"R. A. MacAvoy - Damiano's Lute" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

the dirt.
It was true. The lutenist was leaving, plodding back up die road toward Lyons,
Chamonix and the Alps. Without another word, he was leaving. By conscious
efibrt, the boy turned his sensation of cold desolation into his more
accustomed red anger. He caught up with Damiano in ten athletic bounds.
"Hah!" he spat. "So you think to stick me with that unmanageable swine of a
horse? Well, it won't work. The crows can pick his ribs for all 1 care!" And
he executed a perfect, single-point swivel, flung up his right arm in a
graceful, dynamic and very obscene gesture, and marched back down the road
west and south. His small, peaked face was flaming.
Damiano, in his outrage, had forgotten Festiiligambe, and he now felt a bit
foolish. His less acrobatic steps slowed to a shuffling hah, while he heard
Gaspare rummaging through the wagon. At last, when the noise had faded,
Damiano came back.
The horse, while still standing between die traces, stared curiously over his
shoulder at Damiano. He had a marvelous flexibility in that neck, did
Festiiligambe. Damiano tossed his gear back into die wagon and carefully
deposited die lute into die niche in one corner which he had built for it.
(This corner had no holes.)
Slowly and spiritlessly Damiano walked over to die horse. He examined die
knotted, makeshift harness and die places where it had worn at die beast's
coat. FestilHgambe lipped his master's hair hopefully, tearing out those
strands which became caught between his big box teedi. Damiano didn't appear
to notice.
"I shouldn't be doing this to you, fellow,*' he whispered, stroking die black
back free from dust. "You are no cart horse. It's clean straw and grain for
which you were born. And fast running, with victory wine from silver cups."
Thick horse tips smacked against die young man's face, telling him what die
gelding thought about silver cups. His near hind foot suggested tiiey start
moving again.
Damiano's Lute
17
Having no ideas of his own, Damiano was open to such suggestion. He boosted
himself up to die driver's seat and reached for the whip he had dropped after
drubbing Gaspare. Carefully he pulled up his sleeve, bunching it above die
elbow to allow die sun free access to die neatly punched bite on his forearm.
The horse did not wait for a signal to start.
What a misery that boy was. Squatting passively on die plank of wood, Damiano
let Gaspare's offenses parade by, one by one.
There had been that housewife in Porto. She had had no business to call die
boy such names, certainly, but you cannot drive through a town cracking
strange women on die head and expect to get away with it. Not even when tfiey
are bigger dian you. Especially not then. She had almost broken die lute over
Damiano's shoulders (though he was by rights not involved in die exchange of
insults, only easier to catch tiian Gaspare).
And in Aosta they had come near to feme, or at least a comfortable living,
playing before die Marchioness d'Orvil, until Gaspare ruined things and nearly
got diem sent to prison with that sarabande he insisted on dancing. In front
of die marquese, besides. Damiano blushed even now, wondering how he could
have missed seeing all winter diat die dance was obscene. Gaspare had no