"House On Parchment Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

"He's getting married to Miss Morris."
"Miss Morris? At the sweet shop?"
"Yes."
"She's an old lady."
"She is forty-three," Uncle Harold said with dignity. "Remind me to order my coffin at that age. I'll pay you what I pay the gardenerЧa pound a week. I had thought of doing it myself, but that side lawn looks too formidable for my old bones."
"It looks formidable for mine," Bruce said. "But I'll do it. Thanks, Dad." He rose, finishing his orange juice on the way up. "I'll work on the hedges this morning; there's no sense in cutting the grass before it needs it."
Carol found him later, after she finished breakfast. He was trimming the hedge by the gate. The wind, high that day, snatched the pieces as they fell from the clippers and rolled them down the walk. He put the clippers down a moment and flexed his fingers.
"Hello. Where are you going?"
"I'm taking this pan back to Emily Raison. She gave Aunt Catherine some tea in it the day I heated the stove up, and Aunt Catherine forgot to give it back." She swung the pan in an arc that flashed silver in the sunlight. "It's a nice day. Maybe I'll go for a walk." The drilling started up suddenly behind the gate, screaming into the silence, and she winced. "It sounds
like a dentist's drill."
"Mm. Go across the field, and you can get out of town to the farms."
"Maybe I'll do that."
She opened the gate. Two men with drills and a truck stood between her and Emily Raison's house. She went toward the field to get around them, and when she got to the fieldЧa great circle of green grass sloping gently toward a far roadЧthe wind nudged her in the direction of other fields flowing on and on toward a flat horizon. The drilling grew faint behind her as she walked, until she could barely hear it. She swung the pan aimlessly in circles and smelled the grass, uncut, between her toes. She crossed the road and turned down a quiet highway with blackberry hedges enclosing fields. A fence took the place of the hedges farther down, and she stood on the bottom rail and watched a pair of thick-hooved farm horses cropping beneath the endless sky. In the next field a huge bull stuck his head through the fence and eyed her inscrutably. She circled gingerly around him. She picked a thick handful of buttercup, white Queen Anne's Lace, blue morning glory streaked with white. The flat midlands ran serene and changeless to the end of the world, and the occasional car that whisked by seemed alien and transitory.
She came back an hour later and went through the gate before she remembered Emily Raison's pan. She stood a moment, looking at the hedge, puzzled. The
clippers lay on the clippings in the wheelbarrow, and only about five feet of the hedge was trimmed. She looked around, but she did not see Bruce. She went into the street. Uncle Harold's car was gone. She scratched her head absently a moment, then went over to Emily Raison's house and saw her in the graveyard weeding graves.
She opened the gate and went into the graveyard. Miss Emily smiled vaguely at her. "Hello, my dear. What lovely buttercups." "How many graves are you going to clean?" "Oh, I'm just doing a bit of weeding over Mr. Chapman. He was a good friend of the family when I was a little girl."
Carol knelt down beside her. "Homer Chapman. 1861-1920. He's next door to Elizabeth Greyson." She picked a straggling piece of moss off Elizabeth Greyson's stone.
"Is he, then?" Miss Emily said comfortably. "It's so old Е 1599-1643Е . She was buried here over three hundred years ago Е three hundred years, and her gravestone is still standing up straight, and the church she was buried beside is still standingЕ . They made things to last in those days." She stepped across Elizabeth's grave. "And here's her husband, Jonathon." "Is he, then?"
"And they had a child, buried here." She knelt down again and coaxed a snail off one of the letters.
Slugs had left silver trails like glistening tears across the stone. "Thomas, son of Elizabeth and Jonathon Grey-son." She brushed apart the grass and weed in front of the stone. "It says somethingЕ . 'You areЕ . You are a priest forever, according to the order of MelЧMelЧsomething. Melchisedech. Who is Melchisedech?"
"I don't know, my dear. Some of the people here were before my time."
"He was 1616 to 1644. 1642 was the Civil War. He was a priest in the middle of the Civil War. I wonder if that's what killed him. I wonder if he got captured by the Puritans."
"Then he should have gone through the priest tunnel," Miss Emily said. "He would have been safe."
"What's a priest tunnel?"
"Oh, my dear, they had a nice tunnel between the church and the house so priests could move from one place to another without being caught." She flung a handful of weed into the wind. Carol stared at her, hugging her knees. She could feel her heart thumping against her knees.
"Who did? Who had a tunnel?"
"The people who lived in the house then." She sat back on her heels and brushed her hands off. "Bless me. I'm all grass-stained."
Carol stood up and walked across the graves. She squatted down beside Miss Emily. "What kind of a tunnel? Where does it begin?"
"I don't know. Nobody has ever seen it. I heard Mrs. Brewster's father talk of it. Mrs. Brewster has looked for herself, but she could never find it. So she says it's only a legend; that there's no such thing as a priest tunnel. But I say: who began the legend? The people who built the tunnel, that's who."
Carol sat down on the grass. "A tunnel," she whispered. "A tunnelЕ . Would it go underneath the graveyard?"
"Oh, it went right under the church. That's what I've heard. Is that my saucepan?"
"Oh. Yes." She handed it to Miss Emily. "Aunt Catherine says thanks." She sat quietly, wind blowing the hair across her face. She laughed suddenly, breathlessly, and brushed it away, feeling her fingers cold against her face. "A tunnel. I wonder if it's still there."
"There's no knowing that," Miss Emily said, searching in the earth for the end of a dandelion root. "It may have fallen in."
"Maybe. But everything else has lasted." She stood up. Miss Emily looked up at her.
"Would you like some milk and a biscuit, my dear?"
"No thanks. I have to talk to Bruce." She hoisted herself up on the railing and dropped over, and ran across the street, scarcely seeing the trucks and the drills. She opened the gate. The hedge-clippers were in the wheelbarrow, and Bruce was nowhere to be seen.
The workers left at four-thirty, and he still had not returned. Uncle Harold and Aunt Catherine drove up
shortly afterward. Carol watched them from her window. They parked at the end of the graveyard to avoid the work area, and walked half the block. She saw Uncle Harold stop in mid-sentence when he saw the wheelbarrow, and then she went down to open the door for them.
"Hello, Carol. Where is Bruce?" he said as he came
in.
"I don't know."
"Well. I didn't realize you would have to stay by yourself all day. We should have taken you with us to see the University."
"I didn't mind. I went for a walk."
"Hello," Bruce said behind them, and they turned. Alexander smiled cheerfully beside him.
"Hello."
Uncle Harold felt for his pipe. His mouth tugged in a smile as he lit it. "Alexander. What have you been doing with yourself?"
"Being lazy. I came to take a look at Bruce's bicycle."
"You came on foot?"
"I have a small problem with my back spokes." His slow, calm voice was changeless. "I thought I should do a bit of walking before I forget how. Tomorrow I might even try running. How's your article?"
"I think I may have to finish it in Edinburgh." He looked at Carol. "How does a couple weeks of camping in Scotland sound to you?"