The Hooded Hawke Read Free Page B

lost so many, not since he’d been accused of deserting his duty and his cousin and commander.
    Though the falconer had been fading, the slightest pull on the arrow shot him wide awake. Drake froze, his hand on the slippery shaft.
    “The falcons …” the poor wretch whispered, his voice a wheeze. “I must recall the falcons.”
    “Do not fear,” the queen told him, still gripping his right hand. “We will fetch them back. Now, be brave, Fenton, for we must help you.” Though it didn’t quite calm the injured man, her steady voice comforted Drake.
    Do not fear … Be brave, her words echoed in his head. That dreadful day at San Juan d’Ulua on the Gulf of Mexico when their ships had been fired on by the surrounding Spanish, many sailors had died from crossbow bolts. It was his first battle, after all those early years serving as ship’s apprentice, then an officer on his cousin’s vessels on the English Channel and the North Sea. Being so secure with local tides, currents, shoals, and winds was quite unlike sailing months away into deadly danger in the unknown, not sure he’d come home, not sure he’d live, but loving the danger in his destiny.
    As he withdrew the arrow in a steady pull, the falconer gave a cry, shuddered, and fainted. A new gush of the man’s lifeblood spurted, but the maid’s quick, sure hands packed the wound with the fluffy flower heads.
    She was obviously someone the queen trusted. He noted almost a family resemblance, but of course that could not be. Though the maid Meg also blinked back tears, unlike the queen, she looked haunted, just the way he felt, and his heart went out to her.

    As Drake sat back on his haunches with the shaft still in his hands, he saw the queen’s skirts were bloodied. For her to be bold enough to stay here in the open to tend this man—he’d heard she was brave, and he knew her subjects loved her. Now he could begin to grasp why. She was as shrewd as they said, too, for she looked straight at him and said, “I doubt, Captain, if that arrow was intended for a falconer, so which one of us was it meant for, then?”
    A few minutes later, Fenton Layne died at the queen’s feet as they tried to lift him onto a litter. Probably with his last remnant of strength, Elizabeth surmised, he’d opened his blue eyes and scanned the sky, either for a sign of the hawks or, God willing, looking up to heaven. His hand went limp in hers; she was surprised to see she’d held it all this time.
    “He was ever a good and faithful servant to me,” she said in a loud voice. “My lord,” she added, turning to Robin, “since it seems it was his last wish, will you be sure someone finds the hawks and gets them safely back to someone who can tend them.”
    “At once, Your Majesty— if you are planning to go inside now.”
    She nodded, for she was concerned that Meg had not moved and kept staring at the corpse. Was she seeing this death scene or another with a smaller body, one that Ned had to finally coax from her arms for burial? “Meg,” Elizabeth said, stooping to squeeze her shoulder, “do not blame yourself for this loss— or for any other .”
    “Aye,” Drake put in when the maid didn’t move, “the span of our lives is God’s will, not ours.”
    “Captain, I will send for you later, but there is much I must do now,” the queen told Drake. “Guards, stay with the body until Sir William tells you where the man might be buried. But first, of necessity, Sir William must summon the sheriff and coroner of the shire. I,” she went on, loosing Meg’s shoulder and producing a clean white handkerchief from up a bloodspeckled
sleeve, “shall take the arrow shaft from you, Captain, and the pointed end Meg cut off from you, my lord Leicester.”
    Both men gave their pieces into her keeping. “Meg, come with me,” she added, and started away.
    Her guards, who had returned empty-handed from their chase in the direction of the shooter, and her courtiers, who had