Murder at the Queen's Masquerade

by Amanda Carmack

  Tears sprang to Lady Green’s eyes. Her monkey chattered and patted at her cheek.

  Elizabeth turned her glare onto her cousin. “I will tolerate no dishonesty in my court, even—especially—from my own family. I have shown mercy time and again, only to have it flung back at me. I will tolerate traitors no longer!”

  Lady Lennox gave them a withering glare. “I do not have to listen to such insulting accusations. I am just as much a Tudor as you, and have just as many rights!”

  “Indeed not, cousin,” Elizabeth said. “In fact, I am sure your estates to the north require much attention, with your husband abroad. Perhaps you would care to travel there on the morrow. Unless a room in the Tower would suit you again? That can surely be arranged.”

  Lady Lennox’s cheeks flamed an angry red again, but she merely curtsied stiffly and swept out of the chamber. The door slammed heavily behind her, and for a moment there only the soft sound of Lady Green’s sniffling.

  Kate felt tense as she watched the queen, unsure of what would happen next. With Elizabeth, no one ever knew.

  Suddenly, the queen reached out and stroked the monkey’s tiny head with her long, white fingers. “How did you train him to do such a thing, then, Lady Green?”

  Lady Green sniffled again, and straightened her shoulders. “’Twas not hard, Your Grace. He loves to climb; sometimes I cannot keep him from it even when I try. He got into your wardrobe room once before, I know, and I scolded him much for it. I am sure he could not have loosened that vase on his own! It must have been broken.”

  “Indeed it was cracked around the base,” Elizabeth murmured.

  “Once I—I realized where he had gone, I tried to use my pomander to wedge the door open for him this time. If I wedge the end of it under the latch, the latch can’t catch, yet it looks closed. I thought if I could keep the door from locking, I could fetch him out of there later, when no one was watching,” Lady Green whispered, “but it slipped and the latch fell back into place. I finally managed to coax him back through the roof.

  “I would never have used him thus! Lady Lennox said she would forgive my debts . . .”

  She slapped her hand over her mouth, as if suddenly realizing she had just confessed.

  Queen Elizabeth slowly nodded. “So you merely showed him where to go. Such a creature might be useful for me to have at court. And you show more affection for him than for your own family. Much like my own cousins, I fear. Aye, perhaps I should find a monkey of my own.”

  Kate was horrified, thinking of the monkey making all the ladies-in-waiting shriek, pulling hair and stealing food. Who knew what he would take next? “Your Grace! Surely the dogs would not like it.”

  Lady Green clutched the creature closer. “If—if Your Grace would be pleased I made a present of him . . .”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Nay. I see he would like none but you. Yet you should take him back to the country forthwith, Lady Green, and stay there with him until your son concludes his duties with Sir Robert Dudley. Lady Violet will stay here with me, for her services are much needed. You should certainly cease gambling for a time. I have a cottage where you can be housed, away from my court and under strict watch.”

  Lady Green slid off her chair, her tears flowing freely, but of gratitude now rather than fear. “Oh, Your Grace! I shall, I shall. We shall leave at first light.”

  Elizabeth nodded, and swept out of the chamber, gesturing for Kate to follow. They made their way along the corridor, back toward the queen’s own chambers. The castle was quieter now, everyone sent back to their rooms by the guards, their whispers contained behind their doors, at least until breakfast. Only a few yawning ladies waited for her.

  “You are letting them just leave, Your Grace?” Kate said, wondering if she had just watched the scene aright. “They contrived to steal the pearl.”

  “Not just leave, Kate. They will be well watched at their country houses, I assure you, as Lady Lennox always is. My cousin’s ambitions have always been clear.” Elizabeth masked her own yawn behind her hand. “I think we need not worry so much about Lady Green. It seems she has learned a small lesson here, and will not meddle beyond her own affairs again.”

  Kate was doubtful. It so often seemed that when people were reprieved, they did not remember their lessons for long. But she had to admit she was glad to see Lady Green away, for Violet’s sake.

  “It would merely cause another scandal at my court now, to have two such ladies tossed in the Tower,” Elizabeth said quietly. “We can have no more tittle-tattle now, not even a breath of a whisper. We will merely say the pearl was misplaced. And so it was—until you found it, Kate. That was most clever of you.”

  “Merely a small, dusty job, Your Grace,” Kate said, ruefully rubbing at the dark stain on her sleeve. She deeply hoped she would not have to crawl into such a space again anytime soon.

  “I have so few around me I can truly trust, my sweet Kate,” Elizabeth answered. Her dark eyes looked sad, and she twisted her hands together as if she was chilled. “I know that you will always help me, will always tell me the truth—even if I do not wish to hear it.”

