"Adams, Robert - Castaways in Time 06 - Of Beginings and Endings 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Robert)

Throughout the widespread, protracted fighting: that came to be called the War of the Three Marriages, Harold lived peacefully in York and its environs, leaving on only two occasions, both of these to rush to the bedside of Arthur and restore his threatened health with doses of the dwindling supply of longevity-booster capsules. Then, even as the war had ended, a fresh bout of the dreaded Priests' Plague had rampaged through Europe and into England, Wales, Scotland, and, this time, even the Hebrides, the Danish Islands, Iceland, and Ireland.

Immediately upon receiving word of the advent of the pest, Harold had prepared his archdiocese as well as he quickly could and removed to court, fearing for the well-being of the ever susceptible Arthur, the monarch's brother, Duke Henry, being even then already dead of the plague in Aquitaine.

This second visitation of the murderous disease upon England, Wales, and those parts of Scotland which had suffered in the first episode was not as costly of lives as had been the initial one, but still was it bad enough, following as it did the very same pattern of striking principally nobility and their immediate retainers and servants, large abbeys, well-to-do country gentry, ports, cities, and larger towns.

Even as before, a goodly proportion of the court were badly stricken, but this time not so many died, and of those who did die, Harold noted but few who were then old enough to have been alive at the time of the initial onset of the deadly pest.

King Arthur, however, very nearly died of this second outbreak, and by the time he was once more on his feet and reordering the realm, Harold had less than two dozen of the longevity-booster capsules remaining him.

But the king, recalling his sire in identical circumstances, had performed splendidly in the crises. After decreeing the burning of corpses and their flammable effects, the stringent cleaning of the interiors of buildings, the filling in of cesspits, the scourings of towns and cities, and the towing out to sea and burning of hulks filled with corpses, he and the court had set out on a procession around the realm, avoiding castles, manors, halls, or abbeys and biding in pavilions set up in fields and leas, moors and forests, under the sky.

With Osbert Norton dead (not of the Priests' Plague, but rather of an infected ratbite) and Canterbury once more depopulated of the clergy and their retainers, Arthur had designated Yorkminster to henceforth be the paramount archdiocese of his realm and had empowered Harold to fill all vacant sees. Once again, Harold Kenmore performed the bidding of his monarch, then made his way back to York and Yorkminster and the multitude of tasks that there awaited him. But he was nothing if not a consummate administrator, and within the year he had set matters once more aright and running smoothly.

So seldom indulging himself with a single longevity-booster capsule lest in so doing he possibly doom the sickly monarch, so beset constantly with the cares and worries of his high office, Harold Ken- (tm) more had aged-not so much or at all so fast as those || about him, of course, those never treated with the jj longevity drugs at all-but he remained unaware of f'::; the fact until he again saw Emmett O'Malley.

As paramount churchman in all of England and Wales, his court and establishment at Yorkminster was grown as large and complex as the court of his king, with a never-ending stream of visitors of all stations, supplicants, messengers from the royal court and from Rome and from high-ranking churchmen in foreign lands, nobles bound on one errand or another, and, it sometimes seemed to him, fully half the population of the realm. Naturally, he could not himself spend all day every day doing nothing but meeting with suppliants and the like, so he had of course surrounded himself with concentric layers of men whose task was to winnow out the never-ending streams, and see the most of them met by and handled by lower-ranking subordinates, with only the business that could be performed properly by no other man eventually appearing before the Archbishop of York himself.

Of course, it did not always work out in just the ways Harold had envisioned upon setting it all up. Even men vowed to poverty right often fall to the insistent temptation of silver and gold, and what with the decimations of the clergy by the Priests' Plague, not all of the men making up his insulating layers were men of the cloth, anyway. When, one morning, he was presented with the usual list of those with whom he was to meet this day, he just glanced at it briefly, not even noticing the names, just the numbers of the suppliants and the times of their appointments. But even had he looked more closely, he later determined, he might well still have passed over the clerk's rendition of the name: "Sir Ymit Me Badrag Ui Maile, said to be a high noble of the Irish Kingdom of Lagan."

Although not really aged in appearance, the Em-mett O'Malley who at length had been ushered into Harold Kenmore's audience chamber had still shown unmistakable evidences of much suffering, sorrow, and worry. His once-sparkling green eyes now were more dull and filled with a soul-deep sadness, woe had carved deep lines in his face, and seldom anymore did the once ever-ready smile or merry laugh bring up the downcast corners of his mouth.

Immediately they two were completely alone in a smaller room off the larger, Emmett had tensely demanded, "Harold, hoo mony o' the capsules hae ye left?"

Harold had sighed and shrugged, replying, "About a score or so, Emmett."

