Meridon

38

They were going for me, for the convincingly pretty little farm I had drawn for them. All good card-sharping is a war of imagination in which the card-sharp convinces the pigeons of two things at once: that he is honest, and that they are skilled. I watched them under my eyelashes and saw that they thought Will too staunch, too unwilling, possibly too poor for their skills. But I was a flash young fool. They looked from the little roughdrawn map to my open eager face and licked their lips like hungry men before sweet pudding.

I tapped my cards on the table and shot a look at Will. ‘Seems you were right, Will,’ I said. ‘I’m well out of my depth here.’

Will kept his eyes down and his face still, but he must have been reeling at my sudden change of tack.

‘Let’s finish this game and be off then,’ he said. He glanced at Captain Thomas and Bob Redfern. ‘Begging your pardons, sirs, and thanking you for your hospitality. But I promised this young man’s mother I’d bring him safe home. Aye, and with his inheritance safe in his pocket.’

Captain Thomas cracked a laugh that made the dusty chandelier tinkle. ‘You’re a bear leader, sir!’ he cried. ‘I think Mr Tewkes here is a very sharp player indeed!’

He switched the card he was about to play for one further away from the cleft of his thumb. It was a low trump. He probably knew I had higher. I took the trick as he had intended.

‘Look at that now!’ he said. ‘I missed that you had a trump that high, Mr Tewkes.’

‘Let’s have another bottle,’ Bob Redfern said genially. ‘Up from the country you should enjoy yourselves gentlemen! A shame to go home with no tales to tell! They’ll open their eyes when you tell them you played here, I warrant!’

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.

‘Ready, Michael?’ Bob said pleasantly. I shot him a quick look. He had not been watching me. He was smiling at Captain Thomas, an honest neutral smile, which passing between those two said, clear as a bell, ‘We have them now.’

I riffled the pack. It was stacked as well as I could do, in the time I had, and I was not in practice as I had been when I was Meridon.

I went to deal.

‘Cut,’ Captain Thomas reminded me.

I flushed. ‘Oh yes,’ I said.

They cut before they dealt in this club. Captain Thomas was waiting for me to cut my carefully stacked deck towards him so that the cards I had prepared for Will would be cut to the bottom of the deck where they would go at regular and surprising intervals to any one of us.

‘Agent shifting cut,’ I heard Da’s voice in my head. I saw his dirty hands squaring up a pack on the driving seat on the front of the wagon. ‘See this Merry? D’ye see?’

It was a tricky move. Da used to bodge it, I learned it from watching him failing at it. I glanced around. It was growing light outside but it was still dark in here with the thick musty curtains at the window. Someone at one of the tables was disputing a bill and people were glancing that way. I looked at Captain Thomas.

‘Trouble?’ I asked, nodding towards the table. Captain Thomas looked over. A man had lurched to his feet and tipped the table sideways. I grasped the pack in two hands, my left holding the top half of the pack, and my right holding the bottom. With one swift movement I pulled the bottom half gripped in my right hand and put it towards Captain Thomas.

‘Nothing really,’ he said looking back. He completed the cut, moving the half-deck which was furthest from him on top of the one nearest to him. Without knowing it, he had put my stacked deck back together again. And no one had spotted it.

I heard my heart thudding loud in my ears, in my neck, in my throat. So loud that I thought they would all hear it over the jostle and confusion of the drunk man being thrust down the stairs and out into the street.

I dealt with a trace of awkwardness and the cards lay on the table. Will picked up his cards and I saw his eyes widen slightly, but his hand outstretched to the wine glass did not tremble.

He won, of course.

I saw Captain Thomas squinting at his cards, and at the backs of Will’s. I kept my cards low, held in my cupped hands in case there were markings in the back he could see. I watched the two of them warning each other to call spades for trumps, or diamonds. Hearts or clubs. It would make no odds. Will had a King, a Queen or an Ace in every hand. The other good cards which I had scattered around the table were just to dress the act.

They couldn’t nail it. They were so sure of me as a pigeon. They had seen me shuffle clean enough, and then they had seen me cut. And they believed, as many fools before them have believed, that you cannot stack a cut.

