The Queene’s Christmas (2 page)

The Queene’s Christmas

The Prologue

Cardamom Christmas Cake

Cream 1 cup country butter and blend in ⅔ cup brown sugar, beating with a spoon ‘til frothy. Stir in 1 beaten egg. Stir ½ teaspoon grated lemon peel, ¾ teaspoon crushed cardamom (having been dearly imported from the Portuguese), ½ cup ground almonds, and I cup of currants into 2½ cups of fine white flour Beat the dry ingredients into the sweetened butter. Pour into a greased cake pan or two layer pans and bake in a brick oven may-hap some three-quarters hour or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Yon cake can be frosted with brown sugar icing. Dress cake with holly sprigs
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SEPTEMBER 29, 1564

ST. JAMES’S PALACE, LONDON

“I SWEAR, YOUR GRACE, THAT MAN WILL BE THE DEATH of you yet!”

“Robin Dudley, my Kat?” Elizabeth asked. She forced herself to stand still as the frail, elderly Kat Ashley, First Lady of the Bedchamber, and Rosie Radcliffe, her favorite maid of honor, pinned the ermine mantle to her shoulders over her russet velvet gown. If anyone but these two had spoken such impertinence to her, the thirty-one-year-old Tudor queen would have rounded on them soundly.

“Of course, that’s who I mean,” Kat pursued, fussing overlong with a jeweled pin. “Lord Robert Dudley, alias your dear Robin, about to become Earl of Leicester by your hand. I fear he’ll think he’s king in waiting.”

“Or at least your main advisor, if not heir apparent,” Rosie muttered as she fastened a diamond brooch.

“You too, Rosie?” Elizabeth asked of the pretty young brunette.
“Et tu, Brute
, and you with that sharp object in your hand?”

The queen kept her voice light, but her heart was heavy. Today she was creating Robert Dudley, her staunch ally and longtime court favorite, the Earl of Leicester despite the resentment of the court faction that detested him—led by Rosie’s cousin, the Earl of Sussex.

“Your kith and kin had best not be saying I will name Robin my heir,” Elizabeth warned.

“But you did name him Protector of the Kingdom when you were sore ill with the pox,” Rosie replied.

“Those were desperate times. I’ve said I will not marry him nor name him, or anyone, my successor. If he weds my cousin Queen Mary of Scots, as I have counseled, he shall rule through her.”

“But you’ve said you’ll not name her heir, either,” Rosie added, “though she’s your nearest royal kin.”

“They shall rule Scotland, not England. If I named an heir,” Elizabeth said so sharply that both women stepped back, “disgruntled courtiers and conspirators for my crown would latch on to that heir like leeches, and my life could be more at risk than it already is. As for Robert Dudley, he is being created a peer not to make him worthy, for he already is.

“I’m ready,” she announced with a toss of her red head that rattled the pearls on her jeweled cap. “Let’s brighten this dreary day outside with a fine old ceremony inside.”

“It’s still pouring cats and dogs,” Kat observed as if they could not all hear the drumming of raindrops against the mullioned windows. “However wet the weather in the olden times, it never seemed so chilling. How I long for the good old days!”

“In the good old days, I was not queen but likely locked away in sundry country houses in tawdry gowns,” Elizabeth reminded her. She took the old woman’s mottled hands in hers. The skin felt as dry as parchment. “You said the other day, dear Kat, you longed for an old-fashioned Christmastide. Perhaps we shall have one.”

Kat’s flaccid features lifted a bit. Suddenly, she seemed younger, stronger. She had been withering like one of the brown chestnut leaves on the trees in the park, and Elizabeth had been deeply distressed at knowing no way to halt her slow slide toward a deathbed. Elizabeth’s first governess and longtime companion, Katherine Ashley had been the only mother she had ever known, since her own had been beheaded when she was but three.

As the women left the privy chamber and her other attendants fell in behind them, Elizabeth glanced out the corridor windows. In sodden clumps, Londoners were gathering along the parkside lane, hoping for a glimpse of their queen. Once when she’d ridden into St. James’s after hunting, a crowd of ten thousand had greeted her, shouting, “God save Elizabeth!” and throwing flowers.

That was one of few happy memories of the place, for St. James’s had little to commend it to Elizabeth Tudor other than its being set in a fine hunt park on the edge of her capital city. It was an outmoded, small palace her half-sister, Queen Mary, had favored and died in. Here “Bloody Mary,” as the people called her, had confined Elizabeth before having her hauled off to prison in the Tower; that hardly endeared this russet pile of bricks to her, either. She came only for particular ceremonies she did not want to seem overly grand and for respite from her favorite city palace, Whitehall, when the jakes needed to be cleaned. As soon as this investiture was over she would ride back there, muck and mire on city streets notwithstanding.

When the queen’s crimson-liveried yeomen guards swept open the double doors to the presence chamber, her sharp eyes scanned the crowd. As handsome as ever, though he’d managed a humble demeanor today, Robin Dudley awaited amidst his little entourage of loyalists. He was attired sumptuously in blue and gold; for good reason had his rivals given him the sobriquet of “the peacock”—among other names.

