The Archer's Apprentice

"Yes, Robin, will you not escort the Lady back to England, to her mother's manor?" Rebecca adds, "she could be in mortal danger."

I turn to Rebecca, "Has she enough in her dowry to pay her passage and an escort?"

"She can afford to buy an army," comes the calm reply.

"I could pay you..." Lady Elinor offers.

"We are not men for hire, Madam!" I retort, despite Hugh's tugging at my sleeve, no doubt wishing me to reconsider.

"Please, Robin, you are the one who I trust and through you I have saved my fortune and my mother from paupery. I have no other Captain that I would rather trust my life to."

Rebecca whispers in her ear.

"Rebecca tells me she holds sway over the archbishop here, and will arrange the annulment of my betrothal, even in my absence. I am as good as being a damsel in distress once more, in need of a good knight, or at least an accurate archer."

"And you do have to return to England, and soon," Rebecca says in soothing tones, clearly used to unruffling feathers and persuading far more powerful personages than I towards mutual agreement, "there are storm clouds forming over the good citizens of your shire, Robin, and I doubt you have enough funds left to pay your passage back to where you left your mounts?"

"True," I admit resignedly, accepting defeat at the hands of these two formidable women, "So where do you want to go?"

"To my mother's Inn in Pitstone. That is where my mother will go, where she feels most safe."

"Then I will take you that far, my Lady, before I go home."

"Thank you, Robin, you are a true knight."

"Then I will be his true squire!" chips in Hugh, brandishing a Flanders sausage as if it were a mighty broadsword.

Lady Elinor turns to Rebecca.

"You said earlier that you have seen this stone before?" Lady Elinor asks.

"It was paid to my father in lieu of a debt, sometime before I was born, it is the Emerald of Autiel, and was once part of the crown of the ancient Breton Kings, but now the Count of Breton is but a vassal of the Duke of Normandy. The Jewel is the key to the County of Autiel, the possessor is the owner of that rich estate, which is presently under the protection of the King of England, who possesses all of Normandy and the western seaboard of France all the way down to the Pyrenees."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that you are a wealthy woman, the estate has been paying into this account for over twenty years, with not a single denarii paying out. It has become a King's ransom."

"And that is what the Count wanted to get his hands on?"

"Yes, Elinor, but he wanted you, too, and through you a way to get to the King."

"I don't understand," I chip in, "why would the King be involved?"

"Because ... the King, is my father," Lady Elinor says.

"But you are not ... er, you said ..."

I am at a loss, I don't want to give her away, as I gave my solemn word to her, but only yesterday (or was it earlier today?) she told me she was not the Lady Elinor at all, but a common chamber maid, Jane Elliott. My confusion made me faint, my shoulders drooped. both Elinor and Rebecca held one of my hands.

"I only said I wasn't Lady Elinor," the Lady said quietly, holding my gaze, "because you made it clear that I was so much like a barmaid, that I couldn't possibly have been brought up as a Lady. So I made up that I was just plain old Jane."

"But I only meant by what I said, that you were head and shoulders above any so-called lady I ever met, but why are you in this position if you are the King's daughter?"

"My mother brought me up as the daughter of her late husband, like my dear older sister was. My mother told me that my father died before I was born. I only recently found out that he died almost three years before I was born. I told you about our inn?"

"The Three Horseshoes?"

"Aye, she had no sooner used her late husband's war gratuity to pay the rent for the first year, when a Prince came to stay one windy night. He was on his own, cut off from his hunting party in an unexpected and violent storm. He stayed but not one night, but several and charmed my widowed mother into her bed."

"And you were the result?"

"Not immediately. He left when the stormy weather passed, but he would come back from time to time and eventually I was born. As a child I remember him calling in on Mother now and then, and he would play with me. I thought that he was a nice man, my Uncle Henry. Then we didn't see him for maybe eight or ten years, something like that. I had forgotten him. Until a few weeks ago, when he called by again. He announced to my mother that he had recently remarried and he and his bride were trying for an heir but God was unkind to them and they were unfruitful. He thought it was because he had left his relationship with my mother and my future unfinished and unresolved. He promised that it was something that he should have sort out a long time before. He wanted to make amends to us."

