"Sean McMullen - A Ring of Green Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

In the months past we had travelled far and wide killing firebrands who had spread the green fire, and
thanks to the fire their trails were easy to follow. With Watkin safely in chains we now visited Delmy, the
village from where he had borne the green fire to torment the world. The stout virgin that Watkin had
seduced was named Gerelde, but while she was indeed not comely, she was skilled with herbal cures
and was a surpassing good cook.
Her mother was buried nearby. The woman had once lived alone in a forest some way up the coast,
and was reputed to have been a witch. Cornish brigands had raided the area and seized her, and their
leader had ravished her until she was some months swelling with his child. He had then taken her out to
sea and cast overboard to drown, yet she lived to struggle ashore and be found by the villagers of Delmy.
The village midwife said that she had treated herself with a glowing green paste to ease the pain of the
birth. It was a difficult delivery, as Gerelde was a very big baby for such a small mother as she was. The
witch had died of the stresses of birth and cursing her ravisher.
Sir Peter assembled a squad of men while I went with Sir Phillip to locate the witch's house, a
ransacked shell by now. We exhumed the witch's bones and reburied them in the overgrown garden of
her old home. In the meantime Sir Peter had attacked and annihilated the brigand stronghold, avenging
the witch after eighteen years. Every one of his fighting men had the ring of green fire and was frantic for
revenge against anyone connected with it.
On the evening that we returned to Sir Peter's castle, I spoke with him in his dining hall. Rain dripped
from the roof beams as we sat before the fire.
"That was clever work, finding the first firebrand of the green ring," he said to me. "Why didn't you tell
us that we were on such a quest?"
"If I had told that I wanted a man of such-and-such a description you would have tortured dozens into
confessing to be him. Better to take you on a vendetta against all firebrands and do the questioning
myself."
"Well then, what good came of it? We avenged the witch, yet her magical ring still glows on my
gronnick, and the ring on Watkin the Tinker is still bright enough to light his way on a moonless night.
What sort of a sorcerer are you-- "
"I am a physician, not a sorcerer. Magic does not exist, only illness in all its guises. The full cure for the
ring of green fire is close. I have made progress."
"What kind of progress?"
"I returned the witch's bones to her garden and reburied them there. A month has passed since then,
so the aura from her bones will have permeated the roots of her herbs and be taken up into the leaves. I
shall soon return to her grave and harvest some leaves to grind into a paste."
"Will that be enough? Leaves?"
"There is more, Sir Peter, much more. Even though she is dead she is trying to teach us something of
the new notion of chivalry-- it's new to you English at least, us Saracen scholars have taught it for years."
"That's why we employed you, dammit!"
"And your faith in me is not misplaced. I can see some kind of symbolism of pain being avenged while
its resulting sorrow still lives on. The witch wanted you to do more than just avenge her."
"Well what did she damn well want?" shouted Sir Peter, pounding the table so hard with his goblet that
a gemstone fell out of the silver filigree.
"Patience, patience, I dare not tell you everything yet."
***


Sir Peter had a mistress as well as his wife, and it was this woman that Watkin had bedded one
afternoon in the summer past. The noble had argued with her a little earlier, and she felt lonely and
neglected. Watkin had arrived, and cleverly spoke in a cultivated voice, as if by accident. Then he hinted
that he was himself a noble on some secret mission, and so he won her trust and bedded her.
Understandably, Sir Peter was all for impaling Watkin on a stake at the castle gate until the crows