"Nancy Springer - The Boy Who Plaited Manes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Nancy)

and moved quickly. "Get back to your work, you fellows!" he roared at the grooms, and then he strode
into the stall.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you mean coming in here like this?" It was best, in a lord's
household, never to let anyone know you were obliged to them.
The boy looked at him silently, turning his head in the alert yet indifferent way of a cat.
"I have asked you a question! What is your name?"
The boy did not speak, or even move his lips. Then or thereafter, as long as he worked in that
stable, he never made any sound.
His stolid manner annoyed Wald. But though the master groom could not yet know that the boy
was a mute, he saw something odd in his face. A halfwit, perhaps. He wanted to strike the boy, but even
worse he wanted the praise of the lord and lady, so he turned abruptly and snatched the wrapping off the
palfrey's tail, letting the cloud of white hair float down to the clean straw of the stall. "Do something with
that," he snapped.
A sweet, intense glow came into the boy's eyes as he regarded his task. With his fingers he combed
the hair smooth, and then he started a row of small braids above the bone.
Most of the tail he left loose and flowing, with just a cluster of braids at the top, a few of them
swinging halfway to the ground. And young Lady Aelynn gasped with pleasure when she saw them, and
with wonder at the mane, even though she was a lord's daughter born and not unaccustomed to finery.
It did not matter, that day, that Lord Robley's saddle had not been polished to a sufficient shine. He
was well pleased with his grooms. Nor did it matter that his hawks flew poorly, his hounds were unruly
and his clumsy hunter stumbled and cut its knees. Lords and ladies looked again and again at his young
wife on her white palfrey, its tail trailing and shimmering like her blue silk gown, the delicate openwork of
its mane as dainty as the lace kerchief tucked between her breasts or her slender gloved hand which held
the caparisoned reins. Every hair of her mount was as artfully placed as her own honey-gold hair looped
in gold-beaded curls atop her fair young head. Lord Robley knew himself to be the envy of everyone
who saw him for the sake of his lovely wife and the showing she made on her white mount with the
plaited mane.
And when the boy who plaited manes took his place among the lord's other servants in the kitchen
line for the evening meal, no one gainsaid him.

Lord Robley was a hard old man, his old body hard and hale, his spirit hard. It took him less than a
day to pass from being well pleased to being greedy for more: no longer was it enough that the lady's
palfrey should go forth in unadorned braids. He sent a servant to Wald with silk ribbons in the Auberon
colors, dark blue and crimson, and commanded that they should be plaited into the palfrey's mane and
tail. This the strange boy did with ease when Wald gave him the order, and he used the ribbon ends to tie
tiny bows and love knots and leave a few shimmering tendrils bobbing in the forelock. Lady Aelynn was
enchanted.
Within a few days Lord Robley had sent to the stable thread of silver and of gold, strings of small
pearls, tassels, pendant jewels, and fresh-cut flowers of every sort. All of these things the boy who
plaited manes used with ease to dress the lady's palfrey when he was bid. Lady Aelynn went forth to the
next hunt with tiny bells of silver and gold chiming at the tip of each of her mount's dainty ribbon-decked
braids, and eyes turned her way wherever she rode. Nor did the boy ever seem to arrange the mane and
tail and forelock twice in the same way, but whatever way he chose to plait and weave and dress it
seemed the most perfect and poignant and heartachingly beautiful way a horse had ever been arrayed.
Once he did the palfrey's entire mane in one great, thick braid along the crest, gathering in the hairs as he
went, so that the neck seemed to arch as mightily as a destrier's, and he made the braid drip thick with
flowers, roses and great lilies and spires of larkspur trailing down, so that the horse seemed to go with a
mane of flowers. But another time he would leave the mane loose and floating, with just a few braids
shimmering down behind the ears or in the forelock, perhaps, and this also seemed perfect and poignant
and the only way a horse should be adorned.