Lady Robyn - Hardcover

Chapter 1
 
Tournament Day
 
Saturday, 26 July 1460, Saint Anne's Day, Baynards Castle, London
 
Morning, just before prime. Up and dressed ahead of the dawn, I hear cock crows from the city. Way too nervous to sleep. Tournament today in the Smithfield mud, the Middle Ages at its messiest. Collin will ride, maybe Edward. Scary when you think about, so I try not to. I must be the only woman in medieval England who craves a mocha in the morning. Happily, I still have some instant…
 
Robyn stopped typing into her journal, tearing open a foil packet lifted from a restaurant table on her last day in twenty-first-century London. Pouring dark crystals into a china cup, she added boiling water from a kettle, enjoying the warm feel of hand-beaten silver on a cold July morning, making modern magic on her medieval oak table. Coffee aroma filled the chill air of her tower bedroom, covering over the dank musty morning-in-a-castle smell while her toes dug for warmth in a carpet that came by caravan over the Roof of the World. This stormy summer of 1460 was the coldest and rainiest the locals could
remember--as they said in Southwark, "Wetter than a bathhouse wedding."
When witchcraft first brought her to medieval England--much against her will--Robyn would wake up wondering where she was, thinking she was back in modern Britain. Maybe some weird part of Wales. Or at home in California, waking in a strange bed after a wild Hollywood party. (Where am I? And whose bed am I in?) By now she was no longer shocked to awake in 1460--half a millennium before her birth--but having her own bedroom was a pleasant novelty. Most medievals slept two or more to a bed. But not Lady Robyn Stafford of Holy Wood, the barefoot contessa from Roundup, Montana--she wiggled her toes in triumph.
Lady Robyn had a room of her own, with a wood beam floor, Arabian Nights carpets, a cozy fireplace, and three tall narrow views of medieval London, all in an honest-to-god castle, Baynards Castle: the  white-towered keep set in the southwest corner of the city walls, London headquarters for the House of York. Edward had offered her any room in the family castle, and she picked this one for its fireplace and semiprivacy--it had been a tower guardroom, but now it was all hers, complete with handwoven tapestries and a tall wooden bathtub. Unbelievable--magical, really--especially when her last address had a West Hollywood ZIP code. Three months in the Middle Ages, and she practically owned the place.
So what use was worrying? She tried not to think about the tournament--while planning her Saturday around it. Actually, Saint Anne's Saturday.
Happily, she had a head start on her morning, being up and looking like Lady Robyn, sitting at her carved oak table in a long red-gold gown with tight scarlet sleeves buttoned by gold wire studs tied in Stafford knots. Very medieval. Right now Robyn was only nominally a lady, and some had harsher names for her, since not everyone liked her having the most popular boyfriend in London. But one day she would be a countess, and eventually a duchess. "Robyn Plantagenet, Duchess of York," had a heady ring, even for a former Miss Rodeo Montana. Like a witch condemned to the water test, she was thrown into this wet summer of 1460 to sink or swim; three months later, she was doing quite well, thank you. Half a pound of gold went into her gown, and she had warm fresh milk for her coffee, brought to the castle gate that morning by a man with a cow.
Saying a silent prayer to Aurora, goddess of dawn, and to Saint Anne, whose day it was, she took a first hot grateful sip. "Here's to tournament day, and hoping no one gets hurt. May Mary's mother save them from their foolishness."
Her first dry Saturday in who knows how long, and she would spend it in the mud at Smithfield, seeing horsemen crash headlong into each other. All because of Edward, who claimed to love her. Men will make you crazy, if you let them, especially medieval men--but by now she had survived worse, way worse. On her fourth morning in the Middle Ages she had to watch a trial by combat, with herself as the prize. Two men in steel armor fought on horseback and afoot beneath the spreading oaks of Sudeley park, deciding if she should be freed or burned at the stake for witchcraft. Freed or fried, all on the swing of a broadsword, something so incredibly frightening it brought shivers to her in the chill safety of her castle bedroom. How could a Saturday joust in the Smithfield mud hope to compare?
Hearing someone stirring on her big white canopy bed, Robyn called out in Gaelic, "Good morning."
Deirdre, her Welsh-Irish maid, raised her head from amid the bed linen, the girl's sleepy smiling face shining in a halo of red hair. "More witches' brew, m'lady?"
"Want some?" she raised the cup to entice her maid out of bed. At sixteen--"or thereabouts"--Deirdre liked to sleep in. And last night's supper had ended in an impromptu Saint Anne's Eve ball, where grooms, serving girls, young lords, and spirited ladies danced to live music under the stars, a Welsh harp, several drunk fiddlers, and tiny cymbals on the women's fingers sending music out onto the dark streets of London. Half the castle had to be sleeping late this Saint Anne's Day.
"Oh, please yes, m'lady." Green eyes went wide with anticipation. Introduced to caffeine only a week ago, Deirdre was already an addict.
"If you come get it," Robyn coaxed her sleepy maid, holding out the cup. When they were alone, or feared being overheard, she used her maid's language. Before coming here, Robyn barely knew Gaelic existed; now she spoke it with Deirdre's Wexford accent as easily as she spoke Latin. Or medieval French. Or Walloon. The spell that brought her here from modern England displaced her "in body and soul, to breathe the air, drink the water, and speak the speech." Whatever anyone said made immediate sense, and she answered back, be it in Greek or Gaelic. A handy knack, in fact her most useful magical talent. The spell had not brought her here to harm her or strand her among uncomprehending strangers, so it could not have worked otherwise. Witchcraft was like that--intent mattered as much as technique. In fact, the spell was not even meant for her, per se, having been aimed at Edward; making her a fairly innocent bystander.
Deirdre wormed her way down to the foot of the tall canopied bed, still wrapped in Robyn's down comforter. Without getting out of the covers, the teenager leaned over and kissed her mistress good morning; then she took the coffee, sipping greedily. Castles were cold in the morning, even July mornings, and Deirdre slept mother-naked in summer.
"Ummm!" Deirdre murmured, "What makes it so sweet?"
"Chocolate," she explained, wishing she had brought back more. "Comes from the seeds of the cocoa tree in America."
"America must be amazing, if this is what grows on trees."
"Most amazing," Robyn agreed, watching her redheaded bed worm drink--knowing Deirdre lumped all her America stories together, imagining the pre-Columbian United States inhabited by Indians cruising the Internet in SUVs, eating chocolate out of trees. Picked up during Robyn's one-day stay in Ireland, Deirdre was a cheerful Welsh-Irish bastard, determined to get as far as guts and talent could take her. Quick with languages, the girl was alternatively talkative and dreamy, her head full of teenage lust and fairy tales, believing in true love, pixies, leprechauns, and birds born from barnacles. Happily doing chores for pennies a day and a chance to sleep out of the rain, Deirdre was fairly useless as a lady's maid, but a godsend nonetheless. Despite their vast differences in rank, age, and nationality--not to mention coming from different millennia--Robyn and her maid were soul mates, exiles forced to live by other people's rules. Deirdre saw it at...