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

was Hookton, a place of boats, fish, salt and livestock, with green
hills behind, ignorance within and the wide sea beyond.
Hookton, like every place in Christendom, held a vigil on the eve
of Easter, and in 1342 that solemn duty was performed by five men
who watched as Father Ralph consecrated the Easter Sacraments
and then laid the bread and wine on the white-draped altar. The
wafers were in a simple clay bowl covered with a piece of bleached
linen, while the wine was in a silver cup that belonged to Father
Ralph. The silver cup was a part of his mystery. He was very tall,
pious and much too learned to be a village priest. It was rumoured
that he could have been a bishop, but that the devil had persecuted
him with bad dreams and it was certain that in the years before he
came to Hookton he had been locked in a monastery's cell because
he was possessed by demons. Then, in 1334, the demons had left
him and he was sent to Hookton where he terrified the villagers
by preaching to the gulls, or pacing the beach weeping for his sins
and striking his breast with sharp-edged stones. He howled like a
dog when his wickedness weighed too heavily on his conscience,
but he also found a kind of peace in the remote village. He built a
large house of timber, which he shared with his housekeeper, and
he made friends with Sir Giles Marriott, who was the lord of Hook-
ton and lived in a stone hall three miles to the north.
Sir Giles, of course, was a gentleman, and so it seemed was Father
Ralph, despite his wild hair and angry voice. He collected books
which, after the treasure he had brought to the church, were the
greatest marvels in Hookton. Sometimes, when he left his door
open, people would just gape at the seventeen books that were
bound in leather and piled on a table. Most were in Latin, but a
handful were in French, which was Father Ralph's native tongue.
Not the French of France, but Norman French, the language of
England's rulers, and the villagers reckoned their priest must be
nobly born, though none dared ask him to his face. They were all
too scared of him, but he did his duty by them; he christened them,
churched them, married them, heard their confessions, absolved
them, scolded them and buried them, but he did not pass the time
with them. He walked alone, grim-faced, hair awry and eyes
glowering, but the villagers were still proud of him. Most country
churches suffered ignorant, pudding-faced priests who were scarce
more educated than their parishioners, but, Hookton, in Father Ralph
had a proper scholar, too clever to be sociable, perhaps a saint,
maybe of noble birth, a self-confessed sinner, probably mad, but
undeniably a real priest.
Father Ralph blessed the Sacraments, then warned the five men
that Lucifer was abroad on the night before Easter and that the
devil wanted nothing so much as to snatch the Holy Sacraments
from the altar and so the five men must guard the bread and wine
diligently and, for a short time after the priest had left, they dutifully
stayed on their knees, gazing at the chalice, which had an armorial
badge engraved in its silver flank. The badge showed a mythical
beast, a yale, holding a grail, and it was that noble device which