As the King appeared before the pavilion, a bugle rang out, the
soldiers presented halberds, and all talk ceased sharply.
"My good friends," said he, "I have brought you here to-day to test
your skill with a weapon that once made an English army the most feared
in all the world. In a word, I am curious to know how steadily you can
draw the cord and lay your bodies to the bow. Yonder are the butts,
and here the staves and the draw line. It is but a poor one hundred
paces to the nearest clout; and as that will be too beggarly a distance
for you, my lords, you shall use the second. The first has been placed
for the fair dames who are to shoot with you, if they will."
And taking the hand of the Queen, who had come forth with the Countess
of Clare and was standing beside him, he led the way to the near end of
the clearing where, on a rustic table built of boughs, were piled an
assortment of yew staves and arrows of seasoned ash, with cords of deer
hide, wrist gloves, baldrics, and all the paraphernalia essential to
the archer's outfit.
"Let the lots be drawn," he commanded; and a page came forward with the
disc-bag.
As soon as De Lacy saw that Beatrix would participate in the contest,
he chose with much care a stave best adapted for her wrist, and picking
out a string to correspond and three grey-goose-feather shafts of a
proper length and thickness, he brought them to her.
"Do you not shoot?" she asked.
"Yes--but with small hope. The French do not run to the long bow, and
while once I could ring the blanc I am sadly out of practice."
"Ring it now . . . you can," she said softly.
He looked at her hesitatingly. "Tell me," he said, coming a bit
nearer; "tell me . . . will you be sorry if I fail?"
But the old habit held her and she veered off. "Assuredly . . . it
would be poor friendship if I were not." . . . A bowstring twanged and
the crowd applauded. "Come," she exclaimed, "the match has begun."
"And is this my answer?" he asked.
"Yes, Sir Insistent . . . until the ride back," and left him.
The luck of the discs had made the Countess of Clare the last to shoot.
When she came forward to the line the butt was dotted over with the
feathered shafts; but the white eye that looked out from their midst
was still unharmed, though the Duchess of Buckingham and Lady Clifton
had grazed its edge. Beatrix had slipped the arrows through her
girdle, and plucking out one she fitted it to the string with easy
grace. Then without pausing to measure the distance she raised the
bow, and drawing with the swift but steady motion of the right wrist
got only by hard practice, and seemingly without taking aim, she sped
the shaft toward the mark.
"Bravo!" exclaimed the King, as it quivered in the white.
Before the word had died, the second arrow rested beside it; and even
as it struck, the string twanged again and the third joined the others
in the blanc.
"My dear Countess," said Richard, "I did not know we entertained
another Monarch. Behold the Queen of Archery! Hail and welcome to our
Kingdom and our Court! . . . Gentlemen, have you no knee for Her
Majesty?"
Beatrix blushed and curtsied in return, then quickly withdrew to the
side of the Queen.
"Methinks, my lords," Richard said, "you have got a hard score to best.
However, it is but two hundred yards to your target; so let it be the
notch to the string, the string to the ear, and the shaft in the white
clout yonder."
As the King had said, the distance was short for rovers. In all
regular contests the mark was never under two hundred and twenty paces,
and in many districts it was nearer four hundred. Nevertheless, to
strike an object, even at two hundred, that seemed no larger than one's
hand is no easy task; and yet, as one after another took his turn, the
clout was pierced repeatedly; once by some, and twice by others; but
only the Duke of Buckingham and Sir Aymer de Lacy struck it thrice. It
chanced, however, that one of the latter's arrows landed directly in
the center, on the pin that held the cloth, and this gave him the prize.
"For one who is half a Frenchman, Sir Aymer, you handle a long bow most
amazing well," the King remarked. . . "Pardieu! what say you to a
match between the victors?"
A murmur of approval greeted the suggestion.
"May it please you, my liege," said De Lacy, "permit me now to yield.
I am no match for the Queen of Archery."
"We will not excuse you . . . nor, I fancy, will the Countess," turning
toward her.
"If Sir Aymer de Lacy will engage to shoot his best and show no favor,
I shall not refuse the trial," she replied, coming forward.
"By St. Paul!" Richard exclaimed. "I will answer for that . . . here
is the prize," and deftly plucking the lace kerchief from her hand he
passed it to a page. "Substitute this for the clout in the far
target," he said.
De Lacy thought she would refuse the contest; but to his surprise she
smiled--though with rather indifferent hauteur.
"It is hardly fitting, Sire," she said, choosing an arrow, "that I
should both contribute the prize and contest for it."
Then Sir Aymer spoke, bowing low: "May it please Your Majesty, I am
your leal subject, yet I shall not shoot at yonder mark unless the
Countess of Clare consent."
She gave him a grateful look.
"I thank you, Sir Aymer, for the courtesy," she said. . . "Shoot and
welcome;" and she stepped to the draw line.
It may have been that she was careless, or that the scene had made her
nervous, for while her first two arrows struck the blanc truly as
before, the third went a finger's length above it. With a shrug she
turned away, and loosing the string leaned on the long stave, waiting.
De Lacy had purposed letting her defeat him by a margin so slender as
not to seem intentional, but catching the dark eyes of the King fixed
on him with sharp significance, he understood that he was to win if he
could. So he drew with care, and pierced the kerchief thrice.
