The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams

large table in the middle of the room. Then he drew the cards from their case, which he threw carelessly from him to the floor, and began to separate them into five piles.
    â€œLook,” he said, “these are the twenty-two cards—the twenty-one and the one which is nothing—that we looked at the other night. Those are the Greater Trumps, and there’s nothing to tell you about them now; they must wait till another time. But these others are the four suits, and you will see what we did not carefully look at then; they’re not the usual designs, not clubs and spades and hearts and diamonds, but staffs or scepters, and swords and cups and coins—or deniers. Those last are shaped sometimes as pentacles, but this is the better marking. And see—there are fourteen and not thirteen in each suit, for besides the Knave and Queen and King there is in these the Knight. So that here, for instance, are the Knave—or Esquire—of scepters, and the Knight, Queen, and King of scepters; and so with the swords, the cups, and the deniers. Look, here they are.”
    She bent above them, watching, and after a moment he went on.
    â€œNow these cards are the root and origin of all cards, and no one knows from where they came, for the tale is that they were first heard of among the gipsies in Spain in the thirteenth century. Some say they are older, and some even talk of Egypt, but that matters very little. It isn’t the time behind them, but the process in them, that’s important. There are many packs of Tarot cards, but the one original pack, which is this, has a secret behind it that I will show you on Christmas Eve. Because of that secret this pack, and this only, is a pack of great might.”
    He paused again, and still she made no movement. He glanced at her hands resting on the edge of the table and resumed.
    â€œAll things are held together by correspondence, image with image, movement with movement. Without that there could be no relation and therefore no truth. It is our business—especially yours and mine—to take up the power of relation. Do you know what I mean?”
    As she suddenly looked up at him, she almost smiled.
    â€œDarling,” she murmured, “how couldn’t I know that ? I didn’t need the cards to tell me. Ah, but go on. Show me what it means in them.”
    For another second he paused, arrested; it was as if she had immediately before her something which he sought far off. A little less certainly he again went on, his voice recovering itself almost immediately.
    â€œThere is in these suits a great relation to the four compacted elements of the created earth, and you shall find the truth of this now, if you choose, and if the tales told among my people and the things that were written down among them are true. This pack has been hidden from us for more than two centuries, and for all that time no one, I think, can have tried it till tonight. The latest tale we know of is that once, under Elizabeth, a strange ancestor of mine, who had fled to England from the authority of the King of Spain, raised the winds which blew the Armada northward past Scotland.”
    Nancy wrinkled her forehead as he paused. “Do you mean,” she began, “do you mean that he … I’m sorry, darling, I don’t seem to understand. How could he raise the winds?”
    â€œâ€˜The beating of the cards is the wind,’” he answered, “but don’t try and believe it now. Think of it as a fable, but think that on some point of the seashore one of those wild fugitives stood by night and shook these cards—these”—he laid his hand on the heap of the suit of staffs or scepters—“and beat the air with them till he drove it into tumult and sent the great blasts over the seas to drive the ships of King Philip to wreck and destruction. See that in your mind; can you?”
    â€œI can,” she said. “It’s a mad