"R. A. MacAvoy - L1 - Lens of the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

students are treated equally, called by their prenom only, and forbidden to tell anyone their lineage.
This rule is a beautiful one, my king, and your great-grandfather did nobly in devising it. It is
sometimes even obeyed, at least in public, but I reply that there was rarely a boy whose right name and
tides I didn’t know by the threshing frolic of their first year.
Except my own name, of course. About myself I knew only that my uncle had convinced the
headmaster that my birth was genteel enough for the school’s standards, which are moderately high.
Unless this unremembered uncle returned to claim me or the headmaster broke the king’s rule, I should
never know more than I knew when I came, which was that my name was three odd syllables in a row,
accent on the first: Nazhuret.
Helmer, friend of my years ten through twelve (my friend-ships were neatly packaged in two-year
intervals), said that my name sounded like the sneeze of a cat.
Sometimes I dwelled upon the idea that my birth was quite exalted, but that my parents could not
stand the sight of me and so stored me away at Sordaling until the time I might grow into (or perhaps out
of) my features: It was as useful a daydream as that common one of being switched in the cradle.
When visitors of some grandeur toured the school, I watched carefully to see whether they were
looking at me out of the comer of their eye. Often they were, of course. It was hard not to look at
something so exceptional.
Later, when my unremembered uncle stopped paying, this fantasy of birth became harder to maintain.
By all rights the bursar should have sent me home when I was ten and the tuition did not appear, but
the death of the headmaster, combined with my own ignorance, meant they had no idea where to send
me. Six years had passed since my arrival at school, and my tenure was longer than that of many young
masters, trainer& and deans. All were very used to my presence, and I had drifted into the role of school
orderly before anyone could decide how to show me the door.
The next year the money resumed, along with a lump of delinquent tuition, so I was paid for a whole
year’s worth of cleaning and carrying and sitting up with young fellows whose crying awoke the dorms.
With this money I began to swagger a bit myself, and visited both the bakeries of King Gutuf’s Street
and the entertainments of Fountain Park. I was very fond of the swanboat ride down the slanting canal
shunt, which has in the past few years (I find) been dismantled and replaced with a mill. I was also very
fond of Charlan, daughter of Baron Howdl, whose honors surround Sordaling and who owns a number
of the commercial buildings as well. CharIan did not act like a baron’s daughter. She scarcely acted like
a girl at all, but I rode the swanboats with her and tossed old bread to the real birds.
For a fee of a tuppence I taught little town-boys how to spring over the old broad sword and the
bonfire (which activity is considered very dashing and auspicious among their set), and I taught basic
rapier work to Charlan free.
Unlike many students, I did not fight with the townies. I was too jaded with sparring in the halls to do
it for sport, and the satisfaction of flattening ten burghers’ sons would not have been worth the
inconvenience of a single split lip.
But the money I had been given ran out, and Lady Charlan was deemed too old at twelve to be a
boy-daughter anymore and was locked away. I moped around the river for a few weeks until Howdl’s
old nurse took pity and told me how things were. I spent another week dreaming mad escapes in which I
would spring the girl from her father and her fate and we would take to the woods together and live—I
don’t know how. As brigands, I suppose. Luckily I did not have much free time for mad dreaming and
so never attempted to carry out the scheme.
I returned to the more sedate life of the school and when, two years later, the money stopped again,
there was no talk of sending me away. I was recognized as a son of Sordaling School itself: part master,
part servant, part imp.
Remember the school with me, sir, as the bricks glow in evening sunlight, or the snow of the drill field
lies etched with diagrams of war. The buildings are solid and they loom with a certain presence. The
quadrangles are restful, arbored, and well planted, regularly mowed by junior boys and sheep.
All my duty at school was reasonable and regular, though not exciting, and the food was good. Pm