Longbow Girl Page 19

  ‘Because thieves have no place at the king’s feast, Lord James.’

  James felt the breath of cold, musty air as they neared the dungeons. Brioc touched his back with the end of his rapier, forcing him down the stairs.

  Cranog laughed. ‘Feel the noose, Lord James? Feel it tightening against that noble throat of yours?’

  James bit back an answer. His brain seemed to be running at a thousand miles an hour as he tried to navigate this whole new territory. Captivity; sword; men-at-arms; thief; dungeons. What on earth made them think he was a thief? It seemed to have something to do with his ring, but that was impossible.

  A fire burnt in the lower hallway, casting out scant warmth and coils of smoke that had nowhere to go. A heavy man in rough clothes sat by the fire, half dozing. He jumped to his feet as the trio approached.

  James recognized the nightwatchman.

  The man raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘The Lord James?’ he asked.

  Cranog gave a derisive laugh. ‘Thief and liar, more like. Lock him up!’

  Brioc prodded him on with his sword towards a cell at the far end of the dungeon, where it was darkest, coldest.

  As they passed by empty cells, James saw a sudden movement. A man like a Viking warrior with long, fair hair and a heavy beard got to his feet and gripped the bars with huge hands. Merry’s ancestor. It had to be. James met his eyes: intelligent, curious, charged with the pent-up fury of a caged animal.

  Brioc pushed him on, into an open cell and pulled shut the door with a clang that echoed through the dungeons. The jailer took a large bunch of keys from a pocket in his tunic and locked him in.

  ‘Pray to your god, Lord James,’ mocked Brioc, grinning at James through the bars.

  The puppy-faced Cranog gave a parody of a bow, then turned and, laughing with Brioc, walked away.

  James listened to their dying footsteps. He stood in his cell in the sudden, ringing silence. Locked up. A prisoner. No one would come and rescue him. In this time – or his.

  He could hear a furtive scrabbling sound: rats. The smell of smoke, damp and bad food hung in the frigid air. He sat on the rough bench, pulled a thin blanket around his shoulders and rubbed at his face. How had it come to this? How had this nightmare unfolded? He knew the answer: curiosity and anger that Merry was keeping secrets from him. Now he knew why. For his own good. The sixteenth century was not a playground for the privileged children of the twenty-first. He got up, paced the confines of his cell. Ten steps took him right around.

  He would not be that privileged child, then, he decided. He would become someone else, anyone else, whoever he needed to be to survive. And to escape. The first thing he would not do was despair. Merry was out there somewhere, navigating the past, carving the future. So would he. No one was coming to rescue him. He’d have to rescue himself.

  Then he remembered. Today was his sixteenth birthday. He was meant to be signing with Manchester United. He felt a rush of fury. He’d followed his dreams, and in some vicious twist of fate it hadn’t been his own parents who’d got in the way, but his ancestors! But the fury gave him hope and it gave him purpose. No one was going to get in his way. Somehow, he would manage to escape and return home.

  Time stretched, James had no way of measuring it, but perhaps an hour later he heard footsteps. Brioc and Cranog appeared, carrying flaming torches. Behind them walked the earl. And the countess.

  The jailer fumbled with the keys. Fat fingers slow and clumsy. The earl hissed with impatience. ‘Snap to it, Aeron!’

  Finally the jailer had the lock and the door open. Brioc yanked James out into the hallway between the facing rows of cells. James flew forward, steadied himself, glowered at Brioc. Then he turned and faced the earl.

  ‘Who are you?’ snapped the man.

  ‘Lord James de Courcy.’

  ‘So you say,’ mused the earl with a cold smile. ‘Shipwrecked, says my wife. A tall story! You’re nothing but a thief and an opportunist.’

  The earl reached out, grabbed James’s hand and yanked off the ring. He turned it so that he could read the inscription inside. He ran his fingers over the rim and his face tightened with fury.

  ‘As I thought.’

  He drew back his hand and administered a full, backhanded slap to James’s face. Like King Henry, he wore large, ornate rings. James felt blood gush down his cheek as the jewels cut through flesh.

