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

On the feast day I woke at dawn. My old nurse dressed me in my best: my new doeskin drawers with
braided borders, my red belt rolled upon rope and clasped with crystal, and my necklace of gold beads.
When she had combed my hair, I went to see my mother dressing. She was just out of her bath, and they
were dropping her petticoat over her head. The seven-tiered flounces, sewn with gold drops and
pendants, clinked and glittered as she shook them out. When they clipped together her gold-worked
girdle and her bodice waist, she held her breath in hard and let it out laughing. Her breasts were as
smooth as milk, and the tips so rosy that she never painted them, though she was still wearing them bare,
not being, at that time, much above three and twenty.

They took her hair out of the crimping-plaits (it was darker than mine, about the color of polished
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bronze) and began to comb it. I ran outside on the terrace, which runs all round the royal rooms, for they
stand on the roof of the Great Hall. Morning was red, and the crimson-painted columns burned in it. I
could hear, down in the courtyard, the House Barons assembling in their war dress. This was what I had
waited for.

They came in by twos and threes, the bearded warriors talking, the young men laughing and scuffling,
shouting to friends, or feinting at each other with the butts of their spears. They had on their tall-plumed
leather helmets, circled with bronze or strengthened with rolls of hide. Their broad breasts and shoulders,
sleekly oiled, shone russet in the rosy light; their wide leather drawers stood stiffly out from the thigh,
making their lean waists, pulled in with the thick rolled sword-belts, look slenderer still. They waited,
exchanging news and chaff, and striking poses for the women, the young men lounging with the tops of
their tall shields propping their left armpits, their right arms stretched out grasping their spears. Their
upper lips were all fresh shaved, to make their new beards show clearer. I scanned the shield devices,
birds or fish or serpents worked upon the hide, picking out friends to hail, who raised their spears in
greeting. Seven or eight of them were uncles of mine. My grandfather had got them in the Palace on
various women of good blood, prizes of his old wars, or gifts of compliment from neighbor kings.

The land barons were coming in from their horses or their chariots; they too bare to the waist, for the day
was warm, but wearing all their jewels; even their boot tops had golden tassels. The sound of men's
voices grew louder and deeper and filled the air above the courtyard. I squared back my shoulders, and
nipped my belt in; gazed at a youth whose beard was starting, and counted years on my fingers.

Talaos came in, the War Leader; a son of my grandfather's youth, got upon a chief's wife taken in battle.
He had on his finest things: his prize helmet from the High King of Mycenae's funeral games, all plated,
head and cheeks, with the carved teeth of boars, and both his swords, the long one with the crystal
pommel which he sometimes let me draw, the short one with a leopard hunt inlaid in gold. The men
touched their spear shafts to their brows; he numbered them off with his eye, and went in to tell my
grandfather they were ready. Soon he came out, and standing on the great steps before the king-column
that carried the lintel, his beard jutting like a warship's prow, shouted, "The god goes forth!"

They all trooped out of the courtyard. As I craned to see, my grandfather's body servant came and
asked my mother's maid if the Lord Theseus was ready to go with the King.

I had supposed I should be going with my mother. So I think had she. But she sent word that I was