"Katherine Kurtz - Camber 3 - Camber the Heretic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

him?"
"I can try. But he is a Healer. If he inspects the 'physick,' he will know
something is amiss. This is no remedy for colds, as he will well know."
 Stonily Cinhil turned his face back toward the fireplace.
"Then he must drink, too. And you must erase all memory that aught is
amiss. You are a Healer. I leave it in your hands, Rhys."
"Very well. There is nothing further I can say to persuade you to rest?" he
asked.
"There is nothing."
With a deep sigh, Rhys started to turn and go, but then he saw Cinhil begin
getting to his feet.
Grimly, Rhys helped him to stand, led him to a seat in the window
embrasure where he might watch the fading western sky, and tucked a
sleeping fur around the frail body to insulate against the cold radiating through
the leaded glass.
"It will be my last sunset," Cinhil explained wistfully, as Rhys adjusted the
draperies to give him an unobstructed view. "One might have hoped for a less
grey one, but any is better than none."
Rhys could not trust himself to answer that. Swallowing a lump which had
been building in his throat for the past few minutes, he bowed profoundly,
touching the king's hand in understanding, then turned and fled the chamber.
He found a scene of unexpected tranquillity when he entered the nursery
suite, and the contrast was soothing to emotions as keenly edged as his had
been in the last hour. Rushlights had been lit to dispel the gloom of the
gathering dusk, and the princes were just finishing their baths, in preparation
for supper and an early bed.
The boys had outgrown their childhood nurses the summer before, those
stalwart and loyal ladies having been replaced by a corps of eager young squires
of suitably noble birth and a brace of royal governors appointed by the king.
The former, most of them hardly older than their young charges, saw to the
business of dressing, serving meals, and otherwise assisting their masters in
learning the manners and mannerisms befitting young gentlemen and princes.
The latter were gone now, the day's lessons done. And though the close
proximity of so many boys and very young men at times became more than a
little raucous, tonight that was not the case.
Huddled sleepily beside the fireplace in the main day-room, a yawning
Prince Alroy was nursing a cup of warm milk laced with wine. His squire
combed the raven hair as it dried by the fire's heat. The eldest prince was
already dressed for bed, long white woolen nightshirt covered by a fur-lined
dressing gown of crimson wool. Matching slippers embroidered with the
Haldane lions showed beneath the hem of the gown. The boy's thin shoulders
were hunched down in the fur against the cold.
From behind a lattice screen at the far side of the fireplace, Rhys could hear
the childish exclamations of the youngest, Rhys Michael, apparently disputing
the entrapment of his head and arms inside his nightshirt while his squire
tried to free him. Said squire, a lanky, good-natured youth of only a few more
summers than his young master, could be seen towering head and shoulders
above the top of the screen, his adolescent face creased in a grin as he labored
to extract the royal hands and head from their fabric prison, roughhousing to
an extent he would not have dared with the more delicate Alroy or the serious