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

The voices faded. Others came and went in the darkness, but these were voices without blood,
belonging to the air. Perhaps I should have waited and waked to listen, but I lacked the courage. I
reached for sleep and drew it round me like a blanket, muffling pain and thought together in the merciful
dark.


When I opened my eyes again it was to darkness lit by calm candle-light. I was in a small chamber with
a barrel roof of stone and rough-hewn walls where the once bright paint had darkened and flaked away
with damp and neglect. But the room was clean. The floor of Cornish slate had been well scrubbed, and
the blankets that covered me were fresh-smelling and thick, and richly worked in bright patterns.

The door opened quietly, and a man came in. At first, against the stronger light beyond the doorway, I
could only see him as a man of middle height, broad shouldered and thickly built, dressed in a long plain
robe, with a round cap on his head. Then he came forward into the candle-light, and I saw that it was
Gandar, the chief physician who travelled with the King's armies. He stood over me, smiling.

"And about time."

"Gandar! It's good to see you. How long have I slept?"

"Since dusk yesterday, and now it's past midnight. It was what you needed. You looked like death when
they brought you in. But I must say it made my job a lot easier to have you unconscious."

I glanced down at the hand which lay, neatly bandaged, on the coverlet in front of me. My body was stiff
and sore inside its strapping, but the fierce pain had died to a dull aching. My mouth was swollen, and
tasted still of blood mingled with the sick-sweet remnants of the drug, but my headache had gone, and
the cut on my face had stopped hurting.

"I'm thankful you were here to do it," I said. I shifted the hand a little to ease it, but it was no use. "Will it
mend?"

"With the help of youth and good flesh, yes. There were three bones broken, but I think it's clean." He
looked at me curiously. "How did you come by it? It looked as if a horse had trodden on you and then
kicked your ribs in. But the cut on your face, that was a sword, surely?"

"Yes. I was in a fight."

His brows went up. "If that was a fight, then it wasn't fought by any rules I ever heard of. Tell me тАФ
wait, though, not yet. I'm on fire to know what happened тАФ we all are тАФ but you must eat first." He
went to the door and called, and presently a servant came in with a bowl of broth and some bread. I
could not manage the bread at first, but then sopped a little of it in the broth, and ate that. Gandar pulled
a stool up beside the bed, and waited in silence till I had finished. At length I pushed the bowl aside, and
he took it from me and set it on the floor.

"Now do you feel well enough to talk? The rumours are flying about like stinging gnats. You knew that
Gorlois was dead?"
"Yes." I looked about me. "I'm in Dimilioc itself, I take it? The fortress surrendered, then, after the Duke
was killed?"

"They opened the gates as soon as the King got back from Tintagel. He'd already had the news of the