The Seven of Swords
The seven of swords represents both theft and hardship along with being the card of unexpected changes. Be cautious.
"Look, love, you can't sit there for ever."
La Dolcequita gives the gaoler a look of innocence and experience and raises one thick eyebrow as if to say "Oh, can't I?" Then she lowers her eyelids and returns to gazing at her baby with a dull sphinx face.
The gaoler, Jean Guilcher, notices that the little candle on his table is spitting. Not badly, but being a soft man with a taste for domestic order, he decides to attend to it rather than suffer chaos to continue its wicked work in the world. This is lest matters should get out of hand later. Then he waddles to the fire to poke at the chop he has frying in a little tin pan under the mantle, finding the tongs slippery in his sweaty charcuterie fingers.
Out in the Pré, someone sings a tuneless, guttural song
It's the same the whole world over
It's all the fucking same –
Having clearly found something to trade for a substantial amount of brandy.
Guilcher sighs and turns away from his supper to face the door. In doing so he catches sigh of Dolcequita, who has not moved. Literally has not moved. As much as an eyelid. The movement of those heavy veined lids is what has kept Jean Guilcher reassured that he has a real, live woman under his charge here rather than one of the King's art treasures – Scene Avec Une Femme Andalouse. After all, objets d'art are not at all in his line of work. But then, Guilcher is sure, neither are pregnant gypsies and their brats.
It's the rich as gets the pleasure,
It's the poor as gets the blame.
The hairs on the back of Guilcher's fat neck bristle with irritation. "Is that one of the turnkeys?" he wonders. Whoever it was, the bastard couldn't sing and the words smacked of, if not insubordination, then at least . . . Guilcher wasn't sure what, but he had a dim sense that it shouldn't be allowed, although one might argue that on a night so very bitter and so very near to the nativity of Our Saviour, that a man might be allowed to take what comfort he could find and celebrate how he chose. But that, Guilcher reflected, was the sort of reasoning that had landed him with some tinker bint giving birth in his office. No thanks to the do-gooder Pere Nicholas. For how could you turn away one so wretched? Just how could you listen to the Christmas gospel and do it? What, practically, were you going to do with the poor creature if you could? And what answer could you make to such statements if you were soft, fat, unimportant Jean Guilcher?
All the same! All the fucking same!
Came the voice from the Pré, rough and coarse as the liquor that had inspired it.
In the pursuit of order, Jean Guilcher walked to the door. As he left, he looked at Dolcequita and her babe and made a plea that was meant to be disguised as an order, but really sounded just like what it was: "I really don't want to see you here when I get back. Understood?"