VIII

my way towards the viewing platform a herald waylays me to say that the Spanish would like Arthur to compete against me.
    I nod my agreement, my face calm, hiding my excitement. As I change direction, walking with Compton towards the table, I hiss, “I’m impressing the Spanish! I’m actually helping . Is he looking? Is Father looking at me? Is he smiling?”
    “I can’t see, sir,” says Compton. “Shall I send for one of your own bows?”
    “No, I’ll be fine.”
    Right now I feel I could draw any of those bows lying on the table, even the heaviest.
    The mark to shoot from is placed on the hall floor directly in front of my father’s position on the platform. Arthur takes up his stance first, nocks his arrow, draws, holds, then shoots. The arrow flies smoothly, and embeds itself at the edge of the bull’s eye.
    I’m fizzing with energy as I walk up to the mark. The bow I’ve selected seems to have almost exactly the same drawing weight as my own, but I’m beginning to wonder 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,