At least they had agreed to don disguises. David, for instance, was wearing a farmer’s knee-length tunic. Right now it was crooked from his battle with the crowd, and the skirt had gotten spattered with mud; still, the dishevelment only added to his country peasant look.
Robin craned her neck to see if she could spy any of her other friends—a challenge since none of them were wearing their usual Lincoln Green. At last, she caught sight of Will Stutley animatedly flirting with a flower girl. The poor lass seemed torn between succumbing to his relentless attention and ignoring him completely.
“That boy would try to woo the Queen Mother herself,” Robin laughed, her tone not altogether approving.
“Wooing the Queen Mother would still be safer than shooting before the Sheriff,” David insisted.
Robin let out an exasperated sigh. “David, you are my friend and I know you are just worried, but enough already! My decision is made, and you can either support me in it or not, but stop trying to change my mind!”
“I have always supported you Robin,” David said softly. “You know that.”
Robin felt her ire subside. “I do,” she admitted. “And I am grateful for your concern . . . truly I am. But honestly, David, do you really expect the Sheriff to recognize me in this?” She held up her arms in an orator’s gesture and spun in place.
Instead of her suit of Lincoln Green, Robin was wearing her suit of brilliant red. Over her head was a scarlet hood, and one ragged patch covered her left eye. Only the nondescript quiver on her back, the small sack at her hip, and the longbow in her hand were familiar accouterments.
David gave a rueful laugh. “I barely recognize you in that getup. Perhaps this ploy of yours will succeed after all.”
Robin smirked. “I intend it to.”
In order to reach the tournament, however, she would have to navigate the tumultuous crowd once again; the very thought made her head reel. To buy herself some time, she surveyed her surroundings.
She was standing in a field to the left of the town gate—the first in a long series of pastures and houses. Beyond the houses were strips of tilled dirt, speckled with budding crops. The road through the gate traveled straight for a hundred paces before broadening into the town square. Atop a small rise in its center stood a gallows tree, surrounded almost indecently by the stalls and shops of the market. Somewhere in the distance a church bell tolled, and more fields could be seen lining the eastern border of the town. The archery range was to the right of the gate, but it was the tall sandstone ridge just beyond it that caught Robin’s eye. Upon this steep precipice perched Nottingham Castle—the formidable home of Sheriff Darniel.
“Nasty thing,” David said, following her gaze. “People say it is impregnable—the cliffs guard it on three sides, and the fourth wall has only one gate. Well, secure it may be, but I find it horribly bleak—I am almost sorry for the Sheriff, cooped up inside there of nights. I am glad I do not have to live there.”
As am I, Robin thought. There was no comparing a castle’s stone walls and cruel ceilings with the bright and sprightly boughs of an unfettered Sherwood. To think that she had almost been mistress of Darniel’s dreadful fortress made her shudder.
“Come on,” she said, hoping David had not noticed her reaction. “We have a tournament to win.”
* * * * *
The archery range was a long, rectangular field covered with fine fescue grass. Whitewash had been painted on the ground to mark where the archers would shoot from, and six targets were arrayed a hundred paces beyond this line. Each target had been dyed into three sections—a white outer ring, a black inner ring, and a white core—with each section being half the width of its predecessor. At the very center of each target was a small black dot.
To the right of the range, near the town wall, the lords and their ladies took their seats upon wooden risers. Colorful banners streamed from the guardrails, and off-white kerchiefs fluttered in the air as women waved gaily at the arriving competitors. There were no seats to the left of the range, only thin rails to keep the peasants and lower-class tradesmen from spilling onto the field. A wooden dais with a purple canopy stood on the far end of the field; this was where the Sheriff and his party would eventually sit. For now, it was empty.
At the head of the range rose the archers’ tent—a huge, enclosed structure where the participants could rest between bouts. Brilliant-hued ribbons and heraldic pennons fluttered from its roof, a few detaching beneath the talons and beaks of curious birds. In front of the tent stood a small trestle table, and a squat man in purple livery sat behind it, listing the competitors on a piece of parchment.
“Names?” he intoned as Robin and David approached, his gaze already discounting the rough-clad peasant and the one-eyed lad in red.
“Jack. From Tamworth Town,” Robin invented. “My companion is not competing.”
“Then he is not allowed in the tent,” the scribe told them rudely. “He can watch the tourney from behind the rail with the other rustics.”
His brusque tone made Robin bristle, and she opened her mouth to protest his impudence, but David cut her off.
“It is all right, R–er–Jack. Find me when you are done.” He cast an appraising look at the crowd and added, “If you can.”
Robin watched her friend disappear into the throng. Then with an aquiline glare at the scribe, she pushed aside the thick canvas of the tent and stepped inside.
It was like walking into a warren. Over two hundred archers had come to answer the Sheriff’s call, drawn by the generous gold prize and the lure of recognition and employment for those who shot well.
Most of the competitors were examining their equipment for any defects they might have overlooked; their greetings to each other were genteel, but terse—there would be time for talk later. The majority of the chatter came from a score of young men whose evident reason for entering the tourney was merely to impress a lady-friend.
