The Queene’s Christmas (34 page)

“Ned! Jenks!” she cried. “And my Lord Sussex!”

Her servants looked like two blackened, singed scare-the-crows as they limped toward her, arms around each other’s shoulders. But she could not stop here: Robin was slowly turning into an ice man, and Sussex was shouting something about being hit over the head.

In relief and joy, Elizabeth cursed anyone who claimed she lived by intellect and not her feelings, for she burst into tears. She hugged each man in turn, the most precious Yuletide gifts she’d ever seen. And never had she been more proud to be their friend and be their queen.

Afterword

Twelfth Night Cake

In a bowl, combine ½ cup of juice of orange with 1 cup golden and 1 cup dark raisins and let stand. Cream 1 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, 2 cups wheat flour, and a fresh hen’s eggs. Add the undrained raisin mixture and a pinch of cinnamon. Stir all together and bake until a knife inserted in center comes out clean. Do not overcook, or it can become hard as a rock. Melt 3 tablespoons of honey to glaze the cake, decorating it with ¼ cup of candied cherries. In Scotland and rural shires, they add a pea and a bean, so that the finder of the bean is king for the evening and the finder of the pea is queen. But we do seldom follow such practices in civilized London town
.

TWELFTH NIGHT

JANUARY 6, 1565

“
OF ALL THE YULETIDE HOLIDAYS I’VE HAD, LOVEY, THIS
was the best!” Kat told Elizabeth and reached to take her hand as they sat in armchairs facing the low-burning hearth. “Why, I had to laugh at the look on Master Stout’s face when you told him the extra meat pies you ordered were all to be sent to the kennels on the Isle of Dogs. Kind of you to think of your hunt packs there.”

The old woman chuckled while the queen fought back tears of relief that these holidays were officially over, and that Kat had not known all her queen had been through to keep Christmas for her. After the Twelfth Night Revels in the Great Hall tonight, led by Ned Topside, since Robin had taken to his bed with a dreadful cold, the two old friends sat late in the queen’s privy chamber before the hearth.

“I’ve asked Ned, Meg, and Jenks to come up when the corridors clear,” Elizabeth said, gesturing toward the three other chairs she’d pulled up. “In all the chaos of Christmas, I failed to give them their gifts.”

“I thought you were just holding back for Meg’s marriage.”

“I’ve intentionally not pressed her on that No, I mean to give them their gifts tonight”

“I suppose I should not have spoken so fondly of these holidays with the deaths of the two Scots on top of Vicar Bane’s and poor Master Hodge’s sad demises,” Kat went on. “Your royal Catholic cousin will say you’ve sent her wretched news for the coming year to have her envoy and his man fall through the ice and drown.”

Elizabeth said nothing, but that is the story Cecil had written to Mary of Scots. Though MacNair had drowned under the ice and his body had not been recovered, Forbes had been caught but had hanged himself in his cell before he could be questioned. However much the queen would have liked to accuse the Scottish queen of being privy to their plot, Cecil had found nothing in MacNair’s or Forbes’s effects to prove such, though he had found her stolen bracelet.

“I am sending Queen Mary a gift she will like, though,” Elizabeth said, more to herself than to Kat “Lord Darnley is the messenger Cecil is sending north when the roads clear, and the stage is set for Darnley to entrance her.”

“Hmph. You must have known she’d never trust Leicester, your Robin,” Kat said, taking another piece of Twelfth Night Cake from the small parquet table between their chairs. Like a child, Kat always ate the candied cherries off the top first.

“Yes, I knew that well—from personal experience,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

The queen also knew the battle lines had been drawn between her and Mary, however cordial and correct they might be to each other in the future. In a single year, more than MacNair had tried to plot against Elizabeth in the Catholic queen’s name, and, no doubt, more would. But she, with her friends, her true friends, would be ready for the next onslaught.

Elizabeth herself rose to answer Meg’s distinctive knock on the door and let the three of them in. Meg looked as if she’d been crying; Jenks seemed glum, and Ned either exhausted or pathetic Ned and Jenks still had bandaged hands and singed eyebrows and hair from the fire at Greenwich, which had been successfully put out after some dreadful damage to the east wing. It, like the boat-house, would need to be rebuilt this spring, along with a feigned, polite relationship with Queen Mary.

“Welcome all,” Elizabeth told them as she gestured them in. “Take the chairs and warm yourselves.”

To her surprise, the two men sat in the seats on the other side of Kat, while Meg took the single one by the queen. “Let me serve, Your Grace,” Meg said, popping up when she saw the queen pouring ale for them, but Elizabeth pressed her back into her chair.

“I’ve asked you here tonight to thank each of you for all you’ve done for me this holiday season,” she said, not mentioning specifics, for their endeavors of detection had been kept from Kat as well as from most of the court. “Also, your friendship and support these first six years of my reign have been invaluable.”

“And many more years to come!” Kat chimed in.

The queen gave an ale-filled, heavily embossed silver goblet to Meg, Jenks, and Ned. “To the new year and the future,” she said and lifted her drink to them.

“Oh, Your Grace, it’s beautiful!” Meg cried, the first to catch on that the vessel from which she drank was her gift “Look, such shiny silver with entwined roses around the queen’s name:
From a grateful monarch, Elizabeth the Queen, to my dear Strewing Herb Mistress Meg Milligrew
.”

“Tudor roses, of course,” Ned put in, coming to life at last as he perused his goblet. “Why, on this side it has my name and
Master of Queen’s Revels
scripted in. Done by our St. Paul’s pewterer, Your Grace?”

“He got out of his sickbed in a minute when I sent him the order for them,” she said with a smile. “Meg, you see, yours has herbs as well, and Jenks’s has a saddle and bridle.”

