"I'M ROBIN HOOD'S DAUGHTER, THAT'S WHY!"

Eleanor looked out at the falling snow with her chin in her hand and a morose expression on her face. Papa was gone to Nottingham, so there would be no archery lesson. Mama was leaving as well, to visit with some of the other village women, and she wasn't invited along.

"Why can't I come?" she asked Mama.

"It's grown-up talk. You'd be bored."

"No, I wouldn't! And it's dull around here!"

"There's plenty to do. Finish your story. Work on your spelling lesson."

"I hate spelling. It's boring."

"Then don't blame me if you can't read or spell when you grow up."

"John and Tom a Dale don't have to learn lessons! Their parents don't make them!"

"You know perfectly well that their mother can't read. And your father is trying to teach Allan. He didn't learn, either, when he was young, and it's much harder to learn when you're older. Not being able to read or write is not a good thing, Eleanor. You should be grateful that you have the opportunity."

But Eleanor didn't feel grateful. "I don't feel like reading."

"Finish your embroidery, then."

"Come on, Mama, that's worse than spelling!"

"It will teach you patience, which you need to learn."

"Papa says archery will teach me patience."

"No doubt, but there's more to life than archery lessons."

Eleanor heaved a heavy sigh. Mama just didn't understand. All she did was lecture.

Marian left without saying anything more. Eleanor went upstairs to her bedroom and threw herself across her little bed, tucked into a curtained alcove near the window.

Why did it have to snow again today, of all days? She'd spent hours making new arrows the day before! Papa had just taught her a new trick that she wanted to perfect before she showed it to Rodger and the other village boys. She couldn't show them this new trick inside; there wasn't enough room to do it properly. With the snow coming down thick and fast, there would be no outside target practice, and no games of "Sheriff versus outlaws", either.

There were several boys in the village that she liked to play with. Her closest friends, besides Rodger, were the smith's younger sons, their cousin Matthew, and Allan's sons Tom and John. She was, of course, always the famous outlaw Robin Hood, and the boys played the roles of her fellow gang of outlaws, or the evil old Sheriff's guards who were trying to catch them.

Someone had to play the Sheriff, however, and that someone was usually Rodger. Their ongoing arguments about the subject went something like this:

"You're the Sheriff, Rodger."

"I'm sick of being the Sheriff. I want to be an outlaw. Why can't I be Robin Hood this time?"

"Because I'm Robin Hood's daughter, that's why. He can hit anything with his bow, and you can't. Anyway, you're good at making crabby faces. You're making a really good one right now, you should see yourself! You have to play the Sheriff."

"You think you're so smart, Eleanor, but I'm going to be a better shot than you someday!"

"If you say so, but for now you're still the Sheriff, so stop whining about it."

Boys had more fun than girls, Eleanor had decided, and they made better friends than girls. None of the girls in the village liked archery, or wanted to play outlaws and guards. They only wanted to play with dolls and help their mothers with baby brothers and sisters. They cried when their brothers splashed mud on their dresses or pushed them into Locksley pond.

The boys knew better than to push her! They'd get the same back, and more. Besides, she could outshoot any of them. The bigger boys were stronger and could shoot farther, but Papa had told her that precision was far more important than how far she could shoot. None of then could hit targets with greater accuracy than her. If they resented her for it, they also respected her. She was accepted as "one of the lads", even though she was a girl and wore dresses and long hair.

"Why do I have to wear a dress?" she'd asked Mama yesterday. "I hate dresses! I can't run in one unless I hike up the skirt."

"Eleanor, how do you manage to get so dirty? Look at your face! It looks like you've slid through a pig trough. And your hair is full of rat's nests."

"Ouch!" she'd cried as Mama yanked the comb through her hopelessly tangled, waist-length hair. "Can't you just cut it off?"

"Your father is doing his best to turn you into a boy as it is," Mama replied. "I'm not going to have you looking like one, too."

"My hair gets in the way, just like my dress."

"When you're a grown-up woman, Eleanor, you can shave your head bald for all I care. But right now, you're still my daughter. Here, I'll braid it and tie it up on your head, and then it'll be out of your way. And no, you're not wearing boy's clothes, and that's final."

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She liked Rodger. He wasn't as rough as the other boys. He was cleaner, too, and didn't smell as bad as they did. He was a bit of a sissy and a mama's boy, and he was fun to tease because he always took her so seriously, but she liked him just the same. Mama didn't approve of the way she teased him, however.

"You shouldn't pick on Rodger so much."

"Why not? It's fun!"

"Fun for you, but not for him, Eleanor. Besides, you might regret it some day."

She wasn't sure what Mama meant by that. Honestly, how could she help picking on him? Rodger just asked to be teased sometimes! Like when he tried, in vain, to best her at archery. The other boys had pretty much given up trying to outshoot her, but not Rodger. He was so stupidly stubborn about it. Why couldn't he just admit that he was a lousy shot? The kid couldn't hit the side of a barn if his life depended on it!

