Catherine Howard had become Queen of England. Her former music teacher was now answering questions about their intimacy. A woman from her old household was naming the people who could tell the king more.
Katherine Howard was born around 1523, the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, into a family that had the right surname and almost none of the resources that surname was supposed to guarantee. Edmund Howard was the younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, which made him well-connected in the way that younger brothers of powerful men are always well-connected, adjacent to consequence without any of its material benefits.