own frivolity, I must meet with the Bishop of London’s aide, Vicar Martin Bane,” she added with a dramatic sigh that would have done well in a scene from one of the fond romances or grand tragedies Ned staged for the court.

  “That Puritan’s presence here these next days will be enough to throw a pall over it all!” Ned protested.

  “Keep your impertinence for the banquet tonight, or I will put a lighted taper in your mouth to keep you quiet,” she retorted, but they exchanged smiles, and Meg giggled. Ned’s eyes darted to the girl; it was evidently the first he had noted her here.

  “Ah, but that’s only for the roasted peacock,” he recovered his aplomb, “and I intend to skewer with barbs and roast with jests everyone else. But there is one thing, Your Grace, a boon I would ask which will enhance, I vow, the entertainments for the court”

  “Say on. Some new juggler or more plans for that mummers’ morality play?” she asked, moving toward the door.

  “To put it succinctly, my former troupe of actors is in town. Lord Hunsdon, patron of the arts that he is, tells me the Queen’s Country Players are performing at the Rose and Crown on the Strand. I’m surprised they have not sought a family reunion yet. Of course, compared to my work here at court, theirs is rustic and provincial, but I thought,” he went on, pursing his lips and shrugging, “if I went to see them, we could arrange a special surprise for Twelfth Night or some such—”

  “A fine idea,” she cut off his rambling. “Is your uncle still at their helm, and that other popinjay, ah…”

  “Randall Greene, Your Grace. I know not, but will inform you as soon as I discover the current state of their affairs.”

  “But don’t be gone long to fetch them. You’re needed here, is he not, Meg?”

  “Oh, yes, Your Grace,” came from the coffer’s depths where it seemed Meg hid her head as if to keep Ned from seeing her. “For all the responsibilities on his shoulders for the Twelve Days, that is,” she added.

  Elizabeth pointed to her writing table, and Ned hast
ened to take a piece of parchment. He dipped one of the quills in her ink pot, though he dared not plop himself in her chair, at least not until he began his reign as Lord of Misrule. That so-called King of Mockery could get by with anything, however much he was the butt of jokes in return for his own wit.

  “At least you didn’t say you’d stuff an apple in my mouth as if I were the roast boar,” Ned mumbled without looking up as his pen scratched away. “I’d much prefer the lighted taper.”

  She had to laugh. However full of bombast, Ned always made her laugh.

  Meg hoped Ned didn’t realize she was watching every grand and graceful move he made.

  “What are you doing in her coffer?” Ned asked her when the queen left the room. “You seem as busy as I truly am.” He didn’t even look up from his scribbling, although when the door closed behind the queen he scooted his paper before her chair and sat. The man, Meg fumed silently, was always busy at something or other, including chasing women, but never her. Yet there had always been something between them. Ninnyhammer that she was, Meg scolded herself, now that she was wedding Jenks just after the holidays, she’d never know what it was.

  “Just hiding some mistletoe,” she told him. “It’s for Kat’s potent medicine and not for the kissing bunches. Her Grace’s ladies are making them now, and I’ve seen her Lady Rosie go through her coffers more than once.”

  “Fancy fripperies, kissing bunches. But, you know, one thing I remember about my mother,” he said with a sigh, “is that she’d always hang little cloth figures of Mary, Joseph, and the Christ child in the hoops, so she’d never let my father kiss or pinch her under them, mistletoe or no. She’d have made a good Puritan, eh?”

  “Unlike her son,” Meg bantered, always striving with Ned to give as good as she got.

  “Maybe you should make a kissing bunch just for Jenks.”

  She looked across the chamber at him when she had been trying not to, and, silent for once, Ned glanced up at that moment Their gazes snagged. Silence reigned but for the crackle of hearth flames and the howl of river wind outside.

  “I hope you’re happy, my Meg, and make him happy.”

  “I intend to be and do so. And I’m not your Meg. Not now and never was.”

  “As prickly as holly, aren’t you? Who taught you to read and walk and talk to emulate Her Grace, eh?”

  “You did because she commanded it And who used to chide me all the time that I was clumsy and slow?”

  “God as my judge, not anymore. You’ve grown up in every way.

  “But,” she said, her voice tremulous, “I will make a kissing bunch for Jenks, a special one with sweet-smelling herbs like dried heartsease and forget-me-not, lovers’ herbs.”

  “Alas and alack the day,” he murmured, his heavily lashed green eyes still on her. He started to put his hand over his heart and hang his head most mockingly—she could tell that was what was coming—but he stopped himself. Instead, he gave one sharp sniff and went back to his writing.

  “Always jesting, even when you’re not the Lord of Misrule!” she scolded, surprised at her sharp tone after sounding so breathless a moment ago.

  Ned had always been the Lord of Misrule in her life. He’d turned her emotions topside more than once, but she was certain, she told herself, that she was right to accept Jenks’s suit. Now there was a man to be trusted.

  “I’ve much to do and can’t be wasting time with you,” she added and threw a stray mistletoe berry at him as she slammed the coffer closed and hurried from the room.

  The queen found Secretary Cecil and the Bishop of London’s aide Vicar Martin Bane awaiting her in the presence chamber. At age forty-three, Cecil looked thin, pale, and careworn, but even compared to that, Ned was right Bane could cool a room quicker than anyone else she knew.

  “You requested a brief audience, Vicar Bane,” she said when both men rose from their bows. “How does Bishop Grindal at this most important time of the Christian calendar?”

