Simon Hawke - Shakespeare and Smythe 04 - Merchant of Vengeance (v1. html).

by The Merchant of Vengeance (v1. 0) (mobi)

  “If her father truly cares for her, then he must give her time to accept that which she must face,” said Granny Meg.

  “And if he cares less for her than for himself?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Then in the end, he shall fail both his daughter and himself,” said Granny Meg.

  Elizabeth nodded. “‘Twould seem clear, then, what I must do. I must speak with him and make him understand his daughter’s plight.”

  Granny Meg smiled and shook her head. “You cannot make him understand, Elizabeth. He must choose to understand. In the end, we must all make choices for ourselves. Even when it appears that we have no choice, the truth is that a choice always exists.”

  “I must present him with that choice, then,” Elizabeth replied, “and do all that is within my power to see he chooses wisely. Thank you, Granny Meg, for your good counsel”

  “We are not yet done,” said Granny Meg, as Elizabeth started to get up. “Sit down, Elizabeth.” She pulled out a soft leather pouch and opened the drawstrings.

  Elizabeth swallowed nervously, her gaze fixed upon the deck of cards that Granny Meg withdrew from the bag and placed face-down upon the table. “Perhaps now is not the time…” she began.

  “Shuffle the cards,” said Granny Meg.

  Elizabeth moistened her lips and reached slowly for the cards.

  She half expected to feel some sort of jolt when she picked them up, but she did not. They felt like a perfectly ordinary deck of cards, even though she knew otherwise. Slowly, purposefully, she shuffled them.

  “Place them down upon the table whenever you feel that you have shuffled them enough,” said Granny Meg.

  She did so.

  “And now cut the cards.”

  She picked up approximately half the cards and cut the deck, making two neat little stacks.

  Granny Meg picked them up and put them together once again, then started to deal out the cards, face up, in a ten-card spread known as the Celtic Cross. The first card she placed face up was the Wheel of Fortune.

  “This indicates your present,” she said, as she put down the card. “The card of fate and changing fortune.”

  “We were just speaking of fate,” Elizabeth said softly.

  Granny Meg smiled. “Indeed.” She placed another card down, laying it across the first one. It depicted a woman with her arm around a lion. “The card of Strength. It speaks of courage and conviction. And this card crosses you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It could mean that you are one who has the strength to soothe the grief of others…”

  “As with my friend!” Elizabeth exclaimed.

  “Or else that there are strong influences aligned against you.” Granny Meg continued.

  Elizabeth bit her lower lip. “But which one is it?” she asked. “It could be either one .. or even both,” said Granny Meg.

  “Let us see what else the cards may have in store.”

  As she drew the third card, she said, “This shows what may arise from the current situation in which you find yourself… or else that which you hope may come to pass.” She placed it down upon the table in a position above the first two. “The Chariot,” she said. “Interesting. All very strong cards, having to do with destiny and movement.”

  “‘What does it mean?”

  “The Chariot indicates a moving forward, a sense of purpose, or a triumph over problems or adversity.”

  “Well… this is encouraging, at least,” Elizabeth replied. “Is it not?”

  “We shall see,” Granny Meg replied. She drew the fourth card and placed it below the first two. Elizabeth gasped at the image it depicted, a tall stone tower struck. by lightning in a storm, with two people plunging from the heights.

  “The Tower,” Granny Meg said. “This shows the past, that from which the current situation has arisen. It speaks of sudden change or transformation, of destruction, or of disgrace or loss.”

  Elizabeth nodded, wide-eyed. “Destruction. Aye, murder is surely the destruction of a life. And when her father discovered that the man she was betrothed to was a Jew, he must have felt disgraced. And loss, which is what she feels now. ‘Tis all there, Granny Meg!”

