"Patricia A. McKillip - The House on Parchment Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

"You're just the person I need. I have been writing all afternoon, and suddenly nothing I have written
makes any sense whatsoeverтАФCan you spare me a moment?"
He led Father Malory to the study. Bruce stood watching them until the study door closed behind them.
He stuck his hands deep in his pockets and looked at Carol.
"Have you got any ideas?"
"I had the last idea. It's your turn."
He looked down at the floor. "I don't think I'm thinking too well today," he said. "I wish my bicycle

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were fixed. тАж I would ride so far away that by the time I came back I wouldn't even remember all the
things that happened today." He turned away, going down the hall to the kitchen. "Oh, well. At least
there's fried chicken."
"And we're going to London tomorrow."
"Are we?"
"Is that far enough?"
His face tugged into a smile. "It might help. We'll probably see all the ghosts of the kings of England
walking in and out of walls."
They saw the long line of the kings and queens of England standing waxen and ghostly in a museum in
the middle of London the next day.
"They aren't moving," Carol said. Her voice was hushed. The museum was filled with wax people who
stared at them, silent and aloof from other ages, caught forever in some intense memory of their lives.
Uncle Harold and Aunt Catherine strolled ahead, unconcerned beneath the regal eyes of dead kings.
Bruce flicked through the pages of the guidebook.
"Richard III. That's who comes after Edward V. I never can remember."
"What happened to Henry VII?"
"He's down a bitтАФthat man with the long fur coat. And then there'sтАФ"
"Henry VIII. I know him." She stopped before him and he surveyed her glassily, his brows proudly
arched. "He had six wives, and he chopped their heads off when he got tired of them."
"Not all of themтАФsome of them just died. That's Queen Elizabeth with the red hair. She liked to win
arguments, too."
"What do you mean 'too'?" Carol asked suspiciously, but he had moved on to a slender gentleman with a
little pointed beard.
"That's Charles I. He got his head chopped off."
"I didn't know you were allowed to chop kings' heads off."
"There was a war." He stopped, his eyes narrowed a little, as though he were trying to remember
something. "The Civil War. He lost his head, and after him cameтАФ"
"Charles II?"
"No. Cromwell."
"He's not in the guidebook."
"He wasn't a king. He was a Puritan."
"I thought the Puritans all left England and went to Massachusetts."
He shook his head. "They were very strong followers of Cromwell during the Civil War. They didn't like
churches with stained-glass windows and bell-towers and statues, and they destroyed a lot of them during
the war. They also didn't like the way Charles I was ruling. So they had a war in 1642 and chopped his
head off in 1649, and put Cromwell in to rule. But when Cromwell died and his son began to rule, they
decided anything else was better than him, and they asked Charles II to come back."
"That was a good bird's-eye view of the first half of the seventeenth century," Uncle Harold said behind
him, and they turned. "Well, are you about finished?"