‘Holly and ivy, box and bay, put in the house for Christmas Eve! Fa-la-la-la...’
Catherine smiled at the familiar song. It reminded her of Christmases past at home, when she and her father would gather greenery from the park and she and her mother would tie them into wreaths and swags. It distracted her from her own brooding doubts since the Tower.
All the Queen’s young Maids of Honour were assigned to decorate the Great Hall for the Christmas Eve feast. Long tables were covered with piles of holly, ivy, mistletoe and boughs of sweetly scented evergreen, along with every colour of ribbon and spangle.
They were supposed to work together efficiently to turn them into wreaths, but efficiency didn’t seem to be the order of the day. Most of the ladies sang out of tune as they worked, often leaping up to do a dance or twirl with their ribbons like Morris dancers at a country fair.
Catherine laughed at their antics. She glanced over at her mother, who sat sewing by the fire with Queen Mary and Mistress Clarencius while the Queen’s dogs played about their feet. Even her mother smiled at the music, and seemed content, though Catherine had heard her crying and praying over her rosary in the darkest of the night.
Catherine tied a bow on the wreath she had just finished and had a memory of her mother leaning over when she was a child, helping her clumsy infant hands with the slippery fabric as they both laughed.
She also remembered once glimpsing her parents standing in a close embrace under a kissing bough. How they had leaned into each other, smiling into each other’s eyes before her mother reached up on tiptoe for a kiss.
Catherine felt a sad pang at remembering that tender moment and to know that once she had dreamed of such a thing for herself, too.
‘Is that a kissing bough you’re making, Jane?’ Cecily asked.
Jane held up her handiwork, a delicate sphere of greenery. ‘My grandmother taught me how to fashion one at our house in Buckinghamshire. She said that when she was a girl, it was rumoured that if you stood under such a bough with a gentleman at Christmas, you would be in love always.’
Catherine had a flashing image in her mind of Diego, smiling down at her as they held hands under a kissing bough. It was much too alluring and she shook it quickly away.
‘And we do know who would like to be with Jane under the bough this year!’ another Maid teased.
Jane blushed, and turned away to reach for more ribbon. ‘’Tis merely an old tale.’
The doors at the far end of the Hall opened and King Philip appeared with a crowd of attendants, all of them clad in warm clothes for the frosty day outside. He laughed with Ruy Gomez and just behind him were the Count of Feria, Manuelita de Chavez and her husband, and Master Andrew Loades, the pale-haired gentleman whose brother was in the Tower. For some reason Catherine felt uneasy whenever she saw him.
Diego stood just behind them, his dark hair brushed back from his brow beneath a plumed cap, a pair of gloves slapping against his thigh as if he was eager to be outside. He didn’t smile, but his eyes seemed warm as he surveyed the gathering.
Catherine looked away before she could do something as silly as jump up and run to him. To take his hand, or to demand to know what he was doing at the Tower, she wasn’t sure which. She glanced at Jane’s kissing bough and imagined him standing beneath the green sphere, her gazing up at him, at his beautiful lips, longing to know what they would feel like on hers. She imagined her hands on his shoulders, those powerful muscles beneath softest velvet, so warm and strong and alive, sliding her palms down his chest as his lips lowered to hers...
Master Andrew stopped at the table to examine their work. He pinched Cecily’s cheek, making her giggle, and reached for a sprig of dark green holly. ‘They say if the holly leaves are rounded, the lady shall rule the house. If barbed, then ’tis the lord.’
‘And which is this?’ Jane asked.
Master Andrew ran his thumb over the glossy leaf. ‘Barbed, of course, as is the natural way.’
‘I doubt the Queen would agree with that,’ Jane retorted.
The King knelt beside the Queen. ‘My dear wife,’ he said in Spanish. He kissed his wife on her cheek, making her blush like a girl. ‘It’s a sunny enough day outside at last and I am venturing out to the countryside to find a fine Yule log, and to give my advisers an afternoon free. You should join me. The little one needs fresh air to help him grow strong. Is that not so, Mistress Clarencius? Lady Greaves?’
Queen Mary gave her deep laugh. ‘Would you call for a sleigh, Husband?’
‘Your Majesty, you must not!’ Mistress Clarencius said sternly. ‘It’s much too cold. You catch a chill so easily.’
Queen Mary sighed. ‘Perhaps you are right, my wise Susan. But you must go, my dear Jane! You need to be outside, in the sun, having some fun while you are so young. And you can make sure the Yule log is a pretty one.’
Catherine glanced up just in time to see Diego walking towards the gallery. He was obviously also venturing outside. She remembered he said he sometimes strolled on the walkways above the river, and on a whim she decided to follow him.
‘I won’t go out today, Jane, I have some sewing to do this afternoon,’ she said. ‘But I will get a bit of fresh air.’ She dashed outside before anyone could say anything else.
