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

his tunic. His bones cried out for a cloak, but he hushed them with the reminder
that work would warm them soon enough.

He loped silently down the stairs and came into the kitchen. A breath of light
from the fading moon silvered the edges of the shutters. Master Giles fetched a
small iron pot and filled it with coals plucked from the hearth's neatly banked
ashes. This would be all the heat he'd have in the shed, for a greater fire
might cause the stone to split. It was enough to keep his hands from stiffening
at his art, and that was all he asked.

The house was very still He felt as if he were Lazarus leaving the tomb.
Margaret kept the place clean as boiled bones, yet she did not speak with Master
Giles except to return his perfunctory salutations, to summon him at mealtimes,
to give him messages from the cathedral, and to answer any questions he might
ask. But while she tithed her words to him, the boy Benedict paid out none at
all.

There was frost on the earth. Master Giles stood in the yard with his back to
the house and raised his eyes to the great cathedral. "Five years or six and it
will be done," he said, weaving white veils with his breath on the darkness.
"Two years or three and it may be consecrated to use while the last touches are
made on the outside. Had you lived to see it, Agnes--!" And his leathery thumb
brushed the tears away before they could freeze into stars against the gray and
black cloud of his beard.

It was then he heard the song. Thin and reedy, borne on a voice wobbling over
words and music like a newborn calf trying its legs, it came so softly to the
sculptor's ear that he almost doubted he heard it. But it was there. It was
coming from the shed.

Master Giles felt something brush his leg. He looked down into Candida's
flower-face. The white cat mewed inquisitively and he, feeling only a little
foolish, motioned for her to keep still. He moved with the cat's own stealth to
where the canvas walls were pierced by a loose-hung flap of sailcloth that kept
out the wind. The song praised God for His all-sheltering love as the
stonecutter crept through the doorway.

The boy Benedict sat on a heap of straw that warmed the feet of Master Giles's
newest saint. The carven lamb that pressed itself against the carven lady's
robes permitted thin young arms to wreath its rocky neck, made no objection to a
dark head pillowed on its curlicued flank, did not protest the tears staining
its gray fleece like the tracks of the rain. The boy sang through tears, his
voice leaping and falling, trembling on a cusp of music and slipping from the
precarious perch of a high note not quite grasped.

Master Giles held the music in his mouth and let the lovely, imperfect taste of
it melt sweetly over his tongue. He could not take his eyes from the boy. His
mind did not want to know the things his eyes finally told his heart. The stone
face of the saintly virgin Agnes smiled down on the bowed head of a child whose
face was the image of her own.