Kate laughed. Violet was right—some of the Scots lords visiting Elizabeth’s court, asking for aid against their Catholic regent, were rather exotic and dashing. But . . . “And be carried off to some drafty old castle beside an icy loch? I don’t think that would be enjoyable at all. They seem rather quarrelsome for my taste, as well. If they aren’t fighting a duel with a Frenchman, they’re glaring at the Spanish over the banquet table, or even arguing amongst themselves. I would prefer a more . . . harmonious household.”
“Very well, no Scotsman, then,” Violet said with a giggle. “What of that actor who was at court in the autumn? I vow he was the most handsome man I have ever seen, except for my own husband, and he did seem to like you very much.”
“Rob Cartman?” Kate frowned as she thought of Rob. He was indeed very handsome, with his golden hair and sky blue eyes, full of laughter and poetry. But also full of secrets. “I haven’t seen him for many weeks.” Though she had received a letter from him, telling her of how he and his theatrical troupe fared as they toured the country again under the patronage of the queen’s cousin Lord Hunsdon. She didn’t want to admit how her heart beat just a little faster whenever she saw his handwriting on a missive.
Or how she wore his gift, a tiny jeweled pendant in the shape of a lute, beneath her gowns.
“Oh, well. If you don’t fancy a cold Scottish castle, I daresay a traveling actor’s life wouldn’t be good, either. You should find someone who would keep you here at court. You would not want to live with a mother-in-law like mine, anyway,” Violet said with a dramatic shudder.
Kate laughed. “I told you, Vi—I don’t care to marry yet. I suppose I am like the queen in that way. And I am much too busy right now.”
Violet pursed her lips. “I know, Kate. It is just as I said—I want all my friends to be as happy as I am. And I owe you so very much. If you had not saved my life at Nonsuch last summer, I would not even be here. Nor would my little Catherine or this one, who will make his appearance next year.”
Kate swallowed hard at the terrible memory of what had happened to them at the fairy-tale Nonsuch Palace, the fire—and the murderer—that had almost ended both their lives. She reached for a branch, trying to banish the dark thought of those days beneath the brightness of Christmas. “Anyone would have done the very same as I did, Vi.”
“I do not think that’s true. Few would have been as brave as you. So, if you will not let me matchmake, you must at least be a good godmother to little Catherine.”
“That I am most honored to do,” Kate said with a smile, thinking of the gift she would get her goddaughter Catherine for Christmas—a child-sized lute.
“Good! Now, you should put mistletoe into your bough. It is the most important element, otherwise the magic won’t work.”
Kate laughed, tucking a thick branch of glossy green mistletoe dotted with lacy white berries into the center of her circlet. Surely there was some kind of magic floating in the icy winter air. She felt lighter already, with the holiday upon them. After months of worrying over the queen’s safety, it seemed the perfect time to have a bit of fun.
“Holly and ivy, box and bay,” she whispered. “Put in the house for Christmas Day . . .”
But her laughter turned to a rueful sigh when she returned to her room later that afternoon and saw the stack of books and papers waiting for her. As promised, the queen’s chief secretary, Sir William Cecil, had sent her volumes on codes and languages. She loved studying codes, especially the work on musical mysteries to be found in Plato’s Republic, symbols hidden in the twelve notes of Greek musical scales which Cecil believed had once been used in hidden letters for the Tudor court—and could be used again. Kate loved learning of the strange mysteries there, but sometimes a Christmas dance was just more alluring.
“Fa la la la la,” she whispered, and sat down to her studies.
CHAPTER TWO
“You shall all be the death of me! If I cannot leave these rooms soon, I shall—I shall . . .”
Queen Elizabeth’s furious words ended in an incoherent shout that sent ladies-in-waiting, lapdogs, and parrots fleeing to every corner of the royal bedchamber. She jerked her royal arms away from the ladies who were trying to tie on her silver-brocade-and-sable sleeves, and kicked her velvet shoe at a hapless footstool.
