Where was John? she wondered with a spasm of fear. Was he in danger somewhere? What could she do to help him? She feared there was nothing she could do, not unless he told her all. Not unless they could trust each other, as they had so instinctively in Ireland.
She took another sip of her wine and nearly spilled it on her own pale blue bodice as the doors to the hall burst open in a flurry of drums. Acrobats tumbled through, somersaulting in a blur of brilliantly coloured silks and spangles, tinkling with bells. They rolled between the tables, leaping up in dizzying leaps and twirls.
Behind them marched Lord Merton in his role as Lord of Misrule, fantastically attired in a multi-coloured cloak and tall hat crowned with scarlet plumes. He rattled a staff of bells as the acrobats swirled around him.
Ellen stiffened next to Alys and Alys shot her a curious glance. Ellen quickly smiled, but Alys could not forget her friend’s strange reaction in the midst of such frantic merriment.
The Queen rose to her feet and waved her hand for silence. ‘What do you seek here at my palace, sirrah?’
‘I am the Queen’s own Lord of Misrule! The High and Mighty Prince of Purpoole, Duke of Stapulia, Knight of the Most Heroical Order of the Helmet,’ Lord Merton answered. ‘I declare for this Yule that this is my kingdom, the realm of merriment.’
Queen Elizabeth laughed. ‘The realm of chaos! Very well, my Lord of Misrule, let your reign begin. But pay heed, it will only last until Twelfth Night.’
Lord Merton bowed and strode to the Queen’s dais to offer her his hand. He assisted her down the steps and between the tables. They made their way to a tall, velvet-cushioned chair set by the fireplace.
‘How shall your reign begin?’ the Queen asked.
‘With the bringing in of the Yule log, of course.’
‘As it should be. Ladies! To me!’ the Queen called.
Alys followed Ellen and the others as they gathered around the Queen’s chair, finding cushions and stools to sit on. The rest of the courtiers clustered behind them and Alys felt suddenly trapped. She wished John was there, but she was alone in the crowd.
Lord Merton waved his arms and the acrobats scattered to open the doors once more. They soon reappeared, bearing the Yule log on their shoulders, as long and heavy as one of the gilded ceiling beams. Greenery and garlands tied with fluttering red ribbons bedecked the sturdy oak.
‘What then doth make the element so bright? The heavens are come down upon earth to live!’ Lord Merton sang as the log was lowered into the fireplace. ‘Who has the embers from last year to set the light?’
As one of the pages stepped forward with a torch to start the new fire, Lord Merton paraded around the crowd with his staff of bells. He sometimes stopped and twirled one of the ladies around, but when he came to Ellen she shook her head and turned away.
‘Now,’ Lord Merton said, ‘I command those of you whom the Queen calls on to tell your favourite Christmas memory.’
Queen Elizabeth laughed, the jewels of her gown glittering in the light. She looked younger in the shadows and flickering flames, her make-up a smooth mask, her smile wide. ‘Who do you say shall go first, Lord of Misrule?’
‘Your Majesty herself, of course.’
The Queen stared into the fire for a long moment and seemed very far away. ‘I do remember the year I was summoned to Hampton Court by my father, old King Harry,’ she said. ‘His new Queen was Catherine Parr, who was very beautiful and kind, and who loved celebrating Christmas. There were dances and music, fine clothes, but also much reading of the new faith. I did learn so much from Queen Catherine that Yule season and it has stayed with me these many years.’
For a long moment, there was a heavy silence in the room, as if everyone remembered the dark days that followed the light of Queen Catherine. Then the Queen snapped her fingers as if to break the spell. ‘What of you, Master Ambassador de Castelnau? How do you celebrate in Paris?’
Around the room went the thread of Christmas tales, from ambassador to earl to lady, until it came to Alys. ‘What of my newest lady, then? Lady Alys Drury?’ the Queen said. ‘How do you celebrate the season in Ireland?’
