The Black Arrow

by Robert Louis Stevenson

First published 1888

Amazon

3.9(969)

England during the Wars of the Roses. Young Dick Shelton serves his guardian, Sir Daniel Brackley, until a fellowship of outlaws calling itself the Black Arrow accuses Brackley of murdering Dick’s father. While carrying messages through a countryside divided between Lancaster and York, Dick meets a supposed boy named John Matcham, who is actually the abducted heiress Joanna Sedley. Their attempt to escape Brackley turns Dick against the man who has controlled his inheritance and loyalty.

Dick joins the Black Arrow and becomes involved in battles, sea raids and rival marriage schemes as he tries to rescue Joanna. His information reaches Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III, who knights him after a Yorkist victory in the novel’s fictional Battle of Shoreby. Stevenson uses invented local conflicts inside the wider dynastic war, portraying how shifting allegiance, wardship and private violence allow powerful men to exploit a kingdom without secure government.