Free The Queene’s Christmas by Karen Harper Page A

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.
    “I did,” he said, turning back, “but assumed it was made by his bumping against or falling on something—a corner of his work-table or a fancy bowl, though I overheard the coroner say it seemed to resemble a fancy sword hilt, one molded or sculpted, but I deemed the latter quite impossible.”
    “I appreciate your help and discretion in this delicate matter. There will be nothing more right now,” she told him, as she recalled the constant rattle of Sussex’s ceremonial sword. The problem was, Elizabeth thought, not so much that Master Stout was clever only in the kitchen but that he could not conceive of evil in his narrow realm as she could in her broader one.
    The three of them thoroughly searched the room for what might have been used to hit Hodge. They found nothing telltale or unusual on the floor, worktable, or shelves, or even aloft in the hanging kettles and pots she had Jenks peer into while he stood on the very stool the murderer had perhaps used to tie the noose and hoist Hodge.
    “What was that low, growling sound?” Jenks cried, looking under the table again. “Not the wind?”
    “It’s my stomach,” the queen muttered. “I should have eaten more at dinner, and that hippocras helped me not one whit.”
    “This search is a dead end,” Cecil said, “if you’ll excuse the pun.”
    “We must conclude that the murderer took the weapon with him,” Elizabeth said with a sigh. “If we find it, we may find our man, but exactly what are we looking for? If only we still had the body, I’d take a close look at that blow myself.”
    “If you’re up to it,” Cecil said, “we could go look, as the corpse is not far from here. You never asked me where we had the coroner stow Hodge, so I didn’t think you wanted to know. The ground’s so frozen, he can’t be buried until it thaws, though, at least, it sounds now as if the poor wretch is headed for a grave in hallowed ground instead of some potter’s field with self-slayers.”
    “Then where is he?” she asked. “Surely, not in the palace proper and not in my kitchens!”
    “In the boathouse on the riverbank.”
    “Is it locked or guarded?”
    “A guard would freeze out there. It’s barred and locked, yes, with all your barges off the ice now, but I still have the extra key” he said and, with a taut smile, produced it on his jingling chain of them.
    “Bring that largest lantern, Jenks,” she said, redonning Megs cloak, “and, my lord, we’ll need another.” As they went out into the corridor, Stout stood there with a laden tray.
    “I’ve been waiting to offer you a late-night repast when you emerged,” he explained, his eyes darting among the three of them in the light of the two lanterns they carried. On the tray were tankards of beer, no doubt much like the ones the staff was enjoying now, and a little plate of cheese tarts—no, they were those lemon custard ones everyone called Maids of Honor she’d passed over earlier this evening.
    “I know you like these, Your Majesty,” Stout said, “and you did not eat a great deal at the Christmas Eve feast.”
    She merely nodded and, despite their terrible task ahead; reached for a tart Murder or not,