Longbow Girl (19 page)

M
erry couldn't quite believe she had made it back again, even though history said that she had. She felt even more terrified by the old world this time, knowing some of what it had in store for her.

One battle at a time, she told herself. First, disguise yourself.

She unzipped her backpack and took out the box containing her glass eye. Feeling squeamish, as she always did when handling it, she pushed it into place. Then she stepped from her wet swimming costume and pulled on her warm clothes.

She glanced around, feeling that someone was near. Maybe she was just paranoid. She took her knife from her backpack. Looked around again. She couldn't see anyone, but her instincts were screaming at her.
Time to get away
.

She ran through the forest, out on to the open land. She
paused, scanned the landscape. No one.

She ran down towards Sarn Helen, picking up speed. She wanted to get to Mair's, get to safety, get out of the night.

She reached Nanteos, saw the massive edifice of the Black Castle looming in the moonlight. She ran along the valley, up the hill to Ty Gwyn.

An owl hooted. Merry jumped. She half expected the earl's men to be lurking behind every clump of trees.

She glanced over her shoulder then knocked quietly on Mair's door.

‘Mair. It's me. Merry . . .' She waited, shifting from one foot to the other, growing cold. Growing worried. Silence. She knocked again, louder, listened hard.

Footsteps, heavy, coming closer.

‘Mair! It's me. Merry,' she whispered again. She pulled off her pack, sheathed her knife, realizing she probably looked terrifying.

The rusty sound of bolts drawing back. The old woman stood at the door in a worn nightdress, white hair streaming down her back like a ghost. Or a witch. She carried the stinking fish-whiff tallow candle, which cast a pool of light around her. Beyond, there was darkness.

The healer eyed Merry, looked past her. She seemed to be debating something, biting her lip, her eyes anxious and flickering.

At last she beckoned Merry in.

‘Thank you,' breathed Merry, hurrying inside. She stood, waiting, uncertain of her welcome as Mair pushed shut the
door, slid home the bolts.

Merry pulled off her beanie, gripped it in her hand. Water dripped from it to the rough stone floor.

‘They say you are a horse thief,' Mair declared, holding her candle to Merry's face. ‘A prized Arab stallion was stolen.' She spoke slowly, like a judge gearing up to pass sentence. ‘There's a price on the head of the one-eyed bandit. Ten sovereigns.'

Merry said nothing, just stood, clutching her hat, waiting.

‘They hang thieves!' hissed Mair with a sudden, shocking passion, as if Merry's silent impassivity were too much to bear. ‘And they hang those who give them shelter.'

Merry swallowed. She hadn't thought of that. Did the healer plan to turn her in or turn her away? She could fight, she could run, but she needed help and the old woman was the only one here to give it to her.

‘I have two eyes,' said Merry.

Mair barked out a laugh, surprising Merry. ‘So you have!' The laughter faded. ‘How?'

Merry swayed. She was tired, cold and desperate. She wanted to sit down; she wanted to get on with what she came for.

‘It's a long story.'

‘I'm a patient woman,' said Mair, finally gesturing at the table and stool.

Relieved, Merry sat. The fire was banked for the night, no flames, just glowing embers, but Merry was grateful for even their scant warmth.

‘You've woken me,' said Mair, taking a poker, prodding the
flames into life before adding two thick logs. Then she took a stool and sat opposite Merry. ‘I won't get back to sleep again this night. I have time for a story or two.'

A sudden wind kicked up, howling against the cottage.

‘First I need to ask you, what news of Longbowman Owen?' said Merry. ‘Did they kill him?'

Mair made the sign of the cross, shaking her head violently. ‘God have mercy, no they did not.'

Merry scratched her chin. Where had he been when she went searching for him? Was he being interrogated in some other part of the castle?

‘Where is he now?' she asked.

‘He languishes in de Courcy's dungeon. Pending the king's decision. His family fears he will hang.'

‘Damn the king!'

‘Careful, girl! If anyone heard, you'd be joining him at the gallows.'

Merry sucked in a breath. She'd have to learn to bite her tongue in this time.

‘In that case,' she said, her voice low, determined, more of a declaration than a request, ‘I need a longbow. One that's my height, not too powerful a draw. And flight arrows made for the bow.'

‘
You?
A war bow! What for?'

‘It's a long—'

‘God in his heaven! No more
long story
excuses!' exclaimed the healer. ‘One more time and I'll cast you out!'

Merry couldn't think of anything to say.

‘How old are you?' demanded Mair.

‘Fifteen.'

‘And you want a bow?'

