"Burgess, Anthony - Enderby Quartet 04 - Enderby's Dark Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burgess Anthony)

"Blown up. We are to place twenty barrels of gunpowder in the cellar beneath with faggots on top. Set but flame to the faggots and there will be a greater blowing up than has ever before been seen in the long tale of tyranny and human suppression."
"Blown up," Catesby said after a pause, as to make sure Ben properly understood.
"The Queen," Ben said, "is of the true faith. Is it right she too should be blown up?"
"You are always ready to talk of her Godlessness," Catesby said. "Well, she will be punished. Alternatively, she will be a martyr. Destiny puts forth a choice."
"However you gloss it," Ben said, "she will be blown up."
"Everybody will be blown up," Tom Winter said, pausing in the picking of his teeth. They had eaten of a roast ham, each mouthful full of teeth-hugging fibres. "Everybody."
"And then there will be a new era of love for the true faith?" Ben asked.
"We will think of that after the blowing up," Catesby said. "Certainly there will be a many problems, but sufficient to the day as the Gospel saith. First the blowing up."
"And the choice of the one to whom shall be given the glory of setting flame to the faggots for the blowing up," Kit Wright said. They all now looked at Ben.
"He too will be blown up?" Ben asked.
"There is every likelihood that he will be blown up," Catesby said. "But he will at once be endued with a crown of martyrdom. You, Master Jonson, are wide open." They all continued to look at Ben. Ben said:
"How first are you to convey the barrels to the cellar?"
"It is a wine cellar," Rob Winter said. "The barrels will be brought on a vintner's dray. What have you there, the guards will ask. Wine, will come the answer. Wine, as hath been ordered. It is all very simple."
"And the faggots?"
"The faggots will be in another barrel, dry and ready for the laying on. And he that is to do the brave deed will go as a guard in a borrowed livery. Bearing a torch."
"In broad daylight?" Ben asked.
"He will say he has orders to search the cellar for possible treasonous men lurking. It is all very simple."
Francis Tresham now spoke. "I am against it," he said. "It is a plot of some cruelty. Also of some injustice. The Queen, true, is a foreigner and doth not matter. But there are enow good Catholic Englishmen in hiding among those of the parliament. We are blowing up our own."
"Martyrs' crowns," Ben said. "Think not of it."
"You will do the deed?" Catesby said, leaning closer to Ben and, indeed, discharging a blast of hammy garlic onto him.
"I will think on it," Ben said. "Your reasons are of a fairly persuadent order. I will go home now and start to think on it."
"Guy here will go home with you," Catesby said, "and help you think on it."
"No, he will not," Ben said. "I want none breathing on me while I think. I go into this in full libero arbitrio. I cannot be made to do it."
"That is true," Catesby said. "Except by the promptings of your own destiny, Master Jonson. I see the martyr's crown hovering above you." He looked somewhat fiercely at Tresham. "Frank," he said, "you waver. It is strange you waver when you were loudest once in saying perdition to the betrayer of the faith of his own royal mother. There are measures may be taken to discourage waverers." He looked at dark Guido and then back at pale Tresham.
"I am no waverer. I ask only that we right our souls on this matter of the killing of Catholics along with Protestants. It is a matter of theology I would ask that we concern ourselves withal."
"Theology," little Bates now said. "There is enow of theology at the Godless court, holy Jamie and his atheistical bishops. Out on theology. Let us have the true faith back and God's enemies blown up. I drink to you," he said, "Master Jonson," and drank.
"I too drink to me," Ben said, and drank likewise. He wiped his loose lips and wrung his beard and said, looking at the company severally, "Now I go home. To pray. For blessing and eke for guidance."
"Guido will go with you for guidance through the perilous streets," Catesby said.
"I go alone. I am in no peril."
"Guy will be your guide."
Ben, with Guido Fawkes at his flank, was some way advanced through the warren of stinks and drunkenness and stinking drunken bravoes that led to his lodgings when, to keep up his courage, he began to sing:

"Here will we sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals."

At the song Fawkes clicked his fingers and said:
"Spy."
"I cry your mercy, what was that?"
"Spy, I said. I think you to be a manner of spy."
Ben ceased walking or rolling and looked at him fair and straight beneath the moon. "You are drunk, man. You know not what you say."
"Spy. I asked myself long who it was you put me in mind of, and he too was a poet and spy. He cried his sodomitical atheism to the streets, and none did him harm. I conclude he was under protection. His name was Kit Marlowe. That was a song of his you were singing but now. Spy."
"Marlowe," Ben said soberly. "He was all our fathers, though he was slain young, God help him. You flatter me more than you know. But I am no spy." They heard as it were antiphonal singing, though more drunk than sober, approach.

"Sit we amid the ewes and tegs
Where pastors custodise their gregs
And cantant avians do vie
With numinous sonority."