But when she reached the walkway, he had vanished. Her heart sank in cold disappointment and she strolled towards the gallery to find a quiet moment alone. Outside the window, she caught a glimpse of him again—climbing into a boat that turned down the river towards the Tower.
‘What then doth make the elements so bright? The heavens are come down upon earth to live!’
A dozen of the Queen’s strongest men carried the Yule log into the Great Hall. It was as large and stout as the gilded ceiling beams high overhead. Greenery and garlands bound up with red ribbons adorned the wood, which would be lowered into the largest fireplace to burn until Twelfth Night.
Catherine wondered what her own fate would be after Christmas. Would she and her mother return to their lonely home, without her father?
Yet there was no time for gloomy thoughts that night. Catherine laughed as she watched the log paraded around the cheering crowd, its bright streamers waving merrily, until it came before the King and Queen, who sat in their velvet-cushioned chairs near the fire, holding hands.
Catherine glimpsed Diego standing behind the King, his face aglow with laughter, and she caught her breath. She couldn’t help but stare at him there in the firelight, but she turned away before he could catch her gaping like a country maid.
‘Who has the embers from last year to set the light?’ Lord Rochester, the Queen’s comptroller, called. A pageboy stepped forward with a glowing torch. ‘I do now command those of you whom Queen Mary calls upon to tell your favourite Christmas memory.’
The Queen laughed happily, her cheeks pink in the firelight. She looked ten years younger that night. ‘Who do you command should go first, my lord?’
He bowed. ‘Why, Your Majesty must favour us yourself, of course.’
The Queen laughed and told a story of when she was a very little girl and the Venetian ambassador had visited her father’s Court. ‘And I did love the tunes of his Italian musicians so very much that I broke away from my nurse and ran back to the lute player, begging him to play just one more song! My mother indulged me and let me stay there long after I should have been abed.’
‘Thus you still love music,’ her husband said.
‘So I do,’ Queen Mary said with a laugh. ‘But tell us, Husband, your own favourite Yule tale.’
King Philip related a story of his own childhood, of his long-dead mother’s garden and a choir of nuns who would sing beneath her window at night until the hour of the Christ child’s own birth, when he and his sisters would toss them sweetmeats and oranges. ‘But Don Diego’s home was in Andalusia, the land of the finest feast days,’ King Philip finished. ‘Perhaps he may tell us more.’
‘I recall a game even my grandfather’s generation enjoyed in their youth,’ Diego said. ‘El Tio—simple but lively, with a hollowed-out log filled with sweets. The children knock it about, energetically and noisily, until it breaks and spills out all its treasures. My grandfather said it taught us well how to hit a target with a sword, but my grandmother would declare he only wanted to share in the sweets.’
Queen Mary laughed with everyone else and laid her hand on her belly as she so often did, as if she imagined her own child playing such a game. ‘I dare say you excelled at this game, Don Diego.’
‘I hit my mark often enough, Your Majesty, but I think my daughter may surpass me this year. Her aim last year was remarkable.’ His smile turned wistful, as if he missed her so much in that moment, and Catherine longed to go and take his hand.
‘My cousin’s daughter is quite the prettiest child ever seen, Your Majesty,’ Manuelita said.
‘She must come to England as soon as she is old enough, then, and tell me of all the traditions of a Spanish childhood,’ Queen Mary said. ‘I must incorporate some into my own nursery, would you not say so, my dear?’ She smiled at her husband, who squeezed her hand as more of the courtiers told their favourite Yule tales.
Catherine looked for Diego after the storytelling, as everyone chatted and laughed together while the pages passed around goblets of wine.
‘Mistress Greaves,’ someone said and she turned to find Andrew Loades smiling at her.
‘Master Loades,’ she said warily.
‘So you do remember me? We were neighbours in Kent, though it was my brother Robert who was mostly at your house.’
‘Of course,’ she said. She did remember Robert Loades, he was in the Tower with her father now, his house just beyond the garden of her father’s. Though their family had never been so close to the Greaveses before.
‘I know you haven’t been at Whitehall long,’ he said quietly, stepping close to her. Too close. ‘But I feel, for your father’s sake, I must warn you.’
‘Warn me?’
‘Court ways now are not the ways of true Englishmen and women. There are many elements to be careful of here.’ He looked over at Diego and the Count of Feria. ‘The way matters stand today may not be as they are tomorrow. A delicate lady such as yourself naturally must wish to see the best in all people...’
‘Are we not all God’s children, Master Loades?’ Catherine said sharply, fearing he trod perilously close to treasonous talk now. She had learned indeed from her father; she wanted nothing to do with such things.
His smile turned gentle. ‘Perhaps—not all? I only wish to make sure you are on your guard. As an old neighbour, and one who admires your father.’
Catherine nodded brusquely. ‘That is indeed kind. I shall take your words under great advisement.’ She curtsied as he bowed, then turned and hurried away as quickly as she could.