A VERY TUDOR CHRISTMAS

by Amanda McCabe

  “Meg!” Beatrice whispered, almost crushing Meg’s sleeve with her enthusiasm. “Did you hear that? You could serve the queen.”

  Meg had indeed heard it—she just couldn’t quite believe it. Her, go to court? She couldn’t even wrap her thoughts around it. It was true that once her grandmother had served one of old King Henry’s queens, and her father sometimes went to court to present Queen Elizabeth with a New Year’s gift, but there had never been talk of her doing such a thing.

  And—and if she was truthful to herself—she had to admit that wasn’t why she had hoped the Errolls had come to Clifford. She’d dared hope they came to propose a betrothal.

  Her throat felt thick, but she refused to cry in front of Bea. She should not cry, not over silly dreams.

  But the way his kiss had felt....

  Meg shushed Beatrice again and twisted her head so she could see her parents’ faces. They looked at each other in that quiet way they always had together, as if they could communicate with their gaze alone. It was always maddening to try and decipher what they thought.

  “Our Meg is young yet,” her father said. “And she has little training for a court life. This news is a surprise, and a great honor. We must think about it.”

  Lady Erroll shrugged. “As you think best, of course, Master Clifford. But court is truly the best place to secure a family’s fortune. Our own daughter is but sixteen and has been a maid-of-honor for a year now. And our son...” Her languid voice suddenly turned proud. “Our son has a great career ahead of him. Her Grace is sending him as part of a delegation to Paris. He will be gone for at least a year, and when he returns we have hopes of a very great marriage for him with one of the Howard girls.”

  “If he can cease to be such a care-for-nothing,” Lord Erroll grumbled into his wine. “Running about London with those young bravos....”

  Lady Erroll shot him a scowl. “Robert is young and handsome. Why should he not enjoy himself now? He has a brilliant future ahead of him. The right marriage will surely...”

  Meg could hear no more. She broke away from Bea and scrambled out of the closet. Lifting the heavy hem of her skirt, she ran as fast as she could along the corridors and down the stairs.

  “Mistress Margaret!” a maidservant called as she dashed past. “Wait! I have...”

  But Meg could not stop. She feared her tears would blind her, and worse, people would see them. Her hood tumbled from her head and her hair fell free, but she scarcely noticed.

  On the staircase landing, she paused to catch her breath. She stared out the small window there as she gasped for breath past her stays. The night sky was clear, the stars glittering sharply with the cold, and the moon gleamed on the rutted driveway beneath. Everything was perfectly still, as if frozen.

  Suddenly there was one spark of movement, just beyond the line of trees that led to the gates. Meg went up on tiptoe, trying to see what it was.

  For just an instant, a stray beam of moonlight caught on a figure on horseback. A face, pale in the night, peered up at the house from beneath the plumes of a fashionable cap.

  Meg’s heart pounded again, and she felt the spark of excitement, of distant hope, break over her cold disappointment. Robert Erroll—it had to be. Had she not seen that very hat tumble from his head only that afternoon?

  She ran down the stairs and through the doors into the cold night. But there was no one there, no horse, no plumes, only the brush of the wind through the bare trees.

  “Hello?” she called. “Are you out there?” Nothing. And her hopes plummeted yet again.

  “Meg!” Beatrice cried, and Meg spun around to see her cousin running out of the house after her. “Why did you leave like that?”

  Beatrice’s golden hair shimmered in the night, and her blue eyes looked big and shocked in her pretty child’s face. Meg suddenly felt ashamed of her wild behavior, her silly hopes that a man like Robert Erroll, a man going to France on a mission for the queen and with a future marriage to a Howard, could have had serious intentions toward her. It had all been a foolish dream. Lady Erroll was right: they all had to look to their own futures.

  But, oh! It had been such a sweet dream while it lasted.

  Meg walked slowly back to Bea, her feet feeling as heavy and slow as an old woman’s. She took her cousin’s arm and smiled at her, glad of the covering darkness.

