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

of the tears from Benedict's cheeks. "If she had--" He shook his head
regretfully for all things small and lost and loveless. The two of them sat in
the straw at the feet of the stone Saint Agnes. Her arms reached out, turning
her cloak to sheltering wings above them. The irreverent cat bounded onto the
table and thence up to perch on the saint's crown of martyrdom. Cold dawn paled
the canvas walls.
The boy ran his hand over the lamb's petrified curls. "You are carving this for
her."

Master Giles nodded, then realized such silent signs were useless with his son.
"Yes," he said. "This saint is hers. She will stand with Saint Clement and Saint
George, Barbara and Anthony, Martin for my good friend Master Martin, Giles in
thanks to my patron saint for his many blessings, Mathurin for all the fools of
this world and sweet Saint Cecilia for music."

"Music," breathed the boy.

"You sing--you sing well." Master Giles was in at ease with compliments. Even in
dead Agnes's arms he could not put his tongue to lovers' words but let moans and
kisses and the touch of hands speak her praises for him. "I heard you when I
came out here this morning. I did not know the song."

"She taught it to me," said Benedict.

"Margaret?" He could not fathom that dry stick teaching a child anything but a
catechism of bitterness.

Benedict laughed. "Can you really think such a thing? No, no, I mean the other."

"Your...mother?" Master Giles cudgeled his brains, trying to recall another time
besides the secret months of Benedict's awaited birth when his lost love had
left the town. He could bring none to mind.

The boy said, "No. I mean the lady." And he said no more, as if having said this
was enough.

Master Giles felt like one of good Saint Mathurin's protected fools. "What lady
is this? The wife of the lord of Margaret's old village? His daughter? A
kinswoman?"

Benedict snorted all of these away. "If you could hear her sing, you would know.
I met her in the woods, when Margaret sent me there to pasture the pigs. There
were tumbled stones, and the broken tooth of a ridged column. In springtime I
could feel tiny chips of rock like little slick scales under my bare feet, and
places between them where the mortar had cracked and violets grew."

"A ruin," said Master Giles, who had passed many such places as he moved from
town to town, following his calling. One time he had thought to spend the night
in the shelter of half-vanished walls, sleeping on a mosaic of dolphins and
vines, until his eye fell upon a toppled statue in the empty basin of a