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

and Shrewsbury, and he recited them under his breath as he rode: Whitton,
Stony Stretton, Yokethul, Newnham, and Cruckton. If he kept careful count as
he passed through each one, there'd be no chance of getting lost, and with
luck, he'd be back before his mother even realized he was gone.
Accustomed to forest trails and deer tracks, he found it strange to be
traveling along a road wide enough for several horsemen to ride abreast.
tranger still to him were the villages, each with its green and market
┬░ss, its surprisingly substantial stone church surrounded by a cluster
of thatched cottages and an occasional fishpond. They were in truth little
more than hamlets, these Shropshire villages that so intrigued Llewelyn, small
islands scattered about in a sea of plough-furrowed fields. But Llewelyn's
people were pastoral, tribal, hunters and herdsmen rather than farmers, and
these commonplace scenes of domestic English life were to him as exotic as
they were unfamiliar.
It was midday before he was within sight of the walls of Shrewsbury Castle. He
drew rein, awed. Castle keep and soaring church spires, a fortified arched
bridge spanning the River Severn, and the roofs of more houses than he could
begin to count. He kept his distance, suddenly shy, and after a time he
wheeled the gelding, without a backward glance for the town he'd come so far
to see.
He did not go far, detouring from the road to water his horse at Yokethul
Brook, and it was there that he found the other boy. He looked to be about
nine, as fair as Llewelyn was dark, with a thatch of bright hair the color of
sun-dried straw, and grass-green eyes that now focused admiringly upon
Llewelyn's mount.
Llewelyn slid to the ground, led the gelding foward with a grin that
encouraged the other boy to say, in the offhand manner that Llewelyn was
coming to recognize as the English equivalent of a compliment, "Is that horse
yours?"
"Yes," Llewelyn said, with pardonable pride. "He was foaled on a Sunday, so I
call him Dydd Sul."
The other boy hesitated. "You sound . . . different," he said at last, and
Llewelyn laughed. He'd been studying French for three years, but he had no
illusions about his linguistic skills.
"That is what Morgan, my tutor, says too," he said cheerfully. "I expect it is
because French is not my native tongue."
"You are not. . . English, are you?"
Llewelyn was momentarily puzzled, but then he remembered. The people he
thought of as English thought of themselves as NormanFrench, even though it
was more than a hundred years since the Duke of Normandy had invaded and
conquered England. The native-born English, the Saxons, had been totally
subdued. Unlike us, Llewelyn thought proudly. But he knew the Normans had for
the Saxons all the traditional scorn of the victors for the vanquished, and he
hastened to say, "No, I am not Saxon. I was born in Gwynedd, Cymru . . . what
you know as Wales."
The green eyes widened. "I've never met a Welshman before," he said slowly,
and it occurred to Llewelyn that, just as he'd been raised on accounts of
English treachery and tyranny, this boy was likely to have been put to bed at
night with bloody tales of Welsh border raids.
"I'll show you my cloven hoof if you'll show me yours," he offered, H the