Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [261]
He had seen these tarots several times in Scott’s possession since he had come to Edinburgh. They were gruesome, Gothic, and graced with a kind of lithless malevolence all their own. The four suits were commonplace enough: the artist had reserved his fantastic brushes for the figured cards. The Bateleur, the Empress, the Pope, l’Amoureux and le Pendu, Death and Fortitude, the Traitor, the Last Judgment itself, all shared a grotesque camaraderie of the paintpot.
He admired the set. He enjoyed tarocco himself, but he was uneasily aware that there was not, in fact, time for a game. He said again, “Listen, Scott;” but the cards were already dealt and Will was hesitating over his discard. Erskine gave up, and resigned himself to waiting.
Scott played not one, but two games. He lost them both, but so narrowly that it was not until the last trick of the outplay that Palmer’s evident brain and experience gave him the day. Both games were played in an atmosphere of jocular excitement, and Erskine gathered that to have opposed Palmer at all was something unusual; and to have run him so close something unique.
At the end of the second game, Palmer leaned back with a kind of anguished roar. “Damn it, I don’t know when I’ve had two better games. Why the pest must you go? I can’t settle: you can’t settle: it isn’t fair to the game.”
Scott got up and stretched himself, grinning. “You’ve got troubles enough. You don’t want to risk being beaten by me.”
“Beaten!” It was a chorus. Someone said, “Hey, my boy. You’re speaking of the best card player in England.”
“I still say beaten,” said Scott.
There was an unholy light in Thomas Palmer’s eye. “Is that a challenge?”
“Not particularly,” said Scott. “Sine lucro friget ludus is a family motto. Not much point in playing for love.”
“Hell, we can do better than that,” said Palmer. Their packs were stuffed into an armory let into the panelling: he tossed out parcels until he came to the one he wanted. Then he had another look and, bringing out a second roll, flung them both at Scott’s feet.
“A change of good clothes there, and some money and a silver cup and a good pair of boots. And there’s more still in the other: it’s another man’s stuff that belongs to me now. Will that do for a start?”
Scott drew out his own heavy purse and tossed it once in the air. “I’m sure it will; but we’re a gey practical nation. Will you open them both so that we can see?”
Palmer, unoffended, glinted the butter-tooth in his direction, and slit open the packs with Will’s knife. In his own the contents were exactly as he had said. The other roll was less well-kept: the clothes were soiled and there was no money at all. Scott bent and turned over a long, narrow rectangle of folded papers, sealed with red wax. “What’s this? Deeds of ownership?”
Palmer, shuffling the tarots, glanced at it and shrugged. “Sam didn’t own a rabbit, poor devil. Perhaps a letter to his lady friend.”
Scott turned it over. There was an inscription on the other side, and he held it so that Erskine also could read. The neat writing said, Haddington, June, 1548. Statement. And underneath in a different writing, presumably Wilford’s: Samuel Harvey. Put with things for P.
That was as far as they got before it was whipped from Scott’s fingers.
“Interested?” asked Palmer in the same good-tempered voice. “I thought there was something fishy in the air. Perhaps I’d better keep this.”
For a moment, Erskine thought that Scott would attack the big man. Instead he turned and, opening his purse, upended it on the table by the cards. The crowns rolled and clanked among the little nightmarish drawings and rose in a winking, lunar pile. “I could easily get it by calling the guard,” said Will. “But I’ll buy it from you instead.”
Palmer grinned. “I don’t want to sell.”
The freckles marched cinnamonlike over Scott’s pale face. “Name your price.”
Sir Thomas Palmer got up, the folded papers still in his hands. At the fireplace he turned, and still surveying them