He was stroking his chin. “Actually, I’m wondering if I should let you win.”
“Let me win? You can’t beat me, you fool. Soon you will be on your knees eating the dirt beneath your feet. Come, you can’t put it off much longer. Swallow your conceit and make your shot.”
“I am really very good, Chandra. I told you that.”
She chewed this over for a minute, then said slowly, those incredible eyes of hers hard and cold, “You mean you would allow me to win the way you allowed Wicket to beat Pith?”
“I was only protecting you, trying to keep you safe—you, a small weak girl who is so lovely the sun glints in her hair.”
She snorted.
“Very well. The distance is far too short for me, but if it pleases you, if it makes you feel superior, then I will declare that you are the winner of this paltry beginner’s competition.”
“You bleating goat, I am no beginner.”
“Then why don’t we have a competition that would mean something, that would truly show which of us is the more skilled?”
She called out to Cecil, her twelve-year-old page, “Go to the target. Yes, that’s right. Now, Jerval, tell him the distance you wish.”
Jerval shouted, “Move it to the base of the hill.”
He’d doubled the distance. She had her limits, and he knew it, damn him. Actually, she was anxious to see how well he would do. But now she had to shoot again. She felt a leap of uncertainty, perhaps even a kick of panic.
Jerval saw that she hadn’t creamed her mouth and now she was chewing on her bottom lip, and he knew she was wondering what to do. Oh, she would shoot, he had no doubt about that, but she was frightened she wouldn’t do well. He said, “I do not wish to see you humiliated. You did very well with your other shot, but this is no longer so easy. Would you like to choose a champion?”
She jumped to the bait like the trout he had caught in Camberley’s lake just two weeks before. “I don’t need a champion. I told you, I am amazing with the bow and arrow. I have the eye of an eagle.” But I don’t have the strength, she thought. She saw her father from the corner of her eye, standing beside Ellis, watching the match. She swallowed hard, waved toward him and stepped forward, stretching straight and tall with her side to the target, measuring the distance. She released her arrow and stood motionless, watching it soar upward. There was a bit of wind and it carried it further than she deserved, thank the saints.
The arrow missed the center, but who cared? It slammed itself into the dark blue outer rim of the target. “I hit it,” she said, so surprised, she said again, “I hit it. Did you see that? I really hit it!” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it was too late now. Never would she willingly have given him even a hint that it had been a lucky shot, very lucky and helped forward by a friendly wind.
However, she still wished her father’s men didn’t sound as astonished as Jerval’s. Had they expected her to miss it altogether? Well, truth be told, she had herself expected to miss, have her arrow fall from the sky into the dirt, well short of the straw target.
Jerval heard Crecy say to Lord Richard, “By all the saints’ crooked toes, it was a great distance, too great a distance, but she hit it.”
Ellis said, “Few of the men could do better.”
That was a fact, Jerval thought. He was so pleased with her that he wanted to grab her and swing her into the air. And then he simply couldn’t help himself. He did lift her high in his arms and swing her until she was shouting with laughter. Then, very slowly, he let her down again.
No playmate would do that, and she knew it. She stood very quietly.
John, who was on his haunches chewing on a blade of grass near his father, raised his head and said, “I will do it easily someday, Father. Avery has said that I have your eye.”
“So does your sister,” Lord Richard said.
“Aye, but I will also be as strong as you someday. I will be a man. She won’t.”
If Chandra heard her brother, she gave no sign. She was jesting with her father’s men now, laughing, looking at Jerval, waiting, wondering what he would do.
Jerval met Mark’s eyes, and winked. He drew an arrow from his quiver and set it against the bow. He took his time, aware now that Chandra was utterly silent, tapping her foot just behind him.
He would not ruin her pleasure—he couldn’t. His arrow shot straight toward the target, its speed so great, it was a blur. It slammed into the packed straw with a loud thud.
A smile played about Lord Richard’s mouth as Ponce ran to the target and dropped to his knees in front of it. When he rose, he cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted, “Sir Jerval’s arrow split Lady Chandra’s. Thus a part of hers is closest to the center.”
“By all the saints’ tight-lipped smiles, I can’t believe he did that,” Richard said. “He is perhaps even a better diplomat than Crecy. His obvious skill blasts her in the face and yet she still wins.”
Jerval smiled down at her, seeing the recognition in her eyes that he was t
he better, but it didn’t matter, and he hoped that she realized that. A competition with no one to lose. He said, “I pronounce you the winner, Chandra. Must I drop to my knees and stick my mouth in the dirt? Or perhaps lick your dirty boots?”