The Queene’s Christmas (8 page)

IT WAS NEARLY ELEVEN O’CLOCK THAT NIGHT WHEN THE
queen opened the hastily called meeting of her Privy Plot Council in her presence chamber. “I am not certain that we even have a murder to investigate,” she explained, “but considering the holiday season and all that depends on its going well, we’d best at least put our heads together on Hodge Thatcher’s strange demise.”

She glanced around the table. Cecil sat next to her, frowning at a written report under his folded hands. Across the table, Meg Milligrew was wide-eyed; Jenks, beside her, looked intent, too. At the far end of the table, Ned Topside seemed glum and distracted when he should have been happy, for he had told her he’d found his old players’ troupe and they were coming to court tomorrow.

On Elizabeth’s other side, Harry, Baron Hunsdon, was disturbed by being so suddenly summoned from the festivities, but then he was the one among them who knew nothing of these events yet. He was probably alarmed because each time her covert council had struggled to solve a murder, deceit and danger followed. The queen rued Kat’s absence, but she needed her sleep and should not be disturbed by unrest. Elizabeth longed to invite her maid of honor, Rosie, to replace Kat in this company, but if a murderer were out to disgrace Robin, her little band would have to investigate Rosie’s kin Lord Sussex—along with about half the court.

The queen concluded her opening remarks with “Now that I have summarized for you the case for the poor man’s suicide, my lord Cecil will present the other possibility.”

“Granted,” he began, “some of the physical evidence at the scene of death could be attributed to a suicide. Hodge could have half undressed himself, for his breeches, doublet, and shoes were found under his worktable. The coroner informed me that, for some reason, suicides sometimes take off their shoes, and Hodge was barefooted.”

“On the other hand,” the queen put in, “his disrobing could mean he was getting ready for his new livery and therefore expected to live.”

“After all,” Ned said as if rushing to her aid, “Her Majesty’s interview with Master Stout tips the scales toward suicide.”

“I’d like to believe that, too,” the queen said, “but you are not, Ned, writing the script for the meeting as if it were some play.”

Ned frowned and shifted in his seat as Cecil went on. “Also, the man could have climbed on that stool and slipped the knotted noose around his own neck, having donned the skinned coat of the peacock and having stuck those tail feathers carefully under his armpits. However, to be fair, before I proceed, let’s listen to someone who came upon the death scene before I did.

“Jenks?” Cecil said, turning his way. “Anything to add at this point before I list the evidence to suggest we are dealing not with suicide but with assault and murder?”

“I found it hard to believe,” Jenks said, “that when that noose—made of twisted twine, more or less a thin but strong rope really, was the same sort he used to truss up birds or boars for roasting—now, what was I going to say? Oh, that I find it hard to credit, if Hodge hanged himself, that he didn’t flail around in choking to death and ruin the way those feathers stuck out, spaced just so,” he concluded with gestures.

“Another good point,” the queen said. “If he didn’t struggle, he must have wanted his own death—and to be arrayed like that.”

“Or if someone hanged him,” Cecil countered, “the culprit held his hands in place or rearranged those feathers after the final struggle. Neither I nor the coroner saw ligature marks on his wrists or arms to suggest someone had him tied while he died, then removed such ties. But wait—here is the report I had the coroner write out and sign, and it is most compelling.”

The queen noted that everyone seemed to take in a deep breath and go as still as a statue. All turned toward Cecil.

“I won’t read you all the petty details and the Latin medical phrases,” he said, “but to put it briefly, Hodge was knocked hard enough on the head to fracture his skull. The four-inch-by-eight-inch wound on the top back of his pate,” he went on, pointing at his own head, “was no doubt received before he either stepped up on that stool—or was lifted up to be hanged from a rope attached to the pulley chains.”

“He hardly took a hit like that,” Jenks said, “by bumping into one of those hanging kettles, however big some are. They all hang high.”

“And,” Meg added, “it’s not likely he got a knock on the top back of his head accidentally falling. Not and then climbed up there, like he was out of his head, for such a blow would make him dizzy at least, stun or knock him out at worst. If someone hit him, someone must have helped him up on that stool.”

