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

melted into rivulets, young hawks took their first flight from
the battlements. A rosebush grew at the foot of the tower: a
hybrid, half wild rose, half Cuisse de Nymphe, with twelve
petals and briary canes. One morning men rode up to the
tower on horses whose hides were mottled with sweat. In its
first story, where the chieftain's son had played, they talked
of James III. Troops were coming from France, and the
password was Britannia. As they left the tower, one of them
plucked a flower from the rosebush. тАЬLet this be our symbol,тАЭ
he said in the self-conscious voice of a man who thinks that
his words will be recorded in history books. The tower thought
it would be alone again, but by the time the leaves had
turned, a procession rode up to the palace gates, waving
banners embroidered with a twelve-petaled rose. Furniture
arrived from France, fruit trees were planted, and the village
22 The Rose in Twelve Petals
by Theodora Goss
streets were paved so that the hooves of cattle clopped on
the stones.
It has stood a long time, that tower, watching the life
around it shift and alter, like eddies in a stream. It looks
down once again on a deserted villageтАФbut no, not entirely
deserted. A woman still lives in a cottage at its edge. Her hair
has turned white, but she works every day in her garden,
gathering tomatoes and cutting back the mint. When the day
is particularly warm, she brings out a spinning wheel and sits
in the garden, spinning yarn so fine that a shawl of it will slip
through a wedding ring. If the breezes come from the west,
the tower can hear her humming, just above the humming
that the wheel makes as it spins. Time passes, and she sits
out in the garden less often, until one day it realizes that it
has not seen her for many days, or perhaps years.
Sometimes at night it thinks it can hear the Princess
breathing in her sleep.
23 The Rose in Twelve Petals
by Theodora Goss
X. The Hound
In a hundred years, only one creature comes to the
palace: a hound whose coat is matted with dust. Along his
back the hair has come out in tufts, exposing a mass of sores.
He lopes unevenly: on one of his forepaws, the inner toes
have been crushed.
He has run from a city reduced to stone skeletons and
drifting piles of ash, dodging tanks, mortar fire, the rifles of
farmers desperate for food. For weeks now, he has been
loping along the dusty roads. When rain comes, he has curled
himself under a tree. Afterward, he has drunk from puddles,
then loped along again with mud drying in the hollows of his
paws. Sometimes he has left the road and tried to catch
rabbits in the fields, but his damaged paw prevents him from