"So he arranged to marry you off to some Lord?"

"Yes, he did. After he had gone, my mother told me that although I was not the daughter of her first husband as she had led me to believe, I was a legitimate child in the eyes of the Church and Common Law, due to him being a temporary husband. Remember I said my mother and father were married under the law of Friedelehe?"

"Yes, I remember."

"My mother had insisted they wed, right at the outset when they were first attracted to each other, she would not sleep with him otherwise, even though she was in love with him. She was a respectable Scottish woman, Elsbeth, daughter of William the Smith and husband of Robert of the Clan Ellot or Elliott in English, from the foothills of Glenshie in the County of Angus, once an ancient kingdom in its own right.

"She knew that the handsome and charismatic stranger was married, and she suggested this temporary marriage as a legal way around her issue, and is recognised by the church by way of ancient custom, although the church are not happy about it and become even less so as time goes by. So they drew up a contract then and there and married in the doorway of our chapel, with shepherds as witnesses. A year later, when she went to pay the landlord her rent for the following year, he handed her the freehold deeds to the property, saying the inn had been bought and paid for in her name. When I was about three years old, Uncle Henry brought this emerald, and gave it to my mother, saying that if he even stopped coming round, say for a year and a day, she was to take this jewel to Jacob of London, at the sign of the Red Hand."

"I was born in London," Rebecca says, "but my mother died of a fever there and my father moved us up to York, for the better air, and then we were forcibly moved on to other places."

"My mother went to London after two or three years of not seeing Henry, fearing that as a knight he had been killed. She did not know he was a Prince, then our King. In London they told her that Jacob had gone to York, but the journey was too far and too dangerous, so she put the Jewel back in its hiding place, not sure of its value, either in itself, or as a talisman to a fortune. With the ownership of the inn, and the income to be made from it, we had all we needed for our simple, humble life."

"So that is the real reason for coming here, the Count was not after the Lady's dowry, but to claim this inheritance?"

"No, not entirely," Rebecca says sadly, "he is part of a plot to put King Henry's nephew on the throne of England, William Clito, the son of Henry's older brother, Robert Curthose, who was once Duke of Normandy until Henry took the title by force."

"Only after Robert invaded England to steal Henry's crown a couple of years earlier," pipes up Hugh, spraying pastry crumbs in his eagerness to show he had paid attention at Father Andrew's history lessons at school.

"Yes," Rebecca added, "Robert Curthose, the son of the Conqueror is an old man now of some 70 years and has been locked up in Devizes Castle for the last fifteen years. He is no longer any threat to his brother. His only son William, although still a young man, has the support of some English barons and particularly King Louis of France. He is said to be ready to invade and claim the throne should anything happen to King Henry."

"War in England is the last thing anyone wants," I say, "but my father says there is much disquiet and uncertainty in the shires as there is not yet an heir sprung forth from the King and his new Queen."

"Rumour has it that his daughter, Matilda, the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, Queen of Italy and Queen of Germany, his heir and only known legal offspring, would have a claim on the throne if Henry died without a legal male heir. But Matilda has been married to Emperor Henry V for six years and still no offspring. And if she could not produce a son to take the throne, then any son of Lady Elinor, herself a legal child under the laws of marriage in England, would be heir, both to King Henry's fortune and to the English crown and the Duchy of Normandy."

"God's truth!" swears Hugh, "that would put the fox among the chickens!"

"Aye," I say, "and the result would be carnage, it would split the country right down the middle. ... The Count was not trying to beat you to the bank, Lady Elinor, but to catch you, to make you his."

"Yes, Robin, I have lied to you, most of what I've told you were lies. I am sorry, but suddenly you appeared from nowhere and scared him off. I didn't know what else to do. He already knew who I was, and that besides my little dowry, there was a lot more at stake than the fortune. I was supposed to be a Lady in need of a titled husband, wealthy through commerce but not through a landed estate. That was how the marriage was arranged. But he already knew who my father was and snarled at me that he wanted the Emerald of Autiel, saying it would enable him to raise an army, and boasted about giving me a male child who would one day be King of England. He ripped off my cloak but I refused to give up either my honour or my talisman. So he threw me out of the coach in that dark, lonely wood and tried to take off my clothes to find it, without realising it was secured in the locket, a cheap base metal trinket that my mother once bought from a travelling hawker."