  “I just needed some fresh air,” Meg said as they turned toward the house. “It was very stuffy in that closet.”

  “But isn’t it exciting, Meg?” Beatrice said, bouncing on her toes. “You might go to court, to see the queen herself! You will dance and sing, and have such pretty clothes....”

  Meg had to laugh at Bea’s bubbling enthusiasm. She knew she should feel it herself, and perhaps she would soon enough. If she could let go of her silly dream of being Lady Erroll.

  “It’s surely not certain I will go yet,” Meg said.

  “Oh, you will! And maybe one day, when I’m older, I shall join you there. Wouldn’t that be so merry, Meg?”

  “Aye,” Meg answered quietly. Before they went back through the doors, she glanced back one more time. But the garden was still empty. Surely he had never been there at all. “Merry indeed.”

  * * *

  Robert drew in his horse once he was sure he was hidden by the trees and looked back to the moonlit house. Margaret still stood poised on the doorstep, staring out at the driveway, and for an instant he was sure she saw him there. The wind toyed with the dark satin fall of her brown hair and caught at her skirts. She rubbed at her arms as if she was cold, but she didn’t turn away.

  And he had to fight himself with every ounce of strength he possessed not to wheel his horse around and gallop back to her.

  “God’s blood,” he muttered as his fists tightened on the reins. He knew it was a bad idea for him to come to Clifford Manor, but he couldn’t help himself. He had to see her again, and he’d been so sure that once he did he would realize that whatever strange enchantment she’d cast over him when they’d danced was just that—an illusion.

  How could it be otherwise? The queen’s court was crowded with beautiful women, witty, sophisticated women it was all too easy to laugh with and tease. To lure to his bed.

  And Margaret Clifford was so young, so wide-eyed, so free of courtly guile. When his sister had teasingly suggested he dance with the “country mouse,” he’d thought it might be amusing for a few minutes.

  Never could he have anticipated how it would all feel. Her trembling hand in his, the dark eyes looking up at him, her smile, her lithe grace. Her laughter, so open and real, unlike the practiced trill of those court ladies. Enchantment indeed.

  And when they’d walked around the hall together after their dance, she’d asked him what he did at the court and he found himself telling her things he had hardly dared even think of. Of dreams and ambitions his parents and friends thought him too indolent to pursue.

  Yet Margaret had listened, asked him solemn questions—believed him. Robert had never known such a feeling.

  And that was why he could not go back to her now, no matter how much he longed to. If he went back now, begged her to be his, presented his suit to her parents, he would know he wasn’t worthy of her. He had to prove himself in order to win her. To give her the life her pure heart and true beauty deserved. His family had a fine name but no fortune now. They thought he should marry an heiress to help them, but he was sure he had the keys to their salvation within himself.

  He had to, if he wanted to marry where he chose.

  This voyage to France was the first step. He would show the queen, his family, Margaret, that he could do so much more than dance and preen around court. He would make his fortune, then come back for her when they could be truly together.

  The note he had given the maidservant to deliver to Meg would surely tell her w
hat he could not say face-to-face. He could only pray now that she would wait for him, would write to him that she felt the same.

  “Wait for me, fair Margaret,” he whispered, and spurred his horse into a gallop, leaving Clifford Manor behind.

  * * *

  “Nay, we mustn’t!” the maidservant said with a giggle. She backed away from the footman until her hips rested at the stone edge of the well in the kitchen garden, hoping he could see her bosom in the moonlight, prettily displayed above the edge of her smock. He had to follow her now!

  And he did. He seized her around the waist, dragging her close to him as she giggled even louder. He growled as he buried his face in her bosom, his beard tickling.

  As he tossed her apron aside, the contents of her pockets—a bundle of herbs, a handkerchief and a folded note—tumbled unseen into the well....

  Chapter Two

  London, December 1571

  “Can you believe it, Meg? We are to be goddesses!”