Behind Robin, the tent flap opened again and a herald stepped inside. In a voice trained to resonate over all other noise, he called out the heats for the first round. Each heat had ten men, assigned in the order of their arrival. Since Robin had been the last to arrive, she was in the last heat.
At first, she waited calmly, listening with interest to the sporadic roar of the crowd and trying to guess by their cheers or jeers how well someone had shot. After each heat, the archers would return to the tent—those who had performed poorly to collect their things and leave, the rest to settle down and await the next round. Of those who had remained, some glowed with pride, while others bore supercilious smiles. Robin knew it was the ones who showed no emotion at all that were the greatest threat: content to let their skill do their boasting, they were the ones who had skill to boast of.
As her turn drew near, Robin felt her calm self-assurance slipping away and her heart begin to hammer. She tried to relax, whispering to herself that she had nothing to fear, that she would certainly pass such an early round . . . but in spite of her best efforts, her nerves were stretched taut by the time her heat was called.
Swallowing hard, Robin took her place on the whitewashed line and strung her bow. The crowd, seeing her, began to jeer. Might as well be lame in the hand, they called, than to try and shoot at a target with only one eye—let alone the right eye at that! Was this archer so foolish as to think he could still judge distance accurately? What a jest his effort would be!
So concerned were they with Robin’s eye-patch that they spared not a glance for her mouth—if they had, they would have been startled by the small grin of confidence growing there. They had no idea that their taunts, instead of distressing the scarlet archer, were soothing away her tension instead.
It was true that for most bowmen, being blind in one eye would have been a grave handicap. The left eye especially was needed to sight the target, and without it, determining distance would be nearly impossible. But as a child, the vision in Robin’s right eye had been blurry. Young though she had been, she had
logicked that if practicing archery could strengthen her body, then practicing vision should strengthen her eye, and had taken to wearing a linen rag over her left eye whenever she had trained with her bow, forcing herself to use only her right. Though her cousin had teased her and called her the “one-eyed oddity,” Robin had persisted, and within a year her blurring had disappeared, and she had gained the ability to sight a target as confidently with one eye as with two, much to Will’s chagrin.
This crowd is in for a surprise, she thought.
With renewed assurance, Robin nocked an arrow and raised her bow, drawing back the shaft so that the fletching touched the corner of her upturned mouth. The crowd’s jeers turned to startled cheers as her arrow whizzed through the air to lodge neatly in the white core, automatically advancing Robin to the next round.
With each round she advanced, the targets moved back another fifty paces and the number of contenders dwindled. At last, there remained only thirty archers, out of the original two hundred. Of those thirty, only ten would progress to the penultimate round, and of those ten, three to the finals. Robin intended to be one of those three.
She glanced at where her rivals now stood in small groups within the archers’ tent, quaffing the free ale brought in to slake their thirst, and nattering to relieve the tension. Robin herself had chosen to abstain from both activities, preferring to keep her mind focused, her vision clear, and her reflexes uninhibited by drink. Instead, she leaned back against the wall of the tent and closed her eyes, trying to shut out the ambient noise and calm her nerves.
Once again, Robin was the last to shoot. This time, she had to battle a strong wind that blew the shouts of the spectators into garble and threatened to tear the arrow out from her fingers. The capricious breeze had already wreaked havoc with the aim of several archers, changing its course just when they assumed they had the old wind judged.
Now Robin’s days spent practicing in the Sherwood stood her in good stead as she awaited the almost imperceptible slackening of the breeze—the prelude to a momentary calm before it renewed its charge in a different direction. When that instant came, she did not hesitate, but let her arrow fly through the transfixed air to land with seeming ease near the center of the target.
The herald presented her with the yellow ribbon that signified she was one of the ten to move on, and then the Sheriff stood, signaling a short recess. Those bowmen who had not advanced to the next round gathered their equipment and left the range, nearly all of them heading for the rails to observe the outcome of the match. The spectators already there shifted aside to make room for the archers, deferring their places to those who had contributed to the day’s entertainment.
Robin ducked back into the tent where the other semifinalists were awaiting the next round. After holding so many people all morning, the shelter now seemed disquietingly bare.
In the hustle-and-bustle of the earlier rounds, she had not attempted to assess her rivals. Now she looked them over as critically as she saw they were doing to her.
The most easily recognizable was the Sheriff’s chief forester, Gilbert o’ the Red Cap. He wore the Sheriff’s purple livery, but atop his head perched a red hat, from which he took his surname. It clashed terribly with his outfit, but the forester wore it proudly. His skill and cocky confidence made him the crowd favorite, as their cheers so deafeningly announced each time he had taken his turn. Unless something unexpected occurred, Robin was certain he would be one of the finalists.
She cautiously dismissed a short man in blue: his eyes were cunning, but his hands quivered like a nervous rabbit. True, he had to be an adroit archer in order to have made it this far, but if he continued to tremble with tension, Robin did not see how he would be able to aim well enough to make it to the next round.
