"Jane Yolen - Feast of Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yolen Jane)

Feast of Souls
by Jane Yolen

An A\NN/A Preservation Edition.
Notes

The old man is lying under a white cloak with a large red cross emblazoned. Kneeling by his bed is a
younger version of himself, a dark-haired, hawk-nosed man, eyes carmined with weeping. The bed is
large and hung with heavy wine-colored curtains, but they are pulled back to let in air and light. The old
man needs all the air and light he can get. He no longer eats anything but a little mushroom crumbled in a
bowl, sprinkled with fresh-baked bread. And white wine. Red is too strong, he has told them. It fires the
blood.
There are always watchers in the bedroom now, the vigils set by those who love him best, those who
expect the most from him. His son, this strong-beaked survivor, has organized the relays. John dтАЩErley
and Thomas Basset are there most often, by their own requests. But it is the son, the Younger as he is
called by his mother and those of parallel quality, for he bears his fatherтАЩs name, who takes the most
perilous watch. Wrapped in his silken gown, the squirrel collar soon to be replaced by his fatherтАЩs sable,
he sits late at night by the bed. His is the midnight watch, those times when the Devil is most likely to
prowl and Death to visit.
Because we do not wish to be confused with those small demons that men are prone to number and
to shun, we never visit the dying at night. We come to the bedsides at less vulnerable times. We wish to
be seen. We wish to be known. To be counted, catalogued, wondered at. That is our charge, after all.
We are the harbingers. We are the messengers. We sow a peopleтАЩs God that we may reap the harvest of
their souls. How else to feed on this alien earth?
That is why the Monday before Ascension, during the day, we show ourselves to Earl Marshal as he
lies dying. There is no satiety in feasting on small souls. We look for the men of nexus, the turning points
of history, the great foci. And these we know from the histories. Not the ones writ centuries after, but
the chansons and ballads, the journals and logs set down by the ones who loved them best and count
their loss the greatest.
We knew from the histories that the earlтАЩs dying would be a long, slow progress. What began at
Candlemas would last a full two months and more, taking him to Marlborough Castle, to Westminster,
thence riding down his pain to London Tower where he would wait, besieged behind the thick walls, as if
waiting for some final charge by DeathтАЩs minions. But then he retreated once again, this time by slow
water to his manor in Caversham. Death, our brother, followed.
But we went before. In this eternity of feasting, we always go before. Death reads the histories, even
as do we. He knows the times and the places, though he cannot come before time. He must hope to
harvest what we have not yet happened upon. There are two of us and only one of him but he is a
glutton. We are tasters; he takes all.
In 1219, in Earl MarshalтАЩs dark bedroom, we wear white so he may have no trouble discerning us in
the gloom.
His son is begging him to eat. тАЬWe are certain,тАЭ he says to his father in a voice he would never have
used if the old man were not now permanently abed, тАЬit will do you good.тАЭ Just as reported in the
histories.
The arrival of eternity has softened the earl. A man who captured some five hundred knights in his
lifetime of tournies, who sired five sons and five daughters upon a wealthy, willing wife, he is not used to
listening to the importunings of his children, especially not to one called all his life The Younger. Still the
earl has been made kind in this last crisis, in case he has to justify these last words to his god.
тАЬThen for that,тАЭ he answers in a voice made husky by fever, тАЬI shall eat as much as I can.тАЭ The
histories are always word-perfect in these pasts. Perhaps it is that memory is greater when letters are not
learned. Perhaps we reconstruct history out of story by traveling back in time. Perhaps our hunger for the