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

They considered the enormous English wickedness in silence, overwhelmed by its denouement. It was
their mother's favourite story, on the rare occasions when she troubled to tell them one, and they had
learned it by heart. Finally Agravaine quoted a Gaelic proverb, which she had also taught them.
"Four things," he whispered, "that a Lothian cannot trustтАФa cow's horn, a horse's hoof, a dog's snarl,
and an Englishman's laugh."
They moved in the straw uneasily, listening to some secret movements in the room below.
The room underneath the story-tellers was lit by a single candle and by the saffron light of its peat fire. It
was a poor room for a royal one, but at least it had a bed in itтАФthe great four-poster which was used as a
throne during the daytime. An iron cauldron with three legs was boiling over the fire. The candle stood
in front of a sheet of polished brass, which served as a mirror. There were two living beings in the
chamber, a Queen and a cat. Both of them had black hair and blue eyes.
The black cat lay on its side in the firelight as if it were dead. This was because its legs were tied
together, like the legs of a roe deer which is to be carried home from the hunt. It had given up struggling
and now lay gazing into the fire with slit eyes and heaving sides, curiously resigned. Or else it was
exhaustedтАФfor animals know when they have come to the end. Most of them have a dignity about
dying, denied to human beings. This cat, with the small flames dancing in its oblique eyes, was perhaps


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seeing the pageant of its past eight lives, reviewing them with an animal's stoicism, beyond hope or fear.
The Queen picked up the cat. She was trying a well-known piseog to amuse herself, or at any rate to
pass the time while the men were away at the war. It was a method of becoming invisible. She was not a
serious witch like her sister Morgan le FayтАФfor her head was too empty to take any great art seriously,
even if it were the black one. She was doing it because the little magics ran in her bloodтАФ as they did
with all the women of her race.
In the boiling water, the cat gave some horrible convulsions and a dreadful cry. Its wet fur bobbed in the
steam, gleaming like the side of a speared whale, as it tried to leap or to swim with its bound feet. Its
mouth opened hideously, showing the whole of its pink gullet, and the sharp, white cat-teeth, like thorns.
After the first shriek it was not able to articulate, but only to stretch its jaws. Later it was dead.
Queen Morgause of Lothian and Orkney sat beside the cauldron and waited. Occasionally she stirred the
cat with a wooden spoon. The stench of boiling fur began to fill the room. A watcher would have seen,
in the nattering peat light, what an exquisite creature she was tonight: her deep, big eyes, her hair
glinting with dark lustre, her full body, and her faint air of watchfulness as she listened for the
whispering in the room above.
Gawaine said: "Revenge!"
"They had done no harm to King Pendragon."
"They had only asked to be left in peace."
It was the unfairness of the rape of their Cornish grandmother which was hurting GarethтАФthe picture of
weak and innocent people victimized by a resistless tyrannyтАФthe old tyranny of the GallтАФwhich was
felt like a personal wrong by every crofter of the Islands. Gareth was a generous boy. He hated the idea
of strength against weakness. It made his heart swell, as if he were going to suffocate. Gawaine, on the
other hand, was angry because it had been against his family. He did not think it was wrong for strength
to have its way, but only that it was intensely wrong for anything to succeed against his own clan. He
was neither clever nor sensitive, but he was loyalтАФstubbornly sometimes, and even annoyingly and
stupidly so in later life. For him it was then as it was always to be: Up Orkney, Right or Wrong. The
third brother, Agravaine, was moved because it was a matter which concerned his mother. He had
curious feelings about her, which he kept to himself. As for Gaheris, he did and felt what the others did.