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

He watched her eyes for a momentтАФlarge, fine eyes, remarkable in their clarity and th
only claim she had to beautyтАФthen said abruptly, "I have noted that during your trial you sp
of preferring to have your head cut off rather than say something you had no permission to s
Why is that, Joan? You know what the penalty is for heretics: fire. Ah, you see? You blanch
even now at the mention of it. It is not death you fear, but the manner of your death. You all
invite your judges to slice off your head, yet the very word 'fire' makes you start like
doe. You are afraidтАФnay, terrifiedтАФof the fire. Why?" Without giving her time to answe
continued, "Is it because the fire will burn you to ashes, and there will be no blood? Blood
must be spoiled, mustn't it, for the sacrifice to be complete."
"Sacrifice, your grace?"
She was brilliant, he reflected, at imitating innocence. "I am a learned man, Joan. I hav
read and studied since my earliest youth, for that seemed to me to be the only way I could m
something of myself in a world that despises bastardsтАФespecially royal ones. Having no ta
for the sword, not being a man of my hands as my brother John of Somerset wasтАФmay God
assoil himтАФI decided I must use my brain. And I have used it well, Joan. I counsel the H
Father. I have been Chancellor of EnglandтАФand will be again, I daresay, despite my
cousin of Gloucester."
He stopped then, arched a brow at her, and almost smiled. "I know where you come fro
he continued softly. "Lorraine, out of which no good can comeтАФas the saying has it. A coun
rife with witches. I know of your fountain and your faerie treeтАФthe Charmed Tree of the
Faerie of Bourlement, where nearby there is an enchanted spring. I know that your mo
had dealings withтАФ"
"That is not true!" she cried. "We are good Christian folk! I, too, know what is said of
home, and what the superstitions are, but I do not believe them!"
"And I do not believe you," he told her. "Unlearned and untaught as you are, did you k
of the prophecies? Years ago Marie Robine foresaw a maid in armor, and even Merlin, wh
had much to prophecy about my own house, told of a virgin from the forests of Lorraine wh
would come to the aid of France. Have you listened to such things, Joan, and decided to use
them to your own ends?"
 "No!"
"I do not believe you," he said again, still very gently. "How else but by magical arts
could you have known about the sword buried beneath the altar at St. Catherine-de-Fierboi
The frown cleared from her face; evidently mention of some specific thing, something
real as the sword, gave her ground to stand upon.
"It was God's Will that I find and bear that swordтАФ"
"тАФGod's Will as told to you by your Voices? Or by faerie spirits?"
"It was St. Michael, and St. Catherine, and St. MargaretтАФ"
"My mother's name was Catherine," he commented almost idly.
"En nom Dieu!" she exclaimed. "Is it your mother about to die?"
"Perhaps she burns even now, with my father," he mused. "They sinned, you know. As
have I. As have I. . . ." He looked straight at her, then away. "My daughter, also named Joan
only a little older than you."
"Your grace, what has this to doтАФ"
"Passez outre," he interrupted, mocking her with her own phrase repeated so many tim
during her trial. "Shall I tell you why not one drop of your blood will spill on French soil?
Shall I tell you, Joan, why you will burn?"
She paled again, and her chains rattled faintly, as if she shivered. "IтАФI am tired, your
grace, I would sleep, by your leave."
"Soon you will sleep for all eternity. You will die, Joan. Unconfessed, unshriven, and
unassoiled by God and His Saints. What is more, you will have failed the pathetic lackwit y