When Uncle Archer had come for a visit last fall, he and Papa had spent hours racing their horses across the open fields near the manor, shooting at targets while at a full gallop. Rodger, utterly enthralled by the spectacle, voiced his determination to repeat their stunts.

The results had been good for a laugh. Though he galloped his swift black pony with great energy and enthusiasm, none of Rodger's arrows hit anywhere near the targets. They went wild—lost to sight in the tall meadow grass, buried in tree branches and fence posts.

One even flew across the field and ripped through a dress hanging on the clothesline belonging to the smith's wife. She was not happy about her best dress receiving a nasty tear, and Rodger had gotten a fearful scolding from her. He would have gotten a whipping from his father, too, if his mother hadn't intervened and offered to replace the torn dress. Eleanor supposed that poor Bess, with eight children to feed and clothe, didn't get many new dresses.

Rodger had a more grown-up bow now, and it was much nicer than the one he'd had before, though still not as nice as hers. Her new bow was a gift from Papa's friend Will Scarlett, which he'd made for her when she was born. Papa had saved it to surprise her with when she was old enough to use it.

She loved her new bow, and she wished she could thank Will for it, but he and his Saracen wife Djaq had gone back to Djaq's homeland many years ago. She had no memory of them. She knew only that they lived in some far away place called Acre, where they raised messenger pigeons.

Papa and Mama treasured the letters from them. One letter told them that Djaq's uncle Bassam had died and left them everything, the other let their friends know of the birth of their first child, a daughter.

Papa always hoped for another letter. The two he had were tattered from countless readings.

"Will they come to see us?" she'd asked Papa.

"I don't know," Papa replied. "Acre is far away, Eleanor, and they have a little child now to think of."

"Can't we go to see them? How far away is Acre?"

"Very far, dear one. A long trip on the sea, and a long ride across land. It takes weeks to get there, even months."

Weeks? Months? Her one trip to London, a year ago, had seemed to take forever. She couldn't even begin to imagine traveling for months. She knew that Papa and Mama and the rest of Papa's former gang of outlaws, and Uncle Guy, had been to Acre, but no one would tell her why.

She wasn't even sure what being an outlaw meant, anyway. Papa and his friends had helped many poor people and been kind to them, so why had that been a bad thing to the Sheriff? Not Sir William, of course, but another man who ruled Nottingham before Sir William. What was his name? Vaisey? Well, he had been dead for years, long before she was born, and that was all she knew of him.

She wished she could remember Will and Djaq, but her earliest memory was instead a terrible one. Her father and Uncle Guy had been led away by some armed men in uniforms, while her mother and Aunt Meg cried as the villagers gathered around them. It was a vague recollection, so murky and indistinct now that she wondered for a long time if the memory was, in fact, only a bad childhood dream and not a real memory.

"No, it was real, Eleanor. Your father and Guy were gone for several months. They had to go to London to see the king."

"Why, Mama?"

"They had a little problem with King John that needed to be straightened out."

"What did they do? Was he mad at them?"

"It's hard to explain right now. I'll tell you when you're older."

"Will Papa have to go away again, Mama? Will those men come back some day and take him away?"

"I hope not."

Rodger could not remember his father being taken away. He had been too young. But only a few months ago, they both had received a shock of a different kind. Papa had broken the news to her and Rodger that he and Guy were, in fact, not brothers. They weren't blood relatives at all, but only shared a brother, Uncle Archer.

She and Rodger were not cousins, then, as they had always believed. It had taken a while to figure it all out. What was she supposed to call her aunt and uncle now?

"Can I still call you Aunt Meg and Uncle Guy?" she'd asked them.

Meg had hugged her close and kissed her and said, "Of course you can!" Guy had given her one of his rare smiles, and hugged her as well. "We're family, Eleanor. Nothing will change that."

She was okay with it now. The shock and surprise had faded. Uncle Guy was right. Nothing had really changed.

"Nothing's changed," she'd said to Rodger one day, when she saw that he was still dismayed and close to tears over the news. "We're family, Rodger, and nothing will change that."

He hadn't said anything for a few minutes, just wiped his eyes and started to walk away. Then he'd suddenly turned back and replied, "Now and always," and given her a smile that made her, for a moment at least, ashamed of all the mean things she'd said or done to him.

Yes, there were times when she really liked Rodger, and that had been one of those times.

She got up from her bed, and looked out at the swirling snow. There was no point in sitting in the house all day with nothing to do. Rodger was home, probably out in the stable with his pony.

She picked up her bow and quiver of arrows. She would find Rodger and show him her new archery trick before she showed it to the other boys. And this time she wouldn't tease him about being a lousy shot. Instead, she'd teach the trick to him. Just Rodger, and none of the other boys. She'd work with him until he could do it perfectly, and then they'd both surprise the others!

Maybe, just maybe, she'd even let him try out her bow.