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do for the first time in her life. She was not allowed to help her old friends pack her own trunks. Silently, she gazed at the clothing and belongings strewn around the dormitory. These things before her were the sum total of her life so far. There were two dresses once belonging to her elder sister, Margaret, who was Lady Arundel; a chemise and stockings of her own; the pair of shoes for dancing, worn through at the toes; and in the center of things, like a crown, the new French hood.
    It was blue velvet lined with silk and dotted with real pearls.
The absurdity of its elegance amid her worn things was bittersweet, she thought on a sigh.
    But Catherine knew perfectly well why she was being spirited away to court: She would be trotted out like a fat, delectable Christmas goose, to be given over to whomever her family chose for her. She had heard how every worthy courtier patterned his behavior on the king’s own. Having had four wives, and a string of mistresses, King Henry had a reputation that escaped no one in England or beyond. In spite of his middle age and how stout he had become at forty-nine, she had heard that he was still athletic, and still a powerful magnet for every girl who met him. At least, that was what she had been told.
    She had personally been in his presence three years earlier, when he and Queen Jane had made their progress toward Richmond. They had stopped for the night at Horsham and been entertained by the dowager duchess.
    As a girl of fourteen, Catherine had been surprised by how plain the queen was, her face pale, her features simple. Her voice was thin. She was the complete opposite of her cousin Anne Boleyn, and Catherine now realized that had likely been the point.
    The king had not even noticed Catherine for the presence of his newly pregnant bride. Catherine had stood in the entrance hall amid a collection of others. Having dropped into a deep curtsy as the royal couple entered, she was singled out by her grandmother in no way, and not noticed by anyone except the young, unassuming queen herself. As Catherine had risen, she remembered now how their eyes had met, each holding the other’s in an odd way, as if each knew the other. Catherine shivered now with the memory. She was thinking how that poor girl was dead nearly three years already, and that the child that had swelled her body that day had become the tragic cause of her premature death, as well as the king’s heir.

    The child was Prince Edward, the king’s only legitimate son.
    Perhaps it was that she was going to court now, to live in the household of the queen who had replaced Jane Seymour, that made the memory of that single meeting between them come alive for her again.
    “Your Grace,” Catherine had said softly.
    Jane Seymour’s smile in return had been small and yet regal. “You look very like her.”
    Catherine knew she had meant Anne Boleyn, and there was just a hint of spite in her words. The Seymour family ambition was nearly as strong as the Howards’.
    “I do not remember her well, even though she was my cousin. I was too young when she . . .” Catherine thought whether to say “died” or “lost her head.” She chose neither.
    “I have seen the portrait at Windsor Castle, although it hangs in an alcove near the back stairs now.” Jane Seymour had met her gaze then. “Walk with me, will you?”
    Coming from the queen it was more a command than a request.
    Catherine was full of fear that she would say the wrong thing and face the wrath of a spiteful grandmother absolutely bent on improving the Howard place with the king. The four ladies who accompanied her and Jane were more fashionably dressed than the startlingly plain queen, Catherine thought. Each was draped in velvet, sleeves slashed with gossamer silk, their gowns adorned with ribbons or pearls. Jane herself had begun as a maid of honor to Anne Boleyn when it was the Howard family in favor, not the Seymours. Things at court kept shifting.
    “Do you