How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas (14 page)

I agreed that combination would be attractive. In those days, no one yet decorated hard-boiled candy with vivid colors. Remember, there were no modern machines to shape and color products. Everything had to be done by hand, and, besides, people were still in the primitive stages of learning how to dye clothes, let alone confectionary. But Leonardo da Vinci never had the same limits of imagination as anyone else. He asked if I would go to the market for him and buy beets, since he had noticed recently at dinner that when beet juice was accidentally splashed on clothing, the resulting stain was hard to get out.

“Perhaps this juice can be altered in a way that would allow it to retain the red color without the nasty beet taste,” Leonardo said. “Then I can discover a way to make the color stick to the candy, but not to fingers or clothing. Please, Layla, go to the market and buy some beets for me. I'm anxious to begin my experiments.”

Leonardo did not want to go to the market himself because he didn't want to attract attention. Arthur rarely ventured out in daylight hours for the same reason. They had lived in London now for more than two hundred years, and didn't look a day older than when they had arrived. If too many people saw them often enough to remember them, at some point there would be gossip about why these two fellows apparently never aged. That attention, in turn, might lead to discovery of the toy factory. So it couldn't be risked. Having no real friends besides the other longtime companions was a sacrifice we all had to make. In London, Arthur and Leonardo mostly stayed inside.

I had no such restriction because I didn't always live there. Even after Nicholas and Felix left for the New World, I never moved permanently into the cottage near the London toy factory. I spent much of my time there, to be sure, but I also traveled back to Nuremberg to help out Attila and Dorothea, and, as always, I visited countries in Europe to study their changing Christmas customs and to seek out all the deserving children we would want to reward with gifts. And, unlike Arthur with his forceful personality and Leonardo with his distracted, scholarly airs, I looked and acted perfectly normal. There was nothing remarkable about me. So long as I was careful to keep conversations short and avoid meeting the same people too often, there was little chance they'd even remember me, let alone notice that I never seemed to get older.

It was a sunny summer day, and despite the dusty streets I quite enjoyed my walk from the cottage to the market. Today when people shop in air-conditioned, well-lighted, sterile grocery stores, I think they are missing something. The old outdoor marketplaces of Europe exploded in colors and smells, as people milled about bargaining for squawking chickens and dangling bunches of onions and flapping sets of pantaloons. Vendors set their prices as starting-points for friendly negotiation. If you wanted, let's say, a bushel of apples, you never bought the first ones you saw. Instead, you visited several stands selling the crunchy fruit, and made your final purchase based on which merchant combined the lowest prices with the freshest produce.

I spent many enjoyable minutes shopping for Leonardo's beets, which I placed in a wide basket I held by the handle, and then decided I might buy some fish for our supper, since this marketplace was close by the Thames. It was usually easy to get good prices on freshly caught fish, because they would have just been pulled out of the river and needed to be sold before they spoiled in the heat. In a pleasant sort of way I was telling a vendor he was asking far too much for a few pieces of cod when someone bumped violently against my arm. The basket I was holding overturned, and beets rolled everywhere. I turned and found myself staring into the thin, mournful face of Charles I, recently crowned king of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland after the death of his father, James.

“I do beg your pardon, madam,” Charles said, stammering a little over the
b
and the
p.
He had a slight speech impediment, though it wasn't severe enough to make understanding him difficult. “Here, let my guards pick up those vegetables for you.” He had trouble with the
v,
too.

“Please don't bother, Your Majesty,” I replied, bowing as protocol required but not feeling in any way intimidated by the presence of royalty. After all, in my more than twelve hundred years of life I had met many legendary figures. Charles I might currently rule England, but in a few hours I would be sharing supper with “King” Arthur, not to mention Leonardo da Vinci.

Besides, seeing the king and even speaking to him was not unimaginable in that time and place. Though Charles had several country estates, he often had to be in his capital city to meet with counselors and converse with members of Parliament, the elected body whose permission he required to raise money through taxation. It was a testy relationship. Parliament wanted the king to consult them about all important policy decisions, including if and when to fight wars and how religion should be regulated. Like his father, James, Charles very much believed in the divine right of kings. Parliament, he insisted, should be told what their ruler wanted and then always support his decisions. As we stood face-to-face while some of his soldiers scrambled about retrieving beets, I guessed Charles must be in London because Parliament was in the process of considering his request for money to attack the Spanish port of Cadiz. Of course, he had no reason to come to the marketplace to buy his own food; the king had plenty of servants to do that. But since he was in London anyway, a royal visit to one of its busiest marketplaces made political sense. Common people would have a chance to see their new ruler, and be both pleased by the opportunity and awed by his appearance. Charles was dressed in the finest coat and trousers, and his long brown hair—what you could see of it under a wide, broad-brimmed hat—glowed in the sunshine. His mustache and beard were freshly barbered. The colors the king wore—gold and green and spotless white—were in absolute contrast to the grim blacks and grays of the Puritans. I noticed that even his hands were spotlessly clean, with the nails of his fingers neatly trimmed. A half-dozen guards stood around in close proximity, and I expected Charles, now that he had acknowledged me and seen to it that my vegetables were picked up and put back in my basket, to move on and greet some of his other subjects. Instead, he smiled and continued speaking to me.

