his earth, she wailed in a deep and full
voice, until again her daughter trod there. The other deities covered
their heads with their white skirts.

No one heeded this show very much in the hall, for the whispers over
what had gone before never subsided again that day. Men turned their
backs upon the stage in order to talk with others behind them, and it
was generally agreed that if this refurbishing of old doctrines were
no more than a bold stroke of Bishop Gardiner's, Henry at least had
not scowled very harshly upon it. So that, for the most part, they
thought that the Old Faith might come back again; whilst others
suddenly remembered, much more clearly than before, that Cleves was a
principality not truly Lutheran, and that the marriage with Anne had
not tied them at all to the Schmalkaldner's league. Therefore this
shadow of the old ways caused new uneasiness, for there was hardly any
man there that had not some of the monastery lands.

The King was the man least moved in the hall: he listened to the
lamentations of Mother Ceres and gazed at a number of naked boys who
issued suddenly from the open door. They spread green herbs in a path
from the door to the very feet of Anne, who blinked at them in
amazement, and they paid no heed to Mother Ceres, who asked
indignantly how any green thing could grow upon the earth that she had
bidden lie barren till her daughter came again.

Persephone stood framed in the doorway: she was all in white, very
slim and tall; in among her hair she had a wreath of green Egyptian
stones called feridets, of which many remained in the treasuries of
Winchester, because they were soft and of so little value that the
visitors of the monasteries had left them there. And she had these
green feridets, cut like leaves, worked into the white lawn, over her
breasts. In her left arm there lay a cornucopia filled with gold
coins, and in her right a silver coronet of olive leaves. She moved in
a slow measure to the music, bending her knees to right and to left,
and drawing her long dress into white lines and curves, until she
stood in the centre of the green path. She smiled patiently and with a
rapt expression as if she had come out of a dream. The wreath of olive
leaves, she said, the gods sent to their most virtuous, most beauteous
Queen, who had brought peace in England; the cornucopia filled with
gold was the offering of Plutus to the noble and benevolent King of
these parts. Her words could ha