"Esther M. Friesner - Hallowmass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

Later, as they were walking home, Master Giles asked his son, "What rubble was
that you gave the bishop? 'She sang him for me'? He will think you a lunatic."

"She did." The boy was sullen. "My lady of the forest. I slept and saw her. It's
happened before this, only I never had cause to speak of it. She was seated at a
fountainside, singing praise to God. Oh Father, the colors! How sweetly they
sounded on my ear!" His sulky look melted in the bliss of his remembered vision.
"With her voice alone she built a stair of silver and gold to the very throne of
glory, and up and down its length the angels climbed. Father, I think that I saw
my mother among the blest. My lady sang her face for me so that I could feel it
to my heart!" He embraced himself as if wings of joy had enfolded him. Then his
shoulders sagged, his head drooped. "But she is dead, my poor lady of the
forest, and kept from hope of heaven. Her songs of praise and her salvation are
locked away from her Redeemer as deeply as if they were encased in stone."

Master Giles pressed his calloused hand to the boy's brow. "Have you fever?" he
asked, feeling his heart drum panic. "This is no holy vision, but a sending from
the damned. Don't speak of it! Not before any, man or woman!"

"But you asked," the boy replied simply. "And so did the bishop. I tell you,
that is how I came to make the angel. Her song opened the vault of heaven to my
eyes and left the shapes of all the saints and angels in my hands. I cannot
forget them. I cannot forget her, or her pain, or her song."

"I am your father," Master Giles said severely. "I command you to forget." They
walked the rest of the way home in silence.

Like most parents, Master Giles mistook silence for consent. So it was that by
the time they reached dead Agnes's house he was convinced that his child was in
no further danger of being branded mad for the indiscretions of his tongue.
Indeed, the stonecutter felt secure enough in his dominion over the boy to
revert to planning for Benedict's future.

"My son," he said the next day, "here is clay." He placed the boy's hands on a
lump of the stuff that was at least five times as big as the quantity he was
used to employ to make his models. "Make a saint."

"Father...?" Benedict turned toward Master Giles's voice.

"The twelfth saint for the south porch," Master Giles went on. "I want it to be
of your design, just as you made the angel. Then I will carve it. You can do
this, my boy." You must do this, for your life's sake, his heart implored
silently.

Benedict sighed and rested his hands on the clay. "I can try," he said. And he
began.

There passed a shiftless several weeks for Master Giles. Unable to work until he
had Benedict's model before him, he roamed the town, fidgety as a dog with a
skinful of fleas. He was not used to idleness, and so made himself a pest on the