  He wanted to lunge at the earl, knew that would only bring him more of a beating, so he just stared at his ancestor, steeling himself for whatever came next.

  The earl turned to his wife, contempt on his face. ‘How could you be such a fool as to trust this boy, this impostor?’

  ‘Because I thought he was kin!’ exclaimed the countess, uncowed by the earl’s ferocity.

  ‘Kin! He’s nothing but a thief!’ hissed the earl. He held out the ring. ‘He took you in, you little fool. That’s my signet ring. The one that disappeared. Somehow this little villain got in here and stole my ring. It’s a good job I came back when I did. Should have thrown him in the dungeons the second he turned up here!’

  James’s mind raced. How was it possible that he had the earl’s ring?

  ‘I saw the ring before; he showed it to me when he arrived,’ protested the countess, green eyes flashing with indignation. ‘All de Courcy men over sixteen years of age have such rings! I couldn’t know it was yours!’

  ‘Mine has a tiny nick on the edge that makes it unique!’ snapped the earl, holding up the ring, showing the mark to his wife. ‘You might have thought to be on your guard after Zephyr was stolen right under your nose.’

  ‘The one-eyed witch cannot hide for long,’ the countess declared. ‘Our agents are searching and they’ll find her.’‘

  The earl turned back to James. ‘We haven’t suffered thefts here at the Black Castle for many years. Then the one-eyed thief turns up. Then you turn up. I don’t believe in coincidence.’

  James tried to shut down his mind, to blank out all thoughts so his face revealed nothing. He just looked back at the earl, into his hard eyes, and he waited.

  ‘Do you know her?’ asked the earl. ‘Are you in league with her?’

  James shook his head. ‘I’m in league with no one.’

  The earl just looked at him for a while. James could sense the violence in the man. He waited as the blood still gushed from his face. He felt it running down his chest. He prepared himself for another blow. But it didn’t come. Instead the earl turned away, addressed the jailer.

  ‘Lock him up. No food. No water. We’ll see how he sticks to his story when the hunger spasms grip.’

  The next morning, across the valley in the stone cottage, Merry and Mair breakfasted on bread and honey and fresh milk.

  ‘I need to go out,’ said Merry when they’d finished. ‘I must practise with the bow.’

  The old woman eyed her thoughtfully. ‘You can’t stay locked away in here, it’s true.’

  She got up, rummaged around in a drawer. ‘Here.’

  She handed Merry a pointed green woollen hat, triangular in shape. ‘An archer’s hat. Plait your hair, tuck it up out of the way. From a distance you’ll look like a man.’

  ‘OK. Thank you.’ Merry took the hat, twisted it in her hands, suddenly nervous. ‘And there’s something else. I want to meet my ancestors. Longbowman Owen’s wife and children.’

  Mair nodded. ‘Since you’ll do battle in their name, it’s fitting. And they have a target you’ll be able to use.’ She got up, pulled on her bonnet. ‘Come on. Let’s go now. It’s early. Less people about.’

  Merry quickly plaited her hair, twisted it around her head, wedged it under the hat. It filled the triangular top.

  Mair nodded. ‘Passable,’ she said, pulling on her shawl.

  Merry took the bow, the arrow bag and her own coiled strings: her twenty-first-century interlopers. Out they went into the bitter wind.

  There was no sign of anyone, but still Merry glanced about, turning circles, che
cking. They hurried down the fields towards Nanteos Farm. Merry kept expecting her parents to come running out, carrying Gawain. She felt a wrenching pain, tried to shove it away.

  As they neared the Owens’s farmhouse, her home, Merry felt a wash of emotions. It was familiar but different. Smaller, less well kept. Like Mair’s cottage, there was pale linen in place of glass in the tiny windows. No white-painted windowsills. Only one door, at the back of the house. No rose bushes, no well-positioned bench. No leisure time to sit and take in the views, thought Merry. The only thing that remained the same was a small herd of Welsh Mountain ponies. There were four mares and two foals corralled in a small field. They looked just like their modern counterparts with their shaggy winter coats, dished heads, intelligent eyes and powerful bodies on slender legs. Sheep grazed on the other fields and there were rows of something growing in ploughed earth.

