“I’m Rose—Rose Ashley.”

“Oh, one of the Ashleys.”

“You know my grandmother, Rosalinda?”

“I don’t know any of them. They’ve been serving Her Highness—and the family—for a long time here at Hatfield. Since before she was born. Makes sense you coming. They’re fiercely shorthanded up there. They’ll hire you soon as they set eyes on you. Very thin on staff to serve her.”

“Who’s ‘her’? Who’s ‘she’ exactly?”

“Blimey! Are you daft? She is the royal princess.”

“Royal princess?”

“Elizabeth, daughter of Henry! Henry the Eighth and the late and cursed Anne Boleyn.” Rose noticed that she almost couldn’t say the name Boleyn. “Now, Rose Ashley, have you had the skittles knocked out yer head?” She laughed warmly.

Skittles! Somehow Rose sensed she was not talking about the candy that was in her pocket. She reached for her pocket, but there was no pocket. There was no jacket. Gone too were her jeans. She was wearing a long voluminous skirt of a coarse brown fabric. Instead of a T-shirt, she wore a loose blouse tucked in, with generous sleeves. There were little tucks around the wrists of the sleeves. Nicely made! Rose thought. Hand stitched. A machine could never do such work, not even the Millennium Falcon.

“Go on, Rose, fetch the milk pail. I’ll try to show you as much as I can. Course, I’m a tad lower than scullery, and I think I heard they were looking for someone to serve upstairs in the princess’s chambers. You should do.”

“Me? Why me?”

“They say that the princess thought she saw someone t’other day who she felt might suit.”

Then it hadn’t been a dream, Rose realized. The girl she had seen with the blue dress and the pointy red shoes had been the Royal Princess Elizabeth and they had each seen the other. But that princess, all those people, had lived almost five hundred years ago! How could this be? How had she jumped backward in time nearly five centuries?

“Now run along and get that milk.” Franny said this merrily, as if she were inviting her to join a game.

Rose walked off in a daze. The pail of milk was right where Franny had said it would be. She picked it up and walked back to where Franny was waiting.

“Thank you. It’ll make it so much easier for me. You know, my leg. Well, I guess you can only see my foot.” She smiled, and a dimple flashed in her cheek.

“What happened to your leg?”

“Got the fever when I was a baby. I don’t always need my crutch, but the weather’s been bothering it lately. Then I took a tumble yesterday and that didn’t help any.”

“What kind of fever did you have?”