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

From Normandy to Bourgogne her heart blood will mix with the lifeblood of France.
 "Her heart! Her guts!" The duke's voice intruded. "By Our Lady, what parts of her coul
have picked to better effect? To put heart and guts into the French army and the French king
that's what they'll say when they find out!" Bedford made a few more circuits of the room, t
spun round and spat, "Well? What have you to say to this, Uncle?"
Beaufort regarded his kinsman with concealed loathing. Your father, my half brothe
and late king, would be nauseated by you. You are an idiot and a fool, and a disgrac
the royal blood we share. And you will fail, Nephew, because of what you are. I am neith
an idiot nor a foolтАФyet my failure has been the greater. And my failure has come about
because of God, Who allowed her blood to spill as His Son's was spilt. Were it mere sym
as Bedford believes, still it is the most powerful symbol in the world. Does it mark me
heretic, to believe it is more than that?
"I say," Beaufort murmured, "that dead is dead, and let that end it."
But what he was thinking was, I say that we had best resign ourselves to a brief and
unhappy rule over France. For now she has a true king, crowned and blooded, with the
Sacrifice duly madeтАФand there is nothing we can do to change it.

***

Note: Although Cardinal Beaufort's visit to Joan of Arc is of the author's imagin
the details of the prophecies and the events of her life and death are accurate. (Sh
did find the sword at St. Catherine-de-Fierbois; the executioner did find it impossib
to burn Joan's heart and entrails, and so threw them into the Seine.) Many years
later, Joan's mother appealed to the Vatican to reopen the case, and Joan was
exonerated. Canonized in 1920, she is the patron Saint of France.
Beaufort's parents were Katherine de Roet and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancas
son of Edward III. Katherine was John's mistress for many years before a parting of the
ways, at which time (according to contemporary chroniclers) he denounced her as
witch. They married in 1397 at Lincoln Cathedral; their four children were legitimat
by the Pope and recognized by Richard II. This was the origin of the Wars of the
Lancastrian and Yorkist Roses that ended at Bosworth Field in 1485 with the
victory of Henry TudorтАФa descendant of Katherine de Roet and John of Gaunt
through Cardinal Beaufort's brother John, Earl of Somerset.