“Now, lovey,” murmured Kat Ashley, the only person who would dare to speak to Elizabeth that way. Kat shooed the younger maids away and stepped up to tie the sleeves herself, clucking over the slippery satin ribbons and the loops of pearls clicking over the queen’s shoulders. “You know it is far too cold today for you to go outside. They say it may even snow later. And you are supposed to meet with the Spanish ambassador.”
“Senor de Quadra can kick his heels about all day for all I care,” Elizabeth cried. Her pale face, with its high, sharp cheekbones and pointed chin, was flushed a bright pink. Despite the angry roses that bloomed in her cheeks and the sparkling anger in her dark Boleyn eyes, she stood still for Mistress Ashley to adjust the sleeves. “This palace begins to feel like an overheated mouse-hole, all of us scurrying to and fro to no good purpose. We have had no fun in weeks. It is much too quiet here.”
Kate had to agree with the queen about the feeling of being mice in a maze, even though she kept her head bent over the ivory keys of the virginals in the corner. She continued to play her song, as if she was oblivious to any storms that broke over the luxurious chamber.
After almost a year at Queen Elizabeth’s royal court and her whole life of nearly twenty years spent in palaces of one sort or another, she had certainly learned the value of standing firm, smiling, and staying inconspicuous in any tempest. One learned so much more while going unnoticed.
And when the queen had one of her Tudor fits of temper, the most outspoken ladies and gentlemen generally received the brunt of it and had shoes thrown at their heads.
But the queen was right. Whitehall Palace, that vast edifice of winding corridors, long galleries, hidden chambers, and sparkling treasures, began to feel very crowded in the cold, short, gray winter days. The groundsmen kept the windows firmly fastened against the icy winds that howled past off the river. Fires crackled all the time in the marble grates, struggling to send any warmth into the rooms, but always sending plenty of smoke. The press of people everywhere, in their fashionable glossy satins and furs, made the air humid and heavy.
And the queen’s bedchamber felt the most close-packed. It was not the largest chamber, but one with a view of the queen’s privy garden below. Elizabeth’s desk, piled high with documents that waited for her attention, was placed by the one window. The huge edifice of the bed, carved in fanciful patterns of vines and flowers, hung with red and gold brocade curtains and draped with velvet blankets, was set on a dais at the far end of the room, opposite the fireplace. Cushions were scattered across the inlaid floor for the ladies-in-waiting, amid workboxes, lutes, and baskets for their little dogs.
Kate glanced quickly out the window, near where the virginals sat behind the queen’s desk. She could see the queen’s garden, brown and gray under the winter frost. Beyond the high brick wall, she could see a small sliver of the river, a pale blue ribbon frozen at the edges. The meager daylight was fading, night closing in around them.
For just a moment, she let herself remember winters when she was a child. Her father had taught her to ice-skate when she was seven, and when he lived at Chelsea with Queen Catherine Parr, Queen Elizabeth’s stepmother and Matthew Haywood’s first royal patron, he would take her out on the ice whenever he had a moment from his duties.
She was not a graceful skater, always too afeared of falling on the hard, cold ice, but she loved the feel of her father’s hand holding hers, so strong and steady, always the greatest certainty in her life. But then she grew older, and found out he kept secrets from her—secrets about her mother, Eleanor, who had died in childbirth. Eleanor had been the illegitimate h
alf sister of Anne Boleyn, and thus Queen Elizabeth’s aunt, but Matthew had not been the one to tell that to Kate.
Kate shook her head. She wondered what her father did now, in his country cottage next to his cozy fire. Now he finally had all the time he desired for working on his music, cooped up with all the little luxuries the queen sent him. In his letters to Kate, he told her of the music he was writing, of a friendly widow who brought him fresh butter and milk and fussed over his gout. But she hadn’t been able to see him for herself since the autumn.
What would it be like if Kate could sit with him there now, the two of them working on their music as they so often had when she was younger? Both of them lost in their own worlds, yet still so close. Always understanding.
She thought of what Violet had said about marriage, and for just an instant Kate wondered what it would be like to have her own cozy hearth with a husband. A husband who understood her . . .
