Three-Card Trick

Images of Thomas Cromwell. The original miniatures were painted by Hans Holbein and pasted onto playing cards

When I was about 11, I read a novel called Murder Most Royal by Jean Plaidy. It was about Henry VIII and two of his queens: Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. I devoured Plaidy’s novels at that age - these days I find them pretty heavy going, but they certainly played a part in my decision to go on and study history and for that I remain grateful. Plaidy also introduced me to a now long-forgotten card game:

They were hilarious over the cards; there was much fun to be had at ‘Pope Julius’, the favourite game of the court, with its allusions to matrimony, intrigue and the Pope - they all found it apt in view of the pending divorce.

My imagination was gripped by the idea of Pope Julius, and I was desperate to find out how it was played. What were the rules? I decided it might involve passing cards around - I had an idea of a very specific hand movement for moving the cards - and I still feel I can almost reach out and touch the players that my 11-year-old self imagined; in fact I am almost there playing with them.

More prosaically, I cannot think now how I tried to find out about the game - this was well before the Internet. I suppose I must have consulted encyclopaedias and reference books in the local library. These days, the Internet tells me immediately that the rules of Pope Julius are now lost to time, so all my questing was in vain, but I remember wanting desperately to learn to play it.

Fast forward nearly thirty years to 2009, and I am reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall for the first time. And there is Mary Boleyn telling Cromwell:

They play cards. They play Pope Julius till the dawn comes. Did you know the king pays her gambling debts?

And I still don’t know the rules. However, now I can easily look up the records of the Privy Purse from the catalogue of Henry VIII Letters and Papers, and confirm that, in November 1532, the king paid out money as follows:

Lost at Pope July game to the lady Marques and Mr. Bryan, 20 cr. 26th. Lost to the lady Marquess, Mr. Bryan, and Mr. Weston, at Greenwich, 80 cr. 28th. Lost at cards to my lady Marques at Greenwich, 50 cr.

So I’m back right where I started, still wanting to play Pope Julius.

Playing cards have an important role in the Cromwell Trilogy. There are not - in fact - a huge number of references, but two significant scenes jump out at me. In Wolf Hall, the young Thomas survives by learning how to play the Three-Card Trick; later, in The Mirror and the Light, he tells Christophe (oh my beloved Christophe) to “Get a pack of cards”, so that if he is ever hungry or destitute, Christophe can fall back on the Three-Card Trick to make money. “The lady will provide,” Cromwell tells him.

Reflecting on the Three-Card Trick has led me (very slowly) to creating a set of Cromwell Playing Cards. Henry as the King in each of the four suits, each suit featuring one of the four Queens known by Cromwell. Christophe as the Joker. Cromwell himself as the Jack. That’s the Jack sometimes known as the Knave - a nod to the (untrue?) tale that the king would sometimes call Cromwell a knave and knock him around the head. A story put about by Cromwell’s enemies.

One, Two, and Three of Choughs

This pack of cards need not be restricted to Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades; the suits we know today. There are Sixteenth Century packs that feature suits of acorns, bells, birds. So how about a suit of Choughs? I am working on a suit of Silver Bells in honour of Anthony the Jester. I might develop a suit of Acorns. And I have tried to draw a suit of Pomegranates but it is very difficult to produce pomegranates that don’t look either obscene or nothing like pomegranates. So what else? Swords? Eels? Snakes?

And in a further twist, I have learned that many of Hans Holbein’s portraits are pasted onto playing cards. Including two miniatures of Cromwell himself - of which I have reproductions in my studio, watching everything that I make.

In My Studio

There’s a black cat that I sometimes see from my studio window. Sometimes he is balancing quite happily on a high window ledge across the street, occasionally I see him crossing the road. I call him Marlinspike. This week, Marlinspike crossed my path as I was walking home. “Good afternoon, Master Marlinspike,” I said, but he stalked off, to fulfil some cat-ish purpose up an alleyway. Note to self: an image of Marlinspike must be added to the Cromwell Cloth. How to draw a cat?

This week, I carried on Painting Wolf Hall - adding in an image of Katherine of Aragon being cast aside by the King. I paint these illustrations into a second hand copy of the book at occasional intervals in between other work. I use watercolour or pencil; I generally prefer to use a very opaque Gouache for painting, but it’s important that the text can still be seen through these pictures. These illustrations are very much for my own use - and are a way of working out ideas that might later be stitched.

The three brothers from the boat

The boatmen’s patron saint

The Cardinal

What caught my eye?

I came across my old copy of A Place of Greater Safety this week. (I packed up all of my Hilary Mantel collection while I was having my living room painted and I haven’t yet reshelved it all.) My eye was caught by a couple of sentences in the introduction:

I am very conscious that a novel is a cooperative effort, a joint venture between writer and reader. I purvey my own version of events, but facts change according to your viewpoint.

What a very generous way of inviting the reader into a novel.