Chapter 24: Target Practice

(Will Archer narrates)

Two days without word from Alwen is driving me mad with worry, what can be the problem? She has been sending up to four drays of ale every day and I know that it takes a week to brew ale. Perhaps she has simply run out and needs a couple of days for production to catch up? But no, she has been sending barrels of water too, and the wells have a plentiful supply, with no waiting. There must be other reasons. Despite all the precautions I have taken, has she caught the pestilence from us? No, Henry Small would have reported back as soon as he reached Oaklea, because I am certain that Alwen would have closed off the village in the same way that I have done to the town. It would have been easy, with only the one street into and out of their valley, and she is so used to taking charge.

Maybe it was Henry himself who took the germinating menace to Oaklea? I thought I was being so cautious in speaking with him at the gate, our breathing mutually masked. Did I inadvertently allow a scintilla of this pestilence, perhaps resting on my person, through an unconscious gesture on my part, a wave of my hand, sending destruction to my loved ones and friends? I have avoided catching this plague in all the days I have walked among the sufferers; perhaps I am a carrier, an agent of this evil, spared the convolutions of the symptoms of the illness, all the better to spread its spores among the unsuspecting? The fresh horse, that Henry used, thought safe by being kept outside the walls, may well be a carrier. Although the beasts seen unaffected, in my ignorance of this pest, I may have unwittingly released the evil into the wider world.

What can I do? I cannot go myself to see what is afoot. That would always be my first reaction were the circumstances not so grave. Two hours and I could be there at a gentle canter, at a gallop, within the hour. But I must stay, duty bound to this location, the seat of this debilitating evil, no matter how frustrating the waiting be.

In the meantime, my morning rounds done, I try to free up my mind upon the archery training ground within the Castle Bailey. I settle myself comfortably in my stance, addressing the target as if it is joined to me with an invisible thread, it is thirty paces away, but in my mind set, clear of all thoughts and the emotions of love and fear, I am at one with my aim. Concentrate on the wind swirling around the Castle Keep, I tell myself, William Archer. I see it flow and assess the strength of the air. I nock my bow and draw it. I set there a moment, breathing out and lining up the target, bearing in mind distance and elevation. I can visualise the flight of the arrow, well before it leaves the bow, how it will bend and flex with the tension of the forces exerted on it; how it will rotate, the spinning arrow evening out the external forces of wind and moisture in the air, which flows over the goose feathered fletchings, which in their turn distributes those pressures and steers the dart as determinedly as any ship’s tiller, to drill into the straw butt precisely where intended.

I am about to release that eager dart.

A shout of my name, “Sir William, there be a messenger for ye!” drives me without a moment’s delay to the south west gate of the town the guard has indicated. I never wear chain mail, unlike my predecessor, who appeared to live in it, but being an archer for so long, makes wearing such a uniform uncomfortable. So unencumbered by such armour, I run swiftly along the full length of Main Street, and down the narrow Turner Lane to the south west gate. I climb the steps up to the battlements over the gate and search out my messenger in the well made road from Oaklea, constructed by Alwen of good stone, through the groves of willow growing up in marshes on either side of the road next to the river. A fine road it is, and always a joyous one to ride on, knowing where it leads me, which my earnings paid for, and which has repaid the investment for our family many fold times since.

A lone man is there, one I have never seen before, sitting upon a horse. He is a heavy-set man at arms, dressed in good chain mail, wearing the livery of a black bear on a white ground, arms I do not recognise from neighbours within my jurisdiction, nor among other travellers I’ve seen through the town before.

“Hail, soldier, I hear you have a message for the Shire Reeve?” I call, standing between a pair of crenellations. I realise I probably look as little like the archetypal Shire Reeve as it is possible to be, in my open linen shirt, covered in the sweat from my exertions, no chain mail or Jewel of Office about my neck, left in my office, but I am in no mood for the niceties of etiquette, I want my message!

“I have a message for Lord William Archer, for his ears only. Fetch him immediately, my man!”

I have no patience for this big oaf’s delay. The mid-morning sun is already warm on this bright spring day and even while he has waited for his summons to be delivered to me and my hot footing it to this gate, he has not even had the courtesy to me, or considered the comfort of his sweating horse, to dismount. I will force the issue to a resolvement.

“You can see the town and Castle is closed to travellers, because of plague within, and the Shire Reeve is busy about his duties and sent me, his trusted clerk, to extract your message. I see you carry no parchment in your hand, so I assume the message is conveyed by mouth?”

“It is, and the Lady said it was only to be delivered to the Lord hisself.”

He is annoying me now and my temper is on short tether.

“Does your Lord know that you gadder about the countryside passing on private messages for good Ladies?”

“Aye, my present Master be a guest at the Inn at Oaklea, and has given me leave to deliver the message. I was given four pence by the Lady’s servant to pass on the message and was told that I would receive a further four pence for my trouble from the Lord William Archer when I deliver it. I will not deliver the message until I am paid.”

There are two guards with me, Bartholomew is only a child of thirteen or fourteen, such is the toll of the pestilence in this part of Riverside, but his fellow man at arms, Neville, is a regular soldier and a family man.

“Neville, do you have a purse upon you with four pence in it?” I hiss, “I have come hot foot and uncloaked from training upon the archery ground.”

“Of course, Sire, I have five and a half pence in my purse, though the half was already defaced—”