The Silent Songbird (Hagenheim #7)(44)

The other servants were starting to notice him standing there watching them. Eva seemed safe, as she stayed next to one of the other maidservants, but he wanted to make sure.

He waved Robert over. “All is well, but I wonder if you would keep watch over Eva.”

“Of course. Piers, Aldred, and I will make sure no harm comes to her.”

“Thank you, Robert.” Westley slipped outside.



Westley hurried toward the back of the castle. After helping his father all morning in the planning of a new dining hall for the servants, he hoped he might sit with Eva for a bit while she was reading, but he did not see her in her usual reading alcove. Had she decided not to cease working today, even though his mother had told her to rest all day?

Just as he was about to go in through the back door, he spied her with Reeve Folsham at the other end of the garden, in the open space between the meadow and the fruit trees. They were facing the back of the oat barn, and the reeve seemed to be offering some sort of instruction.

Westley walked toward them. Eva lifted a longbow, drew back the string, and let the arrow fly toward the barn wall. It stuck fast in the wood.

“Very well done,” Reeve Folsham said. “Now try again, only this time, let your cheek rest against your hand, hold only as long as you need to get your sights perfect, and then release.”

The reeve and Eva turned to see him.

“Good morning to you, Westley.”

“Good morning, Reeve Folsham. Eva.”

She nodded, then drew back the bowstring, her face as taut as the string as she focused on the bull’s-eye drawn in charcoal on the barn wall. She let loose the bowstring, and the arrow shot fast and straight, striking the middle of the target.

“You have a talent for archery, you do.” The reeve looked as cheerful as Westley had ever seen him—strange, since his first interaction with Eva was when she cut a line across his side.

“How long have you been shooting?” Westley asked.

“For a couple of hours,” Eva said with a smile.

“When did you learn?”

“Yesterday.”

Westley nodded, pretending not to be surprised. Though she wasn’t very good at servant tasks like feeding pigs, cutting wheat, and knowing which mushrooms were poisonous, she was apparently very good at archery.

“It’s as if she was born to shoot an arrow,” Reeve Folsham said. “Now, Eva, come over here and I will show you how to strengthen your arms. That is all you need to be a good longbowman, indeed.”

They walked over to the barn, and the reeve put his hands on the wooden wall, stepped back a couple of feet, and pushed himself off the wall. “Put all your weight on your arms, and do this over and over every day. It builds the muscles in your arms that you need to shoot long distances.”

Eva imitated his exercise.

“And when you get good at that, you can do it on the ground, like this.” The reeve got down on his stomach, holding himself up on his hands and toes, and demonstrated lowering himself, then pushing himself up again.

“Ah yes, that should strengthen my arms very well,” Eva said cheerfully. “Will you teach me knife throwing and sword fighting now?”

The reeve smiled—or at least one side of his mouth went up. “I have work I should attend to now, but I shall return later. Perhaps Westley can teach you sword fighting.”

“Thank you so much for teaching me archery.” She smiled so big at the reeve that Westley felt a pang in his chest, wishing he could have been the recipient of that smile, which brought out the dimple in each of her cheeks.

The reeve strode away, leaving them alone.

“You have never been a servant, have you, Eva?”

Her lips parted and she looked away, facing the orchard and fiddling with her bowstring. “Whatever makes you say that?”

“You have a way about you. It’s different from the other maidens in Glynval.”

“Are you saying I am special?” She gave him a coy half smile.

A warning went through his gut, like a tiny bolt of lightning. “The main reason is that you don’t know how to do anything.”

“That is an insulting thing to say.” She drew her brows together, but the look of outrage never reached her expressive mouth.

“You don’t know how to cut wheat or make bread or spin wool into thread. You haven’t built up the strength in your arms to carry a full bucket of water, and your hands turned to blisters in one day. But you do know how to read Latin, something no servant I know is capable of. Who are you, Eva? Where do you come from?”

Her face had become pale by the end of his list.

“You can either tell me the truth or tell me some outrageous tale like the one about your master and mistress beating you until you were mute. But I will not be likely to believe any more lies.” He would not be easily fooled, as John Underhill had taunted him.

Her jawline hardened as if she was clenching her teeth. “I told you the truth. I told you I ran away because a man wanted to marry me, and I did not wish to marry him.”

Again he remembered the Earl of Shiveley’s men, along with the king’s men, looking for two women, one of whom had red hair.

“Was this man who wanted to marry you Lord Shiveley?”

She looked away. But surely Lord Shiveley would not marry anyone who wasn’t of royal blood, or at least aristocratic. Perhaps it was the captain of Shiveley’s guard or someone of his household staff who wanted to marry Eva.