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

He says nothing. His hands are very warm.

She hears the voice as light in her head.

Nothing.

"You see," says the monsignor, his mouth still greasy from the medianoche,
chicken grease, chicken bone, "you see, my daughter, Our Lord is very good to
you. He has blessed you after all and beyond what you deserve: He has taken
those voices from you, He has given you this silence in which to contemplate
your repentance, He has freed you from the grip of the devil so that you might
recant your evil and name your collaborators. Come, my daughter, make full and
free confession," hands wiping quickly, fingers shiny on his robe, "come back to
the arms of the Lord and it will be as if you had never left."

"I want a dress," she says, pulling with stiff fingers at her clothing, the same
filthy breeches and white shirt gone gray worn when last she battled for God and
St. Michael, for the ruined and ruinous Dauphin, for betraying' France. "I want
to wash myself, I want to be clean." Let me stand in the rain, she thinks. Let
me stand in the rain as I stood in the fields with my sheep, hearing the voices
for the first time: they were so sure, she was so sure then. Her head feels so
light and hot but to the touch of her palms it is cool, almost cold, cold like
the dead and "Let me," she says, "let me stand in that rain until I am clean,
until I cannot smell my own body like some dead sheep lost from the sheepfold,
until the heat is gone and the body shrinks and all the fire dies."

The monsignor says nothing more to her then or at least she does not hear it but
they do bring women's clothing not that shift and apron with which she is
familiar but such as she has never seen. Oh how complicated and magnificent
these garments, the garments of a proud woman and she has never worn anything
like this in all her life and besides she will not strip there in front of the
guards, she will not do this. "Go away," she says to the monsignor who has
returned, "make them all go away. I want to be with my God and with myself."

"But my daughter," says the monsignor, "this should not be necessary. In the
field they say you ate and slept and relieved yourself in full view of your men,
you lived the life of a soldier yourself, is that not so? Why now is it
different?"

How can she tell them? How can she talk of the arc of the empty field and the
cries of the men, the standard flowing before her, how can she tell them when
there is only silence in her head, her hot and aching brain; why should the
voices leave her now, now when she is trying so hard like the sweet, damaged
Christ lurching from stone to stone, begging for remission, for absolution, for
meaning on the cross, trying so hard to be good, to do what is right: why now?
and the monsignor's stare, the warders beyond and at last, crouched like a child
with the clothing in her arms at last she breaks, weeping mouth open like an
urchin in the streets, huge wet sobs so her body shakes, vagrant lump of flesh
shuddering and trembling like a standard in the wind and one of the warders
makes a sound, chuffing cough of disgust or dismay and "Let her be," he says,