“Sire, the oaths,” one of the other bishops put in. They had almost forgotten the business at hand. So, oaths of fealty were exchanged, and finally a steward gestured the three of them away.
They left the royal chamber and emerged in the hall outside, where the swarm of courtiers and attendants and hangers-on gathered, with much drinking and eating and talking and watching and scheming, and it was all just noise. Mary stopped and looked heavenward. Eleanor stood between them, grinning. She approved, at least.
“Aren’t you going to yell at me?” John asked. “Tell me that was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, to draw the king’s attention like that—”
Mary started walking again. “On the contrary, I think Mother and Father will be most impressed at how you found a way to curry favor. I’m rather impressed myself.”
Well, that hadn’t been the reason at all; he’d only wanted to see if the boy would smile—“Then you don’t mind me throwing you into this?”
“I don’t mind shooting before the king. But the way everyone stared at me like I’m some kind of . . . a trained dancing bear!”
“People like dancing bears,” he offered.
“John!”
“We can’t escape Father’s reputation. We might as well use it, yes?”
“Well, then, if we’re going to shoot in a contest tomorrow, we’d best hurry home and check our bows.”
At least she’d stopped searching the crowd for William de Ros.
* * *
Once, four years earlier, Mary made an impossible shot, at dusk, in the forest, a hundred paces away from a line-thin target using a bad bow and worse arrow, her nose bleeding from where their kidnapper had struck her. She made the shot, just to spite the brute.
She had only gotten better since. But practicing archery was usually what she did to avoid people, not put herself in the center of the entire kingdom’s attention. She decided she might as well make a spectacle of it, so when it came time to dress for the match, she wore a kirtle of Lincoln green.
“Well,” her mother said when she saw. “You’ll leave them no doubt whose child you are.”
“I have given up arguing over it,” she answered. “And if William de Ros is there, best he know what he’ll be getting right up front.”
“Perhaps you should stop worrying so much about William de Ros.”
“Truly, I’m no longer sure he exists.”
“Oh, Mary. Have patience.”
The travelers who had come to Westminster for the coronation filled all the inns and manors and beds in town, so many of those there to pay homage spilled out into encampments in the countryside. It seemed a second town had sprung up, the companies of dozens of England’s knights and lords clustered in tents and pavilions, carts and wagons. The baron of Locksley camped apart from the others, near a sparse woodland of undersized alders, closest thing to a forest for miles around but it would have to do.
The whole company gathered to see them off. A good number of the Locksley stewards and tenants had been outlaws with Robin, back in the time of King Richard. They still kept watch over each other, as if they could not get out of the habit. The only ones missing were Brother Tuck, who had died when Eleanor was a baby, and Little John, who did not like to come out of Sherwood’s shadow for anything. Mary had grown up in that circle of safety and protection and trust—she was only starting to realize what that meant, to have a whole troop at one’s back. One could stand up to an awful lot of trouble.
That she would have to leave the company, perhaps soon, was a thing she hadn’t much considered.
“The green suits you, Mary,” Robin said, coming up from the back of the camp.
“Will you not come and watch?” she asked.
“I fear I would make you nervous if I did.”
She thought a moment. “It might, yes. I’m sorry.”
He came up and straightened a corner of her veil. “Never mind. I’ve seen you shoot plenty of times and will do again.”
When John appeared, pulling a quiver over his shoulder, he was also dressed in Lincoln green, a belted tunic with brown leggings. A matched set, like they planned it this way. Mary slipped her own quiver over her shoulder, adjusting her veil around the strap. Will Scarlet, who served as the Locksley household’s steward, had looked over their arrows personally the night before and reassured her that she knew what she was about and had nothing to prove. She picked up her bow, as yet unstrung, from the nearby rack.
“Well, look at you both,” Marian said, touching her fingers to her chin. “You have your arm guards? All your arrows counted? Extra bowstrings, you should have extra strings—”
“Mother, we’ve checked everything three times over, we’re fine,” John said.