"Mary Jacober - The Black Chalice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jacober Mary)

Chapter I


THE MONK
 Nothing drags the mind of a man down from its elevation
so much as the caresses of a woman.
Saint Thomas Aquinas




On the twenty-fourth day of November, in the year of Our Lord 1103, in the forests of
Helmardin, there did my lord and master Karelian of Lys, knight of the Reinmark,
kinsman and vassal of Gottfried the Golden, fall thrall to the powers of darkness. May
God have mercy on his soul!


The monk paused, squinting as the candle guttered and almost went out. Past fifty
now, and lean with fasting, his face held a hardened serenity, his eyes the ascetic
brightness of a saint. In good light one might guess he had been handsome in his youth; he
had a broad, high forehead and fine cheekbones; where his hair was not cropped short, it
still twisted into grey curls. He dipped his quill and, bending close, began to write again.




There, in that fell place where no Christian may walk without peril, he was ensnared by
sorcery and the foul embraces of a woman, and so destroyed utterly his honor and his
immortal soul. I, though I sinned grievously, was by the grace of God permitted to escape.

It is the burden of my failing years to record now all which passed there, and all which
came of it: treason and war and the deaths of princes ....



He was aware, vaguely, of the sounds of night around him: the distant, soft lowing of
the monastery cattle; a cough in the cell next to his own; the close, irritating scurry of
mice; the curtain shifting at his window. None of it mattered. The world of small and
common things was barely real to him at all.



I WOULD NOT WILLINGLY UNDERTAKE THIS task. I do so out of holy obedience, and
to lay bare for the world the dangers of carnal passion, and the villainy and devouring
corruption which so often lie beneath the surface of a fair woman's skin. For it is in the
flesh of women that the Evil One weaves his snares; by their smiles and caresses
uncounted good men are brought to ruin тАФ