Chapter 13: The Shooting Contest
Logan looked up from his plate as Lee slid into the seat beside him at the table. "Hey. Yer late."
Lee flushed and lowered his eyes. "I'm sorry."
Logan rolled his eyes. "I was just talkin', kid, I wasn't mad or anythin'. But now that we're on that subject, why are ya late?"
Jubilee fumbled for a response. "Uh, I was, uh…I overslept," she said finally, and quickly grabbed for a roll and bit into it. With her mouth full she could avoid further questioning.
She couldn't tell him that she was late because her boots had been tampered with. She could have sworn she left them in her room while she went to the privies in her soft shoes; when she came back her boots were inexplicably missing, and it took a while before she found them tucked between the neat folds of the spare tunic in her chest. They had been dunked in manure, then put back. As a result, she would have to wash her boots and her tunic the next time she had a chance.
She had asked Francis if she could put a lock on her door, and he had given her permission, but the smith was just now busy with making other things to worry about something as small and insignificant as a lock for a squire's door. Jubilee was getting tired of finding her clothes soaked in manure, foul liquids, and other unmentionable things; yesterday she had found someone had put a dead rat into her shoes, and she had set her foot on it when she put her shoe on.
And now she wasn't feeling so good. Winter was setting in, and the castle was chilly. She wore the jerkin Logan had given her everywhere now, even to bed; but it still couldn't stave off the chill she felt from the drafts in the castle, and the gaps in her broken shutters didn't help much. The smell from the stagnant water in the castle's moat, just outside her window, didn't help either. The constant stench made her flee her room every day as much as possible; and when she was in her room, the smell made her nauseous. Even when she wasn't in her room she could smell it. And it made her cough. She had been unwilling to complain; she didn't want to seem ungrateful, so she kept her mouth shut and tried to hide her coughs. She ate as much as she was able, but her appetite had slacked off lately, and she nibbled on her breakfast until it was time to leave the hall.
Snow lay thick and heavy on the ground outside; any work with the horses was out for today. She joined the rest of the squires as they filed out of the hall, heading for their morning weaponry classes. The History course had concluded the previous week, and now the mornings were taken up with weapons and riding lessons.
Squires were allowed to have their own swords, though they weren't sharpened. Logan had watched Lee struggling to handle the one assigned him, and realized that while Lee had muscle enough to deal with it, it was too long for the kid to effectively handle. And since he didn't seem to be growing fast (Logan hadn't seen the boy grow much at all since they'd come, and had reached the conclusion that the kid was a slow grower, and was going to be short for the rest of his life.) He'd sought the Squiremaster's permission to give Lee a shorter sword, an inch or so shorter than the ones the other squires used, and was gratified when the lad stated doing better at the sword practice than he had formerly.
But Logan couldn't match the kid with a bow and arrows. Lee was good with those. He was the best archer in the squires' class, and Logan would have been willing to bet the best archer in the castle. Some of the other knights asked Logan if he was jealous; Logan had replied quite honestly, that he hadn't been able to see why he should be jealous. Yes, he had been the best with arrows once; but as anyone who had sense knew, there was always a chance that you would meet somebody better at your weapons than you. It was inevitable. Logan knew that, and wasn't surprised to be shown right by his own squire.
In fact, he respected and admired Lee more than some of his fellow knights. Logan would have bet his sword on the fact that the kid could outshoot any knight there, and was a better horseman than most of them. Logan's horse was trained now to respond to a touch of hand, knee, and foot; neither his horse or Lee's needed reins and bridles, though neither let on that fact. Logan was afraid that if word got around, others would ask Lee to teach their horses too; and the boy was looking a little peaky lately. Tired. Worn. He didn't want to stress the boy further; after all, the boy was only thirteen. He was already handling responsibilities much weightier than most thirteen-year-olds dealt with.
Jubilee sighed as she reached for a bow and a quiver of arrows. She loved archery, loved that heavy, satisfying thud as the arrow sank into the target. She was good at it, too. No one else here could outshoot her. Not even Nathan and Stephen, standing down at the end of the line of students, had been able to match her in the archery lessons, and they had even talked their fathers into hiring tutors to give them tips and extra lessons! Her prowess had even spread to the knights, and now many of them, Logan included, would show up during the lessons to watch the squires, and her. And here they came, sitting on benches across the back of the salle. She could feel Logan sit behind her, heard him tell her, "Easy there. Concentrate." She grinned at him, then turned and shot.
