"Simon R. Green - Nightside 1 - Drinking Midnight Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)
DRINKING MIDNIGHT WINE
SIMON R. GREEN
Bradford-on-Avon is a real town, with a real history.
Most of the places described in this book really exist,
as does much of the history.
Anything else...
There is a world beyond the world; a place of magics and mysteries, evils and enchantments,
marvels and wonders. And you are never more than a breath away from all of it. Open the right
door, walk down the wrong street, and you can find waiting for you every dream you ever had,
including all the bad ones. Secrets and mysteries will open themselves to you, if something more
or less than human doesn't find you first. Magic is real, and so are gods and monsters.
There is a world beyond the world. But some things never change.
ONE
WHEN LIVES COLLIDE
Bradford-on-Avon is an old town, and not all of its ghosts sleep the sleep of the just. Nestled in
the rolling hills and valleys of the county of Wiltshire, in the ancient heart of the south-west
of England, many kinds of people have lived in Bradford-on-Avon down the centuries, and some of
their past deeds live on to trouble the present. The Romans have been here, and the Celts and the
Saxons and the Normans. And other, stranger folk, less willing to be recorded in official
histories. In this small county town, far and far from the seat of those who like to think they
who is so much more than she seems.
She was there on the train again that evening, in her usual seat - the woman with the most perfect
mouth in the world. Not too wide and not too small, not too thin and not full with the artificial
plumpness of injected collagen or surgically implanted tissues from cows' buttocks. Just a
wonderfully warm and inviting mouth, exactly the right shade of deep red that made the fuller
lower lip look soft and tender and touchable. Toby Dexter wasn't usually preoccupied with mouths,
as opposed to the more prominent curves of a woman's body, but there was something special about
this one, and he liked to look at it and wonder what it might sound like, if he ever worked up the
courage to introduce himself and start up a conversation.
Toby was travelling home from work on the 18.05 train, heading back to Bradford-on-Avon after a
hard day's work in the famous Georgian city of Bath. It was a tribute to that city's relentless
public relations machine that he always added the prefix Georgian whenever he thought of Bath,
though the city was of course much older. The Romans built their famous baths there, that still
stand today. They did other things there too, some of them quite appalling, in the name of the
Serpent's Son; but you won't hear about those from the tourist board. Georgian society made
visiting the baths the very height of fashion, and that was what people preferred to remember now.
The past is what we make it, if we know what's good for us. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-
first century, Bath is a busy, bustling, prosperous modern city, and Toby was always glad to see
the back of it.
The early-evening train was crowded as always, all the seats occupied and all the aisles blocked,
carrying tired commuters home to Freshford, Avoncliff, Bradford-on-Avon and Trowbridge. Packed
shoulder to shoulder, perched on hard seats or leaning against the closed automatic doors, men and
women forced into physical proximity concentrated on reading their books and magazines and evening
papers, so they wouldn't have to talk to each other. The seats were fiendishly uncomfortable:
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |