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anyone to see me.”
    So she removed the pincushion from my jewel casket and proceeded to unpin the ruff even as I tried to hide my face from her. She approached me to fasten a second ruff in place, but I waved her off.
    “I cannot wear this gown.”
    “Which other do you want?”
    I did not know. Neither did I know what I should do. I had examined my every action and found nothing wanting. The Queen despised me, my husband detested me.
    What I wanted was to go home to King’s Lynn.
    My father could disown me, my mother cuff me, but anything would have been better than being here. My chin began to tremble on its own accord. The harder I tried to still it, the worse it became. My lips began to convulse as sobs wracked my body.
    Joan came near.
    I shook my head, willing her to go away, but she ignored me, gathering me to her chest like a child.
    I threw my arms around her waist and clung to her.
    After some time I quieted and Joan brought me more wine. After several sips, my thoughts became sharper and I turned them toward the task at hand, toward something I could do. I concentrated my efforts upon choosing a gown and answering Her Majesty’s only complaint.
    “The indigo. I will wear the indigo.” Crimson would have only enhanced the red in my cheeks. I needed pallor. I wanted the alabaster skin for which the earl had praised the Queen.
    Never before had I been accused of being common. My skin was transparent, translucent, marred by neither pox nor freckle. My black hair only made me seem more pallid; my blue eyes, it had been said, shone like the palest of winter skies. I had been born with the complexion every woman in the kingdom used artifice to obtain.
    And yet, she had called me a Moor.

    Fortunately, Nicholas found me before I had wallowed too long in melancholy. As it was, he walked into the room as I was playing an especially dismal rendition of “Flow My Tears.”
    “My lord?”
    “There is to be a banquet at Whitehall this night. Make ready my horse for leaving, Nicholas.”
    “And the countess’s, my lord?”
    “What of it?”
    “Shall I order her horse readied?”
    “Nay.”
    “She does not go? Is she ill, my lord?”
    She was not ill and Nicholas knew it. He just wanted to hear me say the words. To have me give voice to my own injustice. Only this time, my actions could not be seen by him to be objectionable. “I took her to court. I introduced her to the Queen. The Queen laughed at her. Everyone else laughed at her. I think I have done my duty by the girl.”
    “Why did they laugh, my lord?”
    “Because the Queen called her a gypsy.”
    “A gypsy? But she is as pale as a corpse . . .”
    “I know it. But the Queen said it. What would you have me do?”
    “I would have you go to the banquet with your countess on your arm, my lord, and force everyone to respect her.”
    “That would require a great assumption on your part.”
    “And what would that be, my lord?”
    “The assumption that I care to have her on my arm.”
    “So you mean to abandon her? To have her first dreadful experience at court be her last? My lord, that does not become you!”
    “I mean to do nothing more with her at all.”
    “You must not do it, my lord. What has she done to deserve such ill-mannered behavior?”
    “She has . . .” come to me with the face of an angel and the innocence of a lamb.
    “Aye?” Nicholas prodded.
    “She has . . .” been used terribly by the Queen and all of the court.
    “She has . . .”
    “In truth, my lord, she has been born beautiful to a wealthy father whose fortune you happened to need and she’s had the misfortune to follow behind Elinor.”
    That was not what I had been thinking! “You make me out to be a blackguard.”
    “Then, please, my lord, prove my suspicions to be unfounded.”

    Later, the earl sent word to me, through the steward, that we were needed at the palace for a banquet.
    “I will not go.”
    Joan glanced at the door behind which the steward had