It was close to the midwinter festivals, and the Weaponsmaster seemed inclined to be lenient. They had structured shooting practice for half an hour, during which time every arrow she shot landed squarely in the chest of the target dummies, and then he left them to independent practice.
Nathan and Stephen were kidding around with one of the boys down by their end, and the entire salle grew quiet when the boy put an apple on the head of the practice dummy and went to the far end of the salle, almost a hundred and fifty paces away, and tried to shoot the apple. He shot three arrows at the apple. All of them missed.
Stephen went next. He missed with all three of his arrows, too. Jubilee shook her head disdainfully. This was so easy; the target wasn't even moving, how could they miss? She sniffed and returned to her own shooting as squire after squire tried, and failed to hit the apple.
"Think ya can do better than those puppies?" came a voice from behind her, and she turned to see Logan looking at her with a smile.
She nodded. "It's not as hard as they're making it look," she said scornfully.
"Hey," Nathan turned to her. "You try it then, big mouth. Put your money where your mouth is!"
Jubilee shook her head. "I'm not interested in seeing if my balls are bigger than yours, Nathan," she said. "I know they are."
"How would we know? We've never seen yours!" Nathan challenged her. "So shoot at the thing."
Jubilee rolled her eyes. Without bothering to step forward to the line marked as the shooting point, she raised her bow, nocked an arrow, and shot, as casually as if she had been standing right next to the target. Her arrow flew true, as she knew it would, and lodged in the middle of the apple. The apple teetered fro a moment, then fell from the practice target's head, neatly impaled.
The knights broke out in applause, and Logan flashed her a grin. She smiled back.
"Well, that's all very well," Nathan said. "But what if you can't see the target?"
She blinked. "What?"
Nathan held up a strip of black cloth. "I dare you to do the same thing blindfolded."
Jubilee paled, but Julian, down the row, clapped. "Bravo! There's a true test of an archer's skills. Come on, let's have it."
"Wait," the weaponsmaster spoke now. "Let the boy get into position first. Let him sight the target, then put the blindfold on. The trick will be to see if he can shoot straight after having sighted the target and not having seen it."
Jubilee blinked. "No," she said. "No, I'm not going to do it blindfolded."
"Go on, Lee," said Logan's voice from behind her. "Ya can do it. I got faith in ya."
Julian whirled on him. "You have faith? Well then. Let's have you stand over there with the apple on your head and see if the boy hits it."
The other knights started muttering. Jubilee went pale, staring at Logan wordlessly. He stared back at her. He had faith in her…but was it enough to place himself in direct path of possible harm? He looked at the apple Julian was holding out. "No," he said.
"Coward!" Julian cried. "You said you had faith in your squire, yet you turn the challenge down. Liar, and a coward." Several of the others, including Nathan, chanted 'coward' too.
Jubilee flushed at the look on Logan's face. "He's not a coward!" she burst out hotly. "I'll do it!" She marched determinedly to the line and dug around in her quiver for the straightest, well-fletched arrow she could find.
Logan stared. The boy was going to try it…well, if the boy thought he could do it, Logan would too. He strode to the end of the salle, pushed the target dummy aside, and positioned the apple on his head. "A gold that says the boy misses it," he heard someone call out. In moments, the money was flying thick and fast, and a white-faced boy was standing at the line, looking stunned. Logan fished into his pocket, came out with a coin, and flipped it to the Weaponsmaster. "On the boy," he said confidently. "He'll do it." He was the only one.
Lee looked scared as he looked down the salle at Logan. Logan planted his feet and forced himself to remain utterly still. If he moved even the slightest bit, after Lee had targeted him and after the blindfold had been put on, the arrow might miss, or worse, kill him. He saw the boy lift the bow, nock the arrow, and draw the string back. Then the blindfold was lowered over his eyes by the weaponsmaster, and the order to release was given. Logan squeezed his eyes closed as he saw the arrow leave the bow…
And then silence fell in the salle.