“That’s a good one,” Kat put in, “seeing as how he’s about to get bridled and saddled himself in holy matrimony with Meg.”

Silence fell. Only the hearth crackled away.

“We have decided to delay that,” Meg whispered.

“To delay it indirectly,” Jenks added.

“Indefinitely,” Ned amended. “The three of us—well, for my part, after Jenks saved my life, I just realized all I owed him, that’s all.”

The queen could see that was not all, but she’d question Meg about it later. Elizabeth sensed that the men, in their new-fledged friendship, had somehow decided for Meg. Not wedding because something better and grander was at stake—yes, the queen grasped that full well.

The five of them sat, staring into the settling fire in companionable silence. In that precious moment of peace, Elizabeth felt that no memories of the past could hurt her, nor did the future frighten her. With friends who were dearer than family, she could not only look forward to Christmases to come but enjoy life each day, beginning here and now. Somehow, that was the greatest gift of all.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

AMAZINGLY, MANY TUDOR RECIPES REMAIN, ALTHOUGH I WOULD NOT
recommend following those I’ve included here, since some of them are shortened or amended, or just plain untrustworthy with unusual or vague directions. Sources for these recipes include some fascinating books such as Thomas Dawson’s
The Good Huswifes Jewell
, 1580; Gervase Markham’s
The English Housewife
, 1615; and anonymous, The
Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchen
, 1594. Also, a book with excellent drawings about food and banquets is
All the King’s Cooks
, by Peter Brears.
Food and Feast in England
, by Alison Sim, was also a great help. Thanks to Sharon Harper for her recipe for Maids of Honor.

I am also appreciative that Kirrily Robert has an excellent Web site with original old English recipes to be found at
http://infotrope.net/sca/cooking
.

As in all the books in the Elizabeth I Mystery Series, I take key plot points from history. On December 21, 1564, the Thames froze solid for the first time in years, and it is recorded that “the queen walked upon it” The years of 1608 and 1683 are listed as excellent freezes for Frost Fairs; 1814, the last year for such a fair, saw a catastrophe when the ice cracked and booths and people fell into the river. I have taken literary license with the fact that Lambeth Palace traditionally housed the archbishop of Canterbury rather than the bishop of London,

Under the Protestantism of Edward VI and his sister Elizabeth, some of the early raucous, pagan Yuletide practices and Catholic customs were halted, but “Elizabeth herself paid for holly and ivy to deck the palace each Christmas,” As the queen could be tight with her money, this was no small concession to these holidays for her.

The queen’s beloved Lady Katherine (Kat) Ashley, early governess, confidant, and the only mother figure Elizabeth Tudor had ever known, died, “greatly lamented,” in 1565. It was the same year in which Mary, Queen of Scots, wed Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, and lived to rue that day. Their child, King James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, followed Elizabeth on the throne in 1603. But in the thirty-eight years between the time of this story and the queen’s death, there are many momentous events—and mysteries—to come.

I hope that those of you who have or know of book discussion groups will find the “food for thought” questions that follow useful. Although each of the Elizabeth mysteries can stand alone, this series is also an extended study of a fascinating woman and her times. The queen was a powerful historical figure but also an amazingly modern woman in many ways.

READING GROUP GUIDE

The Queene’s Christmas

DISCUSSION IDEAS

1. Many amateur sleuth or detective stories are told only from the main character’s first-person point of view. Why do you think the author of
The Queene’s Christmas
uses multiple viewpoints?

2. In what way does the Prologue frame or foreshadow the action to come?

3. We are all partly products of our pasts. What family baggage does Elizabeth Tudor always carry with her, despite her position of power and prestige?

4. Although Elizabeth
is the
heroine of the tale, she is all too human. Cite examples of her honorable acts and her underhanded ones. What strengths and weaknesses does she exhibit? Do these make her sympathetic or not?

5. This book in the series and the previous one
(The Thome Maze)
emphasize the queen’s growing conflict with her cousin the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. How is Mary contrasted with Elizabeth, even though the reader never meets Mary? (Elizabeth never met her, either.) How do their contrasting personalities act as strengths or weaknesses in their serving as rulers?

6. How do the recipes that begin each chapter tie in with the action and intent of the story? How do they throw light on or foreshadow events?

7. Food imagery is used throughout the story to tie in with the holiday recipes theme. Beginning with the Prologue, can you cite examples of this?

8. Comment on customs in the story that have their roots in Old England, such as drinking a toast.

9. Discuss clues laced throughout the story to hint that the villain could be any of several characters. Did you at some point suspect, like the queen, that the culprit could be Ned Topside or the Earl of Leicester? At what point were you certain who was the guilty one? Did you figure it out before the queen, with the queen, or after her?

10. Although the book is set in 1564—65, did you find some characters’ thoughts of and reactions to the holidays modern? Perhaps even like your own? In what ways?

11. How is Elizabeth’s relationship
with
her people similar to or different from that of Queen Elizabeth II or an American president? Have we lost or gained from the differences?

12. Elizabeth’s longtime relationship with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was an up-and-down one. Why do you think she never wed him? Did she really wish to? (Earlier books in the series, especially
The Twylight Tower
, expand on this turbulent relationship.)

13. Many of the folk poems commonly called “nursery rhymes” hail from early England. Examples include “Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross,” “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” and “Humpty Dumpty.” If the political and personal origin of Mother Goose rhymes is of interest, you might peruse
The Annotated Mother Goose
, by William S. Baring-Gould and Ceil Baring-Gould. Note that “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” is supposedly a comment on Mary, Queen of Scots. Can you find other Elizabethan-era links?

14. There were remnants of pagan superstitions amid the Christian Christmas celebrations of Elizabethan England—for example, the one about holly leaves in Chapter One. Are there others you can find?