• Пожаловаться

Филиппа Карр: The Miracle at St. Bruno's

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Филиппа Карр: The Miracle at St. Bruno's» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию). В некоторых случаях присутствует краткое содержание. категория: Исторические любовные романы / на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале. Библиотека «Либ Кат» — LibCat.ru создана для любителей полистать хорошую книжку и предлагает широкий выбор жанров:

любовные романы фантастика и фэнтези приключения детективы и триллеры эротика документальные научные юмористические анекдоты о бизнесе проза детские сказки о религиии новинки православные старинные про компьютеры программирование на английском домоводство поэзия

Выбрав категорию по душе Вы сможете найти действительно стоящие книги и насладиться погружением в мир воображения, прочувствовать переживания героев или узнать для себя что-то новое, совершить внутреннее открытие. Подробная информация для ознакомления по текущему запросу представлена ниже:

libcat.ru: книга без обложки

The Miracle at St. Bruno's: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «The Miracle at St. Bruno's»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

"I was born in the September of 1523, nine months after the monks had discovered the child in the crib on that Christmas morning. My birth was, my father used to say, another miracle: He was not young at the time being forty years of age... My mother, whose great pleasure was tending her gardens, called me Damask, after the rose which Dr. Linacre, the King's physician, had brought into England that year." Thus begins the story narrated by Damask Farland, daughter of a well-to-do lawyer whose considerable lands adjoin those of St. Bruno's Abbey. It is a story of a life inextricably enmashed with that of Bruno, the mysterious child found on the abbey altar that Christmas morning and raised by the monks to become a man at once handsome and saintly, but also brooding and ominous, tortured by the secret of his origin which looms ever more menacingly over the huge abbey he comes to dominate. This is also the story of an engaging family, the Farlands. Of a fathr wise enough to understand "the happier our King is, the happier I as a true subject must be," a wife twenty years his junior, and a daughter whose intelligence is constantly to war with the strange hold Bruno has upon her destiny. What happens to the Farlands against the background of what is happening to King Henry and his court during this robust period provides a novel in which suspense and the highlights of history are wonderfully balanced.

Филиппа Карр: другие книги автора


Кто написал The Miracle at St. Bruno's? Узнайте фамилию, как зовут автора книги и список всех его произведений по сериям.

The Miracle at St. Bruno's — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «The Miracle at St. Bruno's», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

And so Kate and Rupert came to live with us.

Everything was different. We seemed to be a household of children, and I was the youngest for Kate was two years my senior, Rupert two years hers. At first I was resentful; then I began to realize that life was more exciting if not so comfortable now that my cousins had come.

Kate was beautiful even in those days when she was inclined to be overplump. Her hair was reddish, her eyes green, and her skin creamy with a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She was vain of her looks even at seven, and used to worry a great deal about the freckles. Her mother had used a freckle lotion because she had had the same kind of fair skin and Kate used to steal it. She could not do that now. She was more knowledgeable than I-sharp and shrewd, but in spite of her two years' advantage, I was ahead of her in the Greek, Latin and English which I had been studying since the age of three, a fact which I knew gave great satisfaction to my father.

Rupert was quieter than Kate; one would have thought she was the elder, but he was much taller and slender; he had the same color hair but lacked the green eyes-his were almost colorless-gray sometimes, faintly blue at others. Water color, I called them, for they reflected colors as water did. He was very anxious to please my parents; he was self-effacing and the sort of person people didn't notice was there. My father thought he might learn to become a lawyer in which case he would go to one of the Inns of Chancery after leaving Oxford as Father had done, but Rupert was enamored of the land. He loved being in the hayfield cutting and carrying and at such times he seemed more alive than we had ever seen him.

My parents were very kind to them. They guessed how sad they must be to lose father and mother and they were constantly indicating how welcome they were in our house.

I was told secretly that I must treat them as though they were my brother and sister and must always remember if I was inclined to be unkind to them that I was more fortunate than they because I had two beloved parents and they had lost both theirs.

Kate was naturally more often with me than Rupert was. When we had finished our lessons, he liked to wander off into the fields and he would talk with the cowherds or shepherds or those of our servants who worked on the land while Kate turned her attention to me; and she always managed to score as soon as we left the schoolroom to make up for my ascendancy there.

She told me that we were not very fashionable people. Her parents had been different.

