Westley came around the side of the kitchen, just catching sight of Nicola and Eva as they walked—Eva was barely limping at all now—through the door to the servants’ dining hall. He followed at a distance, slipping in with some other men. He stood in the corner, watching.
The atmosphere was subdued. A man brushed against Eva’s arm. When he turned to see who was there, he stepped back. “Excuse me.” He politely nodded to her.
Eva nodded back and moved away.
People gave her furtive glances, humble looks on their faces for the most part. Sabina was not there, of course. He didn’t know what she had been doing picking mushrooms for the cook. She was always nearby, it seemed, instead of at her home at the mill on the edge of the village.
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.”