Philippa Gregory - Meridon

Hearts were trumps and I had two or three low cards. I led instead with a King of diamonds and everyone followed my lead with lower cards except Captain Thomas who discarded a low club card, giving me the trick. After that I drew out their low trump cards with one heart after another until all I had left in my hand was the Jack of spades and I gambled on no one having higher. But Captain Thomas had the Queen and at the end of the game we were neck and neck for tricks.

‘I think we should go now,’ Will said. ‘It’s a fair ending to a good jest.’

I laughed excitedly and hoped my colour was up. ‘Leave when I’ve hit a winning streak?’ I demanded. ‘Damme no, we won’t! I won’t leave this table until I’ve had a crack at winning that little farm in Sussex. It’s only a jest! And the night’s young! And the cards are going my way now! I can feel it!’

‘Oh, you’ve a cardman’s instincts,’ Redfern said wisely. ‘Sometimes I feel that too. You just know that you cannot lose. I’ve had that feeling once or twice in my life and I’ve left tables with a fortune in my pockets! It’s a rare gift that one, Mr Tewkes…may I call you Michael?’

‘Oh aye, Bob,’ I said carelessly. ‘You believe in luck, do you?’

‘What true-bred gambler does not?’ he asked smoothly. He shuffled the cards and I picked up my glass and drank, watching him around the rim.

Then I saw it. He had picked up the discarded cards and flicked out of them a selection of cards into his right hand, palmed them in his broad white hand. The backs looked plain enough to me but they might have been marked so he could tell the picture cards from the rest. Or they might have been shaved thinner – I couldn’t tell from looking, I would only be able to tell from touch when the deal was mine. And I would have to wait for that. He shuffled the pack with vigour, the ruffles from his shirt falling over his working hands. He was not too dexterous, he was not suspiciously clever. It was an experienced player’s honest shuffle. He passed the pack to me for me to cut. My fingers sought for clues around the cards in vain. There was no natural point to cut to, he had not shifted the deck or made a bridge to encourage me to cut where he wished. Nothing.

I cut where I wished and passed it back to him. Then he dealt. What he did then was so obvious and so crass that I nearly laughed aloud and stopped longing for my da, for beside me was a man as greedy and as vulgar as my da ever had been. And I had his measure now.

He had not stacked the cards, he had not made that instant calculation of where the picture cards would have to be inserted into the stock of ordinary cards in his left hand. He just thrust the picture cards on top of the deck and dealt a selection of the cream of the pack off the top to me and Will, and off the bottom to him and Captain Thomas. It was a childish simple cheat, and my glance shot to Will to warn him to say nothing when he saw it.

I was safe enough there. Amazingly, he did not see it. Will was indeed the honest country yeoman and he watched Bob Redfern’s quick-moving hands, and collected his cards as they were dealt, and never spotted the movement where Bob’s long fingers drew from the top or the bottom of the stack as he pleased.

I glanced cautiously around. No one else seemed to have seen it either. It was late, they were all drunk, the room was thick with smoke and shadowy. Bob’s shielding hand hid everything. Only I saw the quick movement of his smallest finger on his right hand as he hooked up a card from the bottom of the pack for him and his partner so that they could ensure that they would lose to us.

I had good hands during the game. Good cheating hands. Nothing too flash, nothing too stunning. I fidgeted a good deal, and by holding my breath once and squeezing out my belly I made my face flush when Bob dealth me the Ace of trumps. I won by three tricks ahead of Will and there was a ripple of applause and laughter when I crowed like a lad and swept the heap of IOUs and the tied roll of the Wideacre deeds towards me.

At once a waiter was at my side with a glass of champagne.

‘A victory toast to a great card-player!’ Bob said at once, and held out his glass to drink to me.

Will looked surly. ‘We’d best be off now,’ he said.

‘Oh, drink to my victory!’ I said. ‘You shall come with me to Lord Perry in the morning for him to buy back his farm. How he will laugh! Drink to my victory, Will! It’s early to go yet!’

‘And gambling’s in the air!’ Captain Thomas shouted joyously. ‘I feel my luck coming back! Damme if I don’t’! Stay with your luck, Michael! Dare you put both your properties on the table…your new farm and your own place at Warminster?’

‘Against what?’ I demanded with a gleam.

Will said ‘Michael!’ in exactly the right mutter of anguish.

The waiter filled my glass again, the voices seemed to be coming from a little further away. I cursed the wine silently. I was not used to it, and I was still weak from my illness. Much more of it and I would be in trouble. ‘Damme! This place!’ Captain Thomas yelled.

There was a roar of approval and laughter, and shouts to me: ‘Go on, country squires! Take the bet! Let’s hear it for the Old Roast Beef of England!’

‘I’ll do it!’ I said. I slurred my words a little. In truth I was acting only slightly. Will’s dark look at me was not feigned, either.

I piled the deeds back into the middle of the table again, and Captain Thomas scrawled something on a sheet of headed notepaper handed to him by the waiter. Bob and Will added their IOUs.

‘Your deal,’ Bob said to me. He gathered up the tricks loosely, and pushed them towards me. I took a deep breath and patted them into a pack. I slid my fingers along the sides. I shuffled them lightly. I was pouring my concentration down into my fingertips. It was possible that the pack was a clean one. With the partnership they had of cueing to each other’s cards, it might be that the pack was unmarked. And the dealing from the top and the bottom ploy looked very much as if they used no sophisticated tricks.

Then my fingers had it. Just a touch of roughness on one side of the cards, as if a very fine needle had just pricked the veneer of the surface. They had only marked one side too, so sometimes the mark was on the left, sometimes on the right, and it was hard to tell.

‘You’re scowling,’ Captain Thomas said. ‘All well with you, Michael?’

‘I feel a bit…’ I said. I let my words slur slightly. ‘I will have to leave you after this game gentlemen, whatever the outcome. I’ll come back tomorrow.’

‘Surely!’ Bob said pleasantly. ‘I get weary this time of night myself. I know what you want lad! Some claret! Claret’s the thing for the early morning.’

They took my old glass of champagne away and brought a fresh one filled to the brim with the rich red wine. Will’s face was frozen.

While they were fussing with the wine I was quietly stacking the deck. I thought of Da. I thought of him in a new way – with a sort of rueful pride. He had played on upturned barrels for pennies yet he would have scorned to deal off the bottom like these fine cheats had done. Not him! When my da was sober and cheating he counted the number of hands to be played, the number of players and stacked the deck so the cards would fall as he wished to the players he wished. While they tasted the wine, and quarrelled as to whether it was cool enough, I counted swiftly in my mind, seven cards to each player, the second hand as I dealt it to be the strong one. Strong cards must occur every four cards at the right time for me to get them to Will who was sitting opposite me. Thus in the first deal there had to be a strong card at number 2, number 6, number 10, number 14, number 18, number 22, and number 26. I felt for the marked cards. I thought they had only marked Aces, Kings Queens and Jacks…there didn’t seem to be more than twenty-eight marked cards.