"Dart-Thornton,.Cecilia.-.Bitterbynde.02.-.Lady.Of.The.Sorrows.V2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dart-Thornton Cecilia)

The fourth course, a pair of swans, was brought into the Hall on a silver dish by two comely young serving-girls in plumed costumes. The birds had been flayed carefully so as to leave their feathered skins intact, then stuffed and roasted before their feathers were sewn back on, their heads replaced complete with jeweled collars, and their feet gilded.
Visualizing the swan-girl at the cottage of Maeve One-Eye, Rohain recoiled in horror, then tried to disguise her reaction, dabbing at her mouth with a tiny kerchief presented by her lady's maid. But wights cannot be slain, she recalled with a rush of relief.
The counterfeit swanmaidens presented their dish to the elderly marquess and it was then expertly divided up into modest morsels by the Carver.
During the dispatching of the swans, Dianella and her friends conversed with each other almost exclusively in slingua. Their eyes frequently flicked over the stranger among them. Sometimes they giggled behind their hands. Rohain toyed with her food, pretending to eat, sick to her stomach. She could think of nothing to say and only wished to leave the Hall and retire to the solitude of her suite.
Out beyond the dominite walls, thunder rolled its iron ball along the metal tunnel of the sky. Wind laid both hands on the palace roof and tried to wrench it off.
In readiness for dessert, the last layer of the sanap was removed to reveal the chaste tablecloth. Now the ladies of the heart of the Set, bored with each other, flung an occasional retort at the shrinking violet in the midst of their convivial bouquetЧsweet words, sharp-edged and biting, liqueur laced with poison, swords beneath silk. Airily, they tossed her dignity from one barb to another, until it hung in shreds.
Lucent jellies, glossy syrups, smooth creams and blancmanges, cinnamon curds, glazed pastries, and fruit tartlets followed the last entremet. Rohain pictured the oleaginous scenes necessarily taking place in the sinks of the palace sculleries.
"When are we permitted to depart?" she murmured to her handmaiden. She felt nauseous, but not due to fancy's images.
"Not until my lord the Marquess of Early has left the table."
"I hope he lives up to his name."
"Won't you tell us what you are whispering about with your maid?" entreated False Scallops, the Lady Elmaretta.
"Yea, prithee, tell us!" chorused others, eagerly, eyes shining as they scented a further delicious opportunity to savor somebody's discomfiture and win one another's approval.
"Naught of importance."
"Oh, how provoking!" they cried, in tones of astonishment.
"Fie!" Elmaretta wagged a gilt-nailed, admonitory finger. "You must out with it. No whispering at table!"
"And besides, Dear Heart, everything you say is of importance to your friends!" added Dianella sweetly.
"Well," said Rohain boldly, "I was merely telling Viviana what the fox said to the ravening hounds."
"Oh? And what was that, pray?"
"'When you have devoured me, let the weakest among you look over his shoulder.'"
The ladies exchanged glances.
"Is that intended for a joke?" queried Calprisia. "Marry, 'tis not very amusing."
"No, it is not amusing," her friends agreed. "What a very odd thing to say!"
"Are you sure you've not partaken of too much wine, Dear Heart?" said Dianella. "Or maybe not enough! Look, she's scarcely touched a drop. Butler! Fill up my lady Rohain!"
Several people laughed bawdily.
Rohain held her temper in check. To lose it would be the final humiliation. Having scored, Dianella appeared to lose interest and turned away.
After distending his bloated belly a little farther byway of the inclusion of frumenty, the gouty old Marquess of Early was helped to his feet and made his exit with ceremony. Dinner, mercifully, was over.
Outside, the storm raged on.
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The wattle-gold rooms were a haven.
"The lords had not such viperish tongues as the ladies," muttered Rohain wearily. "Not one of them said a word to degrade me."
"The lords have their own reasons for courtesy, my lady."
Rohain climbed the steps of the bed and sank into the feather-stuffed mattress.
In a small voice, Viviana said, "Your Ladyship ate very little. To be of modest appetite is considered chic."
"You are kind," returned Rohain, "and supported me as best you could against overwhelming odds. But I know how it is. I have failed. I shall never be included now. I am Out before ever I set foot Within."
It seemed a terrible disgrace, as though the world's weight had been set on her shoulders.
Having helped her mistress to bed, Viviana went to dine on the leavings, with the other maids of the lower ranks.
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A pair of inhuman eyes, red coals piercing the gloom of a drain.
A stench of rotting matter and feces, stifling. A skittering and a chattering and a squeaking in the shadows, which were alive, running, slithering clumps and humps, black shapes climbing over one another and surging forward in a terrible, living tide. They were everywhere, in increasing numbersЧunder the bed, in the folds of the curtains and the canopy, falling with soft, heavy plops from the damask pelmet and the frilled valance like malignant raindrops, jammed, wriggling in corners, swarming up the elegant brass legs of the firescreen, smothering the matching firedogs, crawling up the gold-inlaid piers of the lacquered table, upsetting the bowl of oranges upheld on its silver pedestal by four winged babies.
They were rats, and they squeaked.
Their stealthy, filthy claws scratched and scratched. As they drew near, she saw that they wore the spiteful faces of courtiers. Soon they would come running, in long black streams, up the steps of the bed and across the embroidered eiderdown, along her arms to her face. Then they would cover her with their warm, stinking bodies and begin, with those needle fangs, to gouge, to gnaw, burrowing through the newly emptied eye sockets into the brain, until her flesh was devoured and blood gouted all over the silken pillows and ran down to pool on the meadowy carpets and all that remained was a sightless, staring skull. Screaming, Rohain woke up.
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Pale, pearly light suffused the windows. The pillars of the wattle-tree bed grew protectively all around. Her eyes roved the chamber. The fruits in the dish were not oranges but pears, onyx pomegranates, pastel-dyed marzipan plums, enameled porcelain apples, amethyst grapes.
Of rodents, there was no sign. Her hand brushed her forehead. Her breath came and went in shallow gasps, her skin felt damp with perspiration.
Viviana ran in, full of concern.
"My lady, what is it?"
"'Tis naught. Only a dream."
The windows rattled. Viviana went to them and pulled back the lace curtains. Bright sunlight streamed in. The storm had cleared.
Outside on a green hill near the garden wall, albino peacocks swaggered, unaware of their status in the eyes of the Royal Carver. Nannies monitored overdressed children freed from the Palace Nursery, frolicking with their wooden hobby-horses, their whipping-tops, their pet dwarf-horses the size of small dogs. Citizens of Caermelor peered in through the bars of the iron fence, past the shoulders of the Royal Guards, hoping to catch a glimpse of royalty. The sequestered children stared back, equally fascinated. A diminutive son of an earl drove past the window in a child-sized carriage drawn by sheep. Savagely he wielded the whip.
"What do you fear?" Rohain asked suddenly.