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dress.
    Amidst cries and shouts for hot pies or fresh strawberries, they clattered down to the very foot of tall Windsor Castle, wending their way carefully, and passed through the portcullis gate into the Lower Ward. Everywhere above them, suddenly, in the freshening breeze and dwindling raindrops, flew the gold and azure flags and pennants of the Plantagenet kings.
    Joan’s wide eyes darted to and fro as Edmund stepped forward to head off Lyle Wingfield’s quick move to help her down. Her legs and backside ached, her stomach rumbled with hunger, she felt muddy and wet and bedraggled, but the hubbub in the vast stretch of cobbled courtyard and the grassy Lower Ward was wonderful! In the glazed cobbles, now that the shower had ended, there were bumpy mirror images of every fine horse and hurrying person. Pages in liveries of various colors dashed by; important-looking church people and messengers strode here and there in no apparent pattern; and drovers with carts of animals, vegetables, and fruits lumbered past to two large entryways beyond.
    “Oh, it is marvelous—so busy, just like a day at the shire fair. Do you see anyone—you know—important?” she asked, but Edmund merely motioned her over to the left as if she had not spoken. Old Morcar had been helped from his horse, and he fell into a slow, weaving step behind them as they entered through a small, low door in the foot of what Edmund said was Curfew Tower.
    “Sit here, Joan. Morcar, over here. The men will probably scatter with the horses, but just rest a few minutes, and I shall be back directly to tell you where you are both to go.”
    “But, my Lord Edmund,” Joan interrupted, “I thought surely you would know where we are to stay. You said I would be with two or three other ladies in the queen’s wing.”
    “Just hush, Joan. I am as wet and tired as you are. I cannot merely drag you in all unannounced and wander through the queen’s apartments looking for Euphemia de Heselaston to find where you are to bed, you know. Sit here with Morcar, I said, and I shall inquire about both of you.”
    She sank uncertainly down by the weary-looking old man in the little entry room where others were waiting, and a fat, oily man who appeared to be some sort of gatekeeper eyed her now and again. She and Morcar sat quietly, exhausted, on the hard bench for a quarter of an hour while Joan boldly stared down the impolite eyes. Her awe at being in such a wonderful place ebbed, and impatience flooded in.
    Morcar shifted next to her on the bench, and before she realized he was asleep, she spoke. “I need to stretch a bit, Morcar. I am sure Edmund will not mind. Oh, I did not mean to startle you. However can you sleep and we just arrived?”
    The old soothsayer’s long, damp hair looked stringy, and she wondered why he had not covered it with the hood of his black cape in the shower. Strange, but she had hardly given poor, decrepit Morcar a thought, and he had been there at the back of the traveling party all the time, silent and watchful like this.
    “Not sleeping, Lady Joan, not really sleeping. Too tired to sleep, but not you, eh? You are here, and now it begins.”
    “A new life, you mean?”
    “Aye, lady. All of it. And you are too excited to just sit here in this dim little tower room when all that life awaits out there, eh?”
    “It is taking Edmund a terribly long time, I think.”
    “It is all vast, Lady Joan, vast and busy out there. Step out a moment if you wish. All will be as it will be, one way or the other, whatever you do.”
    Joan turned to him to deny those words even though she knew the old man always talked in riddles about the stars and the future. Someday, though she hardly believed in all those readings of the heavens like Edmund and Mother did, she might ask him to tell her own future.
    He seemed to doze again, and despite the continual stares of those who came and went in the tower room, Joan stood and shook out her damp cloak. She folded it,