"Cornwell, Bernard - Grail Quest 1 - Harlequin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cornwell Bernard)

Harlequin

by Bernard Cornwell
Prologue
The treasure of Hookton was stolen on Easter morning 1342.
It was a holy thing, a relic that hung from the church rafters,
and it was extraordinary that so precious an object should have
been kept in such an obscure village. Some folk said it had no
business being there, that it should have been enshrined in a
cathedral or some great abbey, while others, many others, said it
was not genuine. Only fools denied that relics were faked. Glib men
roamed the byways of England selling yellowed bones that were
said to be from the fingers or toes or ribs of the blessed saints, and
sometimes the bones were human, though more often they were
from pigs or even deer, but still folk bought and prayed to the
bones. A man might as well pray to Saint Guinefort," Father Ralph
said, then snorted with mocking laughter. They're praying to ham
bones, ham bones! The blessed pig!"
It had been Father Ralph who had brought the treasure to Hookton and he would not hear of it being taken away to a cathedral
or abbey, and so for eight years it hung in the small church, gathering dust and growlng spider webs that shone silver when the
sunlight slanted through the high window of the western tower.
Sparrows perched on the treasure and some mornings there were
bats hanging from its shaft. It was rarely cleaned and hardly ever
brought down, though once in a while Father Ralph would demand
that ladders be fetched and the treasure unhooked from its chains
and he would pray over it and stroke it. He never boasted of it.
Other churches or monasteries, possessing such a prize, would have
used it to attract pilgrims, but Father Ralph turned visitors away.
 It is nothing," he would say if a stranger enquired after the relic,
a bauble. Nothing." He became angry if the visitors persisted. It is
nothing, nothing, nothing!" Father Ralph was a frightening man
even when he was not angry, but in his temper he was a wild-haired
fiend, and his flaring anger protected the treasure, though Father
Ralph himself believed that ignorance was its best protection for if
men did not know of it then God would guard it. And so He did,
for a time.
Hookton's obscurity was the treasure's best protection. The tiny
village lay on England's south coast where the Lipp, a stream that
was almost a river, flowed to the sea across a shingle beach. A
half-dozen fishing boats worked from the village, protected at night
by the Hook itself, which was a tongue of shingle that curved around
the Lipp's last reach, though in the famous storm of 1322 the sea
had roared across the Hook and pounded the boats to splinters on
the upper beach. The village had never really recovered from that
tragedy. Nineteen boats had sailed from the Hook before the storm,
but twenty years later only six small craft worked the waves beyond
the Lipp's treacherous bar. The rest of the villagers worked in the
saltpans, or else herded sheep and cattle on the hills behind the
huddle of thatched huts which clustered about the small stone
church where the treasure hung from the blackened beams. That