Book looking

I'm in a pout because I still can't find a book I read when I was much younger, and I can't remember the title of it. It was set in Europe, in medieval times, I believe. Had a female protagonist. Her uncle was a clockmaker or something. Her village was raided. She had a younger brother who was odd...maybe albino or a deaf mute...she had to take care of him. She had a romance with a knight. She lived with the uncle for a time. The plague came. Some violence in the book. I thought it was a young adult book. I tried to look for it in the Monterey Public Library website. I think a guy wrote it.
I did find the broom-balancing girl in Brueghel's painting about games which we looked at in elementary school. She had a little poem written about her in our basal text...it went something like "so and so can do this, but I can balance a broom. So and so can do that but I can balance a broom." And it ended with a question like "Do you think a circus might want me?" Hmmm. I think. Anyways, memory can be tricky sometimes. But I also found a book I liked, later on, called Midnight Sandwiches at the Mariposa Express.