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

south porch. The widow and Master Giles lay down together many times with only
simple human comfort in mind and awoke one morning startled to find love had
slipped between the sheets. They did not marry, for the talk would crumble
Master Giles's favor with the bishop as surely as it would destroy the widow's
fame for piety and prayer. There did come a time in that first mad year when the
widow had cause to travel south to settle a matter of inheritance among her
distant kin, but she returned within a six-month and all was as before.

The little white cat Belle birthed many litters and died, leaving the wardship
of the widow's house to her daughter Candida, who was also furred with snow. And
one hot August day the widow died of a sweating fever that carried off many
souls besides her own, leaving the care of her house to a distant relative and
the care of Candida to Master Giles.

The distant relative turned out to be a spinster of the breed that seem born
crones from their mothers' wombs. She was called Margaret, dead Agnes's
far-removed cousin, a woman who had never married and therefore begrudged the
joy of any woman who had. She was able, for charity, to forgive those who found
themselves bound in miserable, loveless matches, and so for a time she had made
Agnes her favorite. But when Agnes's husband died leaving the lady young enough
and rich enough to live on sweetly content, Margaret came near to choking on the
injustice of it all. Or perhaps it was only her own bile that rose to fill her
throat.

Margaret lived with her parents in a village whose chief product was stink.
After they died, Agnes sent her cousin plentiful support, the only fact which
allowed Margaret to reconcile herself somewhat to Agnes's good fortune. She had
less trouble reconciling herself to her own when the news reached her of Agnes's
death and her own inheritance.

She arrived on a raw December day when Master Giles was just finishing work on
his ninth saint. She came mounted on a fat donkey, purchased with the first
portion of Agnes's bequest. (A clerk of the cathedral was guardian and messenger
of the widow's estate. He it was who took word of Agnes's death and final
testament to Margaret, along with a sum of money to finance the spinster's
journey to her new demesne. Agnes had made a sizable gift to the cathedral as
well as to her cousin, and so it was plain courtesy to see that good woman's
affairs well settled.)

Margaret drove the donkey on to the timpani of her bony heels against the
animal's heaving sides, a stout stick in her hand playing counterpoint on his
rump. The poor beast's brayed petition of mercy to heaven roused every street
through which they passed. So loud was her advent, and so well heralded by the
urchins running along beside her, that Master Giles himself was lured from his
beloved stone to see what nine-days' wonder was invading his emptied life.

When she drew up abreast of the late widow Agnes's house, the spinster Margaret
jerked on the donkey's rope bridle and slid from the saddle-blanket with poor
grace. The throng of merrymaking children who had joined in her processional
swarmed around her, offering to guide her, to hold the donkey's bridle, to