It is still dark and cold at eight when there is a stir at the door and Thomas Howard comes in. He exchanges a quick look with me and I think these last three years have not been kind to either of us. I know my face has lines of worry from my care of the queen and the destruction of my peace, and he is gray and fatigued. He has that terrible prison pallor which comes to a man whose skin has been burnished from being out in all weathers, every day, and then has been suddenly confined. The tan is on the skin like dirt but the healthy color beneath has faded. It is the pallor of the Tower: he will have seen it on his father, on his grandfather. He stands on the dais, and to my shock, I see his stance—always haughty, always overproud—has become bowed. He stands like a man weighed down with false accusation.

The duke raises his head as the clerk of the Crown reads the charge, and he looks around, as a weary hawk will scan the mews, always alert, always ready for danger, but there is no bright Howard pride in his eyes anymore. They imprisoned him in the room where they kept his grandfather charged with treason. He can overlook the green where they executed his father for offenses against the Crown. Howards have always been their own greatest danger. Thomas must feel his line is accursed. I think if his cousin the queen could only see him now she would forgive him from sheer pity. He may have been wrongly advised, he may have done wrong, but he has been punished. This man is at the end of his strength.

He is asked for his plea but instead of answering guilty or no, he asks the court for a counsel, a lawyer to help him answer the charge. I don’t have to look to Cecil for his refusal; the chief justice Catline is already there before us all, up on his feet like a little moppet, explaining that in trials for high treason no lawyer is allowed. Howard may answer only if he has been treasonous or not. And there is no mitigation either; in a trial for high treason, if he answers guilty he is saying he wants to die.

Thomas Howard looks at me, as an old friend that he thinks will deal with him fairly. “I have had very short warning to answer so great a matter. I have not had fourteen hours in all, both day and night. I am hardly handled. I have had short warning and no books, neither a book of statutes, not so much as the breviate of statutes. I am brought to fight without a weapon.”