“Majesty,” she says, “I will tell you what I know.” She tells him about a room. It is the room she and her sister slept in. She describes the slanted, low ceiling, the shuttered window, the air that is musty and old because no wind or light is permitted to enter. And next to her, Catherine’s shape in the darkness. The sounds of quiet weeping. She recalls the dust motes like fairies, lit by splinters of sun filtering through the shutters’ gaps, and the spider webs, which grow and widen with the hours and the days, spinning miniature gray curtains in the corners of the room.
Joan tells Charles what she knows of war.
