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

change rings?" They changed them.
"God be with my ring," she said, "as I am with it."
Lancelot turned away and went to the door. They were calling out: "Come out of the Queen's chamber!"
"Traitor to the Kingl" "Open the door!" They were making as much noise as possible, to aid the scandal.
He stood facing the tumult, with legs apart, and answered them in the language of honour.
"Leave your noise, Sir Mordred, and take my council. Go ye all from this chamber door, and make not
such crying and such manner of slander as ye do. An ye will depart, and make no more noise, I shall

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tomorn appear before the King: and then it will be seen which of you all, outher else you all, will accuse
me of treason. There I shall answer you as a knight should, that hither I came for no manner of mal
engine; and I will prove that there, and make it good upon you with my hands."
"Fie on thee, traitor," cried the voice of Mordred. "We will have thee maugre thy head, and slay thee if
we list."
Another voice shouted: "Let thee wit we have the choice of King Arthur, to save thee or to slay thee,"
Lancelot dropped the visor over his shadowed face and pushed the door-bar sideways with his point. The
stout wood, crashing open, showed a lintel crammed with iron men and tossing torches.
"Ah sirs," he said with a grimness, "is there none other grace with you? Then keep yourselves."


8
The Gawaine clan was waiting in the Justice Room, a week later. The room looked different by daylight,
because the windows were uncovered. It was no longer a box, no longer that faintly threatening or
deceitful blandness of four walls, no longer the kind of arras trap which tempted Hamlet's rapier to prick
about for rats. The afternoon sunlight streamed in at the casements, illuminating the tapestry of
Batbsheba, as she sat with her two round breasts in a tub on the battlements of a castle, which seemed to
have been built from children's bricksтАФpicking out David, on the roof next door, with a crown and a
beard and a harpтАФrippling from a hundred horses, parallel lances, helms and suits of armour, which
thronged the battle scene in which Uriah was killed. Uriah himself was tumbling from his horse, like
rather an inexperienced diver, under the influence of a stroke which one of the opposing knights had
delivered in the region of his midriff. The sword was half-way through his body, so that the poor man
was coming in two pieces, and a lot of realistic vermilion worms were gushing out of the wound in a
grisly manner, which were intended to be his guts.
Gawaine sat gloomily on one of the side benches placed there for petitioners, with his arms folded and
his head against the arras. Gaheris, perched on the long table, was fiddling with the braces of a leather
hood for a hawk. He was trying to alter them so that they would shut more firmly, and, as the
interlacement of such braces was complicated, he had got himself in a muddle. Gareth was standing
beside him, itching to get the hood into his own hands, because he was certain that he could set the
matter right. Mordred, with a white face and his arm in a sling, was leaning at the embrasure of one of
the windows, looking out. He was still in pain.
"It ought to go under the slit," said Gareth.

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"I know, I know. But I am trying to put this one through first."