  “I shall do my best for Your Grace, always.”

  “Because you are my family. And that is why you must always stay close to me. I insist upon it.” They had reached the door to the queen’s chamber, where Ned and Wat still stood guard. “Good night, Kate. You certainly deserve to find your own rest now.”

  Kate was weary. Her bones aching from her dusty crawl. But she knew she would not be able to sleep yet. Her mind was whirling with all that had happened at the queen’s masquerade. She stepped out into the courtyard, where the wind had calmed to a mere murmur and the stars were fading overhead, and found just what she hoped for—Rob was waiting on the marble bench.

  He said nothing, just rose with a smile and held out his arm for her. They slowly walked around the edge of the cobbled courtyard, letting the last of the night’s silence wash over them.

  “So the pearl was mislaid?” he said, in his smiling actor’s voice that gave nothing of his true thoughts away. He was like the queen in that way.

  “It would seem thus,” Kate answered. “Poor Thomas is exonerated.”

  “He will be most relieved. As am I. Talented apprentices are difficult to find these days.”

  “Did you ever discover who his fair Rose is?”

  Rob laughed. “A stillroom maid, just as he said. A teasing minx. She has quite dropped him now, after the furor of the night. I think he will not wish to play such games of love chance anytime soon.”

  Kate smiled, but she thought he might be wrong, just as the queen was, about what people learned and what they forgot. “Is all of court life not merely a game of chance?”

  “So it is, and not always a merry one. Yet where else could people like us create our art for such an appreciative audience? We could try being shepherds in a country meadow, but it would never make us so happy as a new song or a fair poem.”

  Kate nodded. She knew he was right. She disliked many of the games that had to be played in the corridors of the queen’s palaces, the secrets and whispers, the masks that had to be changed and changed again. Yet at the end of the day there was music, always music, and plays, and the life of the mind. And most important of all, there was the queen, England’s hope. “You are right, Rob. There is no place else for us.” Her fingers tightened on his arm, and she was glad he was there beside her.

  “And you are weary, Kate, I can tell. I know there is more to this tale of the queen’s pearl, and I hope one day you will tell me. But for now, you should have some mulled wine, and a soft song to lull you to sleep.”

  Kate sighed. “That sounds like the veriest perfection.”

  As they turned back toward the castle, its stone walls just barely touched with the pale pink-gray light of new dawn, she thought she saw something high above on the rampa
rts. A flutter of ghostly white, a hand raised in farewell—a banner of dark hair in the wind.

  And then it was gone.

  Author’s Note

  I hope you’ve enjoyed a little taste of Kate Haywood’s life at Queen Elizabeth’s court! Halloween is my very favorite holiday, and even though the story is not set actually during Halloween, I loved putting in a bit of all the things that are the most fun—costumes, sweets, and ghost stories.

  I also enjoyed seeing one of the many fascinating women of the Tudor period make an appearance at Windsor—Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox (1515–1578). The daughter of Henry VIII’s sister, Margaret, Dowager Queen of Scotland, and her second husband, Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, Margaret had a turbulent and eventful life. She spent a large portion of her childhood at her uncle’s court, and was one of his favorite relatives and a member of Princess Mary’s household until, in 1536, she became secretly engaged to Anne Boleyn’s uncle, Thomas Howard, landing them both in the Tower. Thomas died there, but Margaret was released—until she had a romance with another Howard. She was back in favor in time to attend Henry’s wedding to his last wife, Catherine Parr, and made her own happy (and royally sanctioned) marriage to Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, in 1544.

  She was a favorite of Queen Mary, a staunch Catholic, deeply proud of her royal heritage—and not a favorite of Queen Elizabeth’s at all. (She was also eventually the mother-in-law of Mary Queen of Scots, but that’s for another book . . .)

  For more on Margaret Lennox’s life, I like Kimberly Schutte’s A Biography of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, 1515–1578 (2002). She also makes appearances in some of my favorite books of all time, Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles!

  As for the fad of pet monkeys at court—they weren’t really common pets, but they were something of a status symbol. Queen Catherine of Aragon, Mary Queen of Scots, and Edward VI all had famous portraits painted with their own pets (and Queen Catherine’s was notoriously bad tempered and spoiled). Sir Thomas More’s wife also holds one in Holbein’s famous portrait of the More family. Allison Sim’s Pleasures and Pastimes in Tudor England (2011) has a great chapter on pets kept at court—including monkeys . . . I think I will stick to my dog and cat!

  Read on for a sneak peek at the next book in Amanda Carmack’s Elizabethan mystery series

  MURDER AT WHITEHALL

  Available in December 2015

  The Christmas Season 1559

  Whitehall Palace

  “Holly and ivy, box and bay, put in the house for Christmas Day! Fa la la la . . .”

