The Queene’s Christmas Read Free Page B

staged for the court.
    “That Puritan’s presence here these next days will be enough to throw a pall over it all!” Ned protested.
    “Keep your impertinence for the banquet tonight, or I will put a lighted taper in your mouth to keep you quiet,” she retorted, but they exchanged smiles, and Meg giggled. Ned’s eyes darted to the girl; it was evidently the first he had noted her here.
    “Ah, but that’s only for the roasted peacock,” he recovered his aplomb, “and I intend to skewer with barbs and roast with jests everyone else. But there is one thing, Your Grace, a boon I would ask which will enhance, I vow, the entertainments for the court”
    “Say on. Some new juggler or more plans for that mummers’ morality play?” she asked, moving toward the door.
    “To put it succinctly, my former troupe of actors is in town. Lord Hunsdon, patron of the arts that he is, tells me the Queen’s Country Players are performing at the Rose and Crown on the Strand. I’m surprised they have not sought a family reunion yet. Of course, compared to my work here at court, theirs is rustic and provincial, but I thought,” he went on, pursing his lips and shrugging, “if I went to see them, we could arrange a special surprise for Twelfth Night or some such—”
    “A fine idea,” she cut off his rambling. “Is your uncle still at their helm, and that other popinjay, ah…”
    “Randall Greene, Your Grace. I know not, but will inform you as soon as I discover the current state of their affairs.”
    “But don’t be gone long to fetch them. You’re needed here, is he not, Meg?”
    “Oh, yes, Your Grace,” came from the coffer’s depths where it seemed Meg hid her head as if to keep Ned from seeing her. “For all the responsibilities on his shoulders for the Twelve Days, that is,” she added.
    Elizabeth pointed to her writing table, and Ned hastened to take a piece of parchment. He dipped one of the quills in her ink pot, though he dared not plop himself in her chair, at least not until he began his reign as Lord of Misrule. That so-called King of Mockery could get by with anything, however much he was the butt of jokes in return for his own wit.
    “At least you didn’t say you’d stuff an apple in my mouth as if I were the roast boar,” Ned mumbled without looking up as his pen scratched away. “I’d much prefer the lighted taper.”
    She had to laugh. However full of bombast, Ned always made her laugh.
    Meg hoped Ned didn’t realize she was watching every grand and graceful move he made.
    “What are you doing in her coffer?” Ned asked her when the queen left the room. “You seem as busy as I truly am.” He didn’t even look up from his scribbling, although when the door closed behind the queen he scooted his paper before her chair and sat. The man, Meg fumed silently, was always busy at something or other, including chasing women, but never her. Yet there had always been something between them. Ninnyhammer that she was, Meg scolded herself, now that she was wedding Jenks just after the holidays, she’d never know what it was.
    “Just hiding some mistletoe,” she told him. “It’s for Kat’s potent medicine and not for the kissing bunches. Her Grace’s ladies are making them now, and I’ve seen her Lady Rosie go through her coffers more than once.”
    “Fancy fripperies, kissing bunches. But, you know, one thing I remember about my mother,” he said with a sigh, “is that she’d always hang little cloth figures of Mary, Joseph, and the Christ child in the hoops, so she’d never let my father kiss or pinch her under them, mistletoe or no. She’d have made a good Puritan, eh?”
    “Unlike her son,” Meg bantered, always striving with Ned to give as good as she got.
    “Maybe you should make a kissing bunch just for Jenks.”
    She looked across the chamber at him when she had been trying not to, and, silent for once, Ned glanced up at that moment Their gazes snagged. Silence reigned but for the