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

has begun to drip.
14 The Rose in Twelve Petals
by Theodora Goss
VI. The Spinning Wheel
It has never wanted to be an assassin. It remembers the
cottage on the Isles where it was first made: the warmth of
the hearth and the feel of its maker's hands, worn smooth
from rubbing and lanolin.
It remembers the first words it heard: тАЬAnd why are you
carving roses on it, then?тАЭ
тАЬThis one's for a lady. Look how slender it is. It won't take
your upland ram's wool. Yearling it'll have to be, for this one.тАЭ
At night it heard the waves crashing on the rocks, and it
listened as their sound mingled with the snoring of its maker
and his wife. By day it heard the crying of the sea birds. But it
remembered, as in a dream, the songs of inland birds and
sunlight on a stone wall. Then the fishermen would come, and
one would say, тАЬWhat's that you're making there, Enoch? Is it
for a midget, then?тАЭ
Its maker would stroke it with the tips of his fingers and
answer, тАЬSilent, lads. This one's for a lady. It'll spin yarn so
fine that a shawl of it will slip through a wedding ring.тАЭ
It has never wanted to be an assassin, and as it sits in a
cottage to the south, listening as Madeleine mutters to
herself, it remembers the sounds of seabirds and tries to
forget that it was made, not to spin yarn so fine that a shawl
of it will slip through a wedding ring, but to kill the King's
daughter.
15 The Rose in Twelve Petals
by Theodora Goss
VII. The Princess
Alice climbs the tower stairs. She could avoid this perhaps,
disguise herself as a peasant woman and beg her way to the
Highlands, like a heroine in Scott's novels. But she does not
want to avoid this, so she is climbing up the tower stairs on
the morning of her seventeenth birthday, still in her
nightgown and clutching a battered copy of Goethe's poems
whose binding is so torn that the book is tied with pink ribbon
to keep the pages together. Her feet are bare, because
opening the shoe closet might have woken the Baroness, who
has slept in her room since she was a child. Barefoot, she has
walked silently past the sleeping guards, who are supposed to
guard her today with particular care. She has walked past the
Queen Dowager's drawing room thinking: if anyone hears me,
I will be in disgrace. She has spent a larger portion of her life
in disgrace than out of it, and she remembers that she once
thought of it as an imaginary country, Disgrace, with its own
rivers and towns and trade routes. Would it be different if her
mother were alive? She remembers a face creased from the
folds of the pillow, and pale lips whispering to her about the