"Robin McKinley - Deerskin" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

by that standard she could not be said to succeed. And because she was a child, it
did not occur to her to wonder why neither her nursemaid, nor her dancing-master,
nor her riding instructor, nor her mistress of deportment ever said to her, "My dear,
you are but a child yet, and the queen a woman in the fullness of her prime; you
stand and step and move very prettily, you take instruction graciously, and I am well
content to be your teacher." Her father and mother never suggested such things to
her either; but then they never saw her practice dancing or riding, or sewing or
singing. There were always so many other things for so popular a king and so
beautiful a queen to do.
On the princess's twelfth birthday there was a grand party just for her, and all the
lords and ladies came, and one of the sons of the once-rival kings, who was thirteen,
and stood almost invisible among the tall figures of his guardsmen. There were
musicians, and dancing, and talk and laughter, and the banqueting tables were piled
high with beautiful savory food, and she could not bear it, that so many eyes should
think to turn upon her as the cause of all this magnificence, and she ran and hid in the
nursery.
When her old nursemaid found her at last, and washed her face free of tear-stains,
and pressed her crumpled dress, and tidied her dark hair, and took her downstairs
again, the queen was sitting at the head of the table, in the chair the princess had fled.
The king sat at her right hand, and they were feeding each other bits of cake and
sweetmeats, looking into each other's face, utterly absorbed in these things. The
thirteen-year-old prince sat near them, watching, his mouth hanging a little agape.
The princess slipped away from her nursemaid, who would have wished to make
her present herself formally. But even a royal nursemaid's jurisdictions end at the
ballroom door. The princess found a chair standing next to a curtain and shadowed
by the column at its back, and set herself silently down.
When the princess's return was noticed, and the dancing started again, one or two
young men approached the princess hopefully. But she disliked her dancing lessons,
and disliked being touched and held so by strangers, and she drew back in her chair
and shook her head emphatically at her would-be partners. They went away, and
after a little time no more came. She curled up on her gilt chair and rested her head
softly on one of its velvet arms, and watched her mother and father dancing, their
footsteps as light and graceful as the dainty steps of the royal deer.

TWO
IT WAS TWO YEARS LATER THAT THE QUEEN FELL ILL, AND NO
doctor could help her; and at first no one thought it was serious. Indeed, some went
so far as to hint that nothing at all was wrong; that the queen merely needed taking
out of herself-or perhaps putting back into herself, for she gave of her presence and
her beauty too freely, and was wearied by the adoration of her people. At first it was
only that she rose late and retired early; but the weeks passed, and she rose later and
later, and was seen outside her rooms less and less; and then the news came that she
no longer left her bed, and then that she could not leave her bed.
And then it was said that she was dying.
The doctors shook their heads, and murmured long words to each other. The
people wept, and prayed to their gods, and told themselves and each other many
stories, till the real story sounded no truer than the rest. The story that contained the
most truth, although it was not the story that was listened to the most often, was that
the queen might not die, except that her illness, the strange invisible illness with no
name, had robbed her of the tiniest fraction of her beauty. Her brilliant hair was just a