  Meg smiled at Bea as her cousin took her arm and pulled her through the doors of Cecil House in Covent Garden. They were part of a flock of young ladies and gentlemen of the court recruited to perform in a masque celebrating the upcoming wedding of William Cecil, Lord Burghley’s, daughter Anne to the handsome Earl of Oxford. Lord Burghley was the queen’s chief secretary and closest adviser, and the earl the most eligible of noble bachelors. It was the wedding of the year, an essential event in the Christmas festivities, and to perform in the masque was a great honor, a chance to be seen in front of the whole crowd.

  But Meg would just as soon not be seen. After nearly three years of being at court for part of every year, she had found the chiefest joy there to be in observing all that went on. The people surrounding Queen Elizabeth were like a swirl of brilliantly colored glass, dazzling, gorgeous, enticing, but liable to cut if touched.

  “I am just here to chaperone you, Beatrice,” she said. She held onto Bea’s hand as the other masquerade actors crowded into the entrance hall around them. Bea was always liable to dash off when she became too excited. And, being somewhat new to court and eager to see and do everything, Bea was always excited.

  Like now. Bea held tightly to Meg’s hand as she stared around her with bright eyes, taking in the rich tapestries covering the linenfold-paneled walls, the thick carpets underfoot, the blazing fire in the grate that all chased away the icy day outside the grand edifice of Cecil House.

  Beatrice bounced on her toes. Meg smiled at her, and wondered if she herself had ever been half so excited by life, half so eager to rush out and grab onto its glittering promise with both hands. Perhaps when she first came to court, first saw the queen and all the bejeweled splendor around her?

  Nay, Meg remembered sadly. When she first came to court, she’d been too cast down by the loss of a handsome man who was never hers to begin with. Who had only been a silly girl’s dream.

  A man who never came back from France, but proved himself so valuable to the queen that she sent him on to Venice and thence to the wilds of Muscovy, where he formed alliances and gained royal honors. Lady Erroll was always boasting of her illustrious son.

  But Meg was glad he didn’t come back. He would only remind her of how silly she’d once been. Now she was too busy, too responsible, too old to have such fancies. As she’d said to Bea, she was only here to play chaperone now. Beatrice would surely make the glittering marriage Meg could not.

  “Nonsense, Meg!” Beatrice cried, at last turning her attention from the grand house and swinging around to smile at Meg. “You are no elderly spinster to spend your days clucking at wild young folk. You are much too pretty for that.”

  “Not even a fraction as pretty as you, Bea,” Meg said fondly, tucking back a strand of her cousin’s golden hair that had fallen from her velvet cap. “That is why I must keep an eye on you.”

  “Nonsense, I say! I am perfectly sensible, dearest cuz. I know better than to listen to their blandishments.” Bea tossed her pretty head disdainfully toward the young swains who watched her. “I will take nothing less than marriage, and a grand one, too. Just like Anne Cecil.”

  Meg thought of Anne Cecil, the reason they were all there on this cold day, to rehearse festivities for her grand nuptials. Her match was outwardly a splendid one indeed—the handsome young Earl of Oxford. But Mistress Anne was barely fifteen, sheltered and carefully educated by her protective and powerful parents, and the earl was known as a fiery-tempered troublemaker. Mistress Anne would be a countess, true, but would she find happiness?

  That was what Meg wanted for sweet Beatrice. Happiness.

  “Just be sure you choose a good man, Bea,” she admonished. “A kind one who will know what a great treasure he has in you.”

  “We must find such a man for you first, Meg,” Bea answered. “You are surely not too old to marry.”

  Meg laughed. “It’s true I have no need of a walking stick just yet. But I have met no man at court whose company I could bear for more than an hour altogether.”

  Bea’s eyes widened. “Is it because of Master Ambrose? It was so sad...”

  Meg shook her head. When, more than a year ago, her parents proposed a match between Meg and the son of the Ambrose family, she had tentatively agreed. Why not? Her dreams of grand romance were gone, and Master Ambrose seemed nice enough. When their barely month-old betrothal was ended by his sudden passing from a fever, she had felt only sadness for his poor family.

