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

who invented the adage, which we have translated from sheep into ships.
Towards the remoter distance perhaps a bankrupt might have been getting a vigorous whacking in some
muscovite market-placeтАФnot out of ill-feeling toward himself, but in the fervent hope that if only he
squealed loud enough some of his friends or relations in the crowd would pay his debts out of
commiseration. Further south, towards the Mediterranean basin, you might have seen a seaman being
punished for gambling, under a law of Richard Coeur de Lion. The punishment consisted in being
thrown into the water three times from the mainmast tree, and his comrades used to acclaim each belly-
flopper with a cheer. A third ingenious punishment might possibly have been inflicted in the market-
place below you. A wine merchant whose wares were of bad quality would have been stuck in the
pillory and there he would have been made to drink an excessive quantity of his own liquorтАФafter
which the rest would be poured over his head. What a headache next morning! In this direction, if you
happened to be broad-minded, you might have been amused to see the saucy Alisoun who cried "Tee-
Heel" after she had been given the unusual kiss which Chaucer tells about. In that one, you might notice
an exasperated Miller and his family, trying to straighten out the hurrah's nest which happened last night
through the displacement of a cradle, as the Reeve tells in his tale. A schoolboy who had had the good
luck and the initiative to shoot an Earl of Salisbury dead, with one of the new-fangled cannons, might be
being idolized by his fellow scholars in the playground of yonder monastery school. Plum trees, only
lately introduced like Merlyn's mulberry, might be shedding blossom under the light of eve beside the
playground. Another little boy, this time a king of four years old in Scotland, might be sadly issuing a
royal mandate to his Nannie, which empowered her to spank him without being guilty of High Treason.
A disreputable army, who used to live by the sword as a trained band, might be begging its bread from
door to door тАФ a good fate for all armies тАФ and a man who had taken sanctuary in that church away to
the east there, might have had his leg cut off because he had taken half a step outside the door. In the
same sanctuary there would be quite a congeries of forgers, thieves, murderers and debtors, all busy
forging away or sharpening their knives for the evening's outing, in the restful seclusion of the church

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where they could not be arrested. The worst that could happen to them, once they had got their
sanctuary, was banishment. Then they would have had to walk to Dover, always keeping to the middle
of the road and clutching a crucifix тАФ if they let go of it for a moment, you were allowed to attack them
тАФ and, once there, if they could not get a boat immediately, they would have had to walk into the sea
daily up to their necks, to prove that they were really trying.
Did you know that in these dark ages which were visible from Guenever's window, there was so much
decency in the world that the Catholic Church could impose a peace to all their fighting тАФ which it
called The Truce of God тАФ and which lasted from Wednesday to Monday, as well as during the whole
of Advent and Lent? Do you think that they, with their Battles, Famine, Black Death and Serfdom, were
less enlightened than we are, with our Wars, Blockade, Influenza and Conscription? Even if they were
foolish enough to believe that the earth was the centre of the universe, do we not ourselves believe that
man is the fine flower of creation? If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in
our few hundred, altered out of recognition?


4
Lancelot and Guenever looked over the sundown of chivalry, from the tower window. Their black
profiles stood out in silhouette against the setting light. Lancelot's, the old ugly man's, was the outline of
a gargoyle. It might have looked in hideous meditation from Notre Dame, his contemporary church. But,
in its maturity, it was nobler than before. The lines of ugliness had sunk to rest as lines of strength. Like