  “It’s of that I’ve been sent to speak, Your Most Gracious Majesty,” Bane began, gripping his hawklike hands around what appeared to be a prayer book. Ordained in his own right, Bane served as liaison to her court from Lambeth Palace across the Thames, the traditional home of the Bishops of London, both in Catholic times and this Protestant era. Yet in the winter months, when Grindal was often in residence at his house on the grounds of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the city itself, Bane spent even more time here at the palace.

  Despite his somber black garb, the man was good-looking, with classical features and a full head of graying blond hair to match his neatly trimmed beard. But he was of stringy build and always seemed to be shrinking within his clothes. His cheeks were hollow, as if something inside his head sucked in his face and sank his icy blue eyes beneath his jutted brows.

  “You see,” he went on in a clear, clipped voice when she nodded he might continue, “there is some concern with all this coming merriment. The bishop and I did not realize at first you meant to flout your own family’s statutes.”

  The queen felt her dander rise. “You refer, I assume,” she clipped out, “to the Unlawful Games Act of 1541, banning sporting activity on the twenty-fifth day of December, and the Holy Days and Fasting Days Act of 1551, prohibiting transport and merriment, laws enacted in my father’s and my brother’s reigns.”

  At that rapid recitation, Bane’s Adam’s apple bobbed, perhaps in danger of also being sucked inside the dark void of the man. Did he not think she had a brain in her female head? She knew full well that both Bishop Edmund Grindal and his right arm, Vicar Martin Bane, favored the rising Puritan element in her country. They were men who saw the Catholic Church as nearly satanic but also viewed the Church of England, of which their queen was head, as dangerously liberal and in need of severe reform.

  “I did not know you would be so…” he stumbled for a word, “current on those laws, especially seeing that your promise to your people on Michaelmas, in effect, Your Majesty, appears to have rescinded said laws—”

  “Suspended them for this year alone, after which they will be assessed anew,” she interrupted, her voice as commanding as his was cold. “The Tudor kings allowed such statutes to be enacted for specific reasons which are not pertinent now, in my reign, Vicar Bane.”

  “Yes, of course, I see,” he said, his voice noticeably quailing as he shuffled a wary step back. He glanced askance at Cecil, only to find no help from that quarter. “Perhaps I was a bit wide of the mark,” he added, “but we of the bishopric of the great city of London believe that even snowballing is a profane pastime, and if you encourage a Frost Fair on the Thames after all these years, London’s citizens will be buying and selling on holy days, let alone running hither and yon on the ice.”

  “But we are leaving that all up to the Lord God, are we not?” Elizabeth inquired sweetly. “If the Thames freezes over by His will, when it has not in ages, I shall take it as His most gracious sign that my housebound and hardworking people may truly enjoy this holy season by holding a fair on the river. I myself recall earlier Frost Fairs with great fondness after not having seen one whit of profane behavior.”

  “But do you not live a rather sheltered life, Your Majesty? And we must consider your reinstituting of mummings. The earlier laws were partly passed because crime rose so severely when everyone was going about willy-nilly masked in playacting of sundry sorts.”

  “Yet my father himself, who cast off the excesses of the Catholic Church, loved masques and mummings at court and more than once played Lord of Misrule himself. I repeat, the decrees are for this one year, Vicar Bane, to see how things go. I assure you the precious, holy aspects of Christmas will be made dearer if they are not stifled by poor, plain rituals. We must have joy in this season of the year, for the Lord’s gift to us and even for our gifts to each other. I am certain you will convey my words to Bishop Grindal and bid him come to court tomorrow to lead us all in prayer at the morning service. And you, of course, are welcome always to increas
e our happiness here.”

  When Bane saw he was beaten and bowed his way out, Cecil’s stern face split in a grin. “The man doesn’t know what hit him, but I warrant it feels like a jousting steed at full tilt,” he told her, rubbing his hands in glee. For once those capable hands were not filled with writs or decrees, so perhaps even the diligent Cecil was ready to slacken up a bit at Christmas.

  “He’ll be back, lurking in corners,” Elizabeth said, “but I refuse to let him or anyone else overthrow my hopes for these holidays. My most important tasks of the day are to present the new livery to my household staffs and to oversee the hanging of garlands and greens—and the Earl of Sussex has asked for some time, no doubt to warn me against listening to Leicester again.”

  A sharp knock on the door startled them both. At her nod, Cecil went to open it. Two yeomen guards blocked the way of the agitated-looking Scot Simon MacNair, brandishing a letter. Behind him, looking even more distressed, was Robin Dudley, whom everyone now, except the queen in private, addressed as Leicester.

  “Your Gracious Majesty,” MacNair clipped out, “forgive my intrusion, but I have a message of utmost import”

  “What import, man?” Cecil demanded, plucking the letter from his hand as the guards let both men enter and they bowed.

  “From Edinburgh, I see,” Elizabeth said, noting well the familiar large, crimson wax seal the Queen of Scots employed.

  “From your royal cousin to you, Your Grace,” Cecil said. She saw him skim the letter even as he handed it over.

  “Tell me what it says, Sir Simon,” Elizabeth ordered MacNair. “Or, by the look on your face, Leicester, should you tell me?”

  “Very well,” Robin said. “The Scots queen has flat refused my suit for her royal hand.”

  “Your suit? Mine rather!” Elizabeth cried. She hoped that Mac-Nair not only thought she was shocked and distressed but would report it forthwith to his royal mistress. Mary Stuart had taken the bait, though she was not yet hooked. If she rejected the Earl of Leicester, as Elizabeth had hoped, she might bite all the quicker and harder on the tasty Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, whom Elizabeth intended to dangle before her.