"Edward Whittemore - The Jerusalem Quartet 01 - Sinai Tapestry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Whittemore Edward)

nineteenth century formulated vast, but separate, concepts of the mind and body and society, Strongbow
insisted on dealing with all three.

That is, with sex in its entirety.

Not sex as necessity or diversion or in the role of precursor and memory, not even sex as an immediate
cause or a vague effect. And certainly not in terms of natural history or inevitable law.

Sex neither as habit nor suggestion but simply sex by itself, unplanned and chaotic and concomitant with
nothing, beyond all hope of conspiracy, previously indistinguishable and now seen in infinity.

Sex as practiced. Sex as it was.

At the time, an inconceivable proposition.



In addition to the family game in Strongbow Hall there was also a family mystery. In a manor so old it
was only to be expected that some arcane relationship must exist between the structure and its
inhabitants, its source secret, probably a hidden sliding panel that opened onto dark passageways leading
down into the past.

In fact the huge manor was said to include in its foundations the ruins of a major medieval monastery,
unnamed, thought to have been desecrated when its monks were discovered practicing certain
unmentionable acts. And close beside those ruins were the ruins of an underground Arthurian chamber,
vaulted and impregnable, which had also been desecrated when its knights were discovered practicing
other unmentionable acts.

Even deeper in the ground, according to legend, there were the ruins of a spacious sulphur bath only
fitfully dormant, built during the age of the Romans.

Next to these baths was a small but impressive sacrificial circle of stones from the even more distant era
of the druids.

While lastly, surrounding all these subterranean relics, was an immense erratic design of upright monoliths,
astronomical in nature, erected in antiquity by a mighty people.

No one had ever discovered the secret passageways that led to these buried remnants beneath the
manor, even though they had always been hunted. For centuries Strongbow aunts and uncles, on rainy
afternoons, had armed themselves with torches and organized search parties to try to find them.

Of course minor discoveries had been made. In any given decade a group might come across a cozy
unused tower cubicle heaped with furry rugs or a small snug cellar hideaway just big enough for three
people.

But the family mystery remained. Tradition claimed the secret sliding panel might well be found in the
dark library of the manor, yet strangely Strongbow aunts and uncles never led their search parties there.
When a rainy afternoon came they invariably went in other directions.

Thus the aunts and uncles who became the overseers of the manor early in the nineteenth century might