"Mercedes Lackey - Grey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

Grey For nine years, Sarah Jane Lyon-White lived happily with her parents
in the heart of Africa. Her father was a physician, her mother, a nurse, and
they worked at a Protestant mission in the Congo. She was happy there, not the
least because her mother and father were far more enlightened than many
another mission worker in the days when Victoria was Queen; taking the cause
of healing as more sacred than that of conversion, they undertook to work with
the natives, and made friends instead of enemies among the shamans and
medicine-people. Because of this, Sarah was a cherished and protected child,
although she was no stranger to the many dangers of life in the Congo. When
she was six, and far older in responsibility than most of her peers, one of
the shaman brought her a parrot-chick still in quills; he taught her how to
feed and care for it, and told her that while it was a child, she was to
protect it, but when it was grown, it would protect and guide her. She called
the parrot "Grey," and it became her best friendтАФand indeed, although she
never told her parents, it became her protector as well. But when she was
nine, her parents sent her to live in England for the sake of her health. And
because her mother feared that the climate of England would not be good for
Grey's health, she had to leave her beloved friend behind. Now, this was
quite the usual thing in the days when Victoria was Queen and the great
British Empire was so vast that there was never an hour when some part of it
was not in sunlight. It was thought that English children were more delicate
than their parents, and that the inhospitable humors of hot climes would make
them sicken and die. Not that their parents didn't sicken and die quite as
readily as the children, who were, in fact, far sturdier than they were given
credit forтАФbut it was thought, by anxious mothers, that the climate of England
would be far kinder to them. So off they were shipped, some as young as two
and three, torn away from their anxious mamas and native nurses and sent to
live with relatives or even total strangers. Now, as Mr. Kipling and Mrs.
Hope-Hodgson have shown us, many of these total strangersтАФand no few of the
relativesтАФwere bad, wicked people, interested only in the round gold
sovereigns that the childrens' parents sent to them for their care. There were
many schools where the poor lonely things were neglected or even abused; where
their health suffered far more than if they had stayed safely at the sides of
their mamas. But there were good schools too, and kindly people, and Sarah
Jane's mama had been both wise and careful in her selection. In fact, Sarah
Jane's mama had made a choice that was far wiser than even she had guessed. .
.. NanтАФthat was her only name, for no one had told her of any
otherтАФlurked anxiously about the back gate of the Big House. She was new to
this neighborhood, for her slatternly mother had lost yet another job in a
gin-mill and they had been forced to move all the way across Whitechapel, and
this part of London was as foreign to Nan as the wilds of Australia. She had
been told by more than one of the children hereabouts that if she hung about
the back gate after tea, a strange man with a towel wrapped about his head
would come out with a basket of food and give it out to any child who happened
to be there. Now, there were not as many children willing to accept this
offering as might have been expected, even in this poor neighborhood. They
were afraid of the man, afraid of his piercing, black eyes, his swarthy skin,
and his way of walking like a great hunting-cat. Some suspected poison in the
food, others murmured that he and the woman of the house were foreigners, and
intended to kill English children with terrible curses on the food they