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

"... by getting behind the bully first, and then by being a little careful."
"Behind our famous Double Blue..."
"... Sir Lancelotl"
The position was, and perhaps it may as well be laboured for the last time, that Arthur's father had killed
the Earl of Cornwall. He had killed the man because he wanted to enjoy the wife. On the night of the
Earl's killing, Arthur had been conceived upon the unfortunate Countess. Being born too soon for the
various conventions of mourning, marriage, and so forth, he had been secretly put to nurse with Sir
Ector of the Forest Sauvage. He had grown up in ignorance of his parentage until, when he was a young
boy of nineteen summers, he had fallen in with Morgause, without knowing that she was one of his half-
sisters by the Countess and the slaughtered Earl. This half-sister, already the mother of Gawaine,
Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth, had been twice the age of the young KingтАФand she had successfully
seduced him. The offspring of their union had been Mordred, who had been brought up alone with his
mother, in the barbarous remoteness of the outer Isles. He had been brought up alone with Morgause,
because he was so much younger than the rest of the family. The others had already flown to the King's
courtтАФforced there by ambition because it was the greatest court in the world, or else to escape their
mother. Mordred had been left to be dominated by her, with her ancestral grudge against the King and
her personal spite. For, although she had contrived to seduce young Arthur in his nonage, he had
escaped herтАФ to settle down with Guenever as his wife. Morgause, brooding in the North with the one
child who remained to her, had concentrated her maternal powers on the crooked boy. She had loved and
forgotten him by turns, an insatiable carnivore who lived on the affections of her dogs, her children and
her lovers. Eventually one of the other sons had cut her head off in a storm of jealousy, on discovering
her in bed at the age of seventy with a young man called Sir Lamorak. MordredтАФconfused between the
loves and hatreds of his frightful homeтАФhad at the time been a party to her assassination. Now, in the
court of a father who had been considerate enough to hide the story of his birth, the wretched son found
himself the acknowledged brother of Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris and GarethтАФfound himself lovingly
treated by the King-father whom his mother had taught him to hate with all his heartтАФfound himself
misshapen, intelligent, critical, in a civilization which was too straightforward for purely intellectual
criticismтАФfound himself, finally, the heir to a northern culture which has always been antagonistic to
the blunt morals of the south.



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The page who had brought Sir Agravaine's hippocras came in from the cloister door. He bowed double,
with the exaggerated courtesy which was expected of pages before they became esquires on their way to
knighthood, and announced: "Sir Gawaine, Sir Gaheris, Sir Gareth."
The three brothers followed him, boisterous from the open air and their recent doings, so that now the
clan was complete. All of them, except Mordred, had wives of their own tucked away somewhereтАФbut
nobody ever saw them. Few saw the men thelmselves separate for long. There was something childish
about them when they were together, which was attractive rather than the reverse. Perhaps there was
something childish about all the paladins of Arthur's storyтАФif being simple is the same as childishness.
Gawaine, who was the head of the family, walked first, with a falcon in juvenile plumage on his fist. The
burly fellow had pale hairs in his red head now. Over the ears it was yellowish, the colour of a ferret's,
and would soon be white. Gaheris looked like him, or at least he was more like him than the others. But
his was a milder copy; not so red, nor so strong, nor so big, nor so obstinate. Indeed, he was a bit of a
fool. Gareth, the youngest of the full brothers, had retained the traces of his youth. He walked with a