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

one fatal flaw. They proclaimed themselves to be Cymry"fellow countrymen"but
they fought one another as fiercely as they did their English neighbors, and
had carved three separate kingdoms out of their native soil. To the north was
the alpine citadel of Gwynedd, bordered by Powys, and to the south lay the
realm of Deheubarth. To the English kings, this constant discord was a
blessing and they did what they could to sow seeds of dissension and strife
amongst the Welsh.
During the reigns of the Norman Conqueror, William the Bastard, and his sons,
the English crown continued to gain influence in Wales; Norman castles rose up
on Welsh soil, and Norman towns began to take root in the valleys of South
Wales. As the Normans had subdued the native-born Saxons, so, too, it began to
seem that they would subdue the Welsh.
HENRY Plantagenet, King of England, Lord of Ireland and Wales, Duke of
Normandy, Count of Anjou, ordered a wall fresco to be painted in his chamber
at Winchester Castle. It depicted a fierce, proud eagle being attacked by four
eaglets; as the great bird struggled, the eaglets tore at its flesh with
talons and beaks. When asked what this portended, Henry said that he was the
eagle and the eaglets were his sons.
And as the King's sons grew to manhood, it came to pass just as er|ry had
foretold. Four sons had he. Young Henry, his namesake and
Xll
heir, was crowned with his sire in his sixteenth year. Richard, the second
son, was invested with the duchy of Aquitaine, ruling jointly with Eleanor,
his lady mother. Geoffrey became Duke of Brittany. The youngest son was John;
men called him John Lackland for he was the last-born and the Angevin empire
had already been divided amongst his elder brothers.
But John alone held with his father. The other sons turned upon Henry, seeking
to rend him as the eaglets had raked and clawed at the bleeding eagle on the
wall of Winchester Castle. In the year of Christ
1183, the House of Plantagenet was at war against itself.
BOOK ONE
SHROPSHIRE, ENGLAND
JM/H nSj
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JL J.E was ten years old and an alien in an unfriendly land, made an unwilling
exile by his mother's marriage to a Marcher border lord. His new stepfather
seemed a kindly man, but he was not of Llewelyn's blood, not one of the Cymry,
and each dawning day in Shropshire only intensified Llewelyn's heartsick
longing for his homeland.
For his mother's sake, he did his best to adapt to the strangeness of English
ways. He even tried to forget the atrocity stories that were so much a part of
his heritage, tales of English conquest and cruelties. His was a secret sorrow
he shared with no one, for he was too young to know that misery repressed is
misery all the more likely to fester.
IT was on a Saturday morning a fortnight after his arrival at Caus Castle that
Llewelyn mounted his gelding and rode north, toward the little village of
Westbury. He had not intended to go any farther, but he was bored and lonely
and the road beckoned him on. Ten miles to the east lay the town of
Shrewsbury, and Llewelyn had never seen a town. He hesitated, but not for
long. His stepfather had told him there were five villages between Westbury