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

forgive me. He even said that it was his own fault. God knows, he was a right good brother."
"What are we to do about the King?"
"We must get to England as quickly as we can. Mordred has retreated to Canterbury, where he offers a
fresh battle. It may be over by now. This news has been delayed by storm. Everything depends on
speed."
Bleoberis said: "I will go and look to the horses. When do we sail?"
"Tomorrow. Tonight. Now. When the wind drops. Be quick with them."
"Good,"
"And you, Bors, the fodder,"
"Yes."
Lancelot followed Bleoberis to the stairs, but turned in the doorway.
"The Queen besieged," he said. "We must get her out."
"Yes."
Bors, left alone with the wind, picked up the letter with curiosity. He tilted it in the failing light,
admiring the zed-like g, the curly b, and the curved t, like the blade of a plough. Each tiny line was the
furrow it threw up, sweet as the new earth. But the furrow wandered towards the end. He turned it about,
observing the brown signature. He spelled out the conclusionтАФmaking speaking movements with his
mouth, while the rushes tapped and the smoke puffed and the wind howled.
"And at this date my letter was written, but two hours and a half afore my death, written with mine own
hand, and so subscribed with part of my heart's blood.
Gawaine of Orkney."
He spelled the name out twice, and tapped his teeth. Gawaine. "I suppose," he said out loud, doubtfully,
"they would have pronounced it Cuchullain in the North? You can't tell with ancient languages."
Then he put down the letter, went over to the dreary window, and began humming a tune called Brume,
brume on hil, whose words have been lost to us in the wave of time. Perhaps they were like the modern
ones, which say that
Still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.



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14
The same wind of sorrow whistled round the King's pavilion at Salisbury. Inside there was a silent calm,
after the riot of the open. It was a sumptuous interior, what with the royal tapestriesтАФUriah was there,
still in the article of bisectionтАФand the couch strewn deep with furs, and the flashing candles. It was a
marquee rather than a tent. The King's mail gleamed dully on a rack at the back. An ill-bred falcon, who
was subject to the vice of screaming, stood hooded and motionless on a perch like a parrot's, brooding in
some ancestral nightmare. A greyhound, as white as ivory, couching on its hocks and elbows, its tail
curved into the bony sickle of the greyhound, watched the old man with the doe-soft eyes of pity. A
superb enamelled chess-board, with pieces of jasper and crystal, stood at checkmate beside the bed.
There were papers everywhere. They covered the secretary's table, the reading desk, the stoolsтАФdreary
papers of government, still bravely persevered inтАФof law, still to be codifiedтАФof commissariat and of
armament and of orders for the day. A large ledger lay open at the note of some wretched defaulter,
William atte Lane, who had been condemned to be hanged, suspendatur, for looting. On the margin, in
the secretary's neat hand, was the laconic epitaph "susp.", suitable to the mood of tragedy. Covering the
reading desk there were endless piles of petitions and memorials, all annotated with the royal decision