  “Let us see what influences the events that are unfolding now,” Granny Meg replied as she drew another card and placed it down upon the table to the right of all the others, and even with the first two. “The Five of Pentacles,” she said, gazing at the card, which depicted crippled beggars in the snow. “The card of misery. It signifies loss and destitution, loneliness, impoverishment…” She shook her head and drew another card.

  She stared at it for a moment, then placed it in the sixth position, to the left of the first two cards, thus completing the cross.

  “This signifies what is soon to come,” she said. The card showed a dark-cloaked figure in an attitude of woe, standing over five cups, several of which had spilled out upon the ground. “The Five of Cups. The card of sorrow and despair. There will be loss and bitterness, illusions shattered, bonds broken…”

  “What sort of bonds?” Elizabeth asked with concern.

  Granny Meg shook her head. “I cannot say for certain. It could be the bonds of love or of friendship, perhaps, or else of family or marriage. It could be any of them, or it could even be more than one.”

  “The sorrow and despair…” Elizabeth said with a nervous swallow. “Whose sorrow, Granny Meg? Shall it be mine?”

  Granny Meg looked up at her briefly. “Perhaps. Once more, I cannot say for certain. It may mean yours, or not only yours. But sorrow there shall be. Much sorrow.”

  She drew the next card. This one she placed to the right of all the others, closest to the lower part of the cross formed by the other cards. This card showed the image of a shining woman dressed in bright robes and holding what appeared to be a tall staff.

  “The Queen of Wands,” said Granny Meg. “This card signifies yourself, a woman with a passionate nature and great vitality, one who has fondness for others, and who possesses a nature that is generous and practical.”

  She drew the eighth card and placed it directly above the previous one. This one showed a man holding a scale and distributing coins to hands held out in supplication.

  “The Six of Pentacles,” said Granny Meg. “This card represents the effect of your feelings upon what is unfolding. It signifies gratification, the return of a favour, perhaps, or else the desire to help another.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Indeed, I do so wish to help her, if I can,” she said. “I am just not certain how.”

  “The ninth card…” said Granny Meg, drawing it and placing it directly in line above the eighth. Elizabeth saw the image of a juggler or perhaps an acrobat, attempting to balance upon a tightrope. “The Two of Pentacles,” said Granny Meg. “This card signifies your hopes and fears. You seek balance; you wish for harmony amidst change and conflict. Perhaps you seek to juggle a number of things all at the same time, thus making your balance more precarious. You hope to find a harmony and balance, but fear that you may not achieve or maintain it.”

  She drew the final card.

  “Justice,” she said, as she laid the tenth card down directly above the ninth. The card depicted a robed woman with a laurel wreath, holding a sword in one hand and the scales of justice in the other. “This card represents the final outcome,” Granny Meg said.

  Elizabeth exhaled, suddenly aware that she had been holding her breath. “Justice,” she repeated. “That is encouraging, surely. But justice for whom? For Thomas, the young man who was slain? Or for my friend?”

  Granny Meg merely shrugged. “The cards do not say. They speak merely of the resolution. The card of Justice signifies fairness and equality, balance restored, and rightness achieved. What may seem like justice to some may seem unjust to others. But however it may seem, in the end, justice will be served.”

  “‘Tis a hopeful resolution, then,” Elizabeth said.

  “If one’s hope is for justice,” Granny Meg replied.r />
  “Well, ‘tis clear to me what I must do, then,” Elizabeth said, getting up from the table. She took a gold sovereign from her purse and laid it down upon the table. “Thank you, Granny Meg.”

  “Give my regards to your young man,” said Granny Meg, drawing yet another card and turning it face up as she placed it on the table, to one side of the ten-card spread. It was the Seven of wands, and it depicted a young man armed with a staff, taking a stand against others.

  Elizabeth glanced at her with a slight frown. “My young man?”

  “The one who first brought you to see me,” Granny Meg replied. “Tuck is his name, is it not?”

  “Oh,” Elizabeth replied, looking down. “Oh, I.. well, that is to say… I… I am not certain when I shall be seeing Tuck again.”

