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

place that talent in his service. Your saint has stolen his heart."

"As she stole mine," the boy murmured. His father bit into an apple then, and
the crisp report of teeth in white flesh kept him from hearing Benedict's words.

So it came to be, in that harvest season, that the countryside buzzed louder
than a hundred hives with the great doings of the town. (The highborn must be
called purposely, but the poor always hear the chink of alms and follow.)
Peddlars and mountebanks and wandering priests carried the news out of the
gates, into the fields. (Who would not come who could? Which farmer's dreary
nights and drudging days would not be enlivened for his being able to boast, in
after years, I was there!) Word spread from the stone walls over the ploughlands
and into the darkest recesses of the wildwood, where once a blind boy had
pastured pigs among ruins. (In the twilight of a day that saw the town roads
thick with travelers bound to witness the next dawn's consecration rites, a tall
figure of inhuman slenderness and grace rose from his place beside a shallow,
harebell-covered grave and called his vassals home.)

On the day of the consecration, Margaret rose grumpily from her bed and stumbled
to the window, scrubbing the smut of sour-hearted dreams from her eyes. She
pushed the shutters open and gave a cross look down into the street where
already the populace was flooding the narrow thoroughfare, heading for the
cathedral. Somewhere the bell of a smaller church was ringing. Water sloshed
over stone. Roosters stretched their necks to the blade of the rising sun and
crowed mortality's defiance of death.

Margaret tossed her woolen gown over her head and went downstairs without the
formality of a face-wash.

Master Giles and Benedict were already up and about their business. Margaret's
chill eye swallowed the boy's beauty as an insult to all her fixed ideas of sin
and punishment. Not even his blindness could assuage her offended sense of
morality this day. He was going to live in the bishop's palace-- a bastard to
live in luxury and ease who should have suffered and died for his mother's sins!
Was this fair? Was this the reward her stale virginity had earned in this world?
Only by setting her thoughts on the pious hope of fiery eternal torment awaiting
the child hereafter was she able to enjoy her breakfast.

The three ill-sorted souls, whose only common ground was the shelter of dead
Agnes's roof, walked out that morning in company. Together they made their way
to the open space before the cathedral where the ceremonies would commence.
There was a special place set aside for certain of the bishop's favored ones--
Master Giles and Benedict among them. For this reason alone Margaret consorted
with them, sticking so close they could not hope to escape her. She smiled
grimly, knowing that a real man would have sent her on her way with a cuff, but
that this great fool of a Master Giles never would do, because he was weak and
silly.

It was as splendid a spectacle as ever any townsman could have hoped. The
villeins who had come to gawp were well content with all there was to gawp at.