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

the People had names of that kind. He was Probity Hooke, and his wife was Mercy Hooke. Their
daughter had been Obedience Hooke until she had married Simon Nasmith against their will and changed
her second name to his. Because of that, the People had cut her off from themselves, and Probity and
Mercy had heard no more of her until Simon had come to their door, bringing the newborn baby for them
to care for, and told Probity of his daughterтАЩs death. He said he was going away and not coming back.
Probity had taken the baby from him and closed the door in his face without a word.
He had chosen a first name for the baby because she had neither father nor mother. She was pitiable.
The Hookes lived in a white wooden house on the edge of the town. Their fields lay a little distance
off, in two separate odd-shaped patches along the floor of the steep valley, where soil deep enough to
cultivate had lodged on the underlying granite. The summers were short, but desperately hot, ending
usually in a week of storms, followed by a mellow autumn and then a long, bitter winter, with blizzards
and gales. For night after night, lying two miles inland in her cot at the top of the ladder, Pitiable would fall
asleep to the sound of waves raging along the outer shore, and wake to the same sound. Between the
gales there would be still, clear days with the sun no more than a handsbreadth above the horizon, and its
light glittering off mile after mile of thigh-deep snow. Then spring, and thaw and mud and slush and the
reek of all the winterтАЩs rubbish, rotting at last. Then searing summer again.
It was a hard land to scrape a living off, though there was a good harbour that attracted trade, so
some of the People prospered as merchants. Fishermen, and others not of the People, came there too,
though many of these later went south and west to kinder, sunnier, richer places. But the People stayed
тАЬin the land the Lord has given us,тАЭ as they used to say. There they had been born, and their ancestors
before them, all the way back to the two shiploads who had founded the town. The same names could
be read over and over again in their graveyard, Bennetts and Hookes and Warrens and Lyalls and
Goodriches, but no Nasmiths, not one.
For eight years Pitiable lived much like any other girl-child of the People. She was clothed and fed,
and nursed if she was ill. She went to the PeopleтАЩs school, where she was taught to read her Bible, and
tales of the persecution of her forebears. The People had few other books, but those they read endlessly,
to themselves and to each other. They took pride in their education, narrow though it was, and their
speech was grave and formal, as if taken from their books. Twice every Sunday Pitiable would go with
her grandparents to their church, to sit still for two hours while the Word was given forth.
As soon as she could walk, she was taught little tasks to do about the house. The People took no
pride in possessions or comforts. What mattered to them in this world was cleanliness and decency,
every pot scoured, every chair in its place, every garment neatly stitched and saved, and on Sundays the
menтАЩs belts and boots gleaming with polish, and the womenтАЩs lace caps and collars starched as white as
first-fall snow and as crisp as the frost that binds it. They would dutifully help a neighbour who was in
trouble, but they themselves would have to be in desperate need before they asked for aid.
Probity was a steady-working, stern old man whose face never changed, but Mercy was short and
plump and kindly. If Probity was out of the house, she used to hum as she worked, usually the plodding,
four-square hymn tunes that the People had brought with them across the ocean, but sometimes a
strange, slow, wavering air that was hardly a tune at all, difficult to follow or learn, but once learnt,
difficult to let go of While Pitiable was still very small, she came to know it as if it had been part of her
blood, but she was eight before she discovered what it meant.
The summer before that, Mercy had fallen ill. At first she would not admit it, though her face lost its
roundness and became grey and sagging, and sometimes she would gasp and stand still while a shudder
of pain ran through her and spent itself. Probity for a while did not notice, and for another while chose not
to, but Pitiable found herself doing more and more of her grandmotherтАЩs tasks while Mercy sat on one of
the thin upright chairs and told her what she did not already know. By winter Mercy could not even sit
and was forced to lie, and the neighbours had come to see why she no longer came to church, but
Probity had sent them away, saying that he and the child could manage between them. Which they did,
but PitiableтАЩs days were very long for a child, from well before dawn until hours after dark, keeping the
house clean and de-Cent, and seeing to her grandfatherтАЩs meals and clothes, and nursing her