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

small, dreamlike in her ears. They turned to her, as
though hearing an unexpected note in it, and she drew
a long breath. "It was me."
"You," Aunt Catherine said blankly. Carol gave a little nod.
"Yes. I needed coals. ForЧfor the bed-warmer." Their faces were still around her, bewildered. Her voice dwindled. "My feet were cold."
Uncle Harold stared at her. He gave a sudden odd moan. Then he sat down at the table and laughed until tears ran down his face, and Aunt Catherine's face twitched into a smile in spite of herself. Carol watched them, too numb to laugh or cry. She looked up and found Bruce's eyes on her, the aloofness in them overcome by incredulity. She looked away. Uncle Harold straightened finally, and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "Do you always do things the hard way, Carol?" "I didn't think," she whispered. "All I could think about was my feet."
"Well, after all," Aunt Catherine said. "That's what bed-warmers are for. Carol, if you don't latch that small
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door tightly, the coals will overheat from too much air. That's why we always check it at night. So I can have coffee in the morning without melting the bottom of the pot." "I'm sorry." "I'll find you another blanket tonight."
She nodded. Then she sat down, tucking her cold fingers under her arms to warm them. She heard the soft sigh of Bruce's breath.
"We're biking to Wellingborough today, Dad," he said. His voice was dazed. "I'll be home for dinner." Uncle Harold stared after him in amazement as he went out the door. Aunt Catherine shook her head.
"Shock," she said, and Carol smiled. She leaned against the table, her head in her hands, and the color came back into her face.
"I was so scared to come down here my feet got cold all over again. I've done a lot of things, but I've never nearly burned a house down."
"Never mind," Aunt Catherine said. "The stove should cool down by suppertime. I'll go and brew some tea on Emily's stove. Did the bed-warmer work?"
She nodded. "But I knocked it out of bed this morning, and there's ash all over the place."
"You slept with it?" Uncle Harold said.
"I thoughtЧthat's what they're forЧI wrapped it in towelsЧ"
Uncle Harold's hand went to his robe as though he were feeling for his pipe. He didn't find it. "It's unorthodox. And a bit dangerousЕ . Catherine, I need a very, very strong cup of tea." "I need another stove," Aunt Catherine said.
Carol wandered outside after breakfast. She climbed an apple tree in the back garden and sat in it awhile, looking far out over the green fields that dissolved into a mist at the horizon. The church bells tolled ten o'clock, clear in the windless morning. She jumped down, threaded her way carefully between neat bean rows, and went toward the front gate. She looked out; the road was empty. She crossed it and found a path on the other side that ran in front of Emily Raison's house into the graveyard.
The great grey church stood at the end of the path. On each side of it were rows of high rounded stones, tilted and sunken with age. Long grass grew up their faces, covering worn letters. A cat napped, balancing delicately on one of the stones, its paws tucked under its breast. Beneath it, a little round woman in high boots knelt washing the face of the stone.
Carol leaned against the railing, watching. The cat, splashed with color like a patchwork quilt, yawned and settled itself. It opened both eyes at the sudden movement by the railing as Carol hoisted herself up. She landed on her knees on a grave, and the cat made a startled leap off the stone. The old woman straightened as Carol rose, dusting her jeans.
"Bless me." She sat back on her heels, looking a little
uneasy. Then she smiled, and her face wrinkled like a sun-dried apple. "Hello, my dear. You must be Catherine's niece."
Carol squatted down beside her. "How did you know?"
"Oh, she showed me a picture of you and said you were coming. You look different from the picture, else I would have recognized you straight away."
"That was my mother. She made me look nice. What are you doing?"
"I'm washing gravestones. This one belongs to my cousin Harriet. If I didn't wash them, they'd get all dirty and mossy. I cut the grass round them too, else they'd be overgrown with weeds. That one over there is my uncle'sЧthat one with the beautiful fat cherub."
"Are you Emily Raison? Why do you live in a graveyard?"
Emily Raison dipped her cloth in her bucket and cleaned the dirt out of Harriet's name. "I was a maid in Mrs. Brewster's house when I was a young girl. I went to this church all my life, and this is where I belong. So I saved my money, and when I had enough, I rented the little house from Mrs. Brewster. Do you like the big house, then?"
Carol looked down the path to the high wall and the rise of the big house behind it. She touched her hair. "I think so. I'm not used to things being so old. Е I don't know how to treat old things. And the house is so quiet, and it creaks."
"It was a great noisy thing in Mrs. Brewster's day when she was a young girl, and her father had people in and out. I was always busy."
Carol rested her chin in her hands. "I wish I was," she said. The cat returned unexpectedly to rub its face against her knee. Emily Raison rinsed her cloth and wrung it out.
"I expect you're homesick."
Carol looked at her. "I expect I am," she said, surprised. Emily Raison heaved herself to her feet.
"You come with me, my dear, and we'll have a nice cup of tea. Come along, Geraldine. That's Geraldine, my cat. Don't they look nicer, now? So much brighter, because they have someone to look after them."
"Don't the other ones?"
"Most of them are too old. Hundreds of years old."
She picked up the bucket and led Carol to her gate. Someone passed them: a young, fair-haired priest in a black cassock who called as he went by,
"Good morning, Miss Emily. Have you been washing your relatives?"
"Good morning, Father Malory. Yes. Don't they look lovely?"
"Bright spots in a wilderness. Hello, there."
"Hello," Carol said, and he whisked past like a cheerful, energetic crow to be swallowed up in the shadow of the church.
They had tea and raisin buns in Miss Emily's neat kitchen. Miss Emily talked in her gentle, cheerful voice
about her life long ago in the big house, about her myriad relatives, living and dead, and about how hard it was to climb the sloping hill up to the churchyard after she went shopping. The bells rang unheeded quarter hours as she talked, and Carol's eyes glazed, and she began shredding a raisin bun into her cold tea. The bells struck twelve, and she woke a little to count. "But Susan wouldn't stay," Miss Emily was saying, "no matter how Mrs. Brewster cried. She was always a passionate little girl, Mrs. Brewster was, and she loved Susan. But Susan wouldn't stay, not after what happened in the cellar."
"What happened in the cellar?" Carol asked mechanically.
"Oh, my dear, she never told anybody." "Oh."
"She was just a little bit of a thing, not much older than you, and so fearful about breaking things when she dusted. And when she ran up shrieking with her apron over her face we couldn't think what she had broken in the cellar when there was nothing but coal. And she had hysterics, right in the library in front of two visiting priests. She never would say what happened." "Never?"
"Not a word. She was so delicate I thought she wouldn't last long, but two years later I got a nice wedding picture from her, and she lived to have five children."
Carol swallowed a yawn. "I should go," she said. "Aunt Catherine will be wondering what kind of trouble I'm in now."
Miss Emily accompanied her to the door. "Well, you tell your Aunt Catherine she can make whatever she likes on my stove while hers cools."