"S. M. Stirling - Dies the Fire 02 - The Protector's War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

in the light of moon and stars.

When was that? Before the Change, of course, but when? In summer, I think.

Woburn Abbey was old; it began as a great Cistercian monastery, in the year
when the first Plantagenet was crowned King of England. Henry VIII hung the
last abbot from an oak tree on the monastery grounds when he broke with Rome
and declared himself head of the Church, and granted the estate to a favorite
of his named John Russell. The fortunes of the Russell family waxed and waned
with those of the English aristocracy and England herself. In the palmy years
of the eighteenth century the fifth duke rebuilt the country house in
Palladian magnificence and surrounded it with a pleasance-deer park and
gardens covering five square miles-very convenient with London only thirty
miles to the south. In 1953 the eleventh duke had opened it to the paying
public, complete with golf course, pub, guided tours and antique shop-and
avoided the forced sales which so many of his peers suffered after the Second
World War.
Came on a day-trip, I did, drove up the Mi. After I enlisted, but before I did
the SAS selection ... August of 1996, ten years ago to the month. Me first
leave ... who was the girl? Blond all over, she was, I remember that for
certain. And she giggled.

In England the Change had struck in the early hours of the morning on March
18, 1998: the owner's family and Woburn's staff had only begun to realize what
the failure of electricity and motors and explosives meant when the first
spray of refugees from Milton Keynes and Luton arrived in the area two days
later.
The last duke's heir set up emergency quarters in the buildings and in tents
in the great park, doing his best to organize supplies and sanitation. That
ended when the last of the deer were eaten or escaped; by then most of the
animals in the attached Safari Park had been released, before the keepers
realized that even lion and timber wolves, tiger and rhino were edible when
the other choice was death.

Shortly thereafter the hordes fleeing north from London met those from the
midland cities moving south, and the great dying was well under way. A
cannibal gang from the south side of Milton Keynes used the buildings as a
headquarters for a time, roasting the meat of their catches in the fireplaces
over blazes fed by the Regency furniture, rutting in the beds where Victoria
and Albert had slept, and sitting beneath the Canalettos and Rembrandts to
crack thighbones for the marrow with Venetian-glass paperweights. They turned
on each other when prey grew scarce, and the last died of typhus on Christmas
Day of 1998, shivering and comatose and alone.

Mary Sowley, that was her name. Bugger me blind if it wasn't ten years ago to
the day. We drove through Safari Park and looked at the bloody lions and
didn't that get her motor going ... She married that commuter in Essex, the
one with fuzzy dice hanging from his rearview mirror. God alone knows where
the poor bitch left her bones. Hope it was quick.