"Cornwell, Bernard - Vagabond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cornwell Bernard)

October night he saw the Grail like a great burning cup in the north
and his eyes filled with tears so that the image blurred, yet he could
see it still, and it seemed to him that a vapour boiled from the holy
vessel. Beyond it, in ranks rising to the heights of the air, were
rows of angels, their wings touched by fire. All the northern sky
was smoke and gold and scarlet, glowing in the night as a sign to
doubting Thomas. Oh, Lord," he said aloud and he threw off his
blanket and knelt in the byre's cold doorway, oh, Lord."
Thomas?" Eleanor, beside him had awoken. She sat up and stared
into the night. Fire," she said in French, c'est Un grand incendie."
Her voice was awed.
C'est Un incendie?" Thomas asked, then came fully awake and saw
there was indeed a great fire on the horizon from where the flames
boiled up to light a cup-shaped chasm in the clouds.
There is an army there," Eleanor whispered in French. Look!"
She pointed to another glow, farther off. They had seen such lights
in the sky in France, flamelight reflected from cloud where Eng-
land's army blazed its way across Normandy and Picardy.
Thomas still gazed north, but now in disappointment. It was an
army? Not the Grail?
Thomas?" Eleanor was worried.
It's just rumour," he said. He was a priest's bastard and he had
been raised on the sacred scriptures and in Matthew's Gospel it had
been promised that at the end of time there would be battles and
rumours of battles. The scriptures promised that the world would
come to its finish in a welter of war and blood, and in the last
village, where the folk had watched them suspiciously, a sullen
priest had accused them of being Scottish spies. Father Hobbe had
bridled at that, threatening to box his fellow priest's ears, but
Thomas had calmed both men down, and then spoken with a
shepherd who said he had seen smoke in the northern hills. The
Scots, the shepherd said, were marching south, though the priest's
woman scoffed at the tale, claiming that the Scottish troops were
nothing but cattle raiders. Bar your door at night," she advised,
and they'll leave you alone.
The far light subsided. It was not the Grail.
Thomas?" Eleanor frowned at him.
I had a dream," he said, just a dream."
I felt the child move," she said, and she touched his shoulder.
Will you and I be married?"
In Durham," he promised her. He was a bastard and he wanted
no child of his to carry the same taint. We shall reach the city
tomorrow," he reassured Eleanor, and you and I will marry in a
church and then we shall ask our questions." And, he prayed, let
one of the answers be that the Grail did not exist. Let it be a dream,
a mere trick of fire and cloud in a night sky, for else Thomas feared
it would lead to madness. He wanted to abandon this search; he
wanted to give up the Grail and return to being what he was and
what he wanted to be: an archer of England.
Bernard de Taillebourg, Frenchman, Dominican friar and Inquisitor,