Alys was shocked by the sudden sound of her own name and she felt her cheeks turn warm as everyone turned to look at her. She opened her mouth and to her embarrassment nothing came out.
‘It must be wild there indeed,’ Sir Walter Terrence said. ‘Do you even have music?’
Alys laughed, her embarrassment broken by the absurdity. ‘Of course we do. I learned to play the lute when I was a child. We decorate the halls there just as here and have feasting and dancing. It is too cold to stray far from the hearth.’
‘Just like tonight,’ Ellen said.
‘But we do have our memories to keep us warm,’ the Queen said wistfully. ‘Well, Lord of Misrule, play your music again! We will have no sad faces this night, only merriment.’
* * *
Something startled Alys awake out of a dreamless sleep, something like a noise or movement. For a moment, she lay there perfectly still, a bit disoriented from being jolted from darkness to waking.
She blinked and sat up against her bolsters. She was not in her lonely chamber at Dunboyton, but in the crowded maids’ dormitory at Greenwich. Usually the long, narrow space was full of chaos and noise, ladies dressing and laughing and quarrelling. Now, in the deepest darkness of night, all was silent. The ladies slept beneath their blankets, still and peaceful.
Except for one. The bed beside Alys’s was empty. Ellen was gone, her quilts tossed back, her bolsters askew.
Alys sat up on the edge of her own bed and carefully studied the quiet room. No one moved at all. She waited a moment, in case Ellen had merely left the room for the privy and would soon return.
But she did not. Alys padded across the room to the window and climbed up on the clothes chest to peer outside. The moon cast the empty gardens in silver, like a statue. At first, she thought they were as quiet as the palace, but then she glimpsed a blur of movement along the wall. A flash of light in the darkness, Ellen’s red-gold hair loose over her shoulders, Ellen wrapped in a light-coloured fur. Her head was buried in her hands and she seemed to be crying. No one else was around.
Alys quickly wrapped a shawl over her chemise and stuffed her feet into her boots. Her heart beat quickly; she knew she should not venture out of the palace, but she couldn’t leave Ellen alone. She ran down the stairs and past the snoozing guards at the doors, out into the garden. The wind hit her like an icy blast, catching at her hair, but she pushed past it and soon found Ellen huddled by the wall. Her sobs racked her slender shoulders.
‘Ellen, whatever is amiss?’ Alys cried, running to her friend’s side. She took Ellen’s arm and felt her shivering in the cold.
Ellen looked up, her eyes wide. At first she didn’t seem to see Alys there, but then she collapsed, falling back against the wall. ‘Oh, Alys,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I’m glad you found me. I was lost.’
‘You lost your way from the palace?’ Alys said, confused.
‘Aye, so many things.’ Ellen buried her face in her hands. ‘You are so lucky, Alys.’
‘Lucky?’ Alys managed to lead her towards the pathway. Ellen followed, as if she didn’t know where she went.
‘To have a kind father and no siblings. You should go back to him, you know. Away from this place. It is only vipers here, you know.’
‘It’s all right now,’ Alys murmured, completely confused. ‘You are freezing. Come, let’s find you some wine.’
Ellen went with her back to the maids’ chamber and let Alys pour some wine and wrap her in blankets. Ellen soon feel asleep, but Alys could not find slumber again at all. Vipers. Poor Ellen. What could be so wrong for her? And would the same snake soon come snapping for Alys, too?
Chapter Nineteen
The G
reat Hall was even more splendid than usual for the Queen’s masked ball. Vast swathes of red-and-gold cloth were draped from the ceilings, forming a canopy above the dance floor that seemed to enclose them in some exotic tent. As the ladies processed into the hall, which was already lined with gentlemen in gold-and-silver masks that gleamed in the light, the Queen rose on her dais at the end of the room.
‘Tonight, we shall dance a candle bransle, which was a favourite of the court for Christmas when I was a girl,’ she announced. ‘And I say we all must dance! No wallflowers this night.’