“Nay, not that cap! The black one,” Elizabeth snapped, pulling Kate out of her memories and daydreams and into the present moment in the royal bedchamber. Kate glanced over the fine inlaid top of the virginals to see that the queen was pushing Mary Howard away as the lady tried to offer her a red velvet cap. But the queen’s tone had lost some of its fire, and she stood still while Mistress Ashley finished dressing her.
Elizabeth even bent her head to let Lady Catherine Grey carefully place a black satin pearl-trimmed cap on her coiled red hair. Relations between the queen and her cousin, the beautiful lady so many whispered should be named as Elizabeth’s heir, had certainly not always been cordial. Kate knew Elizabeth suspected that Lady Catherine was not entirely loyal. She had been friendly with the previous Spanish ambassador, the Count de Feria, and his English wife, who had been lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary. Lady Catherine was young, headstrong in the Tudor way, and Elizabeth had sometimes seemed to snub the Greys.
And Lady Catherine had not been seen so much with the handsome Lord Hertford since she returned to court after the death of her mother, Lady Frances, a few weeks before. Could she have finally learned some sense?
“What think you, Cousin Catherine?” Elizabeth said. “Is it too quiet at my court?”
Lady Catherine smiled, but it was not quite the bright, flashing, laughing smile she had before her mother’s death. She was still as pretty as ever, with a heart-shaped face, bright blue eyes, and golden hair, beauty that was set off even better by her black mourning gowns than by the scarlets and blues she usually seemed to love. “It is the Christmas season, Your Grace! Surely we should have a bit of merriment?”
A wave of murmured agreement moved over the ladies gathered around the fireplace. Excitement for the holiday had been building for weeks. Banquets and dancing, decking the halls, sleigh rides and spiced wine, and especially stolen embraces under those carefully made kissing boughs, would be a welcome distraction from the cold winds and the foreign embassies gathered around to press their suits on the queen.
Even Elizabeth smiled at her cousin. “So it is, Lady Catherine. I can smell the evergreen boughs from the ladies’ decorations even in here, and it is a most welcome bit of the fresh outdoors. What else of the season shall we have, ladies? A boar’s head feast? Sugarplums? Games of snapdragon?”
“Oh, all of that!” Mary Radcliffe cried. “It has been so cold and gray for so long.”
“I do well remember when I was young, and Christmas was the time for so much merriment,” Mistress Ashley said, her usually brisk tone wistful as she slid jeweled rings onto the queen’s long white fingers. “Mumming plays, Yule logs . . .”
“I remember those, as well,” Elizabeth said. “My stepmother, Queen Catherine Parr, always saw to it that Christmas in my father’s palaces was most grand. And we have so much to celebrate now. I proclaim this holiday we shall make merry as they did in the past! We must have a Lord of Misrule to oversee the Twelve Days, with theatricals, games, dances, everything.”
The ladies laughed and clapped their hands, twirling around happily at the prospect of a grand Christmas.
“It will be just like when you were a little girl, lovey,” Mistress Ashley said.
Elizabeth squeezed her hand and smiled. “Except when I was a child I did not have to meet with the Spanish ambassador, who will no doubt plague me with the Archduke Charles’s suit again. Go, all of you, and let me gather my thoughts for a moment.”
Immediately, all the ladies gathered up their little dogs and their embroidery, their books and lutes, and hurried out of the chamber, their silken skirts rustling like a sweep of dry autumn leaves blown into the sky. Mistress Ashley hovered behind them, but Elizabeth waved her away as well.
Kate quickly lowered the inlaid lid over the keys and rose to make her own curtsy.
“Nay, Kate, you stay for a moment,” Elizabeth said.
Kate watched as the queen hurried to the window, and, against the instructions of her physicians and of Mistress Ashley, unlatched it and pushed it open. An icy breeze swept into the velvet-lined stuffiness of the room and carried out some of the heavy scent of woodsmoke and floral perfumes. Elizabeth closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath.
