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

Her mouth was too dry for speaking. She swallowed. And then she laughed, drawing a little jerky breath. "It was your shadow, going across the wall. It scared me. I thoughtЧit looked likeЧit looked like somebody walking into the wall."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you. Don't let the house trouble you. It creaks quite a bit, but I doubt if there are ghosts wandering through the walls."
He followed her back up, switching the lights off behind him. She turned suddenly at the top of the stairs and looked down into the dark rooms. Uncle Harold waited patiently. Her brows crept together. She looked at him puzzledly.
"But I wonder where that cat went."
II.
IN THE LIVING ROOM THEY FOUND AUNT CATHERINE
knitting in a rocking chair beside the fireplace. The fireplace, built of red brick with a mantel of dark rich paneling, was enclosed in a deep alcove of thick stone from which unfamiliar things hung, gleaming in the lamplight. Aunt Catherine's mouth was set in a straight grim line. Carol looked over her shoulder to see what she was knitting, and she dropped her hands in her lap with a sigh.
"What is it going to be?"
"Heaven knows. I want it to be a scarf. Emily Raison is teaching me. She can knit whole sweaters."
"It looks all right," Carol said. She sat down on the brick ledge in front of the fireplace. Uncle Harold came back from putting coal in the stove and sat down, dusting his hands. Something clanged faintly
in back of him, and he shifted his chair forward. A brass frying pan with a four-foot handle swung gently against the stones behind him. Carol leaned forward to look at it.
"What is that?" She raised the hinged lid. "It's too heavy to be a popcorn popper."
Uncle Harold laughed. "It's an antique bed-warmer. The vicars didn't have electric heaters to warm their rooms, so they put coals in the pan and warmed their sheets before they went to bed."
"There are times when I've been tempted to use it myself," Aunt Catherine said, frowning at her knitting.
"You can't say you weren't warned," Uncle Harold said. "I warned you about English weather, but you married me anyway."
"I was young and innocent. I wonder why there is a hole in the middle of my scarfЕ ."
Carol looked behind her at the row of fragile teacups on the mantel. She shifted, leaning back against the stones, and glanced up to find a dark, unfamiliar shape hanging over her head. She stood up and reached for it.
"Be careful," Uncle Harold murmured. "It's heavy."
The weight of the iron ball pulled her hand downward. She caught at it and numbed her fingers against the spikes protruding from the ball. She shook her hand absently, staring puzzledly at the arrangement of the ball, linked by heavy chain to a polished wooden handle. Then she said,
"Oh."
"It's a flail. Knights used them during the Crusades. I expect they were quite effective."
"I bet they were." She weighed it experimentally in her hand. The dark ball swung back and forth like a pendulum. "I can't imagine really killing someone with one of these. There wouldn't be much left of him, and you would have to see it. Е It's a little like a baseball bat, I guess. You adjust the weight over your shoulder andЧ"
The door opened, and Bruce came in. He stopped abruptly as Carol turned, and the iron ball, swinging gracefully through the air, smashed one china cup to splinters on the mantel and knocked another to the floor.
The ball bounced painfully against Carol's elbow, but she did not seem to notice it. She stared horrified at the bits of cup at her feet. Uncle Harold took the flail from her limp hands and hung it back up.
"It's a bit damaging to civilization," he commented. Bruce closed his mouth. He held out a letter.
"I cameЧI just came down to give you this. The postman gave it to me this morning so he wouldn't have to bother climbing the hill." His voice shook and he stopped. Carol raised her head. Her eyes glittered with tears.
"I'm so sorryЧ" she whispered.
"Never you mind," Uncle Harold said. Aunt Catherine leaned over the side of her chair, a suspicious
pucker at the sides of her mouth.
"Soon as I finish this row I'll sweep it up. Don't cry. Mrs. Brewster has dozens of bone-china cups."
Carol sniffed. Her face, half-hidden from them in the fall of her hair, had flushed red. A tear trickled down to the edge of her chin. Aunt Catherine dropped her scarf. She put an arm around Carol and led her to the kitchen.
"She'll never miss them."
"It's one of those days when everything goes wrongЧ"
"I suspect you need a hot bath and a good sleep."
"I don't think that's going to help." She wiped her face on a dishtowel while Aunt Catherine took a bottle of milk out of the refrigerator. "I don't know if this house will be able to stand me for a month."
"It's stood all kinds of people for more than three centuries," Aunt Catherine said. She shook the milk bottle and poured half of it into a pan. "The first thing I broke in this house was a hideous Victorian vase shaped like a green Chinese dragon. Harold accused me of doing it deliberately, and I think he may have been right." She smiled as Carol laughed in the middle of a sniff. "Why don't you go up and get ready for bed, and I'll make you some hot chocolate to take to bed with you."
Half an hour later Carol sat in bed drinking chocolate and listening to the house creak around her as it settled in the night air. Through the open curtains she
could see patterns of stars above the swaying graveyard trees. She reached down once and tucked the covers more securely around her feet. The wind, still through the long twilight, had risen again, fresh and chill. The church bells tolled a quarter hour half-muffled by it. Carol finished her chocolate and lay back. The events of the long day ran in a kaleidoscopic stream through her mind. She rolled over, drawing the covers in a hood over her head and shifting her feet to find a warm spot between the cold sheets. The wind whispered through the eaves, shook the window, then turned and sighed away through the trees. A floorboard cracked somewhere in the house. Carol rolled over again. She sat up finally and drew her knees under her chin and rubbed her feet. They were icy. She sat for a moment, holding them. Then she reached for her robe and went quietly downstairs, sliding down the banister.
She took the bed-warmer and the hearth shovel from the fireplace and brought them into the kitchen. She found the coals in the stove behind a small door on the side. The thick heat pushed against her face as she shoveled coals into the bed-warmer. She added a few more to the stove from the half-empty coal bucket, closed the door, and replaced the shovel. Then she found thick dishtowels in a kitchen drawer and wrapped them around the pan. The warmth melted through them to her hands as she carried it down the cold hall, up the stairs. She put the pan between the bed sheets and lay down, resting her feet on top of it. She drifted
to sleep lulled by the night wind and the soft pulse of heat slowly thawing her feet.
Aunt Catherine's cry jerked her upright in the morning almost before she could open her eyes. She heard doors opening and rolled out of bed, kicking the bed-warmer open. A stream of ash fluttered to the rug. She struggled into her robe and ran into the hall, nearly bumping into Uncle Harold, who was leaning over the banister with a razor in his hand. There was a trickle of blood in the lather on his face.
"Catherine," he said. Bruce's door opened. He came out tying his robe, his hair sticking up.
"What's the row?"
"No coffee," Aunt Catherine said succinctly. "No breakfast. Harold, I will never cook another thing on that stove. You can gift-wrap it and leave it on Mrs. Brewster's front porch."
"Catherine, what happened?"
"I don't know! I know I closed the coal door last night; I remember distinctly checking, but it wasn't latched properly, and it may well have burned the house down."
Uncle Harold went downstairs, wiping the soap off his face. Bruce followed him, not noticing Carol on the landing above him, standing white and still, her cold hands covering her mouth. She heard their voices from the kitchen and moved finally.
The heat welled from the open kitchen door, warming the hall floor. The stove, both round burners uncovered and red hot, seemed to shimmer. Aunt Catherine stood looking grimly at it. Uncle Harold opened both oven doors. "I don't understand it," he said. "I do. Impulse."
"Catherine, not even this stove acts on impulseЧ"
"Aunt Catherine," Carol said. Her voice sounded