"Clayton Emery - Robin & Marian - Floating Bread and Quicksilver" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

comings and goings. She doesn't like us. She's
touched. And today she'll be worse than ever."
Marian made silence her question.
"Mornat set her cap for --" she wouldn't say the
name, so Marian knew it must be one of the
drowned brothers -- "one who's left us for a better
place. When she turned thirteen, she washed her
shift in south-running water, turned it wrong-side
out and hung it before the fire, as girls will, you
know. They say the likeness of -- him who's not
with us -- came into her hut and turned the shift
right-side out. Mornat followed him everywhere
then, and let him take liberties up on the cliffs in the
grass, and told everyone they were to marry in
spring. But it didn't happen, for he married Lucy
over there and never spoke to Mornat again."
So, thought Marian, it was the elder brother,
Gunther, that Mornat had fancied. "The poor thing.
It must have torn her heart from her bosom."
"If she has a heart," Sidony sniped. "Them touched
with the sight don't live entirely in this world. And
good enough, I say."
More boats plowed the surf and disgorged heaping
baskets of fish. Men and boys took warmed watered
cider and bread and chowder, then returned to the
waves. Robin, his beard flecked with scales, gave
Marian a quick kiss before driving his oars through
the surf once more.
All day they worked. Drying racks, called "flakes",
were hung with fillets that danced and dripped in the
sea wind. More were packed in salt. When the group
flagged, one woman began a song so old it was
another tongue and no one knew the words, yet
every woman sang along, timing the beat to the
rhythm of their hands. As the sun set, old men built
driftwood fires. Girls threaded fillets onto whittled
sticks and propped the dripping bundles on the
drying racks higher than a dog could jump. Boys
lugged baskets of guts to wash out on the evening
tide as gulls squawked at their feet.
When it was too dark to fish even by torchlight, the
men beached the boats, helped clean and thread
before snatching a few hours' sleep and setting out
at dawn to fetch more fish.
Robin and Marian worked together, cutting
themselves often now, salt stinging the gashes. At
one point in the long night, Marian asked her
husband, "Well, Rob? Are you ready to eschew
outlawry and take up fishing instead?"
Robin sliced, cursed as he shaved fine bones. "Nay,