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

"But he is your father!"
"So far as that goes, I did not ask to be born. I suppose he did that to amuse himself, also."
"I see."
She sat, twisting her sewing in her hands, trying to think.
"Why do you hate my husband?" she asked, almost with wonder.

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"I don't hate him. I despise him."
"He didn't know," she explained gently, "that your mother was his sister, when it happened."
"And I suppose he didn't know that I was his son, when he put us out in the boat?"
"He was scarcely nineteen, Mordred. They had frightened him with prophecies, and he did what they
made him."
"My mother was a good woman until she met King Arthur. She had a happy home with Lot of Orkney,
and she bore him four brave sons. What happened after?"
"But she was more than twice his age! I should have thought..."
He stopped her, holding up his hand.
"You are speaking of my mother."
"I am sorry, Mordred, but really..."
"I loved my mother."
"Mordred..."
"King Arthur came to a woman who was faithful to her husband. When he left, she was a wanton. She
ended her life in a naked bed with Sir Lamorak, justly slain by her own child."
"Mordred, it is no good saying anything if you can't see... if you can't believe that Arthur is kind and
sorry and in trouble. He is fond of you. He was saying how he loved you only a day or two before this
misery began...."
"He can keep his love."
"He has been so fair," she pleaded.
"The just and noble kingl Yes, it is easy to be fair, when it is over. That is the amusing part. Justice! He,
can keep that too."
She said, trying to speak steadily: "If you proclaim yourself king, they will come from France to fight
you. Then we shall have a double war instead of a single one, and it will be fought in England. The
whole fellowship will be blotted out."
He smiled in pure delight.
"It seems unbelievable," she said, pinching the embroidery.
There was nothing she could do. For a moment it crossed her mind that if she humiliated herself to him,
knelt down on her stiff old knees to plead for mercy, he might be soothed. But it was evidently hopeless.


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He was fixed in a course, like a ball in a groove. Even his conversation was, as it were, a spoken part. It
would end according to the script.
"Mordred," she said helplessly, "have pity on the country people, if you will have none on Arthur or on
me."
He pushed the pug off his lap and stood up, smiling at her with crazy satisfaction. He stretched himself,