The noise of London, the constant roar of voices, shouts, laughter, clattering cart wheels, carried on the wind over the slate roofs and chimneys of Whitehall. Kate peered past the queen’s shoulder to see night closing in quickly around the garden below. She wasn’t entirely sure what to do, or why Elizabeth had asked her to stay, so she just waited. She knew the queen always revealed her purpose eventually.
Elizabeth turned away from the window with a smile. There was no sign of her earlier burst of stormy temper. It had passed as swiftly as such fits usually did, and now she looked—excited. Her dark eyes sparkled.
“You have been working on new music for the Christmas season, have you not, Kate?” Elizabeth asked.
“Aye,” Kate answered. Indeed she had. Every night, after the queen’s feasts and dancing and the quiet banquets in her privy rooms were done, Kate would return to her own tiny chamber under the eaves of the vast palace roofs, and would write until she was so tired that the notes would not sound in her head any longer.
“That is good, for if we are to have an elaborate Christmas we shall need much new music,” the queen said with a laugh. “Our court is going to be busy this year, with all the foreign ambassadors closing in on us. We must impress them all.”
Kate couldn’t help but laugh, too, thinking of how busy every day was at Whitehall. Everyone was always running from one place to another. “Is it not always thus, Your Grace?”
Elizabeth laughed, and as always her laughter was as wondrously alive as her temper. “True enough, Kate. The life of a monarch is never an empty one. There is always someplace to be, someone who wants something. Yet it seems all my plague of suitors thinks Christmas is the time to press their cases for matrimony.”
Kate thought of the presents that piled up daily for the queen, portraits and jewels and bolts of fine cloth from Vienna, Sweden, Spain—not to mention the English-grown suitors. “The chance to outdo each other with the splendor of their gifts?”
“Exactly so. Not that I mind that . . .” Elizabeth held up her wrist to examine the pearl and ruby bracelet that shimmered there, and counted off her would-be fiancés on her beringed fingers. “Archduke Charles, Prince Eric, a French prince—take your pick of them. Then there are those closer to home, like Lord Arundel and Master Pickering.” A frown flickered over her face. “And then there are those who desire things more complicated.”
People such as Robert Dudley? Kate thought of the queen’s face when he was near, her radiant smiles—and the rumors that were spreading of the queen’s affection for her Master of the Horse. Or did she think of something else, something more political in nature? “Your Grace?”
Elizabeth shook her head, as if trying to clear her thoughts. “Can you organize a masque quickly, Kate? Perhaps w
ith some of the music you have already written?”
Kate nodded eagerly. This sort of challenge was assuredly one she could meet. Music, even complicated pieces that kept her awake until the small hours, was never as confounding as the doings of courtiers. Not all of the queen’s requests were so easy to fulfill.
“What sort of theme, Your Grace?” she asked, her mind racing over sets and costumes in the Office of the Revels that could be easily used. “Something for the beginning of the Christmas season, like one of the old mummers’ plays?”
Elizabeth stared down at the frozen garden below, her gaze very far away. “I told you a few days ago we are expecting a new arrival very soon. Well, they are a party from Scotland, and they must have a proper welcome.”
“From Scotland?” Kate was wary. Everyone knew England’s northern neighbor had long been in upheaval, with Protestant lords rebelling against Queen Mary’s mother and regent, Queen Marie of Guise. “Queen Mary’s ambassador is surely already here.”
Elizabeth smiled, a small pursing of her lips as if she held a secret. “Monsieur de Castelnau. So he is, and always so insistent on his mistress’s great love and friendship for England. Though even he cannot properly explain why Queen Mary still insists on quartering the arms of England on her engraved plate. Nay, these new arrivals will be no Frenchmen, Kate, but real Scots who declare they have vital business here at Whitehall. We must show a friendly face to everyone in these most changeable days, don’t you agree?”
Friendly to everyone—and true friends with none, it seemed. “’Tis surely always better to have as many friends as possible, Your Grace,” she answered carefully. That was one lesson she had learned well in the last year.
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