Free Timestruck by Flora Speer

have acquired when you
were younger. You won’t regret it.”
    “Dominick told you I was staying?” Gina’s
fingers went still with the bone needle caught in a thick fold of
linen.
    “He said you will be here until he travels to
court later in the summer. He will take you with him to
Regensburg.”
    “How nice of him to tell me his plans for
me,” Gina said so tartly that Hedwiga sent a reproving glance her
way before returning to her own pile of sewing.
    On laundry days Gina helped Ella in the
drying yard, and she worked in the kitchen, too. More than a
hundred people lived at Feldbruck, and nearly all of them came to
the hall for the midday meal, so there was always a lot of peeling
and chopping to be done in preparation for the vegetable stews that
were an important part of most meals. With her nimble fingers Gina
soon mastered the technique of using a kitchen knife. She spent
several hours each day cutting up cabbages, carrots, turnips, and
parsnips.
    The actual cooking was another matter. Gina
thought the open fires dangerous and shied away from them. Hedwiga
scoffed at her fears, but, in a departure from her usual bossiness,
she left Gina to peel and dice, or to make salads from the lettuces
and other leafy greens, the herbs, and even the flowers that grew
in the garden. Gina was surprised by how popular salads were and by
how often fish from the stream or poultry from hunting served as
the main course. In her imagination people in the Middle Ages spent
every mealtime gnawing at huge beef bones or carving greasy slabs
of pork from whole roasted pigs. The diet at Feldbruck was
remarkably well-balanced.
    She was also surprised by Hedwiga’s
insistence on kitchen cleanliness. After the preparations were
completed for each midday meal, Hedwiga instructed Gina to scrub
down the big chopping block in the middle of the kitchen so flies
and maggots wouldn’t be attracted to it. When Gina was finished,
Hedwiga checked to be sure the wood was cleaned to her
satisfaction.
    Hedwiga kept track of personal hygiene, too,
refusing to accept excuses about the chore of filling buckets at
the pump outside the kitchen and then heating the water. Everyone
at Feldbruck was expected to use the bathhouse at least once a
week, and there was always a good supply of soft, homemade soap in
wooden bowls, with plenty of dried herbs handy to scent the water.
No one complained when Gina bathed more often.
    The days slid by peacefully. One week passed,
and then a second. Gina could tell by the fit of her green dress
that she was gaining weight. Oddly, it didn’t bother her. She was
sure some of her new bulk was added muscle from all the manual
labor she was doing.
    But she was no closer to learning how to
return to New York, and that did bother her.
    She didn’t see Dominick as often as she would
have liked. He was frequently gone all day with Arno, the two of
them riding off to make sure the crops were doing well and, as Ella
told Gina, resolving farmers’ complaints or judging disputes.
Acting as judge was one of Dominick’s many duties, for, as lord of
the district, he was Charles’s representative in legal matters.
When Dominick was at home he was always busy, though as she learned
one day, his activities weren’t entirely confined to administrative
duties.
    In her eagerness to discover how to return to
the twentieth century, Gina used every spare moment to explore
Feldbruck in hope of finding a clue. Hedwiga didn’t seem to mind.
She took Gina’s curiosity as a sign of her restoration to good
health and readily answered all of her questions. And, as long as
there were no chores waiting, she allowed Gina to wander about at
will.
    On a sunny afternoon in the middle of her
third week at Feldbruck, Gina finished in the laundry and left by
the outside door. Directly in front of her on the other side of the
drying yard stretched the orchard, where apple and pear trees grew.
She was planning to locate a shady spot where she could sit