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

upon my hand, his soft lip warm and moving.

I was sitting among the house dogs, at the doorway end of the Great Hall, when my grandfather passed
through, and spoke to me in greeting.

I got up, and answered; for one did not forget he was the King. But I stood looking down, and stroking
my toe along a crack in the flagstones. Because of the dogs, I had not heard him coming, or I would have
been gone. "If he could do this," I had been thinking, "how can one trust the gods?"

He spoke again, but I only said "Yes," and would not look at him. I could feel him high above me,
standing in thought. Presently he said, "Come with me."

I followed him up the corner stairs to his own room above. He had been born there, and got my mother
and his sons, and it was the room he died in. Then I had been there seldom; in his old age he lived all day
in it, for it faced south, and the chimney of the Great Hall went through to warm it. The royal bed at the
far end was seven feet long by six feet wide, made of polished cypress, inlaid and carved. The blue wool
cover with its border of flying cranes had taken my grandmother half a year on the great loom. There was
a bronze-bound chest by it, for his clothes; and for his jewels an ivory coffer on a painted stand. His arms
hung on the wall: shield, bow, longsword and dagger, his hunting knife, and his tall-plumed helmet of
quilted hide, lined with crimson leather the worse for wear. There was not much else, except the skins on
the floor and a chair. He sat, and motioned me to the footstool.

Muffled up the stairway came the noises of the Hall: women scrubbing the long trestles with sand, and
scolding men out of their way; a scuffle and a laugh. My grandfather's head cocked, like an old dog's at a
footstep. Then he rested his hands on the chair-arms carved with lions, and said, "Well, Theseus? Why
are you angry?"

I looked up as far as his hand. His fingers curved into a lion's open mouth; on his forefinger was the royal
ring of Troizen, with the Mother being worshipped on a pillar. I pulled at the bearskin on the floor, and
was silent.

"When you are a king," he said, "you will do better than we do here. Only the ugly and the base shall die;
what is brave and beautiful shall live for ever. That is how you will rule your kingdom?"

To see if he was mocking me, I looked at his face. Then it was as if I had only dreamed the priest with
the cleaver. He reached out and drew me in against his knees, and dug his fingers in my hair as he did
with his dogs when they came up to be noticed.

"You knew the King Horse; he was your friend. So you know if it was his own choice to be King, or
not." I sat silent, remembering the great horse-fight and the war calls. "You know he lived like a king,
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with first pick of the feed, and any mare he wanted; and no one asked him to work for it."

I opened my mouth, and said, "He had to fight for it."

"Yes, that is true. Later, when he was past his best, a younger stallion would have come, and won the