The Queene’s Christmas by Karen Harper Page B

it,” Stout said, pulling her back to the present “But, you see, ‘twas Hodge’s dream to be a cook and in London, and when he worked his way up in the Tudor kitchens, he never would go home. His mother missed him sore, their only child, I guess. She died last year, and after that his sire would never take the coins Hodge tried to send, a most bitter, unforgiving man, he was, e'en afore his tumble from the roof. But then he got turned out of his home, and right afore holiday time, but a week or so ago, it were.”
    “And all this weighed heavily on Hodge’s mind,” she said. “He told you so?”
    “Not only that,” he said, nodding vigorously, “but I was thinking about that stack of gold leaf. Secretary Cecil here had me talk to the guards at the larder, where we keep the leafing for special displays under lock and key. Seems Hodge told them he needed the entire amount of it on hand to do not only the peacock’s beak but legs and feet, too, special for the queen’s Christmas, he told them.”
    “But I saw the bird’s body was roasted with the legs under it and not leafed as usual,” the queen observed.
    “So did I, Your Grace,” Cecil put in, “not that Hodge could not have stretched the legs out after it was roasted and leafed them over then. But still that stack of leaf was far too much for what he needed.”
    Hardly able to contain her excitement, Elizabeth stood and started to pace. Both men jumped to their feet so as not to sit in her presence. “Are you thinking, Master Stout,” she asked, “that Hodge might have been intending to take or send at least some of that gold leaf to his father so that he might keep his home, or be well tended by someone? Perhaps he contacted his father or heard from him and—even partially paralyzed and homeless—the stubborn man would not accept charity from his son, not even at Christmastide. Hodge rued letting his people down and killed himself? Do I jump too far afield?”
    “My thinking exactly, Your Majesty,” Stout said, “ ‘specially ‘cause of this.”
    He felt in the inside of his new livery doublet first on one side, then the other, until he produced a grease-spattered scrap of paper he carefully unfolded. When he held it out, Cecil reached across the table to take it from him and offer it to the queen.
    “Open and read it, my lord,” she said as her thoughts raced.
    It was possible that Hodge had been despondent over his family problems, she surmised, gripping her hands together. Perhaps when he decided to kill himself, on the spur of the moment, he decked himself out to show whoever found him that he had lived proudly in his place as royal dresser and garnisher, however much his father criticized his chosen trade. And perhaps he had left behind a suicide note.
    “I am having this writ by the sexton of the church,” Cecil read, squinting at the folded paper and tilting it toward the bank of beeswax candles on the table. “Money cannot replace nor buy the time you did not spend with us, come to us, and help me in the proud trade of your for fathers. You made your fancy bed with cooking for the family that ruined the true church. You chose their table finery and all that, so lie in it, that bed you made. You cared not a fig for us, and naught can make up for that now your mother’s gone and I be like this, not even half a man and that without a home.”
    “So cruel, for all of them, and at Christmas,” the queen whispered, stopping her pacing so fast her skirts swayed. She felt a sudden chill and clasped her elbows in her hands. Hodge’s family had hated hers, but Hodge had chosen loyalty to the Tudors. Though this was not the suicide note she had been expecting, sadly, self-slaying seemed entirely possible now.
    “The note’s not signed,” Cecil said with a catch in his voice.
    “I warrant it did not have to be,” she said. “The way it is worded could have sent him off the edge of despair. To lie in that bed, which his father cursed,