"Why lie to me Elinor? I would have helped you, in all honour."

"I know now, Robin, but then I didn't know you, any of you. And you and Hugh were boys compared to your gruff fellow Henry. I had no expectations that you would be honourable or be as greedy as Count Gervaise. I knew the Count would come back for me, and had to get us moving from that wood and over here to Brugge where I thought I would be safe."

A servant girl comes in and whispers in Rebecca's ear.

"Lady Elinor, my maid will show you to a room where you can change out of those salt stained clothes, we have had a number of items brought in and a seamstress standing by, should you need it. But I must stress the urgency, you must catch this next tide in a couple of hours. I will answer your questions later."

The maid leads Lady Elinor away through the door.

"We have a room for you both to get changed in. I hope I have ordered apparel big enough for you Robin, you have really shot up and filled out since I saw you last year!" Rebecca laughs, "but Hugh here is very much as I expected."

"You have been expecting us to come here?"

"Yes, I have, and you have done well, Robin," Rebecca says, "Thanks to you, the Lady Elinor has her fortune secured and she is free of the clutches of the man her father thought too broke and desperate for the generous dowry to question the arrangement. I know what I know about your movements and progress through agents, who I contact and who keep me informed at intervals, using pigeons."

"Pigeons?"

"Yes, homing pigeons."

"Alwen has a pigeon loft at home behind the brew house by the mill," I say. "I have often wondered why she kept them, as there were rarely any taken for the table."

"I know, I keep it well stocked with birds that know their way back here and she uses them to keep me up to date. Now get ye both changed, through that door and the first door on your left are changes of clothing for you both. Then we must away to meet the ship that will take you to London."

19.

Under siege

(Lady Alwen Archer of Oaklea narrates)

I notice on my way to the brew house, that a crowd of Knights have lately come arrived at the inn. I am curious, as we have had many families with carts and children and all their baggage, fleeing the fighting in Cheshire, they say. I suppose some Knights know when the battle is lost and run to fight another day. Not like one Knight I know! But walking up the hill to the inn is exercise I could well do without, the baby is growing heavier by the day and my back strain and tired legs are nightly reminders of my advanced condition. My ride around the Oaklea Manor estate with my new Steward yesterday was definitely my last ride until after my chick has hatched!

So, I decide to leave the mess to Stephen to cope with, as I don't want to interfere with his running of the Inn. Let him come find me if he has any problems, he knows where I am these days since the plague hit Bartown. I am satisfied with the way Stephen has worked and have signed him up for the rest of the year. He knows that I am happy with him and, provided he keeps up his present good management, I would have no hesitation in hiring him for at least the next five years. With the inn doing well and the brew house continually expanding, I would think he could have a job here for life, unless he was able to open his own hostelry in time.

He was pleased when I advised him of my feelings in this regard and so much relieved, revealing that he wanted to settle down and marry his sweetheart and he couldn't think of a better community than our village of Oaklea in which to bring up a young family.

I have to agree, even though at present I wish I still had my family close by with me.

20.

Worry

(Will Archer narrates)

Another day draws to a conclusion, and still no sign of the deliveries from Alwen, and no message from Henry either, usually so reliable. Even if there is no ale fit to send, the fresh water was invaluable. I have the maids and cooks boiling more cauldrons than ever, so I avoid the kitchens like the ... well, I just don't go there any more.

The plague is still raging through Riverside where I have isolated the pestilence. There are still more and more deaths every day for its evil ravaging of body and mind, and sometimes I wonder whether I did the people of Riverside a disservice by insisting that any person who appeared well could be a carrier and I dared not let them roam, less they spread it throughout the county or the Kingdom. But there are far fewer people catching it in the other quarters, thus isolating it in Riverside.