I slid the last card across the table. Captain Thomas took the trick, it was his third. Will had five, Bob Redfern had three tricks, I had two. Will was a truly awful card-player; with the hands I had given him he should have wiped the floor with the three of us.

‘I’ve won!’ he said incredulous.

Bob Redfern was white, the sweat on his forehead gleamed dully in the candlelight. He slid the heavy document of the deeds of Wideacre across the table to Will. I pushed the deeds of my farm, and the paper for the club, and Redfern’s IOUs.

‘I’m done for tonight gentlemen!’ I said. My voice came out a little high and I took a breath and clenched my fingernails into my palms under the table. I was not out of the ring yet. I rubbed my hand across my chin as if I were feeling for morning beard growth. ‘I’ve won and lost a property, and lost my own as well! A great night! We shall have to settle this very day, Will.’

Captain Thomas smiled thinly. ‘I shall call on you,’ he said. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘Half Moon Street,’ I said glibly. ‘Just around the corner, with Captain Cairncross at number 14.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll call on you a little after noon,’ he said. ‘And I’ll bring Lord Perry. We will all need to settle up after tonight!’

There was a murmur from the men all around us.

I smiled around at them. ‘It’s been a hard gambling night for me!’ I said. ‘Not often I get to play in such company as this. I shall come back tomorrow evening if I may.’

‘You’d be very welcome,’ Captain Thomas said pleasantly. His bright eyes above the curly mustachios were cold. ‘Play always starts around midnight.’

‘Grand,’ I said.

Will got to his feet, as wary as a prize-fighter in an all-comers ring.

‘My cape,’ I said to the waiter behind me.

Will tucked the precious deeds deep into his jacket, and shovelled the other papers and guineas on top of them.

‘We’ll settle up tomorrow,’ the captain said, watching his every move.

‘I’m in no hurry,’ Will lied. He stepped towards the door, his eyes on me. The waiter came and draped my cape around my shoulders. I picked up my hat which I had tossed off during the game, ran my hands through my curls and crammed it on.

‘A grand evening!’ I said. ‘I thank you both.’

I stepped towards the door. I was as loath to turn my back on those two as I would take my eyes off a snake. I felt utterly sure that once I could not see them they could spring on me.

I took two steps towards the doorway, Will was through the door, starting to descend the stair, I was in the doorway, I was through. I went down each stair one at a time, making myself go slow, forcing myself to walk cautiously, as a drunk walks.

‘Thank you, good fellow,’ Will said as the porter fumbled with the bolts of the door. He was hesitating as if they would hold us. Hold us at the bolted door while they rushed us. I risked a quick glance behind me. Redfern and Thomas were at the top of the stairs looking down at us. I felt my throat tighten in panic.

‘Good-night!’ Will called. His voice was assured. I did not trust myself to speak, I waved a casual hand and hoped to God that my face was not too white. The last bolt slid free, the porter swung open the door, the grey light of dawn and the clean cold smell of a spring morning flooded in upon us.

We stepped out, arm in arm, into the silent streets.

The sun was not yet up, it was that pearly pale time of the morning when it is half-way between dark and dawn. I glanced at Will; his face was lined as if he had aged ten years. I knew my own face was bleached with the strain, my eyes dark-shadowed.

‘Are we clear?’ he asked me, his voice very low.

‘I think so,’ I said.

It was a hopeful lie and we both knew it. We did not think so.

‘Walk slowly,’ he said softly. ‘If they’re going to get us it’ll be before we get out into the main street.’

We strolled, five steady paces, away from the doorway of the club. Then there was a shout from behind us:

‘Hey! Hey! Michael! You’ve forgotten your cane! Come back!’

‘Run!’ Will said and grabbed my hand.

As soon as we had taken our first strides I heard them shout behind us, confused instructions to head us off. We hurtled around the corner into Curzon Street. The road was absolutely deserted, the place empty and silent.

‘Damn!’ Will said.

‘This way!’ I said quickly and led him down the street, running close to the wall of the buildings, hoping to be hidden by the shadows.

From the mews behind us we heard their boots on the cobbles, the noise of them stopping and then a loud voice yell, ‘They went that way! That way!’ and I knew we had been spotted.