  Kate Haywood laughed at hearing the notes of the familiar old song, the tune always sung as the court bedecked the palace for Christmas. Queen Elizabeth’s gentlewomen of the privy and presence chambers, along with the young maids of honor, had been assigned to festoon the great hall of Whitehall Palace and its long corridors for the night’s feast, the first of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

  Long tables were set up along the privy gallery, covered with piles of holly, ivy, mistletoe, and evergreen boughs brought in from the countryside that morning, along with multicolored silk ribbons and spangles. Under the watchful eye of Kat Ashley, Queen Elizabeth’s Mistress of the Robes, they were meant to turn all those random bits into glorious holiday artistry.

  Kate sat at the end of the table with her friend Lady Violet Green, who was expecting her first child after the New Year. They twisted together loops of ivy and red ribbon as they watched two of the queen’s maids, Mary Howard and Mary Radcliffe, lay out long swags of greenery to measure them. The Marys sang as they worked, sometimes stopping to leap about with ribbons like two wild morris dancers, until Mistress Ashley sternly admonished them to “sit down again, and cease acting like children who have eaten too many sugary suckets.”

  Kate laughed at their antics. Surely Christmas was the time for everyone to behave like children again? To dance and sing, to feast on delicacies until one was about to burst, to tell stories by the fire until the night was nearly gone. She had always loved this time of year the best of all, those twelve days when everyone set aside the gloomy darkness of winter and buried themselves in music, wine, and bright silk ribbons—and then more music again. Always music for Kate, as she was one of the queen’s principal musicians.

  Kate snatched a ribbon from one of the twirling Marys and laughed. She might be missing her father, her only family, this Christmas, as she had last seen him two months ago in the autumn. But she was surrounded by such merriment that she scarcely had time to feel melancholy.

  The queen’s court at Whitehall was full to bursting for the holiday. There were groups from Sweden and Vienna, pressing the marital suits of their various princes and archdukes, as well as the Spanish under Senor de Quadra and the French, insisting on friendship from the queen’s cousin Queen Mary of Scotland, now also the new queen consort of France. To make things even more complicated, a group of Scottish Protestant lords had also arrived, to ask the queen’s aid in their rebellion against Queen Mary’s mother and regent, Marie of Guise. It was enough to make every courtier’s head spin to decipher who was against whom. And all this during Christmas, the season of banquets and dances and fun.

  Nay, Kate thought, she could only miss her dear father very late at night, in the darkest hours when the rest of the palace finally slept and she was working on new music for the queen’s revels. Then, in the silence as she bent over her mother’s lute, playing old songs her father had taught her when she was only a child, she could miss him.

  Kate reached for two bent hoops and bound them into a sphere for the base of a kissing bough. She picked out the greenest, brightest loops of holly and ivy from the table, twining them around and tying them with a length of red satin ribbon.

  “Are you making a kissing bough, Kate?” Violet asked teasingly. She tied together her own twists of greenery into a large wreath for one of the great hall’s fireplace mantels. She looked most plump and content in her new pregnancy, her blond curls bouncing and her eyes shining. “They say if you stand beneath it and close your eyes, you will have a vision of your future husband.”

  Kate laughed. “I think I would be too nervous to do such a thing. What if I saw a vision of an ancient, gouty knight with twenty children? We can’t all be as fortunate as you with your handsome Master Green.”

  Violet blushed, and laid her hand over the swell of her belly. “We are wondrously happy now, it’s true, since my mother-in-law moved to her dower house. But that only makes me want to see my friends equally well matched! Have you had no suitors since I was last at court?”

  “Nay, not a one. There is no one new at all. There is no more room at court for ambitious young lords. And if there were, they would all be in love with the queen herself.”

  As Kate snipped off the end of a branch with her dagger, she thought about Queen Elizabeth in the past months, as they had moved from Windsor to Richmond to Whitehall. After the frivolity of the summer progress, the queen’s pale oval face had taken on a newly solemn expression, and she spent many more hours in meetings with her privy council and poring over her stacks of documents. Yet there were still days at the hunt and nights dancing, still suitors and sonnets.

  And still Robert Dudley, richly arrayed and ready to pour lavish gifts at Elizabeth’s feet.

  “What of the delegations visiting now?” Violet said as she tied off an elaborate bow. “There are so many here. The French are so charming, so well dressed, and they say the Swedes are most generous with their gifts to anyone who will help them in their prince’s suit. Or the Scots! Some of them are quite handsome indeed. Very tall, such good dancers. You could marry one of them!”

  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 enjoyabl
e 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.”