"Esther M. Friesner - A Beltaine And Suspenders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

At their feet and over their heads were creatures divine and diabolical,

grotesques and fancies of the artist's mind, most of these scaled and crawling.



"It reminds me of an infestation of newts we once suffered through the vicarage,

before we got piped water," said Father Herrick. "Look, even the ones in the sky

are just so many salamanders with wings."



"Do you think --"Telemachus stammered, "-- do you think they might be dragons?"
The vicar sniffed. "Fairly pitiful dragons, if so. But quite in keeping with my

theory concerning Greater Ambrose. Look here, Miss Drummond--" he rose and

approached the mural, picking up a slender lathe with which to indicate those

points to which he referred. "Your Latin is almost as good as mine, and

Telemachustook a First in Classics at Oxford. We all came up with the same

translation, did we not?" He aimed the lathe at a banner of text running along

the lower edge of the painting.



"'Here Saint Augustine departs fromEstadium , having converted many,'" Olivia

read once more. "That would beStaddle , I'd expect. 'Here Saint Augustine

returns toEstadium , to warn the people. Here Saint Augustine relates much of

how he came toAmbrosius Magnus, and of the evil rites, and of the lizards.'

Hmm. Augustine may have done a bang up job of converting the Angles, but this

just sounds like he was a failed Saint Patrick. Must've run into a plague of

reptiles -- one of my Wiltshire informants told me he remembered something like

that during spring thaw in the Jubilee year, although there were precious few

times that old geezer wasn't seeing snakes. When Augustine couldn't drive 'em