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

learning, and Albert the Great was made a bishop. One of them who was called Baptista Porta seems to
have invented the cinemaтАФthough he sensibly decided not to develop it.
As for aircraft, in the tenth century a monk called Aethelmaer was experimenting with them, and might
have succeeded but for an accident in adjusting of his tail unit. He crashed "quod"тАФsays William of
MalmesburyтАФ"caudam in posteriori parte oblitus fuerat adaptare."
Even in modernity, the ages of darkness were not so far behind us. At least they had some sparkling
names for their fiercer cocktails: which they called Huffe Cap, Mad Dog, Father Whoresonne, Angel's
Food, Dragon's Milke, Go to the Wall, Stride Wide, and Lift Leg.
The view from the window was delightful, though in some cases it was odd. Where we have hedged
fields and parklands, they had village communities, moorlands, fens and forests of enormous size.

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Incipit%20Liber%20Quartus.html (15 of 114)14-10-2007 15:44:46
 file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Incipit%20Liber%20Quartus.html


Sherwood stretched for hundreds of miles, from Nottingham to the middle of York. The busyness that
went on in the island, the bee-keeping and the rook-scaring and the ploughing with oxen: for these you
must look in the Lutterell Psalter, where they are beautifully drawn. In those days, if you had been
interested by peculiar things, perhaps you would have had the luck to notice a knight-in-armour riding
past the window. You would have noticed his head, which was shaved round the ears and at the back:
but on the top his hair rose up like a Japanese doll's, so that the skull looked like a cottage loaf. This top-
knot made an excellent shock-absorber, under his helm. The next man to pass might have been a clerk,
perhaps on an ambler, and the hair of this one would have been exactly the opposite of the knight'sтАФfor
he would have been completely bald on top, because of his tonsure. When he had gone to the bishop to
be made a clerk in the first place, he had taken a pair of scissors with him. Next, if you wanted some
peculiar person to ride by, there might have come a crusader who had promised to deliver the grave of
God. You would have expected the cross on his surcoat, no doubt, but you might not have realized that
he was so delighted with the whole affair that he put the same symbol almost everywhere that it could be
made to go. Like a new Boy Scout, transported with enthusiasm, he would have stuck the cross on his
escutcheon, on his coat, on his helm, on his saddle, and on the horse's curb. The next man to pass the
window might have been one sort of Cistercian lay-brother, whom you would have expected to be a
learned man because of his cloth. But no, he was ex officio an illiterate. It was his business to stick the
leaden seals on papal bulls, and, so as to preserve the Secrecy of the Pope, they used to make sure that
he could not read a word. Now might come a Saxon wearing the beard and a sort of Phrygian cap, as a
sign of defianceтАФnow a knight from the Marches of the Northern border. The latter, because he lived by
raiding during the night-time, would have borne a moon and stars on azure in his coat. Here might be
some smoke in the landscape, rising from the bellows of an alchemist who was, most sensibly, trying to
turn lead to gold тАФan art which has remained beyond us to the present day, though we are getting nearer
to it with atomic fusion. There, far away in the environs of a monastery, you might have seen a
procession of angry monks making a barefoot march round their foundationтАФbut they might have been
walking against the sun, in malediction, because they had fallen out with the abbot Perhaps, if you
looked in this direction, you would see a vineyard fenced with bonesтАФit had been discovered, during
the early years of Arthur, that bones made an excellent fence for vineyards, graveyards, or even for forts
тАФand perhaps, if you looked in the other, you could see a castle door that looked like a keeper's gallows.
It would have been completely covered with the nailed heads of wolves, bears, stags, and so forth. Far
away, over there to the left, perhaps there would be a tournament going on according to the laws laid
down by Geoffrey de Preully, and the Kings-at-arms would be carefully examining the combatants, like
referees before a boxing match, to see that they were not stuck to their saddles. The referees at a judicial