‘I do.'

‘What for?'

‘For the king's tourney.'

‘What tourney?'

‘The tourney where he asks for the Owen family to fulfil their pledge. Where he asks for a longbowman to come forward.'

‘He hasn't asked for any such tourney.'

‘He will.'

‘How do you know?' asked Mair, eyes wide, all signs of tiredness gone.

‘Does it matter?' replied Merry. ‘All I need is a longbow so that I can honour the pledge.'

‘But you're not an Owen, girl!'

‘Oh, but I am!' She paused, emotions rising. ‘I saw Longbowman Owen's daughter run out to him when the king's men took him away. Even from a distance I could see the resemblance. I looked like her, at her age, when I had both my eyes . . .'

Mair tilted her head, studied Merry. ‘You weren't born like that?'

‘No,' said Merry. ‘I lost my eye in a longbow accident three years ago.'

‘Why would you play with a longbow?' asked Mair, frowning.

‘I don't
play
with one. I've
trained
since I was five years
old to shoot the longbow. Every generation of Owens has a longbowman.'

‘Glyndŵr Owen.'

‘Yes. And now me. I am the longbow girl.' Merry leant towards the old woman. Her words came out slow and heavy and deliberate. She
had
to make Mair understand. And believe.

‘There will be a tourney. The king will call the Owens on their pledge. I will answer it.'

‘If you are a longbow girl as you claim, then where's your bow?'

Merry felt waves of exhaustion hit her, the sheer, grinding weariness of accumulated lies.

‘And how can there be two bowmen?' continued Mair. ‘Or one bowman and one
longbow girl
at the same time?'

Merry gave a hollow laugh. It was time for the truth. ‘That's just it. We're not at the same time. You want a long story? I'll give you one.'

In the flickering light of the fire, Merry told her tale.

Mair sat and listened, fists clenching and relaxing, clenching and relaxing, like a heart beating. Outside the wind roared down off the Beacons, just as it always had, just as it always would.

The tallow candle burnt down as Merry talked. When she finished, she simply sat, palms turned upwards on her thighs. She'd risked it all. She could be turned out as a raving lunatic. She could be betrayed. There was the bounty on her head.

Mair said nothing. She just looked from Merry to the fire
and back, eyes restless as the flames. Finally she spoke. Her voice was faint, as if she were talking to herself.

‘How can I trust you?'

‘What? You want
proof
?'

‘Not for my heart, not for my soul, but for my mind . . .'

Merry got up, paced round the kitchen. ‘First, the de Courcys will declare a tourney. Wait and see.' She was angry. She hadn't come here, left her home, risked everything to be doubted. ‘Second, there's a brick here, in your hearth, three up, four across.' Merry hoped this wasn't a recent addition. Seren had shown it to her when she was a child, told her it was where the Morgan family had always kept the few valuables they'd possessed.

‘Take it out and there's a hiding place,' she continued, and knew from the flare of Mair's eyes she was right, that the hiding place was there now. ‘You have a leather book, a healer's book of remedies and herbs and recipes dating back hundreds of years, even from this time.'

Merry fell silent. She sat down, rocked her body back and forth. It was too much, too much. What doesn't kill us doesn't always make us stronger . . . but she felt she had no strength left. ‘A longbow girl,' murmured the old lady. ‘From another time.' She reached out, touched Merry's shoulder as if to prove to herself she was flesh and blood. Merry looked up, met her gaze. The woman seemed to see the truth in it, for she nodded and went to stoke the fire. ‘Forgive me and my doubts,' she said to the flames.

Then she turned back to Merry.

‘I've saved someone in every family in the Beacons and beyond. They all owe me. You'll have your bow by the end of the morrow. Now you must rest. You may sleep on the pallet I keep in my herb room.'

Mair gave Merry a rough woollen blanket; then she disappeared into a small room next to the kitchen.

Merry felt spent, purged, beyond exhaustion. She pulled the pallet bed from the herb room, pushed it close to the fire. She took out her glass eye, put it in its box, lay down on the straw mattress, pulled the blanket over her and fell fast asleep.

The healer did not try to sleep.

The girl of her visions had returned. The girl with the hands of an archer. The longbow girl from another time.

E
xhausted, feverish, head spinning, James awoke. He had the sense that something was very wrong. Lying flat, cocooned in sheets and blankets, still half asleep, he blinked a few times. Then a few more. Above him was a rich red canopy. Around him were four elaborately carved posts draped with green velvet. He sat up, looked around, heart racing. He was lying in what was his own bedroom, or should have been, in a four-poster bed. It all came careering back: following Merry, the river, the swim, that awful drowning swim, the castle, his home. Only not. Not for nearly five hundred years.

