"Barry N. Malzberg & Kathe Koja - Orleans, Rheims, Friction Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

So they feed her but only a little: weeviled bread but not much, a watery drink
they call with heavy laughter the Dauphin's toast. After a long wait during
which she tries to think of nothing no Golgotha, no Saviour, no blasphemy, no
loss, they come to take her before the tribunal, men wrapped in deep cloaks
against the ruinous cold, it is very cold yet the water on the walls continues
to flow, beads to drip and run, witch's sweat.

You are a witch, they tell her.

No.

You hear the voice of the Devil speaking to you. You hear many voices because
the Devil speaks in all tongues. It is Satan who has driven you on.

No.

You are a tool and accompanist of Satan, you bear the wound of evil in your
soul, you have incited to treason and death men whose lives by those deaths have
been made evil, whose deaths first describe and then damn them eternally: their
blood is on your hands.

No. You do not understand --

You have called to Satan in the fields and he has possessed you totally and you
have in turn possessed those men.

No, no, no.

This continues. Scholars all their attempt is to distort and debate, twist her
own words to make confusion, trap her, trip her, make her lie; she will not lie.
Mary and Michael, the water on the walls, she could no more lie than could the
sheep. You are going to bum, they tell her and that at least is true: that is
what one does with a witch, a sorceress, no? You crucify a God, stone a saint,
burn a witch. They call her a witch; very well then, she will burn.

The Dauphin at one time might have been expected to help her, might have been
relied upon, watched for and awaited if he were more of a ruler and less of a
child but inside he will always be a child. Some men are like this, has she not
found this to be so? Tell them what is to be done and in their empty spaces,
from their absence they will offer only assent: not so? Of course. Yes. Yes.
There will be no aid from the Dauphin, no aid from the men in the cloaks who at
any rate are bent on burning, no aid from the jailers or the other prisoners or
the men who live or the men who died, died in battle, died in blood and fire,
shrieks and prayers and at last in a kind of suppressed fury the questioning
ends and she is allowed to leave, to be taken back to her cell where she is
pushed to fall on hands and knees, where she keeps that posture to pray, head
low, on all fours like an animal who does not raise its eyes to the master, who
crawls across the stones, snaffling and breathing the water of its own sweat,
who waits for the master's hand to bring punishment or pleasure, death or life,