"Hodgson-CanterburyPath" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hodgson Fannie)

around him as the knights gabbed for him. With the other he slapped at one of
them, a small, dark man with a sharp arch to his brow. "FitzUrse," Thomas said,
and the tourists recognized the name from earlier in the tour, though they
understood no more of Thomas's guttural, Germanic-sounding old English.
Moonlight filtered through the clerestory windows. Thomas and the knights spat
sounds at each other, voices rising over the monks', until FitzUrse drew a sword
that sliced the air and came down with a crack upon Thomas's head. The
Archbishop fell to his knees, whispering the name of Saint Alphege. The sword
struck again, harder, and again, until the top of his head fell away like a cap,
his skull like a chalice pouring blood on the floor. One knight, who had hung
back throughout, a wiry man with a face only just showing age, crossed himself
as Thomas's body collapsed. His face was very pale.

A sharp keening wail, like a balloon squirting air, rose and echoed in the
transept. George spun to see the alien clutch its shiny black carapace and
scurry away, its wail receding along the nave. He shut off the stimfield.

Bloody alien, he thought, then immediately regretted his unkindness. Still, it
had been nothing but trouble, and frankly he thought the creature should be
excommunicated. So he'd told the Dean of the Cathedral earlier that morning. Of
course the Dean, an ambitious young fellow, not even fifty, seldom had time for
George Morville. He probably hadn't heard a word.

The tourists chattered amongst themselves, their shrill accents clashing and
ricocheting off the Bell Harry Tower. It gave George a headache. One of them
tugged at the sleeve of George's well-worn cassock. His eye roved up and down
her lithe body, clothed in a fan-pleated bodice and scuffed white leggings. He
wondered if she was just as lovely beneath the clothes, just as cool and white
and full in the proper places. But she was young, and it was his misfortune to
be old. He asked for her question.

"The one who stood back, which one was he?"

"Hugh de Morville. No relation to me, I might add. Never thought it would come
to murder when they all left King Henry. Didn't have the stomach for it."

"That Kputkp --" she pronounced it kip-ut-kip, jerking her head toward the
wailing alien's path of retreat, "-- didn't have a stomach for it either!" Most
of the humans, and some of the other aliens, laughed. There were no other
Kputkp.

The alien's stomach was not something George wanted to be reminded of. He asked
if there were other questions.

A humanoid alien -- from Kanth, conquered not too long ago in one war or the
other, George thought -- raised its mittenlike hand. Earth was a museum planet
for the history of the human race, but for some reason all these other types
wanted to see it too. At least these Kanth weren't so repulsive. "Becket was not
a kind man. How is he a saint?"