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

during the night. But in my memory of this time they are the voices of dead men, restless in the dark.

April went by, wet and chill, with winds that searched you to the bone. This was the bad time, empty
except for pain, and idle except for the barest efforts to live. I believe I ate very little; water and fruit and
black bread was my staple diet. My clothes, never sumptuous, became threadbare with no one to care
for them, and then ragged. A stranger seeing me walking the hill paths would have taken me for a beggar.
Days passed when I did little but huddle over the smoking fire. My chest of books was unopened, my
harp was left where it stood. Even had my hand been whole, I could have made no music. As for magic,
I dared not put myself to the test again.

But gradually, like Ygraine waiting in her cold castle to the south, I slid into a sort of calm acceptance.
As the weeks went by my hand healed, cleanly enough. I was left with two stiff fingers, and a scar along
the outer edge of the palm, but the stiffness passed with time, and the scar never troubled me. And as
time passed the other wounds healed, too. I grew used to loneliness, as I had been accustomed to
solitude, and the nightmares ceased. Then as May drew on the winds changed, grew warm, and grass
and flowers came springing. The grey clouds packed away, and the valley was full of sunlight. I sat for
hours in the sun at the mouth of the cave, reading, or preparing the plants I had gathered, or from time to
time watching тАФ but no more than idly тАФ for the approach of a rider which would mean a message.
(Even so, I thought, must my old teacher Galapas have sat here many a time in the sunlight, looking down
the valley where, one day, a small boy would come riding.) And I built up again my stock of plants and
herbs, wandering farther and farther from the cave as my strength came back to me. I never went into the
town, but now and again when poor folk came for medicines or for healing, they brought snatches of
news. The King had married Ygraine with as much pomp and ceremony as such a hasty union would
permit, and he had seemed merry enough since the wedding, though quicker to anger than he used to be,
and would have sudden morose fits when folk learned to avoid him. As for the Queen, she was silent,
acceding in everything to the King's wishes, but rumour had it that her looks were heavy, as if she
mourned in secret...

Here my informant shot a quick sidelong look at me, and I saw his fingers move to make the sign against
enchantment. I let him go on, asking no more questions. The news would come to me in its own time.


It came almost three months after my return to Bryn Myrddin.

One day in June, when a hot morning sun was just lifting the mist from the grass, I went up the hill to find
my horse, which I had tethered out to graze on the grassland above the cave. The air was still, and the
sky was full of singing larks. Over the green mound where Galapas lay buried the blackthorns showed
green leaves budding through fading snowbanks of flowers, and bluebells were thick among the fern.

I doubt if I actually needed to tether my horse. I usually carried with me the remnants of the bread my
benefactors left for me, so when he saw me coming he would advance to the end of his tether and stand
waiting, expectant.

But not today. He was standing at the far stretch of his rope, on the edge of the hill, head up and ears
pricked, apparently watching something away down the valley. I walked over to him and, while he
nuzzled in my hand for the bread, looked where he had been looking.

From this height I could see the town ofMaridunum , small in the distance, clinging to the north bank of
the placid Tywy as it wound its way down its wide green valley towards the sea. The town, with its
arched stone bridge and its harbour, lies just where the river widens towards the estuary. There was the