"T. H. White - The Once and Future King" - читать интересную книгу автора (White T.H)

"I don't care if it does or if it don't. I said Woe!"
"Well, whoa, then."
And the magic barge whoaed, just where the currachs were usually drawn up. The three knights got out,
and it could be seen that the third was a black man. He was a learned paynim or saracen, called Sir
Palomides.
"Happy landing," said Sir Palomides, "by golly!"
The people came from everywhere, silently, vaguely. When they were near the knights, they walked
slowly, but in the remoter distance they were running. Men, women and children were scuttling over the
dunes or down from the castle cliff, only to break into the crawling pace as soon as they were near. At a
distance of twenty yards, they halted altogether. They made a ring, staring at the newcomers mutely, like
people staring at pictures in the Uffizzi. They studied them. There was no hurry now, no need to dash off
to the next picture. Indeed, there were no other picturesтАФhad been no others, except for the accustomed
scenes of Lothian, since they were born. Their stare was not exactly an offensive one, nor was it
friendly. Pictures exist to be absorbed. It began at the feet, especially as the strangers were dressed in
outlandish clothes like knights-in-armour, and it mastered the texture, the construction, the articulation

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and the probable price of their sabathons. Then it went on to the greaves, the cuisses, and so up. It might
take half an hour to reach the face, which was to be examined last of all.
The Gaels stood round the Galls with their mouths open, while the village children shouted the news in
the distance and Mother Morlan came jogging with her skirts tucked up and the currachs at sea came
rowing madly home. The young princelings of Lothian got off their donkeys as if in a trance, and joined
the circle. The circle itself began to press inward on its focus, moving as slowly and as silently as the
minute hand of a clock, except for the suppressed shouts from the late arrivals who fell silent
thelmselves as soon as they were within the influence. The circle was contracting because it wanted to
touch the knightsтАФnot now, not for half an hour or so, not until the examination was over, perhaps
never. But it would have liked to touch them in the end, partly to be sure that they were real, partly to
sum up the price of their clothes. And, as the pricing was continued, three things began to happen.
Mother Morlan and the auld wives started to say the rosary, while the young women pinched each other
and giggledтАФthe men, having doffed their caps in deference to the praying, began to exchange in Gaelic
such remarks as "Look at the black man, God between us and harm," or "Do they be naked at bedtime,
or how do they get the iron pots off them whatever?" тАФand, in the minds of both women and men,
irrespective of age or circumstance, there began to grow, almost visibly, almost tangibly, the enormous,
the incalculable miasma which is the leading feature of the Gaelic brain.
These were Knights of the Sassenach, they were thinkingтАФfor they could tell by the armourтАФand, if so,
knights of that very King Arthur against whom their own king had for the second time revolted. Had
they come, with typical Sassenach cunning, so as to take King Lot in the rear? Had they come, as
representatives of the feudal overlordтАФthe LandlordтАФso as to make an assessment for the next scutage?
Were they Fifth Columnists? More complicated even than thisтАФfor surely no Sassenach could be so
simple as to come in the garb of the SassenachтАФwere they perhaps not representatives of King Arthur at
all? Were they, for some purpose almost too cunning for belief, only disguised as thelmselves? Where
was the catch? There always was one in everything.
The people of the circle closed in, their jaws dropping even further, their crooked bodies hunching into
the shapes of sacks and scarecrows, their small eyes glinting in every direction with unfathomable
subtlety, their faces assuming an expression of dogged stupidity even more vacant than they actually
were.
The knights drew closer for protection. In point of fact, they did not know that England was at war with