"Melanie Rawn - The Sacrifice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rawn Melanie)

THE SACRIFICE
Melanie Rawn

May 29-30, 1431 Rouen, France
THE cell was small, about twenty feet in diameter, hexagonal in shape, cold and dark
damp. There was no furniture but a few wooden stools for the guards, and a bed that was
nothing more than a hay-filled mat atop a rough wooden pallet. There were two narrow slit
the wall, for ventilation only; they let in no light. He had been told of this, and had brought
large taper from his own stores. Made of fine beeswax, not spluttering tallow, it burned wi
peculiar soft brightness, as it would have on the high altar for which it had been made. Now
showed him not the gold plate and jeweled vessels of the mass, but the prisoner. A girl in
men's clothing. She was nineteen years, four months, and twenty-two days old.
Henry Beaufort gestured the guards out of the cell with one gloved hand. "Think you th
chained as she is, she can do us any harm?" he asked the one who frowned an objection.
"Leave us."
"Yes, your grace." The guard was not happy about it, nor were the others, but one did n
gainsay the Cardinal of England and a son of a Royal Duke to boot.
The door clanked closed. He turned his gaze upon the prisoner, who sat up on her bed.
"I would rise, your grace, and beg to make my respects, but as you seeтАФ" She shrugge
and her chains rattled. It was obvious she could not stand.
"De rien, ma fille," he murmured. It was of no consequence. He had more important
things to do than allow his ring to be kissed. Before he could say what he had come to
however, she spoke again, eagerly.
"Please, your grace, have you come to hear my confession? Have you come to celebrat
mass for me?"
Leaving aside the absurdity of a Prince of the Church saying the Holy Office for an
illiterate French peasant girl, it amused him to find her so continually single-minded. She a
for this again and again and again, and was always denied it. She must know she would be
denied now. So he ignored the questions and said instead, "There have been no more incide
I trust."
"Incidents?" She looked puzzled.
"The guards," he explained gently. Three of them had attacked her in an attempt at rape
she had fought them off so strenuously that they would have scars for lifeтАФand it would tak
while for clumps of their hair and beards to grow back. Their chagrin would change to prid
soon enough, Beaufort knew, and the scars become battle-honored because of who had give
them. "They have left you alone?"
Incredibly, she blushed. "Y-yes, your grace."
"Ires bien. My lord of Warwick gave specific instructions."
"Not because of any tenderness for me, I think," she replied with a shrewd glance. "He
wants a living head to chop off at the neck."
"I am pleased to find you so perceptive." Odd to think that she could still believe she
would escape the fire.
Quite unexpectedly, she said, "You speak French well, for a goddam."
Amused again by her use of the nickname for Englishmen, he almost smiled. "I am half
French, in truth. My mother was a very beautiful woman from Picardy. Very beautiful," he
repeated softly. "Even her tomb mentions how lovely she was. I used to watch the courtiers
stare at herтАФeven in the later years, when she was fifty and more, when she was older than
am now." He paused, studying her. "She had power over men. So do you. Yet you're not ev
pretty."
"No, your grace," she replied quite seriously.