"Mary Stewart - The Arthurian Saga 03 - The Last Enchantment" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

"We whistled up a strong wind, Ralf. Let us see which way it will blow us."

"You'd let it?"

I laughed. "I have a speaking mind that tells me I may have to. Come, let us start by obeying this
summons."


There were a few people still in the main antechamber to the King's apartments, but these were mostly
servants, clearing and bearing away the remains of a meal that the King had apparently just finished.
Guards stood woodenly at the door to the inner rooms. On a low bench near a window a young page lay
fast asleep; I remembered seeing him when I had come this way three days ago to talk with the dying
Uther. Ulfin, the King's body-servant and chief chamberlain, was absent. I could guess where he was. He
would serve the new King with all the devotion he had given to Uther, but tonight he would be found with
his old master in the monastery church. The man who waited by Arthur's door was a stranger to me, as
were half the servants there; they were men and women who normally served Rheged's own king in his
castle, and who were helping with the extra pressure of work brought by the occasion, and the High
King's presence.

But they all knew me. As I entered the antechamber there was a sudden silence, and a complete
cessation of movement, as if a spell had been cast. A servant carrying platters balanced along his arm
froze like someone faced with the Gorgon's head, and the faces that turned to me were frozen similarly,
pale and gape-mouthed, full of awe. I caught Ralf's eye on me, sardonic and affectionate. His brow
quirked. "You see?" it said to me, and I understood more fully his own hesitation when he came to my
room with the King's message. As my servant and companion he had been close to me in the past, and
had many times, in prophecy, and in what men call magic, watched and felt my power at work; but the
power that had blazed and blown through the Perilous Chapel last night had been something of quite a
different order. I could only guess at the stories that must have run, swift and changing as the wildfire
itself, through Luguvallium; it was certain that the humbler folk had talked of nothing else all day. And like
all strange tales, it would grow with the telling.

So they stood staring. As for the awe that frosted the air, like the cold wind that comes before a ghost, I
was used to that. I walked through the motionless crowd to the King's door, and the guard moved aside
without a challenge, but before the chamberlain could lay a hand to the door it opened, and Bedwyr
came out.

Bedwyr was a quiet, dark boy, a month or two younger than Arthur. His father was Ban, the King of
Benoic, and a cousin of a king ofBrittany . The two boys had been close friends since childhood, when
Bedwyr had been sent to Galava to learn the arts of war from Ector's master-at-arms, and to share the
lessons I gave Emrys (as Arthur was then called) at the shrine in theWildForest . He was already showing
himself to be that strange contradiction, a born fighting man who is also a poet, at home equally with
action and with the world of fancy and music. Pure Celt, you might say, where Arthur, like my father the
High King Ambrosius, was Roman. I might have expected to see in Bedwyr's face the same awe left by
the events of the miraculous night as in the faces of the humbler men present, but I could see only the
aftermath of joy, a sort of uncomplicated happiness, and a sturdy trust in the future.

He stood aside for me, smiling. "He's alone now."

"Where will you sleep?"
"My father is lodging in the west tower."