"Maw is the game, crudely named, like a mouth to throw your money into." Castlenau looks at his honored guest significantly. Bruno nods his head and give him an impatient continue gesture. "The object of the game is to win either three or five tricks or to prevent another player from doing so. Simple enough. The winner of three tricks wins the pot. If there is no winner, another bet is wagered and added to the pot before the next hand. You can see how big pots will emerge."
"Yes, haha. From the pots, steaming heaps of gold." For Bruno, anything not mystical is scatological and the union of those dualities is often on his mind.
"If a player wins the first three tricks he automatically wins the pot. If he plays to the forth trick they must win the rest of the tricks to win the pot. The house rule is the players must put in extra money. If the player does not take the final two tricks, the fool must match the pot. You following me?"
"Yes, yes. You think I'm one of these anglican sluggards?" He crosses his arms, offended.
"This chap is actually quite shrewd. He's quite the gambler at court."
"Fun and games. You take it so seriously. Continue."
"To start play, the dealer rolls out five cards to each, like so. The top card of the remaining is turned up to determine trump. The cards in the trump suit rank five--"
"Ah yes, the mystical five," Bruno says, rolling his eyes.
"--then jack, then ace of hearts regardless of the trump suit. Then ace of trump, if not hearts, followed by king and queen. Now, depending on the color of the trump suit the remaining cards will be ranked different. For red they are ranked 10 down to 2 and for black they are ranked 2 to 10. Non trump cards are similarly ranked."
"Except for the five of course. Yes, yes, all very tricky. Not a child's game."
"The five ranks high only for trumps, you understand. So, play commences with the person to the dealers left, as per usual. This person plays a card and all the other players take turns playing a card of the same suit if they have it. If they do not have the suit they may play a trump. If no trump then any card. They need not play the 5 & jack of trump or the ace of hearts if they do not desire. Lesser trump must be played if the player is void in a suit."
"Ok, I've got it."
"And just in time. I think Sir Charles has arrived."
There is a precarious balance of desires here at the gaming table. The host Frenchman Castlenau is the ambassador to England from Henry III. King Henry deems to smooth out many differences between Catholic and Reformer, seeking a balance between the extremities.
Giordano Bruno of Nola, an Italian, Catholic monk, defrocked for heresy, on a casual flight from an Inquisition he dismisses. He searches from monarch to monarch for a hand to bring power to his philosophy, to start the perfect hermetic kingdom, a unification of all traditions, under a god that extends to all of creation and into an infinite universe, whose center is everywhere. Though he openly identifies this god as the Christian, he secretly espouses what he considers a much more ancient tradition who progenitor is Hermes Trismigestus.
The Englishman is a spy from the court of Elizabeth, a man who pretends to sympathize with the Catholics. More about him later, for now, he is just a chump.
(What will be described here is a round of cards where Bruno places the play of the cards into his mnemonic symbol system whereby he can reasonably predict the outcome of the game. It's a glorified card-counting system, as much as for his own enjoyment as for the winning of the game. But he does enjoy winning.. I'm still trying to figure out how to present this.)
Cards he has held some measure of respect for. Numbers and symbols, easy to organize in the head. The cards tumble out-- Bruno knows of the tarot, a device of witchcraft, a toy compared to the hermetic systems from which it derives. He knows enough of these cards to use their symbols to create a story in sigils in his mind. The play continues circular, spiralling through time. Bruno loves this perfect shape, can find unity there.
The defrocked monk plays his last card. "You have no strategy, but you know how to run." jokes Castelnau. They speak English out of respect for their guest. Occasionally they lapse into French or Italian, "Brutish swine," or "English dog." But they underestimate the Anglican's capacity for language.
Bruno's scribe comes to watch. He brings another bottle of wine for the Latins, whiskey for the Saxon.
"Jordan," as Sir Charles prefers to call the philosopher, shuffling the cards for the next hand, "This is the young king of Scotland's favorite game. They say he is a learned man."
Bruno brightens up, "He is the son of the catholic who is imprisoned in the Tower?"
"Yes, but he is not Catholic and has been educated by the Calvinists."
"Oh, I despise the Calvinists, they are worse than the Spanish Papists, with all their dogmas," Bruno wrinkles his nose and pulls at a card, adding it to the small pile of fire and ash, hearts and staves.
"Without dogmas, what else is there to believe?" asks the Englishman. Bruno is almost tempted not to answer, out of some recently learned lessons from arguing with the English. They are at times clever, but mostly obstinate and asinine. He entertains this thought for perhaps 2 seconds, after which his sharply honed tongue cannot be held back.
"Dogmas are imperfect, they obstruct the development of ideas. Ideas are a shadow of the divine mind. They grow as does everything in nature. I am considering a treatise on the similarity of nature and mind. Dogmas lead to a stunting of the growth of the mind. Of course, some trees do not, by their nature attain a towering height, particularly on this isle." The denigration is lost on the barbarian's ear.
Castlenau perceives this and chuckles, pouring the Italian more wine. He shakes his head, not wanting to comment. "Won't you have some of the wine with us?" Castlenau asks the Englishman.
"No, no." he wags his head like a horse.
Castlenau breaks a piece of bread off of a loaf and hands a piece to Bruno. An understanding passes between them.
The englishman looks down at his dwindling stack of coin. He throws down his cards. "You Italian swindler, I've had enough of your treacherous magic for the night. Besides, I am tired of you papists laughing at me." With that the Englishman stumbles toward the foyer.
And this is why the Nolan rarely gets invitation to games.
***
Giordano Bruno falls off his ass
In 1581, Giordano Bruno, doctor of philosophy, student of hermetic religion and Egyptian mysteries, fell off of a mule on a road outside Paris. He was knocked out, but not completely unconscious. His mind retreated to an area of his mind he had set aside and nourished with his imagination in order to organize all of what he knew in an elaborate mnemonic system using a complex set of visual keys. This science of memory, an architecture of the mind, was invented by the Greeks and utilized by Cicero.
He had deliberately fed this other mind information and called upon it to assist him in remembering great tracts of text, dates and details, the substance and relationships of various laws of nature. It had the form of a gallery of art. [curated possibly by Peter Greenaway--ed.] The subject matter of the pieces of art was everything worth remembering in a ready state of recall. Before, it was always as if he had sent a bird inside to bring back information. In his fugue state, he visited this special place for the first time with his whole being.
He gazed at the soft play of light that gently caressed every surface like the hand of a goodly artist. And whose hand was this but the benevolent sun itself, the local deity who ever watches us, projecting light, divine vision upon us. But this was a seperate sun, a hidden sun, Amen Ra the creator of all things. All his life he had been looking at only the shadow cast by this light. This light was the information that the sun conveyed to dumb matter that compelled it to action. It was the neverending song of life itself.