"Roads by Seabury Quinn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Quinn Seabury)



I. The Road to
Bethlehem






PILES of blazing thornbush crackled in the base-court
of the sari, camels grunted discontentedly in their kneeling
places, horses munched dry grass. Around the empty cook-
pots men licked grease and crumbs of millet from their fingers
and brushed them from their beards, then drew their
sheepskin cloaks about them and lay down upon the kidney
stones to sleep: all but the three who huddled round a
charcoal brazier in a corner by the horse lines - they were
talking treason.

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"Wah, these be evil days for Jacob's children, they are as
the tribes in Egypt were, only they have neither Moses nor a
Joshua! The tax of a denarius on every household, and each
one forced to journey to his birthplace.... Now they slay our
children in their swaddling-bands.... This Romans' puppet
that sits on the throne, this unbelieving Greek!"
"But Judas will avenge our wrongs; men say that he is
that Messiah we have waited for so long. He will rouse his
men of valor out of Galilee and sweep the Roman tyrant in
the sea -"
"Sh-s-s-sh, hold thy babble, Joachim; that one yonder is
belike a spy!"
With one accord the men turned toward the figure
hunched in sleep before a dying fire of thornbush. Flaxen-
haired, fair-skinned, he drooped above the whitening embers,
his cloak of ruddy woolen stuff draped loosely round his
shoulders, the sinking fire-glow picking out soft highlights on
the iron cap that crowned his flowing, braided hair - a man
of mighty stature, one of the gladiators kept by Herod in his
school for athletes that was constantly replenished from the
German provinces or the Slavic tribes beyond the Danube.
"What does the godless dog so far from Herod's
kennels?"
"The Lord of Zion knows, but if he go back to the Holy
City and tell the tale of what he has heard here, three crosses
will crown Golgotha before another sun has set," Joachim