“Agreed,” Harry put in, as if coming to life at last “It’s highly doubtful that the man would hit himself to make it look like an attack. If it’s not a crime of passion, it sounds like a crime of planning.”

“I fear so,” Cecil said. “He was probably hit by the man who left a boot print in the spilled cumin grit on the floor—his murderer, who helped him look as if he might have hanged himself.”

The queen listened with a heavy heart; yes, it must be a murder, one she could hardly ignore. Literally from up his sleeve, Cecil produced a second paper and unfolded it to show the sketch of the boot print she had requested.

“To size as well as shape?” she asked, gripping her hands hard in her lap.

“It is. Though it may not belong to whoever hit Hodge, gave him a hoist up, and knocked over that stool, it’s a place to start”

“Was there blood,” Harry asked, “on his skull up under that peacock skin?”

“Indeed, though it seems the bird skin acted as a sort of bandage to mat and pool the blood,” Cecil explained. “Yet I doubt that the skin was placed on his head as an afterthought to hide that blood. It all seems diabolically designed. I believe the murderer slipped into Hodge’s workroom with the intent to kill and display his victim, but for what purpose or motive I do not know.”

“That,” Elizabeth said, “is what we must learn to find the killer.”

“By the way,” Cecil added, turning over the coroner’s report, “I’ve sketched something here I believe is as significant as the boot print.”

“What’s that, then?” Meg asked as they all gazed at the strange shape.

“I warrant it’s the circumference of the head wound,” the queen answered for him.

Jenks leaned forward, frowning at the sketch of the oblong wound with rivulets of blood or some crude pattern roughly drawn in. Ned quickly rose from his seat and leaned close to see.

“Yet his face was bluish,” Elizabeth went on, “which means he did indeed strangle or suffocate from the noose—but after he may have been stunned enough to be lifted up there and dressed with the peacock regalia. If he were dazed, that could also explain someone’s being able to hold his hands at his sides while he weakly struggled and so died, but without disturbing the symmetrical arrangement of feathers under his arms or making ligature marks.”

Cecil nodded. Harry seemed silently thoughtful, and her servants still wide-eyed. Only Ned looked as if he’d like to argue, but for once he said nothing.

“Then I must cut this meeting short,” the queen said, rising and scraping her chair back. “Cecil, Jenks, and I must return to the site of the murder instantly to search for what could have caused this mark—the first of the two murder weapons, in effect, if we count the noose, too.”

“I looked around as best I could while the coroner worked,” Cecil said as everyone rose. “Whatever caused this blow, Hodge’s murderer must have taken it with him.”

“I suppose it has to be a him,” Meg put in as Jenks squeezed her shoulder and hurried after the queen, “because a woman probably couldn’t lift him, but she could wear a boot like that Are we going to check the boot soles of everyone to see if one fits that shape or has cumin stuck in the cracks of it, Your Grace?”

“That would be fruitless with so many at court The culprit could merely change boots, though the size of the foot may help us to narrow down possibilities later. Meg, I can’t ask my maids for a cape this late, or they’ll know I’m going out. Lend me yours, if you please. My lord Harry, best go back down to join your wife and keep an eye on things below. If anyone asks how I am, report that I am fine but resting until tomorrow.

“Cecil, Jenks, and I,” she went on, stopping in the door to her chamber, “will go down my privy staircase to the river, out and around to the kitchen court, and in that way, to avoid everyone still lingering about the Great Hall or gadding about in the corridors. Meg and Ned, you will stay here and, if something demands my presence, Ned, hie yourself to fetch me, while Meg speaks for me through the door as if I am too tired to come out.”

As the queen took Meg’s squirrel-lined wool cape, Elizabeth realized her herbalist did not look as happy as usual to play queen, even if only for Ned’s eyes. Perhaps, for once, she didn’t want to be alone with him, she thought as she hurried toward her bed-chamber, where her father’s old privy staircase could be entered behind an arras. Jenks didn’t look too happy to be leaving Ned and Meg behind, either.