De Lacy received the bit of lace from the page and proffered it to the
Countess.
"It is quite destroyed," he said. "I am sorry."
She laughed lightly. "You owe me no apologies, and need feel no
regret. You won it honestly--and I accept it now as a gift; a guerdon
of your prowess and your courtesy."
He bowed; and as his glance sought the King, the latter nodded, ever so
lightly, in approval.
An hour later, after the repast was served, the trumpet gave the signal
for departure. As De Lacy stepped forward to hold the stirrup, Richard
waved him aside, and putting one hand on his horse's wither, vaulted
easily into place.
"Look to the ladies!" he called; "and do you, Sir Aymer, escort the
Countess of Clare. It is meet that the King of the Bow should attend
upon his Queen."
Then dropping his tones, so that they were audible only to De Lacy, he
said with a familiar earnestness: "And if you do not turn the kerchief
to advantage, you deserve no further aid."
Reining over beside the Queen, he motioned for the others to follow and
dashed off toward Windsor. In a trice they were gone, and, save for
the servants, the Countess and De Lacy were alone.
She was standing beside Wilda waiting to be put up, and when Aymer
tried to apologize for the delay, she stopped him.
"It was no fault of yours," she said--then added archly, head turned
half aside: "and you must blame Richard Plantagenet for being left with
me."
"Blame him?" he exclaimed, lifting her slowly--very slowly--into
saddle. . . "Blame him! . . . Do you think I call it so?" and fell to
arranging her skirt, and lingering over it so plainly that the Countess
smiled in unreserved amusement. Yet she did not hurry him. And when
he had dallied as long as he thought he dared, he stole a quick glance
upward--and she let him see the smile.
"Am I very clumsy?" he asked, swinging up on Selim.
She waited until they had left the clearing and the grooms behind them
and were among the great tall trees:
"Surely not . . . only very careful," she said teasingly.
He was puzzled at this new mood that had come with the archery and
still tarried--this careless gayety under circumstances which,
hitherto, would have made her severe and distant. He was so used to
being frowned upon, reproved, and held at the point that he was quite
blind to the change it signaled. He bent his eyes on his horse's mane.
He thought of the King's words as to the kerchief and longed for a bit
of his astute penetration and wonderful tact, that he might solve this
provoking riddle beside him and lead up to what was beating so fiercely
in his breast. In his perplexity he looked appealingly toward her.
She was watching him with the same amused smile she had worn since the
fixing of the skirt; and was guessing, with womanly intuition, what was
passing in his mind.
"And forsooth, Sir King of the Bow," she said--and the smile rippled
into a laugh--"are you so puffed up by your victory that you will not
deign to address me, but must needs hold yourself aloof, even when
there is none to see your condescension! . . . Perchance even to ride
beside me will compromise your dignity. Proceed. . . Proceed. . . I
can follow; or wait for the grooms or the scullions with the victual
carts."
And this only increased De Lacy's amazement and indecision.
"Why do you treat me so?" he demanded.
"Do you not like my present mood?" she asked. "Yea, verily, that I do!
but it is so novel I am bewildered. . . My brain is whirling. . . You
are like a German escutcheon: hard to read aright."
"Then why try the task?"
"I prefer the task," he answered. "It may be difficult, yet it has its
compensations."
"You flatterer," she exclaimed; and for an instant the smile became
almost tender.
"Pardieu! . . . You grow more inexplicable still. . . Yesterday I
would have been rated sharply for such words and called presumptuous
and kindred names."
"And what of to-day . . . if that were yesterday?"
"To-day! . . . To-day! . . . It has been the mirror of all the
yesterdays since the happy one that gave me first sight of you at
Pontefract; . . . and the later one when, ere I rode back to London, I
begged a favor--the kerchief you had dropped by accident--and was
denied." . . . He drew Selim nearer. . . "To-day I again secured your
kerchief; and though I wished to keep it sorely as I wished before to
keep the other, yet like it, too, I could only give it back. And now,
even as I begged before, I beg again for the favor. Will you not grant
it?"
The smile faded and her face went serious.
"Do you not forget the words of that first refusal," she asked, "that
'Beatrix de Beaumont grants neither gage nor favor until she plights
her troth'?"
"Nay, I have not forgotten"--and with sudden hope that made his throat
thicken and his fingers chill he reached over and took her hand.
She did not withdraw it nor reprove him. Instead, she fastened her
eyes on his face as though to read his very heart and soul.
Unconsciously they had checked their horses. Then she blushed, and
averting her eyes in confusion strove to release her hand. But De Lacy
pressed on, though his heart beat fast and his head throbbed. Leaning
across, he put his arm about her waist and drew her--struggling
gently--toward him.
"And the kerchief, dear one?" he whispered.
"Nay, Aymer, you surely do not wish it now," she answered brokenly.
"Now, more than any earthly gift or Heavenly grace. . . Give it to me,
sweetheart."
She had ceased to resist and his face was getting perilously near her
own.
Suddenly, and with a smile De Lacy never forgot, she drew forth the bit
of torn lace. "Here, take it, dear," she said.
"And you with it, sweetheart?" he cried.
"Unto death, my lord," she answered; and once more the blushes came.
She tried to hide her face in her hands, but with a joyous laugh Aymer
lifted her from the saddle and swung her across and into his strong
arms.