  As they drew closer, Merry could hear weeping coming from the house.

  Mair knocked loudly, called out. The weeping stopped. A woman opened the door.

  She had lank hair and a face gnarled by distress and streaked with tears. She was flanked by a boy and girl – maybe six and nine, guessed Merry. She stared at them in amazement. Her flesh and blood. Her ancestors … Both had her own blonde hair and blue eyes. And close up, the girl looked even more like Merry had at her age, with two eyes. The emotion bubbled up inside her, threatening to overwhelm her.

  The children shuffled up to her, nervous but intrigued. Merry squatted down.

  ‘What’s your names, then?’ she asked, smiling at them.

  The children were too shy to speak. Their mother answered for them.

  ‘Angharad and Gawain. And I’m Rhiannon.’

  Merry felt another punch of emotion. Gawain, like her baby brother, just a few years older.

  ‘I’m Merry.’

  She gently eased the girl’s hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ear, just like her own mother did to her. She turned to the boy, a waif with huge eyes in his pale, scared face.

  Rhiannon was talking to Mair. ‘My husband languishes in the de Courcy dungeons. He might hang. And now the king has declared a tourney. Tomorrow! He called for us to provide a bowman. Else we forfeit our home. Our lands. Our ponies. Our sheep. Everything. The de Courcys will take it all.’ Rhiannon started sobbing again, which set off the children. The three of them stood in a sobbing knot.

  Merry felt a tightening in her chest. She blew out a breath. It wouldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it happen.

  ‘Stop!’ she said loudly, straightening up. ‘Enough!’

  Rhiannon grabbed her children and stared in shock at Merry. But they all stopped wailing.

  ‘You shall not lose your home,’ declared Merry. ‘You shall not lose your lands. I give you my word.’

  ‘How do you know? How can you promise that?’ asked Rhiannon despairingly.

  ‘Because I will enter the competition. In your husband’s absence.’

  Rhiannon opened her eyes as wide as they’d go. ‘But you’re a woman! And you’re not an Owen.’

  ‘Right about the first. Wrong about the second.’

  Rhiannon squinted at Merry, a mix of hope and recognition dawning. ‘His sister, Blodwen, was given away at birth. Couldn’t afford to keep her. Are you her, come back to us?’

  ‘I am.’ A necessary lie.

  ‘But you can’t shoot a longbow! That takes a man’s strength.’

  Merry shook her head. She held out the bow. ‘I’ve trained on bows like this since I was five. I can shoot a longbow and I can do it as accurately as any man!’

  Her words were met with silent disbelief.

  ‘I need to practise now. You can watch me, if you like.’ She needed her ancestors to believe in her. She needed to give them hope. ‘I assume your husband has a target?’

  ‘He practised every week before the de Courcys threw him in their dungeons,’ replied Rhiannon bitterly. ‘As he is bound to do. It’s over there, behind the house.’

  Merry flinched. The same place her and her father’s target stood, five hundred years later.

  ‘I cannot tarry,’ Mair was saying. ‘I have jobs to do and a living to earn.’

  The old woman’s face was creased in worry. She walked a few paces away, beckoned Merry to her.

  ‘Practise, I know you must,’ she said quietly but urgently. ‘Give them the hope they need, then hurry home. And pray stay out of sight if you see others nearby.’

  Merry nodded.

  ‘Remember, the Owens will suffer more if they are seen to be harbouring the one-eyed horse thief.’

  Merry reached out and touched the healer’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be careful, I promise. They have enough trouble without me adding to it.’

  Worrying, all too aware of the dangers that seemed to multiply around her, Merry watched Mair set off up the hill. She turned as she felt the girl, Angharad, pulling at her sleeve.

  ‘Shall I walk you to the target?’ the girl asked, a hint of boldness in her eyes.

  Merry smiled down at her. ‘That would be very helpful.’

  Angharad took Merry’s hand and led her along. Rhiannon and Gawain followed behind.

  ‘How many summers are you?’ Angharad asked, looking up at her.

  ‘I’m fifteen,’ replied Merry. ‘How many summers are you?’

  ‘Eleven’ came the reply. Merry hid her surprise. Angharad looked smaller, younger.