He cracked open one eye, then the other. The weight of the apple was gone from the top of his head. He looked down at the floor, expecting to see it had fallen. Nothing.
Everyone was staring at the wall behind him, and Lee ripped off the blindfold in the silence, unable to restrain himself. Logan turned to see what everyone was looking at.
The arrowhead had been buried in the padded wall behind Logan; the apple was impaled on the shaft of the arrow, neatly through the middle. He stared at it for a moment, then turned and stared at the boy. "You did it." His voice was soft with wonder. "Lee, you did it! You hit the apple!" he ran for the boy, wrapping his arms around the boy and lifting him in the air. The other squires were cheering, slapping backs, and applauding; even the weaponsmaster was staring at the impaled apple on the wall and shaking his head.
Jubilee felt a great rush of relief as she saw the apple impaled on the arrow. The silence after her shot had been terrifying; she had ripped the blindfold off, praying that she hadn't injured Logan fatally; and instead, she had found she'd done it. She'd done it! She'd really done it! She hugged Logan back, wishing, for one wild exuberant minute, that she could kiss him.
"Go and get your arrow, boy," the weaponsmaster said kindly. "I don't think anyone else will be able to practice anymore today." She left the cheering group, left Logan collecting the sizable pile of gold and silver coins from all those doubters who had said that she couldn't do it, and leaned against the wall for a minute, sighing in relief, before reaching for the arrow and apple.
There was a quiet, almost inaudible swish, and sudden agony bloomed in her hands. The shock was so sudden that she stood for a moment, staring at the arrow that had passed through both her hands and buried its head into the wall. Both her hands were impaled, just as that apple was. And then the agony struck full force, and she screamed with the pain.
Logan spun at the sound of that scream, and stared in shock at the arrow pinning Lee's hands to the wall. As the boy screamed in agony again, this time accompanying it with tears of pain, he broke out of his shocked, horrified freeze and ran to the boy, catching him around the waist with one arm, keeping the boy from collapsing and wrenching the arrow through flesh. With his other hand he grasped the arrow. The boy screamed in agony again as Logan wrenched the arrow out of the wall, but there was no help for it, he had to get the arrow out of the wall before he could free the boy's hands from it. The boy's eyes rolled up into his head from the agony, and he fainted dead away as Logan lowered him to the floor.
Logan stared. Blood was pouring from those hands; the arrowhead had torn a larger hole in the boy's hands than the diameter of the shaft. Vaguely he could hear the weaponsmaster tell one of the squires to fetch the healer, but Logan ignored it all as he snapped the head off the arrow and carefully drew the shaft from the right hand, and then from the left. As the shaft left the wound, Lee roused to an agonized awareness and screamed in agony as blood poured from the wounds. "Oh God, it hurts…!"
Logan wanted to cry too. The arrowhead had cut his fingers as he broke it off, but he ignored the pain as he took the boy's hands in his own, gripping them tightly to stop the bleeding. And there was a lot of it. The boy's clothes were sloppy with it; Logan's hands and clothes were soaked with it, the floor was slick with it, and Logan wondered how much more of it the boy could lose before slipping into shock.
"That's it, that's it, keep pressure on the wound, keep it from bleeding too much…" Logan gripped the bleeding left hand as the healer inspected the right palm. "Haven't hit any of the major veins, missed the big tubes that the blood pumps out of, and missed most of the tendons and muscles," the healer said grimly as he pulled open the bag he carried and seized a roll of bandages and wrapping. He carefully wound the bandages around the bleeding hands, stopping most of the bleeding for a short while, anyhow; then indicated to the two healer's apprentices to open the travois. Logan helped the man lay Lee's unconscious body on it, and started to follow the man, but the Healer shook his head. "I'll bring word, Sir Logan. Right now I need space, and quiet."
Logan watched the man and his two apprentices leave, with Lee's unconscious body between them. A cold, cold rage rose in him as he turned to the watching knights and squires and roared, "WHO SHOT THAT DAMN ARROW!"
The weaponsmaster added his own words to that, much quieter but far more emphatic. "If I find it was one of the squires who did such a dishonourable act in my salle, I will flay the skin from your hide!"
