The Hooded Hawke by Karen Harper

foot if you must! Boonen,” he cried to her driver, “we can’t
coast along here like sitting ducks. Onward! We are far closer to safety at Titchfield than in turning back. On, man, and at the fastest clip you can safely manage!”
    Elizabeth was both moved and annoyed by his taking over. “And Robin!” she cried, as her brain began to really work again, suspicions and all.
    “Yes, Your Grace?”
    “Send someone back through the entourage to tell the others I am well but to beware. They should strive to keep up even if we leave the baggage carts behind. And someone fetch Ned Topside here to his wife!”
    “But he mustn’t leave little Piers unattended!” Meg cried, and that made the queen realize she, too, had recovered her wits.
    “At least the bolt only grazed your skull,” Elizabeth said.
    “My cap flew off, though—it was close.”
    “Very close,” the queen said, and scrutinized the offending bolt stuck in the painted and gilded wood. Her own head might have been there had she been sitting straight up in the center as she usually did, or perhaps if the curtain had not slowed or deflected the shaft. Then, too, Drake had been nearby again when it hit, but where was he now?
    She kept her hand firm on her friend’s shoulder, hoping to comfort her. But indeed, Meg could have been mistaken for herself on that horse, and she began to shake harder than her herbalist or the bouncing coach.
    T hough it was no doubt but a few moments, it seemed to Meg an eternity until Ned rode up to the coach. She cried when she saw him and knelt to reach up to take his hand through the crack between the pierced curtains. He rode quickly and jerkily along beside them, since the queen’s driver was going at a good pace.
    “Slow down, Boonen!” the queen shouted, and yanked the curtains open wider on Ned’s side. “Boonen, we are away from the attack, man, and my bones and teeth can’t take the jolting!”
    “Better you keep the curtains closed, Your Grace,” Ned piped up, “than face another bolt from the blue.”

    “From the greenwood, you mean. And no jesting! I can’t abide this dark, damned forest. Take Meg back with you and sit her down in a wagon, not up on the seat. It is possible that the shooter believed she was me, although the fact the bolt plunged into my coach may make that a pointless point.”
    Meg saw Her Grace shake her head at her own inadvertent punning. Meg held hard to Ned, but, in the stronger light now, she studied the bolt the queen had mentioned, stuck deep in the wood. The vehicle slowed as Francis Drake rode up hastily on Ned’s other side.
    Meg frowned up at the bolt. She’d seen the first one at close range, and this one looked pretty different to her. “Your Grace,” she said, her voice trembling, “this one looks like an arrow, not a bolt, doesn’t it? Maybe it wasn’t even shot by the same man—or shot by someone who is skilled with any sort of bow.”
    A s Ned rode away with Meg sitting before him on his horse, the queen clenched her hands so hard that her fingernails bit into her palms. She was furious with herself for letting panic command her actions and cloud her brain. While she cowered, her herb woman, no less, who had been as endangered and shaken by the deadly missile as she had been, had the presence of mind to see that the bolt was not a bolt at all but an arrow!
    Two attempts on her life—if they were that. By more than one person, as Meg had suggested? She had a bolt and an arrow for evidence, yet perhaps was no closer to knowing who was the expert marksman or-men, who had, thank the good Lord, evidently missed everyone this time.
    Then, too, Drake had been nearby, on his horse, his head probably even visible to the shooter above the height of Meg’s head and the top of the coach. It was feasible that the marksman had mean to hit Drake, she reasoned as, on her knees to give herself some height and leverage, she tried to dislodge the arrow. She amazed herself by not