“I see you have purchased beets, and now perhaps some fish,” Charles remarked. Having heard his mild stutter, it no longer really distracted me. “Will these be the things you prepare for your family's delicious supper?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, pleased by his courtesy and not wanting to explain the beets were for one of Leonardo's experiments, not dinner. “That is, we'll eat fish if I can convince this merchant to sell me some for a fair price.”

Charles laughed. “I, too, have problems receiving fair prices, and even in getting money to make purchases at all. Parliament is very miserly—often, I fear, to the detriment of our nation. But they will see reason, as this fishmonger will. Now, madam, what is your name?”

“Layla, Your Highness.”

“Layla,” Charles said. “An odd name, certainly. French, perhaps? Italian? Well, no matter. Tell me, what profession does your husband pursue?”

It was not an unusual question. Women of middle age, as I appeared to be, were simply assumed to be married. If I answered the king's inquiry honestly, though, he would believe I was insane, so I simply responded, “Nicholas is across the ocean in the New World colonies, Your Majesty.” I didn't add he'd moved to a Dutch settlement because of his disgust with anti-Christmas rules in the British settlement of Plymouth.

“Well, how wonderful!” Charles said. “My father, of course, was responsible for our first New World colony. They called it Jamestown in his honor. I assume your good spouse will soon send for you. And how do you earn your living while he is so far away?”

I thought of the beets, and Leonardo. “I make candy, Your Majesty,” I told the king. “It's of the new variety flavored with peppermint.”

Charles beamed. “Your new queen is very fond of sweets, and of peppermint candy in particular. It is much more common in her native France than it is here in England. She will be pleased to learn supplies of it may be more convenient than she believed.”

As the king and I talked, a crowd had naturally gathered around us listening to all that was said. When Charles mentioned the queen, there was some angry muttering. Just months after her marriage to Charles, Henrietta Maria was already a very controversial figure. In those times, marriages in royal families were arranged more for political advantage than love. In this case, Charles married Henrietta because she was a princess of France. For the moment, England's chief foreign enemy was Spain, so the British king took a woman of French royal blood as his wife in hopes her country might become an ally against the Spanish if England needed military help. There were two immediate problems with this marriage. One involved the royal couple themselves. Charles was twenty-four, in those times considered a very mature age, since few people lived past fifty. (King James died when he was fifty-nine.) But Henrietta was only fifteen, a grown woman by some standards but still, really, a young girl who did not fall in love with her stuttering, shy husband right away.

Meanwhile, many of the British people, especially the working class, did not like what they knew of Queen Henrietta. Mostly this involved her religion. She was a very devout Catholic. King Henry VIII had rejected the Catholic Church a century earlier, so most current English subjects thought of themselves as Protestants. Part of the formal contract of marriage between Charles and Henrietta stipulated that the new queen must be allowed to continue practicing her Catholic faith. Charles went to a Protestant church, but that wasn't enough to silence the queen's many critics. Puritans especially argued that husbands could be influenced by their wives, and because all Catholics were treacherous, Queen Henrietta must privately be trying to convince the king to return England to the Catholic faith. This was highly unlikely since, in these early days of their marriage, they hardly spoke to each other at all. Yet, as is often the way with hateful, unfair gossip, some people kept repeating that Henrietta was treacherous, and almost everyone else eventually assumed that she was.

“Do you have any of your peppermint treats with you, madam?” Charles inquired. “The queen is in our coach just over there”—he gestured to the edge of the market, where a magnificent carriage drawn by four coal-black horses was guarded by a dozen soldiers—“and she would surely enjoy a tasty surprise.”

I couldn't see the queen inside the carriage. The window curtains were drawn tight, which wasn't surprising, since if the crowd had seen her they might very well have called out insults. I wondered why the king would have brought her along, and decided he was trying, honestly though probably uselessly, to show his subjects that their queen was a normal woman rather than the scheming monster her critics proclaimed her to be.

Henrietta

“I have none with me, Your Majesty,” I answered.

Charles looked disappointed. “Well, then, perhaps you will at some future date. Please, madam, prepare some of your finest confectionary and bring it to the palace some time when Her Majesty and I are in residence. Identify yourself as Layla the Peppermint Woman, and if it is a convenient time you will be admitted. And don't fear—I will pay a fair price for your product.”

“It would be my pleasure to offer the candy as a gift, Your Highness,” I replied, and bowed again. I could see that the king's guards clearly wanted him to move on, and Charles, too, looked ready to leave. Just as he turned away, though, I thought of something else.

“May I ask a question, Your Majesty?” I called out.

Now, this bordered on rudeness, and even on being dangerous. It was one thing for me to speak after the king had spoken first, but quite another to address him when the conversation he had begun was concluded. Several of the guards glared, and one stepped toward me, but Charles gestured for him to stop.

“Your king is always pleased to respond to his subjects, madam,” Charles said. “The queen waits in the carriage, and I have business with Parliament, but as all here can see, I pause to take this question from you. What might it be?”

“It concerns Christmas, Your Majesty,” I said boldly. “There are some now in positions of influence and power who say it is sinful and should be abolished. Though their voices are loud, many, many more of us love this special day. I wonder, will you protect it for us, so that we may keep Christmas as a time of joyful celebration?”

The king smiled. “I too love Christmas,” he said. “It is the day to give thanks to God for sending his most holy son, and I realize the feasting and singing brings great happiness to my people. Do not fear, Madam Layla. While I rule this land, your beloved holiday is safe. I only hope Father Christmas will leave some peppermint candy for the queen this year.”