"Andre Norton & Rosemary Edghill - Carolus Rex 1 - The Shadow of Albion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

would.
Even in that bygone generation there had been no one left who could say how the
house had come to be so named н or if there were, they deemed it wiser, in a climate
of uncertain political and theological tolerance, to keep the knowledge to themselves.
For while Charles II, that merry monarch, had often said that the witches of England
should be left in peace, the temper of his son, the once-Earl of Monmouth, was a
chancier н and far more Protestant н thing.
But the time of both merry father and ambitious son was long past now. It was
early in April, on a morning of no particular note in the calendars of alchemists and
philosophers: a day much like any other day on the Wiltshire downs for every
inhabitant of the great house save one.
The room's furnishings were opulent and old; heavy walnut pieces that might
have occupied this very chamber when Charles Stuart had used it to shelter from his
Roundhead persecutors some one hundred fifty years before. The oak wainscoting
glowed golden with long and loving application of beeswax and turpentine even in
this pallid early spring sunlight, while higher upon those same walls fanciful
plasterwork ornamentation spread its delicate lacelike tracery against the darker
cream of the lime-washed background. The room was oven hot, heated by the
blazing fire of sea-coals upon the hearth and by the tall bronze braziers the doctor
had prescribed.
Now that same physician regarded the luxurious scene with disapproval, although
it was not the elegant Jacobean room itself which had earned his censure. He turned
to the waiting servant and, reluctantly, said what he must say.
,,You ought to have called me earlier. Her Ladyship's condition is very grave. In
fact н " He hesitated, choosing how best to break the hateful news.
,,Speak louder, Dr. Falconer; I cannot quite hear you." The mocking young voice
was hoarse with coughing and breathless with its owner's affliction, but it still held
arresting power.
Dr. Falconer straightened from his colloquy with Lady Roxbury's
formidably-correct dresser and returned to the ornately-caparisoned bed of state.
Pulling back the bedcurtains with one well-manicured hand, he gazed down at the
bed's occupant. His patient stared back with brilliant unflinching eyes.
 Sarah, Marchioness of Roxbury, had never been a beauty н her eyes (quite her
best feature) were grey, her hair was silk-straight rather than fashionably curled (and
light brown rather than guinea-gold or raven-black or any of the other unlikely hues
so beloved of the romancers), and she was tall and slender н but she had always
carried herself with the arrogance and style of the Conynghams. Now, however, even
the animal vitality that had lent her passable plainness an aura of glamour was gone:
the Marchioness of Roxbury looked exactly like what she was. A plain woman, and
a dying one...
,,As bad as that, is it?" she whispered. ,,You had best tell me, you know; Knoyle
is a treasure with hair, but she will only cry."
The Marchioness's mother, the second Marchioness of Roxbury and illegitimate
daughter of James the Second, the present king's grandfather, had died in childbed
along with the babe who would, had he lived, have been the two-year-old Sarah's
younger brother and heir to the Marchionate. Now mother and son slept in the small
family burial ground at Mooncoign, and from the moment of their deaths, Sarah
Marie Eloise Aradia Dowsabelle Gonyngham had become Lady Roxbury,
Marchioness of Roxbury in her own right. And each year, since her presentation to
the Polite World at the early age of sixteen, the young Marchioness of Roxbury had