He swung his legs around, pushed aside the velvet drapes, put his feet on the floor. On to
rushes
.

He looked down at his body. He was wearing a nightgown! Who had put this on him? He had no memory of that, or of
being put to bed . . .

Weak light filtered through a gap in the curtained windows. It was morning. He was desperate to pee. But where? He knew there'd be no converted en suite bathroom. There wouldn't even be a loo down the hall. They didn't exist. What there would be, somewhere, was a chamber pot.

James got down on his hands and knees on the sharp rushes and peered under the bed. Spotted the pot, hauled it out.

Seconds after he had finished, there was a knock at the door and before he could speak, a man came in carrying a huge bundle of what looked like cloth and a dead animal. The man with the black beard and the horrible scar. Brioc. He must have been waiting outside, listening . . .

The man nodded to James, gave a curt bow, but his eyes were hard and watchful.

‘You have awoken, Lord James.'

‘So it would seem.'

‘I took the liberty of collecting some clothes for you.' Brioc raised the bundle in his arms. ‘The countess asked me to take some of the earl's vestments,' he added with a frown of distaste, as if this were really quite inappropriate.

‘Good,' said James. ‘Er, thank you.'

He eyed the weird collection of items the man was now laying out at the foot of the four-poster bed: linen, velvet and lace; frills, pleats, embroidery . . . and tights! God, if his mates at school could see him . . . if Merry could see him . . . He felt a sharp pang of fury with Merry for not telling him the truth, mixed in with fear for her. Where was she now? With
her ancestors?

The man was nodding at the clothes. James hesitated; he really didn't know where to start.

‘Used to a body servant, are we?' asked Brioc.

James swallowed, forced himself to nod. Anything to convince the man he was a typical sixteenth-century lord who did nothing, not even dress himself, was good.

It must have taken ten minutes for the man to dress him, an almost unbearably intimate process. James shut his eyes and pretended it wasn't happening. Finally, after securing scores of tiny buttons and multiple laces, Brioc spoke.

‘Would you like to check yourself in the glass?' he asked, nodding to a corner of the room.

Next to the wall was a small free-standing mirror. James tilted it up and down, blinking at his reflection. Doublet, jerkin, leggings, delicate black leather shoes . . . codpiece. He looked ridiculous. He looked like one of the portraits. Like a sixteenth-century de Courcy. And that, he suspected, might be just enough to save his life.

James walked down the stairs. Brioc prowled by his side, the courtier warrior, velveted, scarred, armed. His silver rapier dangled from an ornate black belt, stabbing the air behind him as he walked. On the other side of his belt lurked a dagger in a leather sheath. Death at either hand.

At the far end of the Great Hall stood a group of similarly dressed men. They fell silent as he and Brioc approached, watchful eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Brioc paused by the drawing room door, knocked, coughed,
and was summoned by the countess with her imperious:
Come!

He opened the door, gestured James inside.

The countess lounged in her chair by the fire, flanked by two wolfhounds. They pushed to their feet and eyed James speculatively. Teeth, swords, daggers . . .

‘Thank you, Brioc,' said the countess, with a careless smile.

Brioc seemed to devour the smile. James noted that, noted everything. Fear heightened his perception. He supposed if you were sufficiently afraid you would be almost numb and notice nothing. He was quite a few notches down from that, a sort of amber terror, not full-on red. He feared what
might
happen, not what was happening now.

Brioc glanced at James, as if to say
behave or you'll have me to answer to
, then spun around and strode from the room.

His footsteps echoed away, then stopped. Eavesdropping on the other side of the door, thought James.

The countess tilted up her head. ‘Come, let me see you,' she commanded.

James approached across the long drawing room. The wolfhounds set up a low growl.

‘Zeus! Apollo! Desist!' ordered the countess.

James hid a smile. So like his father's wolfhounds, even down to the names.

‘Something is amusing?'

‘No, reassuring,' replied James, reaching out his hands to let the wolfhounds get his scent. ‘My father has wolfhounds. Four of them.'

‘Ah, a real de Courcy,' declared the countess. ‘You miss him.'

‘More than you could imagine . . .'

The countess gave him a smile of sympathy, then her expression changed and she ran a practised eye up and down him.

‘That's a bit more fitting. You're almost my husband's size. He's just a bit taller and broader than you.'

‘Where is he?' asked James, glancing around as if an angry earl might burst into the room at any moment. He would be much harder to fool than his wife . . .

