"Judith Tarr - Remedia Amoris" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tarr Judith)

Remedia Amoris
By: Judith Tarr
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Readers know Judith Tarr as the author of meticulously researched and gorgeously
crafted historical fantasies like Alamut and The Dagger and the Cross. More
recently, she has moved into Macedon and Egypt with Lord of the Two Lands and
Throne of Isis, about Alexander the Great and his equally charismatic descendant,
Cleopatra.
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Like Katharine Kerr, Judith is a writer who is usually so busy with novels that we
don’t get enough of her short fiction.
Fortunately, in her nonexistent spare time, she has remedied this situation to
some degree; and readers are finding in short stories by Judith Tarr a wry, ribald,
and even gonzo streak—nowhere more than here. I think that Ovid, her inspiration,
would understand… if he wasn’t laughing too hard.
I stumbled onto it. Staggered. Cock first and no mistake, skin full of the old
Falernian, and Whatsername shrieking and whacking me with her thyrsus just hard
enough to keep me good and hard, which was all in the game, and the old
bitch-goddess should have known it.
Dear Mother Three-Face Hecate wouldn’t know a good game if it tupped her
from behind.
So there we were, tumbling on the grass, mooncup swelled and brimming
over, me-cup getting near it, and Lalage, or was it Phyllis, paying top-of-the-lungs
tribute to her Bacchante’s vows. She was just about through the Third
Twist-and-Shriek, and she’d winked at me once when the moon caught her eye. And
the silence crashed down on us.
They ran up to thirteen in full coven. Tonight they were down to three, but
three were enough when they were Threefold Hecate. Maiden was ripe-fig sweet and
dripping honey, and when I was done with Phyllis I’d make a run for her. Mother
was a little off the peak and bellyful of baby. Crone was Crone incarnate.
Maiden was horrified. Mother was indignant. Crone was in midcurse and not
pleased to be interrupted. Maiden swept in and rescued Phyllis, or maybe Lalage,
and fine thanks she got: Lalage, or maybe Phyllis, crowned her neatly with the
thyrsus, told her what she could do with her maidenhead, and cut for the deep
cover. Mother made a leap for the altar and raised a pitchy smoke. Crone stood over
me—no will in me to move, even if I’d been able, and every bit of me as limp as the
old hag’s dugs. She reached out her staff and tested it. I couldn’t even flinch.
 Maiden came up behind her. “Faun,” she said in the sweet severe way they
have before they know a man. “Faun, you were mad to have come here.”
My tongue was my own; just about all of me that was. “Fauns are mad by
nature,” I said. I tried to grin. Insouciance, old Silenus always told us, drives the
ladies wild.
I don’t think he meant this kind of wild.
Mother was chanting through her smokes and lighting them with bits of fire.
The purple was particularly fine. It made me think of once-dyed Tyrian.
I told her so. She paid no attention to me. Crone prodded me again with her
staff. No more life there than before. Maiden said, “You are a very shallow creature.
Drunk as a sponge, raping anything that moves—have you no more use in life but
that?”
“I eat,” I said helpfully. “Lots. I play the pipes. I herd sheep for old Mopsus,