A few days later the Bon Aventure was lying in the river Thames, and we had no more than cast anchor when my lord put on his richest clothes, and bidding me to attend him, went by water to the steps leading to the Queen’s palace of Westminster. I remember that the way took us past Traitor’s Gate, the low and threatening portals by which prisoners are brought within the Tower. As we passed my lord looked at me with a sad smile. “I shall go that way yet, Wat,” he said. And when I burst into a passionate protest, he said to me: “Why, Wat, if you could look upon the company which hath passed by way of that gate, you would see it to be of the finest. I shall not blush to tread in their footsteps.” But I could not believe it, looking upon him in his garb of peach-bloom velvet laced with silver, and the jewels of a king’s ransom; and yet alas! he spoke too truly. I remember when we were come to those stairs of Westminster how the people pressed to look upon him, and shouted for him, and flung their caps in the air. If he was not in favor at the court, certainly he lacked not favor outside it. Even within the palace the pages and the maids of honor peeped at him, and many courtiers thronged to welcome him, and the scullions and grooms of the chambers looked through windows and down staircases to see him pass, so that to me it was as though the tapestry wavered with whispers and eyes. As we waited for an audience we saw many great men pass, but not one fit to stand beside my lord. Then came the Queen, a shrunk, tall, high-boned woman, in a blaze of diamonds, the ruff standing about her spare, pale head like a setting sun, so thick it was with jewels, and her farthingale and petticoat making a prodigious circle about her. She had green eyes, and they were cold, and coldly she gave her hand to my lord to kiss. She had called him back because Spain threatened; but now he was come she could not forget her anger. That was for the old affair of Mistress Throckmorton. I heard the pages whispering that day that she had not forgiven him; and one, a pert, bright lad, who won my heart because he was so eager to see and hear of the Great Captain, told me how my Lord Essex had in likewise nearly forfeited the Queen’s favor. For he had admired upon the person of the Lady Mary Howard a farthingale of cloth of gold, sewn with seed-pearls, the which coming to the Queen’s ears she had demanded the garment for herself, saying that no subject should go finer than the Queen’s Majesty. But having acquired it she discovered herself to be too tall and too broad for it, so that it misbecame her mightily. Whereupon she cast it aside so that none should wear it since she could not.