‘Hunting with His Majesty. Wild boar in the forest of Brecon. They rested overnight in our lodge there. They return today. I am sure my husband will be intrigued to meet you. To hear your story,' she added, head to one side. Mistrust or plain curiosity, James couldn't tell.

The countess indicated the chair opposite her with a gracious sweep of her velvet-clad arm. ‘Now, sit, please. Was your room comfortable?'

‘Very, thank you,' said James, sitting down on the ridiculous pleated skirt-like thing, rearranging it under him.

‘Good. The green room is the chamber given to the heir, to the next earl.' Her mood seemed to change and she gave a slight, sad, smile. ‘I am hopeful God will bless us, but so far he has not. Just like King Henry himself. Though he does at least have a daughter.'

James nodded: the future Queen Elizabeth. He opened his mouth to say that, rapidly changed his mind.

‘You will have a son,' he said instead. ‘I am sure of it.' James could have described him: dark haired, long nosed, a smile of mischief; the thirteenth earl . . . he'd lived with the portrait of the boy for sixteen years.

‘I live in hope,' the countess replied wistfully. ‘Now, since you are rested,' she declared, her voice light again, ‘I want to hear more of your incredible story.'

She leant towards a small table, her heavy clothes making the movement stiff, picked up a large golden bell and rang it vigorously. Rubies dangled from her ears, glittering as they caught the light.

A few moments later, a lady, well dressed but not so richly as the countess, hurried in.

‘Bring food for my kinsman.'

The lady bobbed, then scurried out, closing the door softly behind her.

The countess took a large pewter jug from the table beside her, filled a goblet, handed it to James. He took a sip. Watered-down red wine, spiced with cloves and cinnamon and gently heated. It was warm and soothing. James cautioned himself to just have a little. He needed his wits about him.

He took up his story again, the boat journey, the shipwreck, his long, cold journey from the coast. The attackers who stole his clothes. His arrival at the castle.

The maid came back in with a plate of chicken drumsticks and some kind of pie.

The countess gestured. ‘Eat. You must be famished.'

There were no knives or forks, so James picked up the food
with his hands.

‘You're lucky my watchmen didn't run you through,' mused the countess. ‘Creeping about the castle grounds at night.'

‘Why would they?' asked James, swallowing a mouthful of chicken. ‘I must have looked like a drowned rat!'

‘Robbery, of course. They probably thought you swam the moat.'

‘I wouldn't want to swim in that moat, not with all the ca—' James cut himself short. Did carp exist in this time? Were they in the moat?

‘The carp?' said the countess. ‘Yes, well, we
do
have carp, huge ones. Not very appealing to swim with. We
eat
them, roasted with prunes.' She paused and her face grew serious. ‘But you'd be surprised what people do when they're desperate.'

‘It'd be a brave or stupid person who tried to rob this castle, what with the moat, portcullis, and all the armed men.'

‘Brave, stupid, both, but the castle
has
been robbed,' fumed the countess.

‘What was taken?' asked James.

‘
Zephyr!
'

‘Who's Zephyr?' asked James.

‘My beautiful Arab stallion!' declared the countess, eyes flashing with temper. ‘Stolen!'

James gulped his wine, felt the heat rush through him. ‘And any ideas who might have taken him?' he asked, aiming for casual.

‘Oh yes! I know
exactly
who stole him.'

‘Who?'

‘The English-speaking
witch
!'

‘Witch?'

‘With one eye. I caught her in the act of stealing him, challenged her. She fought me. Fought like the devil. She only
just
made her escape.' The countess fidgeted in her chair, reliving the scene. ‘She must have put a spell on Zephyr; it is only
I
who can ride him! And he is so fleet they outran all my men on their chargers.' She took a sip of wine, slammed down her goblet with a bang that slopped red wine on to the table. It dripped like blood on to the rush-covered wooden floor.

‘But don't worry,' she said, with a smile. ‘We'll catch her, sooner or later. You can't exactly hide an Arab stallion for ever. People will notice him. People will talk. He has our brand on him, besides. And
she
can hardly hide, the one-eyed witch.'

James bent over his goblet of mulled wine. He pretended to breathe in the wafting odours. He took a sip, swallowed the lump in his throat. Only when he felt his face was clear of all emotion did he look up.

‘What will you do with her,' he asked, ‘if you catch her?'

‘She'll hang, of course. Like all horse thieves.' The countess leant forwards towards the fire, rubbed her hands, and spoke into the flames. ‘Or maybe she'll burn, for witchcraft . . .'