The Heirs of Locksley (The Robin Hood Stories 2)
The chair, the ermine, the gold, the fluttering banners, all of it would make one forget this was an eager boy grinning back at them. We’re telling a story, John had said. And the king wanted a story. Well, then.
She smiled, just like John asked, and kept her gaze down as she strung her bow and adjusted her arm guard. Let them stare; she didn’t need to stare back.
The king came out to address the archers and the crowd. He looked back at his councilors, and the same dark-robed bishop who was always with him nodded encouragingly. There was an odd sense that this was a child playing at being king.
But then his young voice, right on the edge of cracking, announced with determination, “For the winner, we have a gold ring from our own treasury!” He held up the ring, a gold band with a dark stone. There was cheering. Mary didn’t think of the ring, only of getting through this with her dignity intact.
“Archers, take your marks!”
Mary leaned close to John as they chose targets next to one another. “Promise me you will shoot your best and not throw the match because you think it’s funny to have people stare at me.”
“Mary, I promise you with all my honor that I always shoot my best against you. You really are that good. You’re as good as Father.”
She wasn’t. She could never be. The very fundamental definition of their father—at least in the stories—was his skill in archery. “We never saw him in his prime, when he was young and fighting the sheriff’s men in Sherwood. Do you ever think of that?”
He turned pensive. “No.”
“We will never be that good, not ever. I have never split an arrow.”
“Then perhaps today’s the day for it.”
Perhaps.
“Lady Mary, you do not use a longbow like your father?” The question came from the archer on her left, Ranulf FitzHugh, the son of a baron from Essex.
She looked up and down the line. Of the dozen men who’d come to shoot, two used Welsh-style longbows, including FitzHugh himself. Not even John used a longbow for this, though he could have.
“No need to, my lord,” she answered. “I’m not shooting deer or sniping at Normans from two hundred paces, am I?”
He chuckled nervously.
John added, “Think you the targets will escape if you don’t strike them hard enough, my lord Ranulf?”
Flustered, he said, “The use of the longbow requires special skill—”
“Yes, it does,” John said. “But you must remember, it doesn’t matter how deep your shaft plunges if you can’t find your mark!”
This was met with general, raucous laughter. Except from Ranulf, who turned away scowling.
“Really, John,” Mary chastised, and this too was met with laughter. “You drag us any lower, we’ll need a shovel to get out of the mire.”
“You let her talk to you that way?” a man from the viewing stand called to John.
He called back, “If you don’t have an older sister, you’ll never understand! They’re supposed to harangue their little brothers!”
With just a couple of quips and a ready laugh, John won over the crowd. Even the somber bishop smiled. Mary just had to follow his lead. She checked the crowd, found Eleanor sitting quietly, alert and interested. So, all was well there. John gave her an encouraging nod, which she returned.
“Archers ready!” the master of the field called.
Finally, she could be with herself, ignoring the other archers, the crowd, the king. Bow and arrow and target. This she knew. She wet a fingertip, raised it to the air, which was still, mostly. She nocked her arrow and drew.
* * *
Those who watched King Henry’s coronation archery tournament thought it was a joke at first, the two fresh-faced archers from Nottinghamshire acting like Robin Hood’s heirs, making jokes about shooting Normans—they glanced nervously at the king for guidance, wondering if they should laugh or be offended. It must have been a joke. Robin Hood was only a story.
The boy was good; all could tell he knew his way with the bow, had likely been shooting all his life. But the girl was the only one to hit the target dead center. Then she did it again, and again. It seemed at first she must have split her own arrow—just like in the stories. But no, the latest arrow only shaved off some of the shaft of the previous.
“Waste of a good arrow,” she muttered, when the page brought her arrows back and she studied the scarred shaft.