Her dear, brilliant chief secretary, William Cecil, bearded and thin, looked hardly happy about this necessary charade. In truth, he was no friend of Robin’s either, though the two tolerated each other for the sake of queen and kingdom. The clusters of courtiers included Rosie’s cousin Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, who would rather, no doubt, skewer and roast Robin than honor and toast him.

The queen’s gaze settled on the two men she wanted most to impress today, so that they would report Robin’s elevation to their Scottish queen. As diplomats, both spoke several languages including their native lowland Scots, but they were rapt in whispers now as they went down on their knees before her.

The queen wanted everyone, especially her too clever Catholic cousin, the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart, to know Robin was eligible to sue for Mary’s hand. At least that is what Elizabeth and Cecil had publicly promoted. Their actual plan was, of dire necessity, much darker and deeper.

“Ah, my lords, you must tell your queen, my dear cousin,” Elizabeth announced so everyone could hear, “how greatly my court honors Lord Dudley, soon to be Earl of Leicester”

“Indeed, we shall tell her all,” Simon MacNair spoke up.

“Of course you will,” the queen countered quietly with nary a change of expression but a roll of her eyes toward the hovering Cecil.

MacNair was the younger and handsomer of these Scots, an aide to the seasoned Sir James Melville, who was Queen Mary’s envoy to the English court. Melville was leaving for Edinburgh on the morrow, so Elizabeth would soon have only MacNair to keep an eye on. MacNair looked more the part of a braw Scot, auburn haired and big shouldered, while Melville seemed more polished and urbane. Elizabeth trusted them both in opposite proportion to how much Mary Stuart relied on them.

“Tell me, my lords,” Elizabeth said, drawing herself up to her full height of five feet, six inches to peer down at them as they knelt, “whether your royal mistress is taller than I or not.”

“Six feet tall, she is, higher by half a head,” the black-bearded Melville said as she gestured for them to rise.

“Then she is too high,” Elizabeth retorted with a set smile. “But not too high to take to herself as husband, consort, and king our illustrious Earl of Leicester. Come close and stand by me for this,” she invited them and swept toward the throne awaiting on its dais under the crimson cloth of state.

As Robin knelt before her, the queen tapped his broad, fur-draped shoulders with the ceremonial sword and intoned in her clarion voice the traditional words creating him Earl of Leicester. At her accession to the throne, she’d named him her Master of the Horse; she’d given him money, a wool monopoly, and Kenilworth Manor in Warwickshire—and her heart, though cursed if he would ever be sure of that while there was breath left in her body.

“And so, it is done,” she whispered for Robin’s ears alone and stroked his warm neck once with her left thumb. The ceremony was over. Her hand on the newly created earl’s arm, Elizabeth pre-ceded her entourage out of the crowded chamber. “I’ll need my cloak,” she requested as her women divested her of the ermine mantle. “With Ladies Ashley and Radcliffe and the Earl of Leicester, I am going in my carriage to Whitehall forthwith, and the rest of you shall come when you will.”

The big, boxy city carriage was brought around from the mews. When Elizabeth was certain the rattle of its iron wheels on cobbles was not another deluge, she stepped outside. The rain had momentarily stopped. A roar went up from the hundreds of people who had waited outside the gatehouse.

“Come on then,” she said to her courtiers, who she knew would soon be scrambling to follow her to Whitehall. “We shall walk a bit, as we’ve been closed in for days.”

As ever, she glanced up under the arch of the stone and brick gatehouse at one of the few sets of the entwined initials,
H & A
, of her parents, which someone had failed to chisel away when her father wed his later queens. Ah, she did now recall a happy day here at St. James’s during her father’s reign; it must have been when Catherine Howard was briefly queen.

Elizabeth had been allowed to watch the Yuletide hanging of greens in the great hall, the decking out of the grand staircase, the bay and ivies being suspended in hoops from this gatehouse. At the banquet table that night, her father had smiled at her and shared with her a mammoth piece of his favorite Cardamom Christmas Cake. And Kat had been there, smiling, ever watchful and protective.

Elizabeth of England climbed the carved mounting block just outside the gatehouse, but she did not get into the carriage, which had followed her. She turned to her people and held up her hand. At first the crowd cheered and waved until someone realized she would speak. Slowly, the roar became chatter, murmur, then silence, while her guards held their halberds out to keep back the press of people.

Just when she was ready to speak, Robin, frowning, whispered up at her, “Your Most Gracious Majesty, it’s going to rain again. Your coach is here, so—”

“So it will wait for the will of its queen even as the earls of her realm must,” she told him. “My good people!” she called out. Men doffed their wet wool caps; children popped up, hoisted onto shoulders. “On this Michaelmas holiday honoring the archangel Michael, I wish to give to all an early gift for our next and grandest holiday, the Twelve Days of Christmas.”

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
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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.