Chapter One

On that rare and jeweled day, the great adventure of her life began. The lush blossoms and tender crops of fertile Kent gilded the May morning breeze with their mingled aromas, and nightingale songs floated from the nearby forest depths unutterably sweet. Her beloved home, the large, stone-walled house known in the English shire of Kent as Liddell Manor, reflected its gray stones and windows, beams, and brick chimneys in the encircling moat, but beyond the gardens and orchards, the great Kent Road to London beckoned eternally outward. At first in early dawn it seemed no one stirred, but soon enough the slender, blond girl knew, they would all be upon her: then she would go away to whatever lay out there and this gentle haven of peace and freedom would be hers no more.

It was not that she was afraid, she told herself determinedly as she stood barefooted at the window in a favorite short linen chemise she had long ago outgrown but still stubbornly slept in no matter how her maid railed at her about it. Joan of Kent, as the shire folk called her, had never been afraid of anything-not yet, at least. Besides, since she was granddaughter to the past King Edward I of all England, she had always known deep inside she should never be meek or afraid of anything, even if she were a woman. There had not been one thing yet, in all of her life here at Liddell, she had wanted to possess or to do that she had not had or done. That is, not until a fortnight ago when her eldest brother Edmund, lord of Liddell Manor ever since their father had died so long ago, had come riding home from king's service and told her she was leaving Liddell to