The barge goes silently in the watergate, where she herself once went in as a traitor and cried in the rain and said she would go no farther. I walk to the little barred gate in the great wall, and a porter recognizes me and lets me in. Like a ghost I stand in the shadow of the great walls and see the queen go quietly into the Tower. She has come to see the duke, her cousin, her closest kin, on the very eve of his death. There is no doubt in my mind that she will forgive him. No one could send Thomas Howard to his death if they had seen his pride humbled, and his handsome face lined with pain, but at the very door of his chamber, she shies away. She cannot bear to see him, but she decides to spend the night under the same roof: he in his cell, she in the royal chamber. He will never even know that she is there, sharing his agony. She knows he will be awake: praying and preparing for his death at dawn, writing to his children, begging them to care for each other. He has no idea that she is so close to him as he readies himself for death on her orders. But she is housed beside him, sleepless as he is sleepless, watching for dawn through the windows of the same building, hearing the light rain drizzle on the same roof. God knows what is going through her mind; she must be in an agony of indecision to undertake such a vigil with him.

She knows that he has to die. All her advisors say that she must harden her heart and have him executed. He may be her cousin and beloved to her, but he is a known and declared rebel. Alive, he would be a figurehead for every traitor, every day, for the rest of her reign. Forgiven, he would make every spy hope for forgiveness, and how would Cecil rule by terror if we were known to have a merciful queen? Cecil’s England is darkened by apprehension. He cannot have a queen who turns kind. Howard is a challenge to the rule of terror whether he likes it or not. He has to die.