The Black Arrow

Summary

The Black Arrow is set in England during the Wars of the Roses, when York and Lancaster fought for the crown and lesser lords changed sides as fortune moved. Richard Shelton, called Dick, is the young ward of Sir Daniel Brackley, a grasping knight who holds the Moat House at Tunstall and has grown rich by seizing other men's lands. In the Prologue, as Sir Daniel's men are summoned to battle, old Nicholas Appleyard, a veteran of Agincourt, is shot dead at his own door by a black arrow, and a rhyme pinned to the church door, signed John Amend-All, promises black arrows for Appleyard, Bennet Hatch, Sir Oliver Oates the priest and Sir Daniel, and accuses them of killing Sir Harry Shelton, Dick's father. In Book I Dick befriends a frightened youth, John Matcham, who has escaped from Sir Daniel. Crossing the fen they fall in with the outlaw Fellowship of the Black Arrow, led by Ellis Duckworth, whom Sir Daniel ruined, and see Sir Daniel's men under Selden cut down in the forest. On the heath a blind leper with a bell pursues them and seizes Matcham; he turns out to be Sir Daniel himself, fleeing in disguise after the Lancastrian defeat at Risingham. In Book II, back at the Moat House, Dick questions the dying archer Carter about his father's death, discovers that Matcham is Joanna Sedley, an heiress whose marriage Sir Daniel means to sell, and escapes an attempt on his life by climbing from a window, after which he joins the outlaws. In Book III he follows Joanna to the coast town of Shoreby, where Sir Daniel has promised her to the old Lord Shoreby. He allies himself with Lord Foxham, her rightful guardian, and they steal the ship Good Hope from the skipper Arblaster for a rescue by sea, but the attack fails, Foxham is wounded and the ship is wrecked. In Book IV the outlaw Will Lawless disguises Dick as a friar; inside Sir Daniel's house he kills a spy and finds Joanna and her friend Alicia Risingham, and at the wedding in the abbey church Lord Shoreby falls to black arrows. Arrested, Dick wins his freedom from Earl Risingham by revealing a letter that proves Sir Daniel's double-dealing. In Book V he saves a small, misshapen young nobleman from attackers: Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III. Dick holds a street for him in the Battle of Shoreby and is knighted, then spends his reward to save Arblaster's life and loses Gloucester's favor. On his wedding morning he spares Sir Daniel, but Ellis Duckworth shoots him with a black arrow, and Dick marries Joanna. The tale ran in the boys' paper Young Folks in 1883 under the name Captain George North and appeared as a book in 1888.

Top Lessons

• Revenge leaves a sorry taste

  The outlaws' rhyme promises a black arrow for every man who wronged them, and the arrows do their work. Yet at the end Dick, who had every cause for vengeance, spares Sir Daniel, and Ellis Duckworth, who kills him, asks Dick to pray for him. Stevenson lets the reader feel the justice of the outlaws' grievance and still judges forgiveness the better part.

• Actions cannot be undone

  Dick steals the Good Hope to rescue Joanna, and the attempt costs the lives of innocent sailors and ruins Arblaster. When he buys the old man's life, Arblaster still will not forgive him. Dick learns that good intentions do not cancel consequences, and that a deed once done cannot be remedied by penitence alone.

• Fighting needs a cause

  Dick fights bravely at Shoreby and is knighted, but Alicia tells him that war is noble only by its cause and that he has fought for credit and a wife. Sir Daniel, by contrast, changes sides whenever it suits him. The book asks readers to weigh loyalty, courage and purpose rather than admire courage alone.

• Faithfulness to friends

  Dick will not leave Lawless to hang, though Earl Risingham calls the old rogue gallows-ripe, and Lawless repeatedly risks his life for Dick. Their unlikely friendship between a young gentleman and an old thief is one of the warmest things in the book.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The most memorable medical image is the leper on the heath in Book I, Chapter VII: white-hooded, blind, tapping with a staff and ringing a bell so that others may avoid him, shut out from human touch and believed to carry death in his touch. Sir Daniel chooses the disguise precisely because no outlaw will approach a leper, and the boys' terror and Dick's refusal to shoot at a leper show how medieval fear of the disease set the sufferer apart from the community. Stevenson, who suffered from chronic lung disease and later visited the leper settlement at Molokai, writes with pity as well as horror. Elsewhere the book is full of wounds and slow deaths, among them Carter dying in the Moat House, Lord Foxham struck down on the pier, the slaughter of men and horses at the Shoreby barricade, and Sir Daniel's convulsive death from an arrow. Richard of Gloucester's crooked shoulder belongs to the Tudor tradition of his deformity, here a mark of character as much as of body.

• Book I, Chapter VII

  A blind leper with bell and staff crosses the heath and pursues the boys; he is revealed as Sir Daniel in disguise.

• Book II, Chapter I

  The wounded archer Carter lies dying in the Moat House and refuses Dick the truth about his father's death.

• Book V, Chapter I

  Dick meets the young Duke of Gloucester, slightly deformed with one shoulder higher than the other, fighting off assailants.

• Book V, Chapter VII

  Sir Daniel, struck by the last black arrow, dies in spasms of pain in Dick's arms.