"Wilbur Smith - Courtney 03 - Blue Horizon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

"The master thinks it is time she learned to do so. She, too, will have a new room and you will have the one beside her. She will have a bell to call you if she needs you in the night."

The girls' new apartments were on the floor below the library and Mijnheer's bedroom suite. Louisa made a game of the move, and stilled Gertruda's misgivings. They took all her dolls up and held a party for them to introduce them to their new quarters. Louisa had learned to speak in a different voice for each toy, a trick that never failed to reduce Gertruda to shrieks of laughter. When each of her dolls in turn had told Gertruda how happy they were with their new home, she was convinced.

Louisa's own room was light and spacious. The furnishings were quite splendid, with velvet curtains and gilt chairs and bedstead. There was a feather mattress on the bed, and thick blankets. There was even a fireplace with a marble surround, although Stals cautioned her that she would be rationed to a single bucket of coal a week. But, wonder of wonders, there was a tiny cubicle that contained a commode with a lid that lifted to reveal a carved seat and the porcelain chamber-pot under it. Louisa was in a haze of delight as she crept into bed that first night. It seemed that she had never been warm in her life until this evening.

She came out of a deep, dreamless sleep and lay awake trying to place what had woken her. It must have been well past midnight for it was dark and the house was silent. Then the sound came again, and her heart raced. It was footsteps, but they came from the panelled wall at the far side of the room. She was gripped by superstitious dread, and could neither move nor scream. Then she heard the creak of a door opening, and a ghostly light glowed out of nowhere. Slowly a panel in the far wall swung wide open and a spectral figure stepped into the room. It was a tall, bearded man dressed in breeches and a white shirt with leg-o'-mutton sleeves and a high stock.

"Louisa!" His voice was hollow and echoed strangely. It was just the voice that she would have expected from a ghost. She pulled the covers over her head and lay without breathing. She heard footsteps crossing to her bedside, and she could see the wavering light through a slit in the bedclothes. The footsteps stopped beside her and suddenly her coverings were flung back. This time she screamed, but she knew it was

futile: next door Gertruda would be sleeping in a mindless stupor from which nothing short of an earthquake could waken her, and there were only the two of them on this floor of Huis Brabant. She stared at the face above her, so far gone in terror that she did not recognize him even in the lantern-light.

"Don't be afraid, child. I will not hurt you."

"Oh, Mijnheer!" She flung herself against his chest and clung to him with all the strength of her relief. "I thought you were a ghost."

"There, child." He stroked her hair. "It's all over. There is nothing to be afraid of." It took her a long time to become calm again. Then he said, "I won't leave you here alone. Come with me."

He took her hand, and she followed him trustingly in her cotton nightdress on bare feet. He led her through the door in the panel. A spiral staircase was concealed behind it. They went up it, then through another secret doorway. Suddenly they were in a magnificent chamber, so spacious that even with fifty candles burning in their chandeliers the far reaches of the room and the ceilings were in shadow. He led her to the fireplace in which tall yellow flames leaped and twisted.

He embraced her and stroked her hair. "Did you think I had forgotten you?"

She nodded. "I thought I had made you angry, and that you did not like me any more."

He chuckled and lifted her face to the light. "What a beautiful little thing you are. This is how angry I am and how much I dislike you." He kissed her mouth and she tasted the cheroot on his lips, a strong aromatic flavour that made her feel safe and secure. At last he broke the embrace and seated her on the sofa in front of the fire. He went to a table on which stood crystal glasses and a decanter of ruby red liquor. He poured a glass and brought it to her. "Drink this. It will chase away the bad thoughts."

She choked and coughed at the sting of the liquor, but then a marvelous glow spread through her, to her toes and fingertips. He sat beside her, stroked her hair and spoke to her softly, telling her how pretty she was, what a good girl, and how he had missed her. Lulled by the warmth in her belly and his mesmeric voice she leaned her head on his chest. He lifted the hem of her nightdress over her head and she wriggled out of it. Then she was naked. In the candlelight her childlike body was pale and smooth as cream in a jug. She felt no shame as he fondled her, and kissed her face. She turned this way and that at the gentle urging of his hands.

Suddenly he stood up and she watched him as he pulled off his shirt and breeches. When he came back to the sofa and stood in front of her

he did not have to guide her hands and she reached for him naturally. She gazed at his sex as she slid back the loose skin to reveal the shiny plum-coloured head, as he had taught her. Then he reached down, removed her hands and sank to the floor in front of her. He pushed apart her knees and laid her back on the velvet-covered sofa. He lowered his face and she felt his moustaches tickling the inside of her thighs, then moving higher.

"What are you doing?" she cried, with alarm. He had not done this before, and she tried to sit up. He held her down and suddenly she cried out and sank her fingernails into his shoulders. His mouth had settled on her most secret parts. The sensation was so intense that she feared for a moment she might faint.

It was not every night that he came down the spiral staircase to fetch her. On many nights there was the rumble of carriage wheels on the cobbled streets below Louisa's window. She blew out her candle and peeped through the curtains to watch Mijnheer van Ritters' guests arriving for another banquet or fashionable soiree. Long after they had left she lay awake, hoping to hear his footstep on the staircase, but she was usually disappointed.

For weeks or even months at a time he was gone, sailing on one of his fine ships to places with strange and evocative names. While he was gone she was restless and bored. She found that she was even impatient with Gertruda, and unhappy with herself.

When he came back his presence filled the great house, and even the other servants were enlivened and excited by it. Suddenly all the waiting and pining were as if they had never happened as she heard him descending the staircase and leaped from her bed to meet him as he stepped through the secret door in the panelling. After that he devised a signal to summon her to his chamber so that he no longer had to come down to fetch her. At dinner time he would send a footman to deliver a red rose to Gertruda. None of the servants who delivered the bloom thought it odd: they all knew that Mijnheer had an inexplicable affection for his ugly slow-witted daughter. But on those nights the door at the top of the spiral staircase was unlocked, and when Louisa stepped through he was waiting for her.

These meetings were never the same. Every time he invented some new game for them to act out. He made her dress in fantastic costumes, play the role of milkmaid, stable-boy or princess. Sometimes he made her wear masks, the heads of demons and wild animals.

On other evenings they would study the pictures in the green book, and then enact the scenes they depicted. The first time he showed her the picture of the girl lying under the boy and his shaft buried in her to the hilt, she did not believe it was possible. But he was gentle, patient and considerate, so that when it happened there was little pain and only a few drops of her virgin blood on the sheets of the wide bed. Afterwards she felt a great sense of accomplishment and when she was alone she studied her lower body with awe. It amazed her that the parts she had been taught were unclean and sinful could be the seat of such delights. She was convinced now that there was nothing more that he could teach her. She believed that she had been able to pleasure him, and herself, in every conceivable way. But she was wrong.

He went away on one of his seemingly interminable voyages, this time to a place called St. Petersburg in Russia to visit the court of Pyotr Alekseyevich, whom other men called Peter the Great, and to expand his interests in the trade in precious furs. When he returned Louisa was in a fever of excitement, and this time she did not have long to wait for his summons. That evening a footman delivered a single red rose to Gertruda while Louisa was cutting up her roasted chicken.

"Why are you so happy, Louisa?" Gertruda demanded, as she danced around the bedroom.

"Because I love you, Gertie, and I love everybody in the world," Louisa sang.