The Queen took one of her page’s hands and climbed down the steps, moving among her courtiers as she matched people up, according to their masks. A gentleman with the visage of a Green Man went with a lady in a gown embroidered with ferns and leaves; two jesters in blue-and-green motley were matched. Alys reached up and felt the edge of her plain white mask, wondering if it meant she would be unmatched.
Or that she could wait for John to find her, though she wasn’t sure how she would know him with a mask and hooded cloak.
‘My Lady Alys, would you do me the honour of partnering me for this dance?’
She spun around to see a man standing right behind her. He was tall and well muscled, but she knew it was not John. The beard was too pale below the edge of the elaborate gold mask, the doublet too stylish in its green-and-gold puffs. She thought it had to be Lord Merton and somehow the thought of taking his hand made her want to back away.
‘I thought we were all meant to be anonymous tonight, sirrah,’ she said, trying to be as light and teasing as she noticed were the other ladies, as they laughed with their partners and tried to guess their identities.
‘I fear a lady of your beauty could never be unknown,’ he answered. ‘If I have offended...’
‘Not at all. Surely such a compliment deserves a dance.’
Alys slowly took his offered hand and let him lead her into the forming dance set. They could not begin until the Queen took her place to lead the figures and Elizabeth was still strolling around the hall, matching up couples. Pages dashed around, lighting everyone’s candles for the dance as the musicians tuned their instruments.
Alys studied the people gathered around her, the press of gilded masks and rich satins gleaming in the candlelight. It all made the scene so strange and mysterious, like something glimpsed in a dream. But she did not see John amid the crowd. Nor did she see Lady Ellen, though she had left the chamber before Alys did, in a distinctive autumnal-coloured gown.
The musicians launched into the lively music of the old dance, one Alys only remembered from her childhood. Luckily, most of the intricate steps began with the man and she could follow along easily. The man of each partner, his lighted candle held high in one hand, spun and hopped towards his lady, a series of intricate steps that ended in a low bow. The ladies then curtsied and danced to meet their partners, their skirts swaying around them.
Her partner took her hand to lead her in the turn and Alys thought he held her too tightly, peered at her too closely from behind the cover of his mask. She stumbled a little in another spin.
‘You should take care, my lady,’ he said. ‘There is some danger in this hall for those who are unwary. For those who don’t know the secrets.’
‘The—the secrets of the dance?’ she answered. She did not like the dark tone of his voice at all. She thought of Ellen and her vipers. Ellen had declared she must have been sleepwalking in the night and laughed Alys’s concerns away, but those words haunted her.
‘Any secrets, of course. They are not the fit province of ladies, anyway.’
‘Then what is?’
‘Dancing, of course.’ He turned her again, a spin under his arm that took her too close to the candle’s flame. ‘Choose your dance partners, and your friends, ever wisely.’
They turned once more and he handed off the candle to her next partner. Fortunately he was a small, slim, leaping man, one with no strange menace behind his mask, and Alys laughed at his antics. They did their series of steps and she spun away to the next partner, and the next. As she turned again, she caught a glimpse of John at last, in the crowd of people at the edge of the room who did not dance. She knew it was him, despite the plain black mask he wore, the short cloak that shrouded his hair and shoulders.
But as she spun around yet again, her head whirling, she lost sight of him.
Her breath felt squeezed in her lungs, pinched by her new satin bodice, and her heart pounded so loudly she could hardly hear the music as it wound faster and faster. The lights of the dancers’ candles seemed to flare in front of her eyes, blinding her. She felt like a wild bird, beating her wings against a cage, longing to soar free over the Galway cliffs again.
She wanted to be the innocent, unwary girl who had first met John again, wanted their strange, idyllic days at the abbey once more. Court was too confusing for one such as her.
She stumbled out of the patterns of the dance and fled the hot press of the great hall. She didn’t know where she was going, she just wanted to hide and find herself again.
She ducked behind one of the sparkling tapestries and wedged herself into the small sanctuary space between the cloth and the panelled wall. She closed her eyes and let the muffled roar of the party rush over her. The contrast between the glittering, artificial party and her old life at Dunboyton was so sharp in that moment, so poignant, she almost cried for it.
