"Alas!" said the Queen, "what needs this, Catherine?--why prepare new victims to be involved in, and overwhelmed by, my cruel fortune?--were we not better cease to struggle, and ourselves sink in the tide without farther resistance, than thus drag into destruction with us every generous heart which makes an effort in our favour?--I have had but too much of plot and intrigue around me, since I was stretched an orphan child in my very cradle, while contending nobles strove which should rule in the name of the unconscious innocent. Surely time it were that all this busy and most dangerous coil should end. Let me call my prison a convent, and my seclusion a voluntary sequestration of myself from the world and its ways."
"Speak not thus, madam, before your faithful servants," said Catherine, "to discourage their zeal at once, and to break their hearts. Daughter of Kings, be not in this hour so unkingly--Come, Roland, and let us, the youngest of her followers, show ourselves worthy of her cause--let us kneel before her footstool, and implore her to be her own magnanimous self." And leading Roland Graeme to the Queen's seat, they both kneeled down before her. Mary raised herself in her chair, and sat erect, while, extending one hand to be kissed by the page, she arranged with the other the clustering locks which shaded the bold yet lovely brow of the high-spirited Catherine.
"Alas!
"Not so," said Roland Graeme, "it is we, gracious Sovereign, who will be your deliverers."
"
So saying, she passed her hand fondly over the head of her youthful favourite, while her more aged attendant replied despondently, "Alas! madam, your thoughts stray far from home."
"They do, my Fleming," said the Queen; "but is it well or kind in you to call them back?--God knows, they have kept the perch this night but too closely--Come, I will recall the gay vision, were it but to punish them. Yes, at that blithesome bridal, Mary herself shall forget the weight of sorrows, and the toil of state, and herself once more lead a measure.--At whose wedding was it that we last danced, my Fleming? I think care has troubled my memory--yet something of it I should remember--canst thou not aid me?--I know thou canst."
"Alas! madam," replied the lady----
"What!" said Mary, "wilt thou not help us so far? this is a peevish adherence to thine own graver opinion, which holds our talk as folly. But thou art court-bred, and wilt well understand me when I say, the Queen
With a face deadly pale, and a mien as if she were about to sink into the earth, the court-bred dame, no longer daring to refuse obedience, faltered out--"Gracious Lady--if my memory err not--it was at a masque in Holyrood--at the marriage of Sebastian."
Хаос в Ваантане нарастает, охватывая все новые и новые миры...
Александр Бирюк , Александр Сакибов , Белла Мэттьюз , Ларри Нивен , Михаил Сергеевич Ахманов , Родион Кораблев
Фантастика / Исторические приключения / Боевая фантастика / ЛитРПГ / Попаданцы / Социально-психологическая фантастика / Детективы / РПГ