the archers, with Queen Lucy
Lucy was the youngest of four; she had never been anything but. Her brothers would be beside her, even unto the world’s ending, and her big sister was the guardian of the most sensitive parts of her heart. Susan always had a knack for knowing where Lucy had wandered off to; what wind-whisp or sunset had captured her attention. Her siblings understood her—usually—often—
They did not understand this.
Their first Christmas in Narnia, Susan had been given a bow and a horn; Lucy had received a dagger and a healing cordial. Both girls had been given two gifts, first to rescue and then to fight. They were two responsibilities, as queens and as women. The dagger was fierce and sharp, a defensive tool in the hands of an eight-year-old girl, not to be used in battle. But what about an eighteen-year-old queen?
Narnian noblewomen practiced archery recreationally. It was hardly unusual to see a lady wielding a bow at a tourney or during a hunt. Neither was it unusual to have her instructed in the essentials of warfare, for dire need and self-defense. Yet Lucy wanted not merely to understand warfare, but to practice it. She would be one of the mightiest archers in Narnia—first in attack and last in retreat, as Peter would say. To fight was not a hobby, but a calling, or perhaps a conviction. Did not a queen defend her kingdom?
Perhaps her siblings did not understand. Certainly, none of them agreed with her when she made her intentions known. Or perhaps they understood too well. After all, none of them stopped her either.
She told Peter first, one night in her sitting room. She was seventeen, a woman by Narnian reckoning. In those days, the High King would often find his way to his youngest sister’s rooms late at night. Her merry company was a balm to burdened spirits, and Peter was heavily burdened in those days. There was trouble to the west and to the north, a hundred far-flung fights that needed the king’s attention. Lucy wanted to help.
When she told him, Peter smiled a little and sighed very heavily. “Give it a year, Lu,” he told her. “A year to prepare for the real ugliness of it and to earn your command. Eighteen’s a proper age for taking the battlefield, I think-- though I don’t remember why.”
Susan and Edmund conceded less readily than Peter had done. Edmund questioned Lucy at length about her reasons for wanting to fight (Lucy would later say it felt rather like a cross-examination). When he was satisfied with her answers, Edmund nodded firmly and said, “As you say, my lady sister.”
Susan was the hardest, perhaps because she understood the least. When Susan found out—not from Lucy herself, but from Peter—she didn’t respond directly. However, she spent the next several weeks fussing and fretting over Lucy even more than usual. Once during that time, Lucy went into Susan’s rooms unnoticed and saw her crying softly. She was never sure if those tears had been for her.
A year passed. Lucy trained her hands for war. She spoke with Aslan about what her role was to be and promised she would not fail. She argued with Peter, but at last agreed not to carry her cordial into any but the direst battle.
When she was newly eighteen, Lucy rode out to battle for the first time with a column of archers behind her. It was a minor battle, all told, and little needs to be said of it. Only that war was as ugly as everyone had said, and that the Valiant Queen acquitted herself honorably.
There is nothing beautiful about war, but the Narnian soldiers said there was a certain loveliness in Queen Lucy whenever she rode to war. She was merry as she went; not for any lack of seriousness, but because Lucy had learned at Aslan’s side to marshal high courage and to spread it out to those around her. On the road to battle, people said that Lucy always laughed like she really meant it.
There is nothing beautiful about war, but there was a certain brightness about the Valiant Queen in battle. With her hair braided back, armored in mail and the blessing of Aslan, there was poetry in her movements: in the bowstring pulled back to her cheek. Neither fear nor the chaos of battle could disrupt her clear, bright eyes sighting down the arrow shaft. Her high voice shouted orders above the fray, and it also gave hope. It did not take long for Queen Lucy to be accepted as the captain of Narnia’s archers, and a light on the battlefield besides.
Years later, when Prince Rabadash brought his two hundred horse against Anvard and Peter was absent, Lucy could tell how relieved Edmund was that she was there with him. Even after many years of kingship, it is always better to prepare for such a battle with family at your side. In the command tent, Edmund squeezed her hand, and Lucy couldn’t tell for whose benefit the gesture was meant.
Lucy knew that Susan was relieved too. Just before she rode out from Cair Paravel on her charger, Susan had embraced her and whispered, “take care of each other.” Then she’d stood up, regal and tall and poised, gathered herself into the Queen-at-the-Cair that she was when her siblings were absent, and addressed the whole force. “May Aslan bless and keep you. Go in his name, and find victory,” she said in a carrying voice.
In Aslan’s name they went, and victory they found.
He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
Her people called her Queen Lucy the Valiant.