Her father had gone often to Court. She told me, erroneously as it turned out, that Rupert would have a fine estate when he came of age and that it was being looked after for him by my father, who was a lawyer and so qualified to do so. "You see we are favoring him by allowing him to look after our affairs." That was typical of Kate. She made a favor of accepting anything.

"Then he will be able to grow his own corn," I commented.

As for herself, she would marry, she told me. No one less than a Duke would do for her. She would have a mansion in London and she supposed there would have to be an estate in the country but she would live mainly in London and go to Court.

London was amusing. Why did we not go there more often? We were very near. It was just up the river. All we had to do was get into a boat and go there. But we rarely went. She herself had been taken to see the great Cardinal go to Westminster in state.

What a sight it had been! Kate could act; she took my red cloak and wrapped it around her and seized an orange and held it to her nose as she strutted before me.

"'I am the great Cardinal,' " she cried. "'Friend of the King.' This is how he walked, Damask. You should have seen him. And all about him were his servants. They say he keeps greater state than the King. There were the crossbearers and the ushers-and my lord himself in crimson... a much brighter red than this cloak of yours. And his tippet was of'sable and the orange was to preserve him from the smell of the people. But you don't understand. You've never seen anything... you're too young.”

She might have seen the Cardinal with his orange, I retorted, but I had seen him with the King.

Her green eyes sparkled at the mention of the King and she had a little more respect for me after that. But we were rivals from the beginning. She was always trying to prove to me not how much more learned she was than I - she cared not a berry for the learning such as our tutors had to impart-but how much more clever, how much more worldly.

Keziah admired her from the start. "Mercy me!" she would cry. "The men will be round her like bees round the honeysuckle." And that, according to Keziah, was the most desirable state for any woman to be in.

Kate was nearly eight years old when she came to us but she seemed more like eleven-so said Keziah; and there were some at eleven who knew a thing or two-Keziah herself, for instance. I was a little jealous of the effect she had on Keziah, although I was always her Little 'Un, her baby, and she always defended me, when defense was needed, against the dazzling Kate.

But after Kate came all the little pleasures seemed to be slightly less exciting.

Romping with dogs, feeding the peacocks, gathering wild flowers for my mother and seeing how many different kinds I could find and name-all that was childish. Kate liked dressing up, pretending she was someone else, climbing the trees in the nuttery, hiding there and throwing nuts down on people as they passed; she liked wrapping a sheet around her and frightening the maids. Once in the cellar she startled one of them so badly that the poor girl fell down the steps and sprained her ankle. She made me swear that I wouldn't tell she was the ghost and from then on the servants were convinced the cellar was haunted.

There was always drama around Kate; she would listen at keyholes to what people said and then she would tell her own highly colored version of it; she plagued our tutor and used to put her tongue out at him when his back was turned. "You're as wicked as I am, Damask," she would tell me, "because you laughed. If I go to hell, you will go too.”

It was a terrifying thought. But my father had taught me to be logical and I insisted that it wasn't so bad to laugh at something wicked as to do it. It was every bit as bad, Kate assured me. I would ask Father, I said; at which she told me that if I did she would invent such wickedness and swear that I was guilty of it that he would turn me out of the house.

"He never would," I said. "He gave up being a monk so that he could have me.”

She was scornful. "You wait till he hears.”

"But I have done nothing," I protested tearfully.

"I will tell it so that it will be just as though you had." "You'll go to hell for it.”

"I'm going there already-you said so. So what does a bit more wickedness matter?”

Usually she insisted that I obey her. The worst punishment she could inflict on me was to remove her exciting presence and this she quickly discovered. It delighted her that she was so important to me.

"Of course," she was fond of saying, "you are really only a baby.”

I wished that Rupert would have been with us more often, but we seemed so very young to him. He was kind to me always and very polite but he didn't want to be with me, of course. One of the occasions I remember most vividly of him was in the winter at the lambing time and how he went out into the snow and brought in a lamb and sat nursing it all the evening. He was very tender and I thought how kind he was and how I could love him if he would only let me.

Читать дальше

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «The Miracle at St. Bruno's»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «The Miracle at St. Bruno's» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё не прочитанные произведения.


libclub.ru: книга без обложки
libclub.ru: книга без обложки
Колин Глисон
Виктория Холт: The Queen's Secret
The Queen's Secret
Виктория Холт
Val McDermid: Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey
Val McDermid
Отзывы о книге «The Miracle at St. Bruno's»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «The Miracle at St. Bruno's» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.