"Sharon K. Penman - Here Be Dragons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Penman Sharon K)

Marared, his mother.
Voices sounded beyond the door. Llewelyn recognized one as his stepfather's;
the other belonged to Robert Corbet, Hugh's elder brother. "Do you not think
you're making too much of this, Hugh? Boys will get into squabbles. Look at my
torn, how he"
"You have not seen him yet, Rob," Hugh said grimly, and pushed the door back.
Robert Corbet, Baron of Caus, was only twenty-eight, but he was decisive by
nature and long accustomed to the exercise of authority. At sight of Llewelyn,
his face hardened. Kneeling by the boy, he said, "Who did this to you, lad?"
Marared was standing behind her son. She reached out, let her hand rest on his
shoulder. Emma shook her head and said, "It is no use, Rob. He's not said a
blessed word so far. Mayhap if we left him alone with Hugh and Margaret. . ."
Llewelyn's head came up at that. Her name is Marared. Marared, not Margaret.
The words hovered on his lips; he bit them back with a visible effort, and
turned his face away, stayed stubbornly silent.
Servants had carried bedding into the chamber, were spreading blankets down on
the floor by the bed, and Hugh smiled at Llewelyn/ said, "Margaret and I
thought it would be best if you passed the nigh*
here
13
pth us. Now why do we not see about getting you out of those hSimed clothes?"
T lewelyn rose obediently, let his stepfather strip off the bloodied, tunic,
his shirt, chausses, linen braies, and the knee-length cowboots. But as Hugh
pulled the blanket back and the boy slid under overs, he said, very softly yet
very distinctly, "My mother's name is
Marared."
Hugh stood looking down at his stepson. He did not say anything, h t Llewelyn
had an unsettling suspicion that he understood, understood all too well.
Left alone at last, Llewelyn sought in vain to make himself comfortable on the
pallet. He held the compresses to his injured eye, tried not to think of
anything at all. When the door opened, he did not look up, believing it to be
his mother. But the footsteps were heavier, a man's tread. Llewelyn raised
himself awkwardly on his elbow, and his heart began to thud against his sore
ribs, for it was Morgan.
Marared had been only fifteen when Llewelyn was born, widowed the following
year while pregnant with his brother. With Adda, small and frail and maimed,
she was fiercely protective, but she'd tended from the first to treat her
eldest son as if they were playfellows rather than mother and child. Llewelyn
adored the dark, beautiful girl who teased him, laughed at his misdeeds, and
taught him to view their troubles with lighthearted abandon. But it was Morgan
who set the standards that structured his life, it was Morgan's approval that
mattered. Instinctively he knew that his mother would forgive him any sin, no
matter how great. Morgan would not, and that made his good opinion the more
precious. He shrank now from revealing his shame to Morgan; that the youthful
priest should look upon him with contempt was a greater punishment than any
pain Walter de Hodnet had inflicted.
Morgan was carrying a platter. Setting it down, he tossed a cushion on the
floor by Llewelyn's pallet, and spreading the skirt of his cassock as if it
were a woman's gown, he settled himself beside the boy.
"The Lady Emma has sent up some broth, and your lady mother thought you might