Read "The Great Captain" by Katharine Tynan online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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.