"Mary Stewart - The Arthurian Saga 02 - The Hollow Hills" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

"How does the hand feel?"

"Better. There's no poison there; I know the feel of it. I'll give you no more trouble, Gandar, so stop
treating me like a sick man. I'm well enough, now that I've slept. Get yourself to bed, and forget about
me. Good night."

When he had gone I lay listening to the sounds of the sea, and trying to gather, from the god-filled dark,
the courage I would need for my visit to the dead.


Courage or no, another day passed before I found the strength to leave my chamber. Then I went at
dusk to the great hall where they had put the old Duke's body. Tomorrow he would be taken to Tintagel
for burial among his fathers. Now he lay alone, save for the guards, in the echoing hall where he had
feasted his peers and given orders for his last battle.

The place was cold, silent but for the sounds of wind and sea. The wind had changed and now blew
from the northwest, bringing with it the chill and promise of rain. There was neither glazing nor horn in the
windows, and the draught stirred the torches in their iron brackets, sending them sideways, dim and
smoking, to blacken the walls. It was a stark, comfortless place, bare of paint, or tiling, or carved wood;
one remembered that Dimilioc was simply the fortress of a fighting man; it was doubtful if Ygraine had
ever been here. The ashes in the hearth were days old, the half-burned logs dewed with damp.

The Duke's body lay on a high bier in the center of the hall, covered with his war cloak. The scarlet with
the double border of silver and the white badge of the Boar was as I had seen it at my father's side in
battle. I had seen it, too, on Uther as I led him disguised into Gorlois' castle and his bed. Now the heavy
folds hung to the ground, and beneath them the body had shrunk and flattened, no more than a husk of
the tall old man I remembered. They had left his face uncovered. The flesh had sunk, grey as twice-used
tallow, till the face was a moulded skull, showing only the ghost of a likeness to the Gorlois I had known.
The coins on his eyes had already sunk into the flesh. His hair was hidden by his war helm, but the
familiar grey beard jutted over the badge of the Boar on his chest.

I wondered, as I went forward soft-footed over the stone floor, by which god Gorlois had lived, and to
which god he had gone in dying. There was nothing here to show. Christians, like other men, put coins on
the eyes. I remembered other death-beds, and the press of spirits waiting round them; there was nothing
here. But he had been dead three days, and perhaps his spirit had already gone through that bare and
windy gap in the wall. Perhaps it had already gone too far for me to reach it and make my peace.

I stood at the foot of his bier, the man I had betrayed, the friend of my father Ambrosius the High King. I
remembered the night he had come to ask me for my help for his young wife, and how he had said to me:
"There are not many men I'd trust just now, but I trust you. You're your father's son." And how I had
said nothing, but watched the firelight stain his face red like blood, and waited my chance to lead the
King to his wife's bed.

It is one thing to have the gift of seeing the spirits and hearing the gods who move about us as we come
and go; but it is a gift of darkness as well as light. The shapes of death come as clear as those of life. One
cannot be visited by the future without being haunted by the past; one cannot taste comfort and glory
without the bitter sting and fury of one's own past deeds. Whatever I had thought to encounter near the
dead body of the Duke of Cornwall, it would hold no comfort and no peace for me. A man like Uther
Pendragon, who killed in open battle and open air, would think no more of this than a dead man dead.
But I, who in obeying the gods had trusted them even as the Duke had trusted me, had known that I