  And realization that she probably was not meant to be married.

  “I have recovered from all that,” Meg assured her cousin. “I am entirely attentive to finding a good match for you.”

  Before Bea could answer, Mildred Cecil, Lady Burghley, wife of the chief secretary, appeared at the top of the stairs. All conversation and laughter immediately quieted, for the tall, long-nosed, stern-eyed Lady Burghley was formidable indeed. She gathered the fur edges of her black velvet robe closer around her as she studied the courtiers gathered in her hall.

  Her daughter Anne hovered behind her, a small, pale-faced girl whose light brown hair and tawny silk gown blended her into the paneled walls.

  “Thank you all for coming here today,” Lady Burghley said. “The wedding is only days away and there is much work to be done. If you will follow me...”

  Lady Burghley swept down the stairs, Anne hurrying behind her, as servants in the green-and-gold Cecil livery leaped to open the doors to the great hall. Meg and Beatrice were swept along by the crowd into the cavernous space.

  There was scarcely time to take in the painted beams of the ceiling high overhead, the glowing tapestries of red, blue and green, or the glittering plate piled on the tiered and carved buffets pushed back against the walls. They were hurried to the far end of the long room to where a stage had been built for the wedding masques.

  Servants were still putting the finishing touches on the painted scenery, and seamstresses were huddled over yards of carnation silk and gold satin for the costumes.

  “This is the Grove of Diana,” Lady Burghley said with an impatient wave at the still-unfinished painted trees. “Over there shall be the Bower of Flora, and there the House of Night. We shall need nine Knights of Apollo, nine Hours of Night, nine...”

  Suddenly the doors to the hall opened again, and Lady Burghley frowned at the group who dared to arrive late. Everyone else craned their necks and went up on tiptoe to try and see. The ladies broke into giggles, hastily muffled.

  Bea was no different. “Look, Meg!” she whispere
d excitedly. “’Tis Peter Ellingham.”

  Meg bit back a smile. Peter, Lord Ellingham, was a very handsome young man, as golden as Bea and as eager about life. He had been paying much attention to Bea of late, asking her to dance with him at banquets, playing lute duets with her and games of primero, all under Meg’s careful watch. They laughed and gamboled together like pretty puppies.

  Bea pretended not to take him seriously, but Meg wondered. Perhaps Bea, like Anne Cecil, would be a young bride, but only if Lord Ellingham proved himself worthy.

  Meg turned to study the newcomers. Lord Ellingham was indeed there, clad in peacock blue and green, grinning at Bea. With him were his usual friends, young men as good-natured and lighthearted as himself, likely to make fine Knights of Apollo.

  Meg suddenly glimpsed a darker movement at the edge of the crowd, and she turned to study it closer.

  Suddenly the crowded, stuffy room turned freezing cold and she couldn’t move. Her hands shook, and she clenched them in the folds of her skirt. She couldn’t tear her gaze from the man who stood at the edges of Lord Ellingham’s merry group. For it was the one man she had thought—hoped—never to see again.

  It was Robert Erroll.

  Like her, he had grown older in the three years since she’d seen him, but the time sat well on him. His face, framed by a neatly trimmed fashionable goatee, was leaner, even more chiseled, browned and slightly weathered by the sun and snow of his travels. His black hair was longer, swept back from his brow and touching the high black collar of his purple velvet doublet. His hand was curled around a jeweled dagger at his belt, and he watched the enthusiasms of Peter Ellingham and his friends with a small, wry smile on his sensual lips.

  Then his gaze swept over the room—and came to land on her. His eyes, those oh-so-blue eyes she remembered so well, widened a bit as he saw her there. Despite the crowd around her, she felt horribly exposed with nowhere to hide. His smile flashed broader for just an instant. But then a veil quickly fell over his eyes, his smile, leaving nothing but a mask of fashionable boredom. He gave her a small bow.