Westminster Palace, Spring 1425 #3
‘One for today,’ she says and turns it over.
It is the moon card: a full moon with two towers and something like a crayfish coming out of a stream.
She looks at it but says nothing. ‘One for tomorrow,’ she says.
This one is the wheel of fortune. ‘What you least expect,’ she says without delay, and turns up an image of a ragged man with feathers in his hair.
‘A beggar!’ I say in disgust.
‘And last, what is sure to come true,’ she recites and turns up the last card. It is the tower card.
I wait for her to look up. The white cap is bent over the cards; she is fingering them as if she sees them with her fingertips, pressing down on them as if to smear the painted pictures. I wait. I am not sure I have any faith in this at all.
‘The moon card means you are in a time of great opportunity,’ she tells me solemnly. ‘And change. You can wax. The wheel of fortune shows that extraordinary good luck is going to come to you – something neither of us could foresee.’
‘Yes, but you are supposed to foresee,’ I say snappishly. ‘That’s what I just paid you for.’
She surprises me with her ready laugh. ‘I know!’ she exclaims. ‘I should have said unexpected good luck that you cannot foresee. But I – with my Sight – I do.’
‘And the beggar?’
‘The fool,’ she corrects me. ‘He’s not a beggar. That is motley, not rags. He speaks of greatness – he is there in reply to what is unexpected. You’re going to have a great leap of fortune. You’re going to leap to greatness.’
I am too unhappy to find hope in any of this: four strange Italian cards and a woman like a farmer’s wife reading them. ‘And the tower?’ I ask sarcastically, pointing to the tower card, the last. ‘That’s wonderful luck too, isn’t it? Great wealth?’
‘Yes,’ she says hesitantly. ‘Often, that’s what it means. But what else do you see in the picture, this picture of the tower?’
She hands it to me, and I look at it more closely. It is brightly coloured, painted by an artist, with interesting little details drawn with black ink at the sides.
‘What cards are these?’ I ask. ‘I’ve never seen anything like them before.’
‘They are trionfi cards,’ she says. ‘Duke Humphrey’s Italian book-seller sent them to him and he gave them to me to study.’
I look more closely at the tower card. Men and women topple from the top; there is a fire blazing out of a window as a bolt of lightning strikes the roof. A black dog walks in through the open door.
I shrug. ‘I can see half a dozen things,’ I say. ‘Are they all going to happen to me? Lightning strike? Fire? Falling from a tower?’
‘No,’ she says, taking the card back as if it is meaningless. ‘But it’s always interesting what someone sees.’
‘Then once again, I am doing all the work here. I see what anyone would see: lightning, fire, a dog.’
‘Where’s the dog?’ she asks, as if she does not know her own cards.
‘There!’ I say impatiently, pointing so she can see for herself.
‘And shall you get a place with the queen or one of her ladies and stay in England?’ she asks, putting the card away as if she cannot see the dog and has no interest in my vision.
‘While I wait for my great fortune? Before I am struck by lightning? I doubt the queen needs any ladies-in-waiting while she lives so quietly with her son.’
‘Her son’s going to have his own household,’ Margery tells me. ‘They don’t want him spoiled, a little poupée to his French mama. He’s to live with his guardian and with other young lords and learn to be a man.’
‘Isn’t he too young to be taken from her?’
‘He’s three. What’s the right age to make a prince unhappy?’
‘It’s her who’ll be unhappy. Who will care about her, when he’s gone? Who would want to serve a widow queen at a kingless court? Not me.’
‘The groom of her household would know if she needed a lady-in-waiting,’ Margery says, with a sideways smile. ‘Owen ap Maredudd would get you a place, wouldn’t he? For old times’ sake? For the chance of times to come?’
I hesitate. ‘Owen? He’ll go with the prince, won’t he? Seeking a good place, like all Welshmen?’
‘Owen ap Maredudd.’ Something about the way she lingers over his name makes me look at her again.
‘Is he my good fortune?’ I ask.
She points to the wheel of fortune card. ‘There’s a Welsh dragon beside the star. And you like him, don’t you? I thought you were half in love with him before you went away?’
I hesitate. ‘I can’t afford to like a poor man,’ I say. ‘And he told me himself that chivalry is dead.’
‘Oh, he won’t be poor for long,’ she says casually.
‘So you said, but when does he get his fortune and his royal son?’
She laughs again. ‘I know only what anyone might know,’ she says, as if the glass jars of herbs and the bottles of dark oils are common knowledge, as if my chosen cards in her hands dealt themselves.
‘Owen ap Maredudd is going to rise and rise, and so will you. Half the women of court are in love with him. He’ll marry well – very well. D’you like him still?’
I think of his eyes and his knowing smile. I think of how he told me so gently that I was mistaken to believe in chivalry, that the world is not like a fairy tale. He spoke as if he was sorry to bring me such a bleak report.
‘Yes,’ I say slowly. ‘I still do. In a way, I still do.’