"Peter David - Sir Apropos 01 - Sir Apropos Of Nothing" - читать интересную книгу автора (David Peter)

as he said gruffly, "Get cleaned up. You look like crap." He paused as if he was considering adding
something, and then thought better of it, turned, and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

And thus was I conceived.
 It occurs to me, as I read over the previous narrative, that I may come across as cold or hardhearted.
I have described to you, after all, the brutal and pitiless gang rape of my mother. I have done so in a fairly
straightforward manner. Where is the passion, you might wonder? Where is the sense of outrage? Did I
not care about the awful circumstances that resulted in my being placed upon this earth?

Once, passion was all that sustained me. Anger burned brightly in my chest, and a sense of moral
outrage consumed me. These were, after all, knights. King Runcible would boast at community fairs and
such that they represented the best that mankind had to offer. They were to stand for fair play, for justice,
for honor. My mother knew differently, of course. She knew what a pack of bastards they were. Either
Runcible knew of their efforts and quietly endorsed them--in which case he was a screeching
hypocrite--or else they acted without his knowledge, in which case his craftiness was a sham and he lived
in quiet ignorance. But she said nothing. She kept her silence, as did the other girls who worked in the
inn.

They did so out of fear, of course. Oh, they could have gone to the king, tried to accuse an
assortment of the knights of their crime. But Madelyne would have had trouble identifying the men in
question, for they had kept their hoods up the entire time they had been there, and the dim light had
continued to cloak them in shadows as black as their own souls. Even if Madelyne had been able to
single out specific knights, she would have had no proof to offer. Her bruised body, even the child
growing in her belly, could easily have been the result of any other assignation with the types of brutes
who usually consorted with tavern floozies. To accuse a knight without proof would have been slander,
and slander against a knight of the realm was suicide.

So she said nothing. Indeed, as she rolled off the table and went to wash herself, she knew already
that she was going to say nothing. She also claimed later, to me, that she knew even at that moment that I
was already in process.

I have no rage now. I have no pity now. It has all been burned out of me, exorcised after decades of
experiences and strife, of trauma, of triumphs and almost immediate setbacks. I look upon my life and I
am simply left shaking my head, wondering how I managed to contain all the rage that surged in me
without spontaneously combusting or in some other way experiencing an abrupt end.

My mother claimed it was because I had a destiny, and my anger was what I needed to survive.

Perhaps she wasn't all that na├пve after all. Either that, or she simply learned from her harsh trials, just
as I did, and dealt with it in her own way. At least she didn't lose her mind. Certainly other women in that
position might have done so.

Or maybe she did, and I simply didn't know, since I was a little insane myself. Maybe I still am.




Chapter 3