"Moon, Elizabeth - Gird 02 - Liar's Oath E-Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

bestowed on a favorite nephew. “They all tell me that the Marshal-General
doesn’t like fancy things, that he was a mere peasant, but of course that’s
nonsense.” Luap opened his mouth, then shut it slowly at the expression on the
peasant woman’s face. Best hear the old woman out. “Being a peasant doesn’t mean
having no taste,” she went on, looking up to be sure he agreed. “Peasants like
fancy things as much as anyone else, and some of them do very good work. Out in
the villages, you know.” She seemed to expect some response; Luap nodded. “Men
don’t always notice such things, but I learned as a young wife—when my husband
was alive, we used to spend summers at different vills on his estates—that every
peasant vill had its own patterns. Weaving, embroidery, even pottery. And the
women, once they found I was interested, would teach me, or at least let me
watch.” Another shrewd glance. Luap nodded again, then looked at the peasant
woman leaning against the wall. Servant? Keeper? The woman’s expression said
protector, but it had to be an unusual situation. Few of the city servants had
stayed with their mageborn masters when Fin Panir fell.
“So I know,” the old woman went on, “that Gird will like this, if he only
understands how important it is.” She unfolded the cloth carefully, almost
reverently, and Luap saw the stylized face of the Sunlord, Esea, a mass of
whorls and spirals, centering a blue cloth bordered with broad band of silver
interlacement. “For the altar in the Hall, of course, now that it has been
properly cleansed.” She gave Luap a long disapproving stare, and said “I always
told the king, may he rest at ease, that he was making a terrible, terrible
mistake by listening to that person from over the mountains, but he had had his
sorrows, you understand.” When he said nothing, finding nothing to say, she
cocked her head and said “You do understand?”
“Not… completely.” He folded his arms, and at her faint frown unfolded them.
“This cloth is for the Hall, you say? For the High Lord’s altar?”
She drew herself even more erect and almost sniffed. “Whatever you call it—we
always called Esea the Sunlord, though I understand there has been some argument
that the High Lord and the Sunlord are one and the same.”
“Yes, lady.” He wondered what Arranha would say about this. For a priest of the
Sunlord he was amazingly tolerant of other peoples’ beliefs, but he still held
to his own.
“I could do nothing while the Hall was defiled. And of course the cloths used
then could not be used again; I understood that. But now that the Hall is clean,
these things must be done, and done properly. Few are left who understand that.
You must not think it was easy.”
“No, lady,” Luap said automatically, his mind far astray. How was he going to
explain her to Gird? How would Gird react?
“First,” she said, as if he’d asked, as if he would be interested, “the wool
must be shorn with silver shears, from a firstborn lamb having no spot of black
or brown, neither lamb nor ewe. Washed in running water only, mind. And the
shearer must wear white, as well. Then carded with a new pair of brushes, which
must afterwards be burned on a fire of dry wood. Cedar is best. Then spun
between dawn and dusk of one day, and woven between dawn and dusk of another,
within one household. In my grandmother’s day, she told me, the same hands must
do both, and it was best done on the autumn Evener. But the priests said it was
lawful for one to spin and another to weave, only it must be done in one
household.”
She gave Luap a sharp look, and he nodded to show he’d been paying attention. He