"John Morressy - The Juggler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morressy John)

Beran was the youngest of twelve children, six of whom were living. His oldest sisters were married to
men of the village. His youngest sister, Joan, two years older than he, worked in the kitchen at Sir Morier's
castle. Beran and his brother, Rolf, a year older than he, remained at home and worked the land with their
parents.
His oldest brother had gone off to serve the king when Beran was still very small. He had returned once
to visit them, and when the others were thought to be asleep, he had given his parents prizes he had taken
during a campaign: a purse of gold and silver coins, and a gold ring with a red stone in it. Beran, lying awake, hoped
to hear the story of the battle, but his brother said no more. The prizes were carefully hidden, and no one
was to be told about them.
The village stood on a broad plateau just below the hilltop, the houses clustered together for safety.
Everyone was near enough to hear his neighbor raise the hue and cry and come to his aid, and all could
remove quickly to the castle in time of danger. The village held nearly two hundred people in its thirty-seven
houses, each house with its garden plot in the adjoining croft. Beran's family had one of the best cottages in
the village. It was thirty feet by six-teen, with solid corner posts, two windows, and two doors.
The villagers worked hard, and their work was well rewarded. The land was rich and fertile and the
weather was clement. Harvests in recent years had been abundant. The animals were healthy and
pro-duced many young. Some of the old people talked of winters when entire families had starved or frozen
to death in their homes, of rains that washed away a year's harvest in a single day, and of plagues that
killed the pigs and cattle, but the younger ones had never seen such thingsl As far back as Beran could
remem-ber, there had always been food to eat, even in the winter. His family was especially fortunate,
because Joan sometimes brought home scraps from the castle kitchen.
 Sir Morier was a righteous man and a good protec-tor. He dispensed justice fairly, if severely. He was
generous in allowing his villagers firewood, and made no impossible demands on their labor, as some great
ones were said to do. He often visited the villagers and talked with them, and Beran had seen him work at
his father's side.
There was always talk of war, but the wars were something distant, fought in foreign lands for
un-fathomable reasons against men different from them-selves. The villagers felt secure against the
enemies of their king and lord, and from hunger and disease and the bands of lawless men who were said
to roam the land. Life in the village was good, they said-certainly it was as good as any of them expected
life on this earth to be-and they had much to be thankful for.
Beran was small of frame, but very quick and agile, with sharp eyes and deft hands. He had the patience
and tenacity of a cat by a mouse hole. When some-thing interested him, or puzzled him, he could sit for
hours working on it until he had solved its mystery. Sir Morier himself had once called him "The
Philoso-pher," and told the boy that he would send him to the university, where people did nothing but sit all
day and think about things, but Beran knew that this was all a joke. The university was as remote from his
life as were the stars. He would live out his life in the vil-lage, marry the woman chosen for him, raise his
fam-ily and work for as long as he was able, grow old and die, and be buried in the little plot where his
brothers and sisters lay. He was neither happy nor unhappy at the prospect; it was the way things would be,
and he accepted it without question. One might as well question the rising and setting of the sun.
One day he went to the market town with his father and about a score of men from the village to attend a
fair. They took a well-marked trail through the wood and were wary every step of the way. All the men
wore daggers at their belts. Some carried cudgels. It was Beran's first time away from the village. He was
a little frightened, but when at last they came to the fair and he saw the people, more people than he had
ever seen in his life, and all of them busy and noisy and bustling about, his fear gave way to excitement. His
father appointed a meeting place, then went about his busi-ness and left Beran to his own devices. The boy
wan-dered wide-eyed through the crowds, drinking in the unfamiliar sights and sounds.
He quickly accustomed himself to the stir and the color, the shouting and calling back and forth, the
strange people and the animals and the loud laughter. Except for greater numbers and the odd dress of
some, the fair was not, after all, so very different from his village on a feast day. There was really only one
great difference, and he soon discovered it: A company of traveling players had set up a couple of planks