"Mary Renault - Greece 1 - The King Must Die" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

Poseidon, as I knew, can look like a man or like a horse, whichever he chooses. In his man shape, it was
said, he had begotten me. But there were songs in which he had horse sons too, swift as the north wind,
and immortal. The King Horse, who was his own, must surely be one of these. It seemed clear to me,
therefore, that we ought to meet. I had heard he was only five years old. "So," I thought, "though he is the
bigger, I am the elder. It is for me to speak first."
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Next time the Master of the Horse went down to choose colts for the chariots, I got him to take me.
While he did his work, he left me with a groom; who presently drew in the dust a gambling board, and
fell to play with a friend. Soon they forgot me. I climbed the palisade, and went seeking the King Horse.

The horses of Troizen are pure-bred Hellene. We have never crossed them with the little strain of the
Shore People, whom we took the land from. When I was in with them, they looked very tall. As I
reached up to-pat one, I heard the Horse Master shout behind me; but I closed my ears. "Everyone gives
me orders," I thought. "It comes of having no father. I wish I were the King Horse; no one gives them to
him." Then I saw him, standing by himself on a little knoll, watching the end of the pasture where they
were choosing colts. I went nearer, thinking, as every child thinks once for the first time, "Here is beauty."

He had heard me, and turned to look. I held out my hand, as I did in the stables, and called, "Son of
Poseidon!" On this he came trotting up to me, just as the stable horses did. I had brought a lump of salt,
and held it out to him.

There was some commotion behind me. The groom bawled out, and looking round I saw the Horse
Master beating him. My turn would be next, I thought; men were waving at me from the railings, and
cursing each other. I felt safer where I was. The King Horse was so near that I could see the lashes of his
dark eyes. His forelock fell between them like a white waterfall between shining stones. His teeth were as
big as the ivory plates upon a war helm; but his lip, when he licked the salt out of my palm, felt softer than
my mother's breast. When the salt was finished, he brushed my cheek with his, and snuffed at my hair.
Then he trotted back to his hillock, whisking his long tail. His feet, with which as I learned later he had
killed a mountain lion, sounded neat on the meadow, like a dancer's.

Now I found myself snatched from all sides, and hustled from the pasture. It surprised me to see the
Horse Master as pale as a sick man. He heaved me on his mount in silence, and hardly spoke all the way
home. After so much to-do, I feared my grandfather himself would beat me. He gave me a long look as I
came near; but all he said was, "Theseus, you went to the horse field as Peiros' guest. It was unmannerly
to give him trouble. A nursing mare might have bitten your arm off. I forbid you to go again."

This happened when I was six years old; and the Horse Feast fell next year.

It was the chief of all feasts at Troizen. The Palace was a week getting ready. First my mother took the
women down to the river Hyllikos, to wash the clothes. They were loaded on mules and brought down to
the clearest water, the basin under the fall. Even in drought the Hyllikos never fails or muddies; but now in
summer it was low. The old women rubbed light things at the water's edge, and beat them on the stones;
the girls picked up their petticoats and trod the heavy mantles and blankets in mid-stream. One played a
pipe, which they kept time to, splashing and laughing. When the wash was drying on the sunny boulders,
they stripped and bathed, taking me in with them. That was the last time I was allowed there; my mother
saw that I understood the jokes.