Two of the men were peasants—she had seen them shoot and they were indeed very good marksmen. Robin hoped one of them would carry the day if she could not, but she had to concede that it was unlikely. Not because their skill was insufficient for the task, but because as the day had progressed, they had seemed increasingly cowed by the adroit company they kept. Even now, their gazes kept shifting sidelong to the four men standing in the middle of the tent, and Robin turned her head to peer at them as well.
These four yeomen were well attired, and carried themselves with the relaxed confidence of archers who had been to and triumphed in many such tournaments. They seemed well acquainted with each other, and conversed amiably about the day’s shooting. Looking at them, Robin felt her own confidence begin to waver. It had not really occurred to her until that moment that she might not make it to the finals, but as she considered the archers before her, she had to admit that it was more than a slight possibility. Seeking a distraction, she shifted her gaze to the last archer.
She had not seen him before amid the press of competitors and the bustle of the tourney, but now he stood apart from the others with a quiet aloofness. Recognizing him so unexpectedly made Robin drop her bow, her muscles suddenly weak. Several of the archers turned to look in her direction, their stares changing at her clumsiness from speculative to dismissing. Blushing within the folds of her scarlet hood and averting all eye contact, Robin silently scooped up her bow and stood against the tent wall, wishing she were invisible. Her mind was still in shock. What was he doing here?
Lords did not compete against peasants—he himself had said it led to overfamiliarity and encouraged people to challenge their lord’s authority. Heaven help her, what if he recognized her? Hastily, Robin double-checked her hood and eye-patch.
Lord Locksley, preoccupied with his own turbulent thoughts, had taken no notice of the scarlet archer’s disturbance. He was dressed as the commoners around him, but he was no commoner, and it shamed him to compete in a tournament for such a plebeian reason as pecuniary need.
He had never been particularly wealthy, but he had always managed his manor well, and had never expected to face true financial distress. But when his eldest daughter had run off so unexpectedly, he had been left to pay the wedding forfeit . . . enough to make even a rich man’s coffers grow tight. A solid gold arrow would go far toward dispelling his manor’s fiscal strain.
At least, he thought gratefully, the Sheriff had been willing to forgive some of the mulct he was owed, provided he still received his desired alliance with the Locksley family. Soon the whole rotten deal would be closed.
And who will be left for me then? Lord Locksley gloomed.
The summons of a trumpet interrupted his thoughts, calling them all back to the range. Robin was the first out the tent flap. As the archers lined themselves up on the field, she made certain to position herself as far from her father as she could.
Her gaze turned toward the Sheriff, who was leaning forward in his gilded chair and watching the archers with far more intent than he had thus far that day. From this distance, Robin could not see the features of his face, but it was easy to imagine the Sheriff’s frown of displeasure as he realized none of the ten wore the hoped-for Lincoln Green. He bent his head towards the herald at his right; whatever the man said, Robin felt certain the Sheriff’s frown only deepened.
“You will shoot two arrows each,” the herald at their end was instructing. “The finalists will shoot three. Closest to the center of the target wins.”
The archers nodded and strung their bows, their faces set—even the blue-clad yeoman looked poised; Robin attempted to match their expressions as she strung her longbow. She had to try twice—the first time her fingers, suddenly slick, slipped.
During the earlier rounds, the crowd had booed and cheered for their favorites, hooting wildly at the foul shots and hurrahing a shaft well aimed. Now they were silent, eerily so. The only sound was the twang of strings as the archers took their shots one-by-one, and the distant fwumps as their arrows struck the targets.
Twenty twangs and twenty fwumps later, the spectators on both sides of the range broke their silence with an enormous roar of appreciation. Surely these were ten of
the finest archers in all of England! At 250 paces, all ten had managed to lodge their arrows within the middle ring of the target. What a shame that only three could advance!
From where Robin was standing, it was impossible to tell which arrows lay the closest to the target’s center. Her heart told her she had shot well, but was well good enough?
Her gaze cut towards her father; he was the very picture of serenity, calmly leaning against his bow as he awaited their results. She wished her thoughts could be as serene, but instead, doubt plagued her; the words he had spoken to her during their last real conversation together echoed in her ears:
“You seem to think you are a man . . . . You are nothing but a girl, and it is high time you faced that fact.”
What if her father was right? What if she was wrong to compete like this, to think of winning against men like this, she, a mere girl? She knew society would find her so, that she would be shunned, imprisoned, perhaps even killed if the truth were known. If she lost (when she lost, a part of her whispered) would her people surmise that she was not all she pretended to be? Would they desert her?
A runner arrived bearing the arrows of the three most accurate shooters; Robin accepted hers from his hand, slightly dazed. Those who had not qualified were falling back, their role in the tournament finished. Rather than leaving the range, they lingered behind the finalists, waiting to see who would take home the golden prize.
Robin glanced at the other two finalists left on the field. Gilbert o’ the Red Cap was one, looking very smug. The other man was her father.
Once again, Robin was twelve, preparing to do battle with her father for the right to learn the archer’s art. As with that time, she would shoot well. As with that time, she would lose. Exuberant cries told her that Gilbert had shot the first of his three arrows. It was her turn.
Robin: Lady of Legend (The Classic Adventures of the Girl Who Became Robin Hood) Page 12