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veil. Afterward, when I finally accepted that I could not pursue my vocation in England and resolved to marry, that ended in failure as well.
    Catherine continued, “It would be more of a matter of dispute for Edmund, but exceptions are made. You must try. I know you—the proudest woman on God’s earth. I fear that you are so wounded, you won’t—”
    â€œStop,” I cried. “Catherine, you don’t understand.”
    A sharp rapping ended this painful conversation. I wiped the tears from my cheeks while Catherine saw to the door.
    Culpepper had returned—no surprise to that. But he wasn’t alone. A stout woman stood behind him, her arms heaped with dresses.
    â€œMistress Joanna Stafford, I come from the king,” he said, with all formality. “He has ordered that these garments be made ready for you. Tomorrow, he shall dine with Queen Anne, and it is the king’s pleasure that you join them.”

8

    C atherine Howard always slept with a window open. We were so different in temperament, in interests, but that was a preference we had shared at Howard House, even in the icy cold.
    This was a cloudless night, and so the moon’s bath of light swam through the bedchamber. I was too troubled by the day’s events—and too apprehensive about what lay ahead—to find rest. But she slept soundly, one of her arms thrown over her head. She was a different person when she slept. Some cynical, calculating adults look like innocent children when their eyes are closed, but Catherine was more childlike when awake. Now that pleasing vitality she had, which sparkled her eyes and dimpled her cheeks, was absent. In the moonlight, in profile, she was older, serious, even a touch sad. And, most of all, with her long straight nose, she was a Howard.
    Our friendship was formed almost two years ago, when we were thrown together in the Howards’ establishment. I was kept in Howard House in Southwark, against my will, by the Duke of Norfolk, who had decided that since his wife was a Stafford, he could decide my life and put an end to my independence. Catherine was sent to Southwark from her stepgrandmother’s house in Horsham to learn how to serve a queen. Two penniless daughters of unimportant younger sons of large families. A silent sympathy quivered between us. Who else could better understand what it was like to be viewed with barely concealed irritation by the heads of our respective families? The sighs of impatience when we outgrew our clothes, required an apothecary, held an empty plate at a banquet.
    If we’d been the daughters of first sons—such as Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, or my cousin Elizabeth Stafford, Duchess of Norfolk—there would have been marriage by the age of sixteen and wealth and servants and vast homes to run. Failing that, we were still expected to secure noble marriages, but the path was fraught with uncertainty. The best position to be in to find a husband was royal service—maid of honor to a queen or a queen’s daughter. My mother had trained me for years for such a position, but I’d lasted a single day. I was infinitely better suited for the cloister than for the court.
    Now it was Catherine’s turn. I always felt that she could be me . . . but without the benefit of being raised by my particular parents, a vigilant mother and an honorable father. She was raised carelessly, begrudgingly, until her prettiness vaulted her from the ranks of lesser relations to court service. Despite her disadvantages, Catherine was much more agreeable than I, so compliant a girl that I’d warned her at Howard House about the dangers to her virtue from immoral men, while she giggled behind her hands.
    But Catherine could be stubborn, too, as she was earlier—insisting that I share her room during my brief stay at court. She made her case for it while Culpepper listened silently.
    â€œI have friends who brought me