  ‘Where do you bide?’

  ‘Bide?’ replied Merry with a puzzled look.

  ‘Live. Your home,’ explained the girl.

  Merry felt another jolt of emotion. She blew out a breath. ‘Ah, not too far away,’ she managed to say.

  Preoccupied, she didn’t notice the man watching from the trees.

  Longbowman Owen’s target was different from the ones Merry used, but the principle was the same: hit dead centre! This one was made of a circle of white-painted wood attached to a post that was dug into the ground. In the middle was a black circle about six inches across and inside that a small white circle: the gold.

  Merry paced away from it, counting out the yards, looking for any marks in the grass that would reveal the start line.

  ‘Where’s your father’s start mark?’ she asked Angharad.

  ‘He has several. The far one is a long, long way back,’ replied the girl with a flash of pride.

  She strode out, Merry following. At last they came to a scuffed area with a faint streak of white.

  ‘This must be all of two hundred yards,’ Merry said. She felt a wave of despair.

  ‘Yes, but he uses closer ones too,’ Angharad added. She pulled Merry back closer to the target. ‘Hundred yards, this one is,’ the girl said, pointing at a worn area in the grass.

  That was thirty yards more than she trained at, thought Merry. She walked forward another twenty yards. If she were to practise for accuracy, get her eye in, this was as far back as she could go. She could only pray the tourney would focus on shorter range, higher accuracy shooting.

  She picked up the unfamiliar bow, weighed it in her hands, tried to get a feel for it. Thicker, heavier, darker wood. It was an old bow, well used, well made. She remembered Ivan Evans words: ‘Bit of a history … from before my grandfather’s time’ … She had the strongest sense that it had gone to war. Maybe even Agincourt … just over a hundred years ago.

  She gripped it tight. She would use its history, use its strength. As always when holding a bow, but today more than ever, she felt the power of the weapon surge through her.

  She turned to her ancestors, gave them a brief smile. Their faces remained sombre. And disbelieving.

  She turned her attention back to her bow. She used her knee on the stave, putting most of her weight on to it, flexed it, strung it with her own fast flight cord.

  She twisted, loosened the drawstring on her arrow bag, pulled out an arrow. She flexed it, proved it, nocked it. She braced her legs, bent over and breathed. In one graceful movement, summoning all h
er power, Merry straightened, pulling back the bow as she did. Please don’t break, she thought, aware of the almost unbearable tension her string placed on the old bow.

  She took a moment with the bow at full extension, eyeing the target and the fields behind. Then she released her string. The bow sprang back to vertical with a massive, explosive force, propelling the arrow into the target.

  Merry heard the gasps, heard the words, but she ignored them all. Instead she looked up at the cold mountains, watching impassively, the mountains of her childhood. They’d be the mountains of her old age too, if she survived this.

  She pulled her attention back to her bow, to the target. She loosed her remaining arrows. Only then did she turn to her audience.

  Now they believed.

  Merry continued to practise. She’d hit the black ring and that was a start, but she was not consistently hitting the inner white ring. She had no idea if taking part in the tourney would be enough, or if she had to win. But it seemed to her that winning would be the only sure way to guarantee that her family’s pledge was seen to be honoured by the hostile earl and his friend the king.

  She shot arrow after arrow till her fingers were raw and her muscles trembling.

  The ancestors continued to watch. High above a peregrine falcon circled.

  Finally, she got three arrows in a row in the inner white ring. She knew if she practised any more today, her muscles would seize up. She unstrung her bow.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said to Rhiannon and the children.

  They nodded gravely.

  ‘You’re like an angel,’ said Angharad, awestruck.

  ‘No, she’s not,’ said Gawain. ‘She’s like a warrior!’

  Angharad laughed. ‘An angel warrior!’

  The words hit Merry like an electric shock. Time, legend and truth collided. She looked at her three ancestors and felt the burn of a new purpose and strength grow inside her. This was what it was all about. This was who and what she’d come back for. Maybe even why she’d been born. To their surprise, she grabbed them, hugged them in turn, then before they could see her tears, she hurried up the hill to Mair’s cottage.

  Merry pushed open the door and froze.