I led Will across the road at the run and dived up Queen Street. I glanced behind me. There were five of them, a little slower than us and we had a good lead. But Captain Thomas was gaining a little, he looked fit. Already my breath was coming in gasps and I could feel my knees starting to go weak.

We ran without speaking up the length of Queen Street, they were about a hundred yards behind us. I could not believe there were no lighted doorways, no carriages, no late parties, not even a neutral witness. There was no one. Will and I were on our own against five villains and the deeds to Wideacre in Will’s pocket.

At the corner I did not hesitate even for a second. I was running without a thought in my head except to get away from them. Now I dived over the road and up John Street hoping to be into the shadows before they came to the crossroads and saw us.

We nearly made it, but we heard Thomas shout, ‘Stop! Listen for them!’ and then the triumph in his yell. ‘They’re going that way! After them!’

The road was narrow and the clatter of boots on cobbles behind us seemed to get louder and louder. My cape was twisted around my legs, hampering me like hobbles on a horse, I could feel myself slowing. Only fear was moving me on now; and I was not going fast enough.

‘Which way?’ Will gasped.

My mind reeled. I had been heading for home, instinctively threading my way through the fashionable streets and the dark secret mews streets behind them. But I knew I could not keep up this pace. They would be upon us, and in any case I would lose my way in this warren of new gracious squares and back lanes.

‘The park!’ I said. I thought of the cool trees and the dark hollows where we might hide. I thought of the icy grass shining under the pale light of early morning. It was as like to country as we would get in London and I had a great longing for earth under my feet. Both Will and I were country children, we needed to be home.

We swung left down Farm Street and I could see the high trees of the park, it seemed like miles away at the end of the street.

‘Down there,’ I said. I was running even more slowly, my throat was tight and my chest heaving. ‘You run, Will, you’ve got the deeds. Get them away. Get away with them.’

He shot me a swift sideways look, his teeth gleaming in the half-light. The idiot was smiling.

‘We’ll make it,’ he said. ‘Keep running.’

I was so angry with him not understanding that I could not keep running, I was finished, that my anger gave me a spurt of energy which bore me up. Also, I was afraid. That made me faster than our pursuers. Behind us were men, angry and greedy for my land, but they were not scared as I was. I had run from men too many times in my life not to feel my heart race when I heard boots on cobblestones behind me. My heart was thudding in my chest, and my breath was hoarse, like in my illness, but I could still run and run and run.

We burst across the road. There were one or two carriages in the distance, but no one close enough, and anyway, the hue and cry was after us. If we called for help we might find ourselves before a magistrate, and I had a law-breaker’s terror of the justices.

‘Those trees…’ Will gasped. He was near the end of his strength too, he was wet with sweat, his face shiny in the pale light. He headed towards a little coppice of beeches and silver birches. They were stark in the pale shadows, their bare branches thin threads of blackness against the lighter sky. But they would give us some shelter.

I shot a look behind me. They were hard on our heels, crossing the road even now. They would see us go into the coppice, we would not have time to hide. They would cast about and catch us.

‘You go on!’ I said peremptorily. ‘I’ll hold them up! For God’s sake, Will!’

He turned roughly on me as soon as we were hidden from sight.

‘Drop your breeches,’ he ordered. I gaped at him and he dragged my cloak from my neck and bundled it under a bush of blackberry.

‘Drop your damned breeches!’ he whispered harshly. ‘You pass as my doxy!’

Then I understood. I ripped the boots off my feet and tore the breeches off. My cravat went the same way, and I stood before Will in my night-shirt. Without hesitation he took a handful of the material at the neckline and ripped it so that it dropped down to my bubbies, showing my milk-white neck and shoulder, the rounded curve of my breast and the rosy nipple.

Behind us, at the edge of the coppice we heard Thomas’ voice, and Redfern shouting:

‘Look up to the trees, check the boughs!’

Will flung himself upon me and bore me down to the ground.

‘Open your legs for God’s sake, Sarah,’ he said impatiently, and rolled himself over so that he was lying on me. I felt him fumble at his breeches and I felt my white face burn red as he pulled them down so he was bare-arsed.

‘Will!’ I said in whispered protest.

