"Robert F. Young - L'Arc de Jeanne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

through the woods. As a young girl she had been an avid reader. Her marks at the orphanage school had
been about average and probably would have been higher if she had taken an interest in her studies. She
liked to wear bright-colored clothes, and she loved brushes and combs and was forever combing her
hair. She was very religious, and during her years at the orphanage, she had said her mystics morning,
noon, and night.
D'Arcy was at a loss to understand why these things should make her physically, emotionally, and
intellectually susceptible to him, but who was he to argue with the Ambassadress's computer?
The matter drifted from his mind, unable to compete with the distractions afforded by his
surroundings. Pastel-colored flowers grew along the bank, ephemerally outlining the footsteps of a playful
morning breeze. The brook sang as it purled over chalk-white pebbles, and now and then the shiny
shards of fish could be seen, darting this way and that in the pellucid water. Foliage filtered sunlight lay
upon the ground like scattered pirate's treasure.
A kilometer lay behind him. Halfway through another, he heard hoofbeats. They grew rapidly louder,
overflowing the aisles and the bowers and the shady byways. Presently the brook broke out into a large
clearing, and D'Arcy stepped into bright sunlight. Simultaneously, on the opposite side of the clearing, a
horse and rider appeared.
He paused, but made no attempt to conceal himself. The horse was a black stallion and the rider was
a girl wearing a blue skirt and a red blouse with white stripes. A golden bow hung on her right shoulder
and the tufts of arrows showed above her left. She was both barefoot and hatless, and her light-brown
hair was caught back from her face with a red ribbon. Her face made him think of a flower that had just
opened its petals to the sun.
She rode right up to him and said, "Bonjour, monsieur."
"Bonjour, mademoiselle," he said back. "You must be La Pucelle du Bois Feerique."
She smiled, and little lights danced in her eyes. They were the same shade of brown her hair was, and
there was a dimple in her left cheek. She was just beginning to lose the ripe fullness of adolescence and
was on the verge of becoming a woman. "My name is Jeanne Marie Valcouris," she said, "and I am a
witch."
"So I've heard," he said.
"And you are not afraid?"
He grinned. "Why should I be afraid of a good witch? I can understand why I should be afraid of a
bad oneтАФyes. She could turn me into a newt or a toad, but a good witch could only turn me into
something better than what I am, and I would be better, instead of worse, off."
Jeanne Marie laughed. Then she grew silent, and the attentive expression on her face indicated that
she was listening, although what she was listening to he could not imagine. At length she said, "The voices
like you. I'm glad, because I like you too."
"The 'voices'?"
"Joseph Eleemosynary and Rachel de Feu." Jeanne Marie slid down from the black horse, landing
lightly on her bare feet. "And this is St. Hermann O'Shaughnessy. I think he likes you too."
St. Hermann O'Shaughnessy nickered. D'Arcy ran his fingers through the animal's black mane. "It's
nice to know I've got so many friends," he said.
Remembering what McGrawski had said about malnutrition-produced hallucinations, he took a good
look at the girl's face. Like her body, it bespoke a well-fed healthy female who, if she had ever fasted at
all, hadn't done so for at least a month. Another explanation would have to be found for the voices.
But it wasn't up to D'Arcy to find it. His province was to abduct Jeanne Marie, not to find out what
made her tick. "My name is Raymond D'Arcy, and I'm lost," he went on, somehow managing to make
the second part of the statement sound as truthful as the first. "But even if I weren't lost, it wouldn't make
much difference, because I couldn't go anywhere anyway. Last night while I was waiting for the
air-diligence to Moliere, I was hit over the head and robbed, and when I came to, I found myself lying in
a clearing in these woods."
The falsehood had been supplied by Smith-Kolgoz, who had insisted that a peasant girl like Jeanne