  “I have a feeling that you shall be seeing him quite soon,” said Granny Meg with a smile.

  “Well… then I shall be sure to give him your regards,” Elizabeth replied, a trifle awkwardly, as she turned to leave.

  Granny Meg drew another card and placed it crosswise on top of the Seven of Wands. It depicted a moon with a woman’s face rising above a desolate land from which rose two stone towers, with a dog and a wolf howling up at the night sky. She frowned. “Tell him to beware the moon,” she added.

  Chapter 10

  As she rode across town in her coach, Elizabeth kept thinking about what Granny Meg had said. She was both fascinated and frightened by the mysterious cards that Granny Meg used to divine the future. She wished the strange cards could have been more specific. They spoke of misery and sorrow and destruction, but they also spoke of justice. And then when Granny Meg had told her that she would be seeing Tuck again soon—“your young man,” she had called him—Elizabeth had felt herself blushing and had looked away. Doubtless, it had been a pointless thing to do, for it did not seem possible to hide anything from the wise old cunning woman. Nevertheless, she had felt embarrassed and had already started for the stairs leading down to the shop when she had heard Granny Meg add, from behind her, “Tell him to beware the moon.”

  That strange and cryptic warning had brought her up short. Whatever had Granny Meg meant by that? But when Elizabeth had turned to ask her, the room was empty. Granny Meg was gone.

  For a moment, Elizabeth had just stood there, stunned and speechless. How was it possible for Granny Meg to have simply disappeared? Except for the stairs leading down to the shop, there was no way in or out of the room. It was as if she had never even been there in the first place. Elizabeth had swallowed hard, thinking once again what she had thought only a short while before: What if the old cunning woman had never really been there at all? What if she truly was a ghost? Elizabeth turned and nearly ran downstairs.

  The overcast sky had turned dark, and it began to thunder as the coach drove through the London streets, taking her toward Henry Mayhew’s house. She did not really know Portia’s father very well. They had only met on a few occasions, and then just briefly. For that matter, until recently, she had not known Portia Mayhew much better.

  Henry Mayhew had struck her as a man who had a great deal in common with her own father. They shared the same first name, and they were both men who had not been born to money, but had worked hard and achieved success later in life, which made them value what they had achieved all the more. Like her own father, Henry Mayhew had seemed almost entirely preoccupied with business and was probably not the sort of man who had very much time for women. To such a man, as to her own father, a woman was merely a sort of accoutrement, one that served a specific purpose, much like a prized mount or a sporting hound. Elizabeth chuckled to herself at the unintentional and ribald pun implicit in the thought. A “prized mount,” indeed.

  She tried to imagine if there had ever been a time when her own father had thought of her mother that way. Clearly, there must have been, for she was living proof of that; however, it seemed impossible to imagine. Perhaps they had merely procreated because it was what married couples were supposed to do. She could not believe her father ever could have acted anything even remotely like the characters in the romantic poems she had read. Indeed, he had expressed his scorn for such pursuits on more than one occasion. He believed that poetry was idle nonsense, fit only for players, bards, and gypsies, not “serious” people. To him, the very idea of romance was foolish. And her mother certainly did not seem like the sort of woman to inspire it. Her parents seemed merely to share the same house and the same bed. Each had his or her own duties to perform, and neither seemed to spend very much rime even speaking to the other. It seemed like such a pointless way to live. Had they ever even been in love?

  She knew that their marriage had been arranged, just as most marriages were these days. Marriage for love, as her mother had often said, was all right for “the common sort of people,” but it was hardly appropriate for “the upper classes,” who needed to concern themselves with more practical matters. The way her mother spoke, one might think they were aristocrats, rather than members of the rising middle class. Or perhaps that was merely the way her mother placated herself for the lack of romance in her life.

  Elizabeth had sworn that she would never do that. She would never marry a man she did not love and simply acquiesce to what he and everyone else seemed to expect of her, regardless of her own desires. And if there was anything that she could do to prevent Portia from having to succumb to such a fate, then she would do it without any hesitation.