He had a moment to rear up and look at me, his face was brimful with mischief. ‘Stupid little cow,’ he said lovingly, then he dipped his head into my naked neck and started thrusting at me with his hips.

‘Holloa!’ came the yell behind him, Captain Thomas skidded to a halt and his bully-boys craned over his shoulder. Will kept his head down, I risked a peep over his shoulder. They were staring at me and at my bare splayed legs. I ducked my head down into Will’s warm jacket and inwardly cursed them and every damned man on the whoreson earth. I hated Will, and Captain Thomas, and Wideacre with every inch of my frigid angry body.

‘Did ye see a couple of gentlemen, run through here?’ Thomas rapped out.

Will let out a great bellow of rage, or it would have passed for frustrated lust. ‘What the devil d’you think I’m doing, keeping watch?’ he hollered. ‘O’course I didn’t. What does it look to you that I’m doing? Go your ways, damn you. I’ve paid for twenty minutes and twenty minutes I’ll have!’

They hesitated, two of them fell back.

‘They went that way…’ I said. My voice was silky, slurred. I gestured with an outflung hand and they saw my naked shoulder and the line of my throat, gleaming in the pale light.

Captain Thomas bowed to me, ironically. ‘I am much obliged to you ma’am,’ he said. ‘And I apologize for disturbing you, sir.’ We heard him take two steps. ‘It seems the lady is less attentive than the man,’ he said and the men laughed. Then his voice changed. ‘Is that them? Boarding that coach? Dammit! After them!’

We heard the noise of them crashing through the undergrowth and their yells to the coachman. We froze, as still as leverets in bracken, while we listened to the coach pull away, and them chasing after it, yelling to attract the guard’s attention. Then it was quiet. They had gone.

Will Tyacke lay on top of me, his face buried in my neck, breathing in the smell of my sweat, his face rubbing against my skin, his hardness pushing insistently through my rumpled shift at the deep inner core of me where I could feel I was as soaking wet as any loving strumpet behind a hay stack.

‘It’s all right, Will,’ I said, my voice warm with laughter. ‘You can stop pretending. They’re gone.’

He checked himself with a shudder but the face he raised to look at me was alive with love.

‘My God, I love you,’ he said simply. ‘It would be well worth being hanged for card-sharping to rip your nightgown open and lie between your legs – even for a moment.’

I stretched in a movement as languorous and sensual as a cat. I felt as if blood had never flowed in my veins before this moment. I felt warm all over, I felt alive all over. My skin, the inside of my wrists, the soles of my feet, the warm palms of my hands, the tingling tip of my tongue, every tiny fraction of me glowed like gold. And deep deep between my legs I felt a pulse beating as if I had never been alive there before, as if Will was a plough to turn the earth and make it fertile, and that suddenly my body was no longer wasteland; but rich fertile ploughland, hungry for seed.

‘Not now,’ I said unwillingly. ‘They’ll be back when they’ve stopped the coach. They’re not stupid.’

Will leaped up. ‘No!’ he said. ‘Here! Your clothes!’

He reached into the blackberry bush, stamping his feet and cursing in a whisper when the briers scratched him. Then he turned his back in incongruous chivalry while I got dressed. I crammed my hat on my head, and wrapped my cloak around me.

‘Home to Wideacre,’ Will said decisively.

‘I’ve got to fetch Sea,’ I said.

Will checked, looked at me to see if I was jesting.

‘We cannot!’ he said. ‘We cannot risk retracing our steps, going back the way we’ve come. We should strike across the park now, go west, double back later.’

‘I want Sea,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Sea will get us home. And you’ll want your horse.’

‘They’d send them on…’ Will started.

‘Not they,’ I said certainly. ‘I’m finished with the Haverings for all time. They’ll not send on as much as a pocket handkerchief of mine. I’m getting my horse out of their stables before they know their pigeon’s flown the coop.’

Will hesitated, looked from my resolute face to the streets of the city which were getting noisy and busy as the sun rose.

‘I’m not going without Sea,’ I said.

‘Oh very well,’ he said sullenly, and we strode out of the coppice shoulder to shoulder without a spark of passion or even affection between us. Cross as cats.