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

frontiers had seemed to Lyo-lyok, and would to Man if he could learn to fly.
The old King felt refreshed, clear-headed, almost ready to begin again.
There would be a dayтАФthere must be a dayтАФwhen he would come back to Gramarye with a new Round
Table which had no corners, Just as the world had noneтАФa table without boundaries between the nations
who would sit to feast there. The hope of making it would lie in culture. If people could be persuaded to
read and write, not just to eat and make love, there was still a chance that they might come to reason.
But it was too late for another effort then. For that time it was his destiny to die, or, as some say, to be
carried off to Avilion, where he could wait for better days. For that time it was Lancelot's fate and
Guenever's to take the tonsure and the veil, while Mordred must be slain. The fate of this man or that
man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.
The cannons of his adversary were thundering in the tattered morning when the Majesty of England
drew himself up to meet the future with a peaceful heart.
EXPLICIT LIBER REGIS QUONDAM REGISQUE FUTURI

THE BEGINNING
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Incipit Liber Secundus


THE QUEEN OF

AIR AND DARKNESS
When shall I be dead and rid
Of the wrong my father did?
How long, how long, till spade and hearse
Put to sleep my mother's curse?

1
There was a round tower with a weather-cock on it. The weather-cock was a carrion crow, with an
arrow in its beak to point to the wind.
There was a circular room at the top of the tower, curiously uncomfortable. It was draughty. There was a
closet on the east side which had a hole in the floor. This hole commanded the outer doors of the tower,
of which there were two, and people could drop stones through it when they were besieged.
Unfortunately the wind used to come up through the hole and go pouring out of the unglazed shot-
windows or up the chimneyтАФunless it happened to be blowing the other way, in which case it went
downward. It was like a wind tunnel. A second nuisance was that the room was full of peat-smoke, not
from its own fire but from the fire in the room below. The complicated system of draughts sucked the
smoke down the chimney. The stone walls sweated in damp weather. The furniture itself was