"R Garcia Y Robertson - Strongbow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

cradle, as soft and compelling as the rolling sea. Flickering candlelight, the
rising and falling rhythm, the taste of honey, all drew Clare in. Cares fell
away. Her eyes closed. She let herself drift away on Nuala's song. The world
around her disappeared.

Waiting in the darkness behind her eyelids was her spirit guide. Maid Marian.
Mary as maiden, young and blonde, as ripe and wild as the greenwood. Dressed in
a forest-colored tunic and hose, she had a huntsman's cap and horn, and carried
a bow. The mannish garb showed she defied men's laws and assumed their
prerogatives, unfettered by dresses and convention. Her bow symbolized her power
over life and death. Her cap and horn meant she hunted for souls.

She asked, "Why have you come, dear daughter?"

"I have come to see my mother," Clare whispered back.

"And so you have," Marian spun about and spread her arms.

"My Earthly mother," Clare explained.

Maid Marian smiled, showing sly dimples, looking as merry and roguish as the
outlaws who worshipped her. "I knew that."

In a twinkling Clare found herself standing in a narrow stone cell furnished
with a plain oak chair and table. A woman slept on the low bed. The only
decoration was a little picture of the Virgin on the wall, lighted by wax
candles. Clare knew at once she was at Fontevrault Abbey on the banks of the
Vienne, near Chion. The woman sleeping on the bed was her mother.

Marian admired her likeness on the wall, while Clare stared down at her sleeping
mother, envious of her serenity and shining chestnut hair. She always felt plain
compared to her mother. Mother had been the great lady, mistress to an earl, a
damsel for poets to sing of. Clare was the little cast-off bastard, an
inconvenience to everyone.

She also envied her mother's security, sleeping peacefully in this tight stone
cell. Fontevrault was an utterly amazing place in a world otherwise ruled by
men. Here the monks and lay brothers were completely subject to the Abbess, who
by law had to be a widowed nun -- both chaste and maternal, and accustomed to
managing a household. Under women's rule Fontevrault had become a refuge for
battered wives, poor widows, prostitutes, discarded mistresses, incest victims,
outcast concubines, and surplus princesses who could not find suitable
marriages.

Mother was none of these. Her husband, now dying, had been hopelessly devoted to
her. She was neither battered, nor sick, nor outcast. She was not a nun, nor
even a lay sister. But she was beautiful, charmingly willful, and adept at
landing on her feet. She had found the one place in Christendom where no man's
hand could reach her.