‘Cease this at once,’ she whispered fiercely to herself. The old, practical, Irish Alys would never have been so sad.
Suddenly, the noise turned loud again as the tapestry was swept aside and Aly’s eyes flew open. She was no longer alone in her sanctuary; John had followed her.
She had only a glimpse of his tall, lean figure, outlined by the torchlight, before the cloth dropped behind him and they were alone in their own dark little world.
He smelled like her John, of clean, light citrus and fine velvet, and he felt as she had felt him for so long in her dreams, warm and strong, a rock between her and what she feared. He was her Juan still in so many ways and yet also such a stranger, one who played games in this dangerous courtly world she could not yet fathom. Her instincts told her he was no villain, but she feared he was involved in something too complicated for her. She backed up until she felt the wall holding her up.
‘Alys?’ he said gently. ‘Are you ill?’
‘Nay, I...’ She swayed dizzily. Maybe she was ill. She knew she was uncertain in her heart and she didn’t like that feeling. She didn’t know what to do when she was with him, but she knew she had to be brave now. ‘It was so crowded, I could not quite breathe.’
‘It’s not like Galway, is it? No world could be as different. I do not wonder you had to step away.’
Alys nodded. He did understand, the way her homesickness warred with her curiosity, her fears. ‘I feel I am always lost here,’ she blurted out. ‘That I never really know what is happening.’
His arms came around her, drawing her close to him, and at last she did feel safe, even as she wondered if he was the one she should fear the most. She rested her forehead against the soft velvet of his doublet and closed her eyes. For just an instant, she could pretend they were alone in Ireland again, in their quiet little room, with all the danger of the world closed outside the door.
She felt him kiss the top of her head and she tilted her face up to his. His lips skimmed her brow, her cheek, lightly and sweetly.
At last, his lips touched hers again, and it was just as she remembered—hot and cold all at the same time, as consuming as a wave of the sea, washing over her and carrying her away. Once, twice, as if he too sought the memory of their kisses. And again, deeper, harder, hungrier, and she gasped for more.
That small sound against his lips made him groan and he drew her closer until there was not even a breath between them. Their bodies still fi
t together perfectly, as if they had always been meant to be just that way. As if nothing could tear them apart and in that moment nothing could.
Alys went up on the tips of her toes, her lips parting beneath his. His tongue lightly touched hers, tasting, testing, before he deepened the kiss and it was all she knew.
She wound her arms around his neck, feeling the soft silk of his hair between her fingers, holding on to him tight as if he would fly away from her again. But he was going nowhere now. Their kiss turned desperate, blurry with heat, and full of a need she didn’t even know was there, hidden in her heart.
That need frightened her, yet she craved more and more of it. More of him. She wanted to be so close to him that everything else vanished for ever and yet she knew the world outside would not be left for ever. It would claim him again, as it had in Ireland.
She tore her lips away from his and backed away. ‘John,’ she gasped. ‘What is this? What is happening?’
‘I don’t know, my dearest Alys,’ he said, his voice rough. He rested his forehead against the wall beside her head, his breath ragged in her ear. ‘I only know I have tried to deny it, to force it away, but it won’t be gone. I have cursed myself for it.’
His words gave her a warm, thrilling feeling, all the way to her toes, yet it also scared her. ‘John, will you not tell me what I have to fear here at court?’
He groaned. ‘I cannot, Alys, not yet. I only—are you to accompany the Queen on her hunt tomorrow?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, bewildered. ‘But why?’
‘Stay close to me, promise me you will, and be most wary,’ he said urgently. His hand sought hers in the shadows and held on to it tightly.
‘I hope I am always wary. But how can I stay close to you when the court is near? The confusion of it all and if there is gossip...’
‘Aye, I know it. Just be most careful. And meet with me tomorrow before the dancing? I will tell you more then.’
QUEEN'S CHRISTMAS SUMMONS, THE Page 18