  Once again, her thoughts turned to Tuck’s father. What an appalling, arrogant, selfish, and deceitful man! She tried to imagine whether Tuck could ever become like that when he grew older. She shook her head, as if to dispel the very idea. She felt ashamed of herself for even thinking it. Except for a familial physical resemblance, the father and the son had nothing at all in common— most fortunately, she thought. What could possibly account for the two of them being so very different? But then again, what could account for her being so different from her own mother? Had there ever been a time when her mother had thought and felt the same way she did? And if there had, then what could have happened to change her so? Was it merely a matter of advancing age, Elizabeth wondered, or was it marriage to her father that had beaten her down?

  The thunder crashed and lightning lit up the sky outside her coach window. The rain began to pelt down. She felt a little sorry for the coachman, sitting up there exposed to the elements in nothing but his hat and cloak, but then that was his job. And at the same time she thought that no one would ever be telling him whom he must marry. He was free to marry anyone he pleased.

  She wondered what his life was like. Did he have a ‘life awaiting him at home? And if so, how long had they been married? Were they like her parents, who merely slept together to keep each other warm? Or did they, despite the little money that they had, still find romance and passion in their lives? Did they make love in bed by candlelight, or perhaps upon the floor, with their sweaty, naked bodies intertwined before the hot and roaring fire in their hearth?

  Elizabeth moistened her lips and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. This was not the sort of thought she should be entertaining as she was preparing to meet Portia’s father and convince him of the utter wrongness of his course. She needed to have her wits about her, to be serious and level-headed. Any sort of emotional appeal would be wasted on him. Her argument would have to be completely logical and practical. It would not do, she thought, to argue that Portia was too distraught with grief and needed time to mend her broken heart. He would dismiss that as a trifling matter, a foolish woman’s argument. No she thought, the thing to do would be to focus upon Tuck’s father, the man to whom Henry Mayhew was apparently about to betroth his daughter. She would have to convince him of the truth about Symington Smythe II, Esquire, that he was a fraud and a bounder, whose true object was not to find himself a suitable wife, but to get his hands upon her father’s money.

  Of course, that meant she would have to tell him how she knew. She wondered how Mayhew would res
pond to that. She was not ashamed of Tuck, and she did not keep her friendship with him secret from either her family or her friends. Her father did not object to it, exactly. He tolerated it, in a rather grudging sort of way, in part because he felt indebted to Tuck and in part, she felt, because he trusted him to behave in an honourable fashion. That seemed somewhat incongruous, perhaps, because Tuck was a player and players were generally considered, more or less, to be on a level with prostitutes and gypsies. A man such as her father—in other words, someone like Henry Mayhew—would not normally think that players could behave in an honourable fashion, much less except them to. Nor would her father have thought so, in all likelihood, had not Tuck and Will proven themselves in his eyes. He still did not entirely approve of them, but neither could he bring himself to disapprove. And somewhere in that region of vague tolerance and indecision was bounded her relationship with Tuck.

  It was something more than friendship and somewhat less than love. Or at least less than a love that was openly acknowledged or expressed. And if her father should ever suspect that, thought Elizabeth, then what little tolerance he had for their relationship would probably be strained beyond endurance. So long as he believed that it was merely a friendship, or perhaps even a mildly rebellious sort of infatuation on her part, stimulated by its social impropriety, then he could choose to look the other way and sniff disdainfully, shrug his shoulders, roll his eyes, and assume that she would eventually tire of it. However, it was one thing to be vaguely tolerant of her relationship with Tuck because she was discreet about it and never forced the issue or even brought it up in conversation, thereby enabling him to act as if it did not truly exist, yet it was another thing entirely to have someone like Henry Mayhew question him about it. That would throw discretion out the window with all the subtlety of breaking wind at vespers.