No one spoke. Everyone had the same sick look on their faces that Logan knew was on his. "Ah, the hell with ya all," he shouted at them, and left the salle, running heedlessly through the thick snow to the castle.
He was out of breath when he reached the top of the stairs, and almost ran into Renee. She gasped as his bloody hands left stains on the front of her dress, and even as Logan started to fumble for an apology she grabbed at him. "What happened?" she gasped.
"Lee," Logan gasped out, the anger running out of him like water and leaving him with an overwhelmingly sick horror that Lee might die. "There was an accident…an incident…in the salle, Lee was shot…" And Renee abandoned him, racing down the steps toward the healer's rooms, leaving her maids far behind.
Renee flew down the steps. Accident…what sort of accident…She almost slipped at the bottom of the steps, but recovered and ran on, ignoring her maids' panted calls to her to stop. She ran down the healer's hall, just as the man himself was coming out of the room. "How is he?" she gasped.
The healer had a stunned expression on his face, and she knew the worst had happened. "Your Majesty, if the 'he' you are referring to is the young squire Lee, then I must inform you that that squire is no 'he', he said tonelessly. "I attempted to remove the young man's blood soaked clothing to change him, and found a most unexpected surprise underneath."
"I know that!" Renee stamped her foot. "I knew the 'boy' was a girl! And I am hereby ordering you, upon your loyalty to your Queen, not to speak of this to anyone!"
The man stared at Renee. "Your Majesty…my Queen…" he fumbled. "This is a matter of some importance…this girl cannot be allowed…"
"She can and she will," Renee said fiercely. "You will speak of this to no one, Healer, including the King. That is a royal order, from me, that can only be countermanded by the King himself. Do you understand?"
The Healer stared at Renee, then dropped his eyes, and his head, and nodded. "Yes, my Queen."
"Now tell me how she is."
"She," and the man laid particular emphasis on the feminine pronoun, "will be fine. The arrow missed most of the major tendons in her right hand, and her left fared better. She will lose some feeling, some mobility, in the last two fingers of her right hand; but it will not be serious, and she will still be able to handle a sword. Her shooting ability may be slightly impaired, and there will be some scarring, but no major injury will be done."
Renee blew out her breath. "Thank goodness." She looked over at the man. "You have a female healer among your complement of helpers, am I correct?" she said.
"Yes, but she is only equipped to deal with female maladies," the man protested.
Renee sighed at the man's obtuseness. "She can tend to any small services the girl may require. You will work on her hands. There are no differences between hands, and you will be spared the embarrassment of tending to female needs. I will tell your healer myself; you may not speak of your patient's true identity to her in front of anyone who may overhear. Do you understand me?" She turned and strode down the hall to find the rooms belonging to the female healer.
After she had informed the female healer of her new duties as regards to the young squire, revealing Jubilee's secret most unwillingly and swearing the woman to secrecy (a secrecy the woman, like Renee herself, was only too eager to preserve) she headed back upstairs. At the top of the stairs she ran into Logan, washed and dressed in his usual red uniform, waiting for her. "How is he?" Logan asked anxiously.
"The healer informs me he will lose feeling and partial mobility in the last two fingers of his right hand, but otherwise he will be fine," Renee said. "He will still be able to handle a sword, although he may never become an excellent archer, since the last two fingers will not curl around a bow any longer." Logan groaned and buried his face in his hands, and Renee felt sorry for him. However, there was nothing she could do now. "What happened?"
"We…there was a shootin' contest in the salle. Lee won. As he was goin' ta pull his arrow out o' the wall, someone else shot an arrow. The arrow caught Lee's hands an' pinned 'em ta the wall."
"When the culprit is found, I want him flogged," Renee said tersely. "This kingdom needs all of its fighters in top condition, and this careless act just injured one of our squires. You will find the culprit, Sir Logan."
"Yes, Yer Majesty," Logan said bowing to her. She dismissed him with a wave and watched as he trudged down the hall toward his room. She retreated into her own, sent her maids away, and only then allowed herself the luxury of a few bitter tears at the pain Jubilee must have endured.