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

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Incipit%20Liber%20Quartus.html (98 of 114)14-10-2007 15:44:46
 file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Incipit%20Liber%20Quartus.html




13
Anguish of Ireland had once dreamed of a wind which blew down all their castles and townsтАФand this
one was conspiring to do it. It was blowing round Benwick Castle on all the organ stops. The noises it
made sounded like inchoate masses of silk being pulled through trees, as we pull hair through a combтАФ
like heaps of sand pouring on fine sand from a scoopтАФlike gigantic linens being torn тАФlike drums in
distant battleтАФlike an endless snake switching through the world's undergrowth of trees and housesтАФ
like old men sighing, and women howling and wolves running. It whistled, hummed, throbbed, boomed
in the chimneys. Above all, it sounded like a live creature: some monstrous, elemental being, wailing its
damnation. It was Dante's wind, bearing lost lovers and cranes: Sabbathless Satan, toiling and
turmoiling.
In the western ocean it harried the sea flat, lifting water bodily out of water and carrying it as spume. On
dry land it made the trees lean down before it The gnarled thorn trees, which had grown in double
trunks, groaned one trunk against the other with plaintive screams. In the whipping and snapping
branches of the trees, the birds rode it out head to wind, their bodies horizontal, their neat claws turned
to anchors. The peregrines in the cliffs sat stoically, their mutton-chop-whiskers made streaky by the
rain and the wet feathers standing upright on their heads. The wild geese beating out to their night's rest
in the twilight scarcely won a yard a minute against the streaming air, their tumultuary cries blown
backward from them, so that they had to be past before you heard them, although they were only a few
feet up. The mallard and widgeon, coming in high with the gale behind, were gone before they had
arrived.
Under the doors of the castle the piercing blasts tortured the flapping rushes of the floors. They boo'ed in
the tubes of the corkscrew stairs, rattled the wooden shutters, whined shrilly through the shot windows,
stirred the cold tapestries in frigid undulations, searched for backbones. The stone towers thrilled under
them, trembling bodily like the bass strings of musical instruments. The slates flew off and shattered
thelmselves with desultory crashes.
Bors and Bleoberis were crouching over a bright fire, to which the bitter wind seemed to have given the
property of throwing out light without heat. Even the fire seemed frozen, like a painted one. Their minds
were baffled by the plague of air.
"But why did they go so quickly?" asked Bors complainingly.
"I never knew a siege to be raised like that before. They raised it overnight. They went as if they had
been blown away."

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Incipit%20Liber%20Quartus.html (99 of 114)14-10-2007 15:44:46
 file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Incipit%20Liber%20Quartus.html



"They must have had bad news. Something must have gone wrong in England." "Perhaps."
"If they had decided to forgive Lancelot, they would have sent a message."
"It does seem strange, sailing away at a moment's notice, without saying anything."
"Do you think there can have been a revolt in Cornwall, or in Wales, or in Ireland?"
"There are always the Old Ones," agreed Bleoberis numbly.
"I don't think it could be a revolt. I think the King was taken ill, and had to be carried home quickly. Or