The slap of chill night wind shocked the queen at first. Meg’s cloak was thin compared to hers. She must give the girl one on New Year’s Day to ward off the sting of winter. At least this had a hood to pull up and gather close about her neck.

They had not brought a lantern, for they knew the palace windows overhead would light their way, and a nearly full moon shone off thin snow and thickening river ice. The queen’s stomach growled, as if in foreboding; she realized she should have eaten something more, however unsettled she’d felt.

“The Thames is near frozen clear across,” Jenks said. “We’ll have that Frost Fair for certain.”

The lights of Lambeth Palace, home of the Bishop of London and Martin Bane, when Bane wasn’t at court protecting their interests, shone across the expanse of ice. Lambeth had its own barge with oarsmen, but with the Thames gone nearly solid, Elizabeth realized that the churchmen must have been traveling rutted roads and crossing crowded London Bridge. They’d be happy enough to soon use a cart or sleigh. When ice must be traversed, horses wore studded shoes, and wheels had nails pounded through them for traction.

Before the river tidal flats began, though they were but frozen mud now, a small path wended its way around the palace’s stony skirts, and they followed that One more turn and they could see the torchlit porter’s door that guarded the kitchen block from the public street on the other side of the walls.

“That reminds me,” Elizabeth whispered. “Jenks, did you inquire from the day porter if anyone unusual came in or out of the kitchen-block gate this afternoon?”

“Yes, Your Grace. No traffic for once. All the Twelve Days supplies were already in, he said, and no one wants to leave where all the good times are—that’s how he put it. Except for Ned.”

“Ned put it how?”

“No, I mean, Ned went out the porter’s door this afternoon, looking most distraught, too, didn’t even answer the porter’s 'heigh ho’ to him. The poor man—the porter, Your Grace— thinks Ned’s really the hail-fellow-well-met he plays in the come-dies.”

“Why would Topside be going out this back gate today?” Cecil asked sharply.

“He learned his old troupe of players is in town,” Elizabeth explained, “so I gave him permission to invite them for a performance or two before all this happened. And he was vexed because I named Leicester as Lord of Misrule. Cecil, get us past the porter, won’t you, as I have no wish for him to know it’s me.”

He walked ahead and knocked on the bolted door; his words floated to Jenks and the queen. “My lady and I have been walking by the river with a guard, but it’s far too cold. We want to get back in by the kitchens, get a bit of warmth from the big hearth fires.”

“Oh, my lord secretary, certes,” the man cried and rattled his keys overlong opening the gate. With Elizabeth holding her hood close to her face, the three of them hustled past before he caught a glimpse of anyone else. Icy wind even here in the courtyard swirled up Elizabeth’s skirts, but once inside, it was warmer, almost steamy with mingled, succulent smells. Despite the work they’d come to do, the queen felt even hungrier.

“I told Stout to seal off the dresser’s workroom and let the man who replaced him work elsewhere for a few days,” Cecil said, “lest we should need to return like this.”

“Good planning, my lord,” she said. “Jenks, go find Stout and tell him that we’re here and why—and bring back some lanterns again.”

He hastened to obey while Cecil unwrapped the thick twine stretched across the door from latch to hinge. Neither rope nor string, it looked to be the same sturdy stock that had been used in multiple strands to make the hangman’s noose. Cecil opened the door. The darkness within seemed profound, almost a living, breathing being. In the pale slab of light from the hall sconce, the queen’s eyes adjusted slowly. She imagined she could see the corpse still hanging amidst the pots and chains, a man sprouting feathers as if he could swoop at them.

She jumped as light leaped in behind her and Cecil, Jenks held one large lantern, and her master cook two more.

“Your Majesty,” Stout said, “I had no idea you’d be back and at this hour. The staff is yet cleaning up and having a bit of our own feast, though there’s a pall on things from what happened here. Still, you said, Yule will go on.”

“You are doing what is right, Master Stout. I simply wanted you to know we are here. Please return to your people without divulging my presence, and I’ll send Jenks for you if I need you further. By the way, did you hear the coroner say Hodge had a head wound?” she asked as he set his lanterns on the table and started for the door.