Free VIII by H.M. Castor

whether I’ll be able to relax enough to shoot fair.
    As I take up my stance, I try to breathe deeply. I try to forget where I am, block out the hall, the distractions around me, the colours, the faces, the shuffles and coughs and muted conversations.
    I uncurl my fingers. My arrow, straight and deadly, thuds into the bull’s eye, just off-centre.
    We each shoot twice more, Arthur and I. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see someone approaching. It’s a herald, the man who refereed my bout with Brandon. “Would you like to try to hit this, my lord?” he says to me. He is holding out a glove – a leather gauntlet, its cuff embroidered with gold. “It is a challenge, if you will accept it, from Ambassador De Puebla.”
    My eyes flick to the viewing platform. I see the ambassador, his neatly trimmed black beard turned towards my father as he speaks. My father’s head is inclined a little, his gaze dropped – listening, concentrating. Neither of them is watching me. But talking about me? Perhaps.
    I look at the glove, still offered on the herald’s palm. An expensive item. Does the Spanish ambassador really want it ruined – or does he think I don’t stand a chance of hitting it? I’ve played this game many times with Compton – usually with an old cap or two, out in the woods by Eltham. It’s easier than shooting birds – but then I can do that, too.
    I say, “I accept.”
    The herald pads away in his soft-soled shoes, carrying the glove carefully, as if it’s a basin of water that might spill. I step up to the mark, nock an arrow and, as the herald stops and turns, I half-draw it in readiness.
    Up on the platform, conversations pause – heads turn. The herald shows me the glove, then throws it high into the air.
    A glove flies differently from a cap, of course. The weight’s distributed differently – the heavy cuff with its trimming makes it spin differently in the air.
    It’s the work of a moment – a half-moment. The full draw, the movement of the bow as you train it on the object’s line of flight, the release.
    Yet in that half-moment, my concentration falters. My eyes slip from the spinning glove to a face beyond it – a face I have the weird feeling of recognising. The hair is straw-coloured and the eyes so deep-set as to be in shadow. Behind the face, wings are spread wide.
    It’s a carved angel, gazing down at me from one of the hammer beams of the roof. It holds a shield: the fleurs-de-lys of France quartered with the lions of England. I see it all in an instant – the hair, the wings, the shield – but even as the arrow is loosed I know that that instant was crucial; I can’t have shot true.
    The glove lands in the sand, but I’ve already turned away. It occurs to me, as I go back to my place at the side of the shooting area, cursing myself silently, that the applause is particularly generous considering I’ve missed. Compton grins at me when I reach him, so broadly that it gives me a flicker of uncertainty; I look back. The herald has retrieved the glove and is holding it up high, turning round so that all can see. My arrow has pierced the leather through the palm. I stare at it in disbelief.
    Then I glance again at the roof, looking for the face. It has no golden hair, no colour at all – it’s just plain carved wood. I don’t recognise it now. Who did I think it was before? I don’t remember. I shake my head, as if I’ve come in from a rain-shower, just as Arthur starts forward, and signals that he would like to try this game too. A glove is hurriedly found for him, donated by another Spaniard; the herald throws for a second time.
    On the viewing platform, a hundred faces tip upwards as Arthur’s arrow flies towards the mighty oak ribs of the roof. Arrow and glove pass elegantly, like the jets of a fountain. They land in the dust, ten feet apart.
    There is a short silence.
    Then the spectators break into applause. I see that Ambassador De Puebla has risen to his feet as he