Even in the Castle, where so many were housed at the beginning of the outbreak, many of the initial sufferers are now recovering their strength, including Jake Moore and Robert my Castle lieutenant.

Neighbouring towns have sent us more fresh citrus fruits, after the marketeers, who called several days ago, have spread the word. It has cost much in boiled silver coin, but seeing the immediate relief such tinctures bring immediately they are administered, is indeed worth every silver penny.

I cannot help but take heart from the fact that even those families who were sick in the other three quarters of the town, isolated in their homes, they have not spread the pestilence to their neighbours.

It leads me to think that the poorly built and tight packed tenements of the Riverside, with its swampy ground, would best be cleared of houses, of bone heaps and night soil pits, so only workshops and warehouses use it during the day, and more ditches dug to drain the land better.

But such thoughts are work for the future, my mind returns to the present.

Do I dare to risk it, not just for my person but for all innocents who live in this county that I hold responsibility for the protection of, to venture forth to find out how my dear family fares?

I am not sick yet, but who can guess how long this evil ferments in the body until its true purpose becomes apparent and emerges in the deadly form of sickness?

No, I cannot, dare not, take the risk, though my heart aches.

21.

Tide to tide

(Robin of Oakley narrates)

Though the ship is skimming the waves as if it was in a race, the thought of sailing at faster than the fastest horse, and at night, despite the fullness of the moon, was terrifying sitting in the single deck cabin of our ship.

This is a Venetian galley, that Rebecca has secured for us to cross the channel, and it sails like the wind. The Capitan speaks no English, and I speak no Italian, though Rebecca had chattered away to him with her instructions on the jetty before we sailed as if she was a native.

On deck, seeing the movement of the ship in relation to the barely visible ribbon noting the transition between sky and sea, rather than just feeling it, the speed seems more controlled and therefore acceptable to my senses. It is much easier on the mind to be able to see where we are going.

I determine that I am no sailor, but for the first time since leaving the river two days ago I am enjoying the journey. Though the sea is featureless, other than light twinkling off the tops of the waves, the sky on the other hand is alight with stars. I have lived all my life at the bottom of a valley, so for me the sky has never been so huge as it is now!

The steersman guides us by those stars with a smile in my direction when he sees my dishevelled person on deck. The huge, black bearded Capitan goes further, and claps me on the back, to the accompaniment of a deep laugh when he sees me on deck. They all seem so cheerful, boosting my confidence in giving up my fate and mortality to the skills of their sailing and the strength and watertightness of their sleek craft.

Soon I first hear, then see breakers hitting distant shores on either side of me, where we enter the broad River Thames estuary and surge high on the tide as the moon sinks nearer to the western horizon.

I have time to relax and think. Mostly about what Rebecca told me as we waited on the wharf at Brugge for the galley to be loaded and readied to sail with us and its cargo. She made me see my father in a whole new light. She told me about how my father had lived and earned his living. All those years he spent on the road, living by his wits and using the wager mongers to boost his winnings against their books.

I remember him on our first meeting, only a year ago. I recall him winning far more coin from the wager mongers than his third place purse. In fact, it totalled much more than my winnings at the tourney!

It was the first tournament I had ever entered last year in Bartown, the first of only two tournaments in which we together competed.

As Rebecca said, on that day he had worked the wager mongers' books to his own advantage by his being careful, always betting on certainties.

That's why he hid his talents during early rounds so it looked like he won the final round through good blind fortune or accidental failings by his so-called superior archers.

I remember thinking at the time, that he cannot possibly be the bowman that my sister sought so eagerly, this old man's bowmanship being little better than the ordinary run of the mill.

Only now, a year later, with Rebecca pointing out the facts, does it dawn on me that he was pipped into third place in that tourney by a hair's breadth because he only wanted second place behind me; he stood to earn more from my winning than if he had triumphed in the tournament.

And all this time I had deluded myself that I was perhaps his equal, when I clearly wasn't even close, neither by steadiness of aim or resolve in guile. But I am not dismayed by my self-evaluation, for I am proud to have such a father as he.