“Sire,” says Mistress Boleyn, saucily, “and am I not worth a little abuse?”
“You deserve some quite certainly,” he agrees; and his bright lecherous pig’s eyes twinkled, and he guffawed.
“Defy the Pope, then, sire, and marry your true love. Let us snap fingers at Giulio de Medici—”
“Faith, and not every lass can bring eleven fingers to the task,” the King put in.
She tweaked his fine gold beard, and Kennaston saw that upon her left hand there was really an extra finger.
“My own sweetheart,” says she, “if you would have my person as much at your disposal as my heart is, we must part company with Rome. Then, too, at the cost of a few Latin phrases, some foolish candle-snuffing and a little bell-ringing, you may take for your own all the fat abbey-lands in these islands, and sell them for a great deal of money,” she pointed out.
So, between lust and greed, the King was persuaded. In the upshot, “because”—as was duly set forth to his lieges—“a virtuous monarch ought to surround his throne with many peers of the worthiest of both sexes,” Mistress Anne Boleyn was created Marchioness of Pembroke, in her own right, with a reversion of the title and estates to her offspring, whether such might happen to be legitimate or not. A pension of £1,000 per annum, with gold, silver and parcel-gilt plate to the value of £1,188, was likewise awarded her: and the King, by thus piously defying Romish error, earned the abbey-lands, as well as the key of a certain bed-chamber, and the eternal approbation of zealous Protestants, for thus inaugurating religious liberty.
IV
“Epper Si Muove”
THESE ironies Kennaston witnessed among many others, as he read in this or that chance-opened page from the past. Everywhere, it seemed to him, men had labored blindly, at flat odds with rationality, and had achieved everything of note by accident. Everywhere he saw reason to echo the cry of Maugis d’Aigremont—“It is very strange how affairs fall out in this world of ours, so that a man may discern no plan or purpose anywhere.”