"Stephen Lawhead - Patrick, Son of Ireland" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lawhead Stephen)

spoons. They were fine spoons. Each teardrop-shaped bowl was a
masterpiece of smithery balanced on a long, elegant handle
capped by a tiny Corinthian finial: eight in all, and older than
Elijah. Our silver-the spoons and matching plate, an enormous
bowl, and two large ewers-was old and costly; it had come from
Rome sometime in the dusty past, handed mother to daughter
longer than anyone could remember.

My motherтАЩs treasured silver held pride of place on the black
walnut table in the banqueting hall: a large, handsome room
with a vaulted ceiling and a floor that featured a mosaic
depicting Bellerophon riding the winged horse Pegasus and
killing the Chimera with a flaming spear. This scene occupied
the center of the room and was surrounded by a circular
braidwork border picked out in red, black, white, and brown
tesserae and, in each corner of the room, a likeness of one of the
Four Seasons.

On frigid winter evenings I would lie on my stomach on that
wonderful mosaic and feel the delicious warmth seeping up from
the hypocaust beneath. The floor above the hall was given to
sleeping rooms for ourselves and those few servants my mother
would suffer to abide in the house.

Our villa was called Favere Mundi, an apt name for one of the
most pleasant places in the whole of our island realm. It was
built in the traditional manner: a low, hollow square with a
red-tiled roof surrounding a central courtyard that contained a
pear tree, a fountain, and a statue of Jupiter in repose. As a
child I thought the statue bore the likeness of my grandfather.
Scarcely a day went by that I did not run to greet the image.
тАЬHail, Potitus!тАЭ I would cry and smack the carved marble limbs
with my hands to make him take note of me. But the frozen,
sightless gaze remained fixed on higher things, perpetually
beyond heed of the merely mortal and mundane.

Two long wings on either side of the enclosed square
contained the workrooms: one each for wood, leather, and cloth
and one where our candles, lamps, and rushlights were made.
Between the wings rose the main section of the house,
comprising two floors; the lower floor was given almost entirely
to the great hall, and the upper opened onto a roofed gallery
which overlooked the court.

Like my father before me, I was bom in my grandfatherтАЩs
house. We were wealthy people, noble Britons, and our villa near
Bannavem Taburniae lacked for nothing. Sixty families lived on
our estate and worked our lands. We grew grain to sell in the
markets of Maridunum, Corinium, and Lon-dinium; we raised
cattle and sold to the northern garrisons-Eboracum and beyond;