"Theodora Goss - The Rose in Twelve Petals" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goss Theodora)

I. The Witch
This rose has twelve petals. Let the first one fall:
Madeleine taps the glass bottle, and out tumbles a bit of pink
silk that clinks on the tableтАФa chip of tinted glassтАФno, look
closer, a crystallized rose petal. She lifts it into a saucer and
crushes it with the back of a spoon until it is reduced to
lumpy powder and a puff of fragrance.
She looks at the book again. тАЬPetal of one rose crushed,
dung of small bat soaked in vinegar.тАЭ Not enough light comes
through the cottage's small-paned windows, and besides she
is growing nearsighted, although she is only thirty-two. She
leans closer to the page. He should have given her spectacles
rather than pearls. She wrinkles her forehead to focus her
eyes, which makes her look prematurely old, as in a few
years she no doubt will be.
Bat dung has a dank, uncomfortable smell, like earth in
caves that has never seen sunlight.
Can she trust it, this book? Two pounds ten shillings it cost
her, including postage. She remembers the notice in The
Gentlewoman's Companion: тАЬEvery lady her own magician.
Confound your enemies, astonish your friends! As simple as a
cookery manual.тАЭ It looks magical enough, with Compendium
Magicarum stamped on its spine and gilt pentagrams on its
red leather cover. But the back pages advertise тАЬa most
miraculous lotion, that will make any lady's skin as smooth as
an infant's bottomтАЭ and the collected works of Scott.
3 The Rose in Twelve Petals
by Theodora Goss
Not easy to spare ten shillings, not to mention two pounds,
now that the King has cut off her income. Lather lucky, this
cottage coming so cheap, although it has no proper plumbing,
just a privy out back among the honeysuckle.
Madeleine crumbles a pair of dragonfly wings into the
bowl, which is already half full: orris root; cat's bones found
on the village dust heap; oak gall from a branch fallen into a
fairy ring; madder, presumably for its color; crushed rose
petal; bat dung.
And the magical words, are they quite correct? She knows
a little Latin, learned from her brother. After her mother's
death, when her father began spending days in his bedroom
with a bottle of beer, she tended the shop, selling flour and
printed cloth to the village women, scythes and tobacco to the
men, sweets to children on their way to school. When her
brother came home, he would sit at the counter beside her,
saying his amo, amas. The silver cross he earned by taking a
Hibernian bayonet in the throat is the only necklace she now
wears.
She binds the mixture with water from a hollow stone and
her own saliva. Not pleasant this, she was brought up not to
spit, but she imagines she is spitting into the King's face, that