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

The white cat was not enthralled by human music. She ambled past the
stonecutter, bright eyes of gold on the small, gray, squeaking temptations which
all that straw might hide. Seeing a tuft tremble, she crouched, haunches
bunched, tail stiffly twitching, lips silently writhing over her race's
ceremonial curse upon the whole tribe of vermin. Then she sprang.

If there had been a mouse in hiding there, he escaped her, but the boy's foot
did not. Benedict shouted with surprise and flung himself backward as Candida's
paws captured his ankle. His whole weight struck the statue.

Master Giles shot through the doorway, throwing himself forward to embrace the
boy with one arm and to steady the statue with the other. Straw flew up in a
sunburst of golden dust. The boy yelled again to feel Master Giles's strong hand
on his arm. He flailed his limbs wildly, fingers groping for his staff.

"Ouch!" cried the stonecutter as the boy's heel struck his thigh. "Hush, hush,
don't be afraid, it's only me." His words worked. The boy was still. Empty eyes
could yet hold questions. Master Giles replied, "I couldn't sleep, so I came out
here to work. When I saw the cat pounce on you, and you hit the statue, I was
afraid you were going to knock...it...o .... " Realization stole over him as he
spoke, and he saw the same dawn on the boy's face as a smile.

The statue was nine feet of solid rock, Benedict a scant five feet of flimsy
flesh and bone. "Me knock her over?" the boy asked lightly, dimples showing in a
smile that belonged to the beloved phantom of the house.

"Why, yes," Master Giles said, falling gladly into the straight-faced fool's
part. "With all your muscle, my poor saint would never have a chance to stand
against you." And they both laughed.

He could tell the boy what he knew, then; what he had just then come to know.
Shared laughter made shared hearts easier. The evidence of Master Giles's eyes
did not come as much news to Benedict.

"I never knew you were my father, but I knew she was my mother," the boy said.
"Margaret called me bastard so often when I was small that I grew up thinking it
was my name. But when I knew the difference and heard her call her cousin Agnes
whore, I knew that must be another way for Margaret to say that Agnes was the
bastard's mother."

"I'll kill her." Master Giles forced the words out between gritted teeth.
Benedict could not hope to see his father's knuckles whiten, but he could not
help feel the stonecutter's corded arms tense with cold rage.

"Let her be," said Benedict softly, and his voice held the peace of Christ. It
was then that Master Giles knew there would never be anything he could refuse
his son.

"She never told me she was with child," the stonecutter said, stroking the last