"Gregort Maguire - Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maguire Gregory)

"Let me tell you what I know about hunger and plague," says Margarethe, pestering a burgher who is
trying to slide by her unaccosted. "Your townsmen refer us to the poor-houses here, and promise that the
needy can fatten themselves there on butter and beef. But I have seen the poor fight over a sick dog, to
kill it and char its meat, and puke it up within the hour. I've known hunger to turn father against son, and
husband against wife!"

"Mama, the things you say!" Iris is amazed at her mother's testimony.

"You think I embroider these things? Hunger is real," says Margarethe. "Haven't I seen children munching
on rats?" But she softens her voice and tries a new approach.

"I have skills, old mother, I know the herbs and tisanes for the stiffness in the joints. I know what to
gather, and how to dry it, and what to mete out, and what to reserve. I know the worts, the simples, the
roots. I know"—she pauses, judging her next audience of one weak-chinned old dame—"I know the
holy words to pronounce, and when they fail, the

unholy. I know the spells, I know the secret charms, I know the invisible comforts . . ."

The frightened crone bangs her shutter closed so hard that it nearly catches her crippled hand at the wrist.

"What we need is a table," says Iris, "a table that always groans with a weight of food, appearing by
magic every day—" "Fancy won't feed us, Iris," mutters Margarethe. "God's truth," she cries in anger, "is
there no mercy in this damp town? Will the ill chance that chased us from England catch up with us at
last, when we have no strength to keep running away?"

Midday. The j>un doing its best, dragging its golden skirts through gritty streets. In a back lane, where
the smells of the brewery get trapped in alleys and mildewy work yards, there is one window that doesn't
swing shut. Margarethe stands, her hand pressed against her ribs, heaving, trying to keep from weeping
with rage. At wit's end, she's working to invent a new story. Ruth plays with the pretty toy that the girl
named Clara has thrust in her hands. Iris looks in the window.

The room is tall and airy, more stable than salon, an old storehouse for arms maybe. Iris peers. The room
is in disarray. A table holds pots and mortars and grinding stones. A kettle of nose-wrinkling oil gently
steams on a low fire. Paintbrushes brandish themselves out of clay pots, unruly as autumn bracken.
Against the wall lean freestanding panels of wood, like a series of doors, and one or two panels are
propped on easels in the center of the room. Every surface is worked over with color, fields of fog cut
with strokes of unapologetic brightness. Every color that Iris has ever known, from midnight blue to the
sourest citron.

THE OBSCURE CHILD

A man turns, only slowly hearing Margarethe's words. He seems irritated to be yelled at through his own
window, which has been opened for air and light, not for prying eyes or beggars on the prowl.

Iris leans farther to look. The consolation of gray, of green, the surprise of pink. The redemption of
cloudy white on four new panels yet to be touched by image.

"Iris, don't be forward with the gentleman," murmurs Margarethe, readying her latest version of woe.

Iris ignores her mother. "What are you doing?" she says through the window.