Novel: The Black Arrow

Overview
Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses (1888) is a brisk historical romance set amid the Wars of the Roses. It follows the coming-of-age of Richard "Dick" Shelton, a ward raised by the scheming knight Sir Daniel Brackley, as he learns the truth about his father's death, navigates shifting allegiances between Lancaster and York, and fights to win and protect his love, Joanna Sedley. Arrows fletched in black, loosed by a band of forest outlaws, mark the novel's central motif of vengeance and rough justice in a lawless land.

Plot
In Tunstall Forest, a black-feathered shaft fells the archer Appleyard, and a note signed "John Amend-All" accuses four men, Sir Daniel Brackley, Bennet Hatch, Sir Oliver Oates, and Appleyard, of betraying and murdering Sir Harry Shelton. Dick, Sir Harry's son and Sir Daniel's ward, is rattled by the charges but remains under Sir Daniel's sway at the Moat House, a fortified manor. Sir Daniel, ever opportunistic, uses the civil war as cover to enrich himself and plots to force a lucrative marriage by imprisoning the heiress Joanna Sedley.

While fleeing through the woods, Dick encounters a slight, sharp-tongued boy named John Matcham, whose loyalty and courage win his admiration. After a series of perils, Dick discovers that "John" is Joanna in disguise and vows to defend her. Recaptured by Sir Daniel's men, Joanna is carried off; Dick escapes through the Moat House's secret watercourse and joins forces with the Black Arrow outlaws led by Ellis Duckworth and the roguish former monk Lawless. From them he learns that Sir Daniel likely engineered his father's death and that the black arrows are tokens in a campaign to hold the guilty to account.

Sir Daniel shifts sides as the war tides turn and hustles Joanna to the port town of Shoreby, where he arranges a hasty marriage to the powerful Lord Shoreby. The wedding erupts into chaos when a black arrow strikes Shoreby dead from within the church, and the town soon plunges into battle as Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brings Yorkist arms against the Lancastrians. Amid the street fighting, Dick distinguishes himself and is knighted by Gloucester, whose cold brilliance impresses and unsettles him. Though briefly participating in the Yorkist victory at Shoreby, Dick's growing moral clarity sets him apart from the ruthless calculations of princes and captains.

A coastal interlude with the hard-bitten skipper Arblaster helps Dick elude Sir Daniel's pursuit, and Dick repeatedly risks capture to track and free Joanna. The final movement gathers at Holywood Abbey, where Joanna seeks sanctuary. Sir Daniel attempts one last abduction, but the forest justice he evaded finally reaches him: a black arrow finds his throat, and he falls, the chief wrong sealed and answered. With the feud spent and the four names accounted for, Dick turns from soldiering. He marries Joanna and retires to his patrimony, choosing steadiness and mercy over the brutal opportunism that ruined his guardian.

Themes and Context
Stevenson fuses swashbuckling adventure with a critique of factional strife. The black arrows symbolize a rough, extralegal justice that arises when civic order collapses; Dick's journey is a moral education from credulous vassal to independent knight who prizes conscience above party. The novel relishes medieval color, moated houses, abbeys, ambushes, and sea-scrapes, yet its heart is the conflict between loyalty to a master and loyalty to the truth. Richard of Gloucester’s cameo lends historical bite, foreshadowing the sharklike politics that will crown and consume him. In the end, the romance affirms constancy and private honor as antidotes to the savagery of civil war.