"Louis L'amour - sackett02 - To The Far Blue Mountains" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

"So long?" I said. "It scarcely seems so." I leaned toward him. "Werewolves! I'd
know that odor anywhere! The smell of graves opened! Old graves! Of bodies long
dead!" Pausing, I said, as if puzzled, "But you said King Henry the Seventh was
nearly a hundred years ago?"
"Nearly." The man was edging away from me.
"Well, well! How time goes on! But when you have passed, you know, when you're
no longer subject to time—"
"I must go. They await me at the tavern yonder."
"Ah? A tavern? I was tempted to enter, but you know how it must be. When I enter
the others leave. So I—"
"You're mad!" The man burst out suddenly. "Crazy!" And he clapped his heels to
his horse and raced away.
From the hedge there was a chuckle. "He didn't know whether you were crazy or a
ghost, Barnabas." Black Tom shivered. "On a night like this a man could believe
anything out here in the dark." He gestured. "Come quickly! We have a boat."
Down the lane I rode, with Black Tom trotting beside, hanging to my stirrup
leather. There was time for only a glance at the cottage, dark and silent, its
small windows like lonely eyes. I figured William was at the hut, some distance
away. I felt a twinge at my heart, for the cottage had been my boyhood home,
this place and the fens. Inside was the fireplace beside which my father had
taught me my lessons. No man ever worked harder for the future of his son,
teaching me all he could from what he had seen and learned.
No more ... my father was gone, buried these several years. A wave of sadness
swept over me. I started to turn for another look ...
"Quick! Barnabas, into the boat! They come!"
It was no common boat, but a scow, and I took my horse quickly across the plank,
and we shoved off upon the dark, glistening water. We could hear the hoofbeats
of horses.
Looking back, I felt warm tears welling into my eyes. It had been my home, this
cottage on the edge of the fen. Here I had grown to manhood, and here my father
had died.
And where, in my time, would my body lie?
2
We of the fens knew every twist and turn of the waterways that formed an
intricate maze where a stranger might soon become lost. A man might believe the
fens, seen from West Keal, utterly flat and without a hiding place. But there
were many islets, hidden coves, willow-sheltered channels, and occasional
fields.
Over the years the fens had changed much, while seeming not to change at all.
Roman efforts to drain them had largely failed, due to changes in the sea level
and long periods when no effort had been made to continue the work. Now
Elizabeth was considering a new effort at drainage, for once drained the fens
became the richest of farmland.
We who lived in the fens had small concept of their actual area, and no doubt
felt them larger than they were, for they seemed vast, extending into several
shires, although boundaries meant little.
The Romans had come, even, it was said, to the place where we now went. It was
an islet of no more than three acres cut by several narrow, winding waterways.
There were few low-growing oaks, gnarled of trunk and thick of branch, but not
tall, and some birch trees. Backed against a limestone shoulder was the hut, a