A light, but a light of wildness, had come into the green eyes then, and the hard, bejeweled fingers had clamped down on Harold's arm with crushing force. "Nae, Harold, mon, not whatall ye hae wi' ye. Hoo mony in a', I mean?"

"That's it, Emmett," the archbishop had said, while peeling back the calloused fingers to free his punished arm. "I have exactly twenty-four longevity-booster capsules left. You look awful, Emmett. Are you well? Should I send for a restorative for you? A bit of wine, perhaps?"

Upon Harold's words, the blood drained from his flushed face and all the strength, seemingly, from his solid-looking, still-powerful body. Stumbling, tottering backward, he sank into a chair, all animation gone from his features, his appearance now become that of a hopeless man who has seen his certain doom.

At last, he had spoken in a soft, hushed voice filled with utter despair. "Och, the God an' His Holy Saints help us both, then, auld frind, for we be sair-tain sure noo tae age an' die lang afore oor time. Where went a' the hunnerds ye owned, mon?"

Harold shrugged again. "They were used, Emmett, a dozen here and a dozen or two there, over the years, to keep Hal and Arthur and Henry alive. I could have done no less for my old friend and his little sons. But what about your own capsules, Emmett? You had just exactly as many as did I when we parted in Scotland."

Then the red-haired, onetime twenty-first-century scientist had related the terrible tale of his recent misfortunes. His wives, immediate family, and household almost all wiped out in mere days by the ferocious effects of the Priests' Plague were sorrows that still oppressed and haunted him.

"When first it come ain us," he had said, "it's I thocht me o' hoo' ye had cured the auld king wi' y'r capsules, so it's I took a party and rode hard f'r Fora, the gude fithers there havin' had the keepin' o' the casket wherein was hid me ain fr mony's the lang year. But, och, hoo' tumble a sight we found there! The curst Plague had struck a' there doon the week afore, and wi' a' o' the gude men dead, the monastery had been looted an' burnt oot, ainly the black, sooty stanes left o' it. Still, I knew o' some dozen I had hid away back in Tara, sae we turnt aboot and rode back as fast nor we'd come ... but ainly death were there tae greet us a'. They a' lay cauld and dead of the plague-my new, bonny wife, my other wives, my slavegirls, a' me children young an' older, near all me servants, e'en. And, worse, a' Tara were like that, too.

"The Ard-Righ an' a' his ain family and the most o' his great court had a' died. It were a' that we few survivors could do tae luck ontae a bastard half brother of Brian tae replace him. Mony as disliked the idea o' a bastrad, a rough mon as had been lang a' mercenary fightin' a' o'er Europe an' Ifriqa, bein' set 'pon the Stane, f r fear it would move 'neath him and shriek oot his unworthiness, but it a' went well an' it's a fine Ard-Righ he's made us a'."

Gently, Harold had touched his old friend's red-furred hand, saying, "It must have been bitter-hard, Emmett. You lost all your family, then?"

"F'r lang an' lang I so thocht," replied the big man. "But then ain o' me grandsons, Tim, sailed back tae Ireland frae Great Ireland, which happy land had not been touched by the plague. Och, foin indeed it were that blessed day tae find that at the least ane o' the get o' me loins had not died. Sincet then, it's IVe come tae learn o' a few ithers-grandchildren, great-grandchildren, some o' them legitimate, some bastards-scattered aboot in this kingdom or that.

"Och, but whin Tim appeared, it's nane o' t'other I was a-knowin', ye ken, an' t'were me mind tae do fr the bouchal the best I could be doin'. So wi' the generous help o' the new Ard-Righ, t'were settin' him on the throne o' Lagan-it just thin bein' empty an' the bouchal w' as much or more rightful claim tae it as ont thin extant, too, both his mither an' his grandmither havin' been out'n the royal hoose o' Lagan an' hisself havin' happened tae be foaled in Lagan, more's t' luck. So noo he be t' legal king an' wed an' a' an' a-gettin' his dynasty a-started."

The brief flush of happiness which had colored his face and put life into his green eyes abruptly was replaced with the same old woeful spiritlessness as he sighed and said dolefully, "An' it's I can but hope that it's I'll be livin' lang enough fr tae see Tim's son succeed him, is a', Harold. I noo own but twa o' t' capsules tae me name an' you hae twenty-two; sae mony betwixt us might maintain us anely threescore or less years. Aye, an' thin we'll surely start in tae age. Tae age, mon, tae become old an' feeble, infirm, stitf-jinted, unable e'en tae tumble a lassie an' tek joy frae her as a mon should. What can we do, Harold, f r the love o' God an' a' His holy saints, mon, what can we do? Can ye fashion more o' the capsules? D' ye recollect how, arter a' these lang years?"