Elizabeth I - 05 - The Thorne Maze

by Karen Harper

  Although it seems in the story that both the rural authorities slighted the murder investigations of Templar’s and Bettina’s deaths, such practice is authentic for those times, in major cities as well as the countryside. Autopsies were not yet permitted. The innocent or guilty verdict was based on “common knowledge” (what people saw), not on what we would call proof or evidence. If a murder case did go to trial, it was over in a matter of minutes and, though juries decided the outcome, little defense was offered. Our justice system may be based on English common law, but we have come a long way since.

  As for other points of interest in Tudor life, it is not true that Queen Elizabeth took a bath “at least once a month whether she needed it or not.” In the Tudor palace of Whitehall, Elizabeth’s father had ordered built a sunken tub in a small, windowless room with a heated tile stove; this early “Turkish bath” was excavated in 1939. Elizabeth bathed often and had a keen sense of smell—perhaps not a boon in those times.

  According to authorities today, Queen Catherine Howard’s ghost does haunt Hampton Court. Researchers from the University of Hertfordshire were allowed to spend ten days in the palace, seeking evidence for reported murmurs, patches of cold air, and the sound of footsteps to track her presence in the “Haunted Gallery.” The “wet woman” at Theobalds manorhouse is based upon the dripping female ghost at Scotney Castle in Kent.

  At Windsor Castle, the ghost of Elizabeth herself has supposedly been seen, once by the current Queen Elizabeth’s sister, the Princess Margaret. The sight of the Virgin Queen is often accompanied by the smell of rosewater, one of her favorite fragrances. Princess Margaret said she followed the queen’s ghost to the door of the library, where she disappeared. (After all, no self-respecting manor or castle in the British Isles should be without its own ghost.)

  And lastly, the clove-scented gillyflowers are our modern-day pinks, related to carnations. The word pink is of later origin than the Tudor era; they were probably eventually called pinks for their ragged or pinked edges. Although the origin of the word pink is unknown, it could have come from the pale, rose-hued gillyflowers.

  One thing I did change to suit the story is that, unlike William Cecil, Christopher Hatton attended not Gray’s Inn but Inner Temple, where Elizabeth saw him and brought him to court.

  How “Rosie” Radcliffe came to court as a Yuletide gift to the queen and the customs and foods of the Tudor holiday season—as well as a mysterious murder during the traditional Yuletide hanging of ivy, mistletoe, and holly—will occupy Her Majesty in the next Elizabeth I Mystery: The Queene’s Christmas.

  Karen Harper

  December 2001

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  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 25th 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, heavens 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 there. 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 queen’s 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 body-guard 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 however 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, Martin Bane,” she added with a dramatic sigh that would have done well in a scene from 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 protest
ed.

  “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 no doubt 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 know 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 hastened 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, though, 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 sometime this winter, 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.”

  “Fancy fripperies. 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?”

  “Hell’s teeth, 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 Ned 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: Martin could cool a room quicker than anyone 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 more time in 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 at first realize 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 and my brother’s reigns.”

  At that rapid recitation, Bane’s adam’s apple bobbed, perhaps endangered 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 statues 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 hither and yon masked in play acting 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 increase our happiness here.”