"Joanna Russ - Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russ Joanna)

pleasant to me. I had no more idea of danger than a puppy. There
was some tumult by the door—I think the men with the logs were
trying to get in her way—and Abbess Radegunde took out from the
neck of her habit her silver crucifix, brought all the way from
Rome, and shook it impatiently at those who would keep her in. So
of course they let her through at once.
I settled into my corner of the window, waiting for the Abbess's
crucifix to bring down God's lightning on those tall, fair men who
defied Qur Savior and the law and were supposed to wear animal
horns on their heads, though these did not (and I found out later-
that's just a story; that is not what the Norse do). I did hope that the
Abbess, or Our Lord, would wait just a little while before
destroying them, for I wanted to get a good look at them before they
all died, you understand. I was somewhat disappointed as they
seemed to be wearing breeches with leggings under them and tunics
on top, like ordinary folk, and cloaks also, though some did carry
swords and axes and there were round shields piled on the beach at
one place. But the long hair they had was fine, and the bright colors
of their clothes, and the monsters growing out of the heads of the
ships were splendid and very frightening, even though one could see
that they were only painted, like the pictures in the Abbess's books.
I decided that God had provided me with enough edification and
could now strike down the impious strangers.

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But He did not.
Instead the Abbess walked alone towards these fierce men, over the
stony river bank, as calmly as if she were on a picnic with her girls.
She was singing a little song, a pretty tune that I repeated many
years later, and a well-traveled man said it was a Norse cradle-song.
I didn't know that then, but only that the terrible, fair men, who had
looked up in surprise at seeing one lone woman come out of the
Abbey (which was barred behind her; I could see that), now began a
sort of whispering astonishment among themselves. I saw the
Abbess's gaze go quickly from one to the other—we often said that
she could tell what was hidden in the soul from one look at the face
—and then she picked the skirt of her habit up with one hand and
daintily went among the rocks to one of the men, one older than the
others, as it proved later, though I could not see so well at the time—
and said to him, in his own language:
"Welcome, Thorvald Einarsson, and what do you, good farmer, so
far from your own place, with the harvest ripe and the great autumn
storms coming on over the sea?" (You may wonder how I knew
what she said when I had no Norse; the truth is that Father Cairbre,
who had not gone to the cellars after all, was looking out the top of
the window while I was barely able to peep out the bottom, and he
repeated everything that was said for the folk in the room, who all