"Nancy Holder - Highlander - Measure of a Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Holder Nancy)

and remembered it all, as clearly as if it had happened yesterday ...
which in some ways, it had, for time for an Immortal is not what it is
for mortals. It is compressed, expanded, distorted, and put in
compartments so that one does not go mad with so much remembering.

But these memories, the memories of Machiavelli, were brilliant and
vivid, like gaudy and desperate Venice herself. As shimmering and
unforgettable as the beautiful women he had loved with the brute energy
of youth in those early years of eternal life: Debra, Terezia, Maria
Angelina.

Maria Angelina ...

OPENING:

King's Gambit

Venice, 1655

for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to eome to
ruin, sinee there are so many men who are notgood."

-Niccolo Machiavelli, THE Prinee

The Protector was a fine, well-armed brigantine decorated at the stern
with the coat of arms of its master, Lord Axthur Burlingame. She was
given her name to flatter Oliver Cromwell, the Great Protector of
England, who had lopped off the head of the rightful king and sent his
son and successor scurrying to France. The world was in a deplorable
state: kings murdered; wars lasting for thirty years; Turks growing
beautiful women like tobacco on farms to placate their savage sexual
appetites; plagues that killed more than all the century's wars and the
incompetent, small-minded men who sat on most of the thrones of Europe
combined.

On top of all that, the poseur, Cromwell, wanted to readmit Jews into
England. Burlingame snorted with disbelief.

But a maD could count on safe passage. Honor still existed. So, while
Lord Axthur's ship plied the perilous Mediteff anean on a peace mission
sanctioned by the Signory of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, he kept
his safe-passage confidently locked inside the strongbox beneath his
bed.

Nevertheless, in the dead of night and without warning, the Venetians
attacked him.

"MacLeod!"

His name was a shriek as the Highlander awoke; he was but an hour off