"Yes, Sir Insistent . . . until the ride back," and left him.

The luck of the discs had made the Countess of Clare the last to shoot.

When she came forward to the line the b.u.t.t was dotted over with the feathered shafts; but the white eye that looked out from their midst was still unharmed, though the d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham and Lady Clifton had grazed its edge. Beatrix had slipped the arrows through her girdle, and plucking out one she fitted it to the string with easy grace. Then without pausing to measure the distance she raised the bow, and drawing with the swift but steady motion of the right wrist got only by hard practice, and seemingly without taking aim, she sped the shaft toward the mark.

"Bravo!" exclaimed the King, as it quivered in the white.

Before the word had died, the second arrow rested beside it; and even as it struck, the string tw.a.n.ged again and the third joined the others in the blanc.

"My dear Countess," said Richard, "I did not know we entertained another Monarch. Behold the Queen of Archery! Hail and welcome to our Kingdom and our Court! . . . Gentlemen, have you no knee for Her Majesty?"

Beatrix blushed and curtsied in return, then quickly withdrew to the side of the Queen.

"Methinks, my lords," Richard said, "you have got a hard score to best.

However, it is but two hundred yards to your target; so let it be the notch to the string, the string to the ear, and the shaft in the white clout yonder."

As the King had said, the distance was short for rovers. In all regular contests the mark was never under two hundred and twenty paces, and in many districts it was nearer four hundred. Nevertheless, to strike an object, even at two hundred, that seemed no larger than one's hand is no easy task; and yet, as one after another took his turn, the clout was pierced repeatedly; once by some, and twice by others; but only the Duke of Buckingham and Sir Aymer de Lacy struck it thrice. It chanced, however, that one of the latter's arrows landed directly in the center, on the pin that held the cloth, and this gave him the prize.

"For one who is half a Frenchman, Sir Aymer, you handle a long bow most amazing well," the King remarked. . . "Pardieu! what say you to a match between the victors?"

A murmur of approval greeted the suggestion.

"May it please you, my liege," said De Lacy, "permit me now to yield.

I am no match for the Queen of Archery."

"We will not excuse you . . . nor, I fancy, will the Countess," turning toward her.

"If Sir Aymer de Lacy will engage to shoot his best and show no favor, I shall not refuse the trial," she replied, coming forward.

"By St. Paul!" Richard exclaimed. "I will answer for that . . . here is the prize," and deftly plucking the lace kerchief from her hand he pa.s.sed it to a page. "Subst.i.tute this for the clout in the far target," he said.

De Lacy thought she would refuse the contest; but to his surprise she smiled--though with rather indifferent hauteur.

"It is hardly fitting, Sire," she said, choosing an arrow, "that I should both contribute the prize and contest for it."

Then Sir Aymer spoke, bowing low: "May it please Your Majesty, I am your leal subject, yet I shall not shoot at yonder mark unless the Countess of Clare consent."

She gave him a grateful look.

"I thank you, Sir Aymer, for the courtesy," she said. . . "Shoot and welcome;" and she stepped to the draw line.

It may have been that she was careless, or that the scene had made her nervous, for while her first two arrows struck the blanc truly as before, the third went a finger's length above it. With a shrug she turned away, and loosing the string leaned on the long stave, waiting.

De Lacy had purposed letting her defeat him by a margin so slender as not to seem intentional, but catching the dark eyes of the King fixed on him with sharp significance, he understood that he was to win if he could. So he drew with care, and pierced the kerchief thrice.

De Lacy received the bit of lace from the page and proffered it to the Countess.

"It is quite destroyed," he said. "I am sorry."

She laughed lightly. "You owe me no apologies, and need feel no regret. You won it honestly--and I accept it now as a gift; a guerdon of your prowess and your courtesy."

He bowed; and as his glance sought the King, the latter nodded, ever so lightly, in approval.

An hour later, after the repast was served, the trumpet gave the signal for departure. As De Lacy stepped forward to hold the stirrup, Richard waved him aside, and putting one hand on his horse's wither, vaulted easily into place.

"Look to the ladies!" he called; "and do you, Sir Aymer, escort the Countess of Clare. It is meet that the King of the Bow should attend upon his Queen."

Then dropping his tones, so that they were audible only to De Lacy, he said with a familiar earnestness: "And if you do not turn the kerchief to advantage, you deserve no further aid."

Reining over beside the Queen, he motioned for the others to follow and dashed off toward Windsor. In a trice they were gone, and, save for the servants, the Countess and De Lacy were alone.

She was standing beside Wilda waiting to be put up, and when Aymer tried to apologize for the delay, she stopped him.

"It was no fault of yours," she said--then added archly, head turned half aside: "and you must blame Richard Plantagenet for being left with me."

"Blame him?" he exclaimed, lifting her slowly--very slowly--into saddle. . . "Blame him! . . . Do you think I call it so?" and fell to arranging her skirt, and lingering over it so plainly that the Countess smiled in unreserved amus.e.m.e.nt. Yet she did not hurry him. And when he had dallied as long as he thought he dared, he stole a quick glance upward--and she let him see the smile.

"Am I very clumsy?" he asked, swinging up on Selim.

She waited until they had left the clearing and the grooms behind them and were among the great tall trees:

"Surely not . . . only very careful," she said teasingly.

He was puzzled at this new mood that had come with the archery and still tarried--this careless gayety under circ.u.mstances which, hitherto, would have made her severe and distant. He was so used to being frowned upon, reproved, and held at the point that he was quite blind to the change it signaled. He bent his eyes on his horse's mane.

He thought of the King's words as to the kerchief and longed for a bit of his astute penetration and wonderful tact, that he might solve this provoking riddle beside him and lead up to what was beating so fiercely in his breast. In his perplexity he looked appealingly toward her.

She was watching him with the same amused smile she had worn since the fixing of the skirt; and was guessing, with womanly intuition, what was pa.s.sing in his mind.

"And forsooth, Sir King of the Bow," she said--and the smile rippled into a laugh--"are you so puffed up by your victory that you will not deign to address me, but must needs hold yourself aloof, even when there is none to see your condescension! . . . Perchance even to ride beside me will compromise your dignity. Proceed. . . Proceed. . . I can follow; or wait for the grooms or the scullions with the victual carts."

And this only increased De Lacy's amazement and indecision.

"Why do you treat me so?" he demanded.

"Do you not like my present mood?" she asked. "Yea, verily, that I do!

but it is so novel I am bewildered. . . My brain is whirling. . . You are like a German escutcheon: hard to read aright."

"Then why try the task?"

"I prefer the task," he answered. "It may be difficult, yet it has its compensations."

"You flatterer," she exclaimed; and for an instant the smile became almost tender.

"Pardieu! . . . You grow more inexplicable still. . . Yesterday I would have been rated sharply for such words and called presumptuous and kindred names."

"And what of to-day . . . if that were yesterday?"

"To-day! . . . To-day! . . . It has been the mirror of all the yesterdays since the happy one that gave me first sight of you at Pontefract; . . . and the later one when, ere I rode back to London, I begged a favor--the kerchief you had dropped by accident--and was denied." . . . He drew Selim nearer. . . "To-day I again secured your kerchief; and though I wished to keep it sorely as I wished before to keep the other, yet like it, too, I could only give it back. And now, even as I begged before, I beg again for the favor. Will you not grant it?"

The smile faded and her face went serious.