nvs1408: переводы

→T. Quinton; never Tristram. I put down the letter, and saw Teviot's eyes upon me. He asked me how I fared, or something of the sort. I cannot recall it, but I can recall my reply: ' The longed-for heir to Ravensden. But I am the heir to Ravensden.' A responsibility I had shunned all my life; and yet the prospect of it being taken away by the issue of this unnatural marriage brought on a strange surge of anger. 'My poor brother. My poor family. This cannot happen. This will not happen.'

→T. Quinton.

→Your most loving uncle,

→I returned to my uncle's peroration. Forgive me, nephew, for I write importunely. You cannot possibly influence or deter what is to come to pass—what might already have come to pass, perhaps, by the time that you and your ship return safe to England's shore. Perhaps these are but the rantings of an old and bitter man, and your brother and the Lady Louise will indeed provide the longed-for heir to Ravensden. God knows, they may live in married bliss hereafter, to the glory and honour of our ancient lineage. But I write this to you now, as your father's son and the bearer of my father's name, knowing that you will not betray my confidence, and that you will share at least some of my fears for Charles and our most glorious, but most vulnerable, House of Quinton. God be with you, dearest nephew.

→I could also imagine her opinion. Indeed, I did not need to imagine it for very long; it awaited me on the pages of her many letters. Even today, in these rude and permissive times, I have rarely encountered an author who possesses such a richly diverse vocabulary of the obscene. If Tristram's concerns over potential interception by the Spanish Inquisition had any justification, and even if only one of my wife's letters had fallen into their hands, then the successors of Torquemada would have significantly enhanced their comprehension of human anatomy. Such were the consequences of Cornelia's childhood, much of which was spent avoiding her dull parents and mixing happily with the foul-mouthed sailors and fishwives who thronged the quays of Veere, her home town in Zeeland.

→You will forgive me for such thoughts, for believe me, they are as nothing to the opinion of your own dear wife, who rode here to Oxford but yesterday to regale me upon the matter. This was typical of Cornelia, who would not have balked at the surprised stares and caustic comments of those who witnessed a lady of breeding riding hell-for-leather (as was always her wont) the fifty or so miles between Ravensden Abbey and Oxford.

→Our new Countess is to be Louise, Lady De Vaux. You might have heard of her, for she has a considerable name at court. Several names, indeed, of which 'harlot' is the one least likely to cause offence to the King of Spain's Inquisition if they intercept any of the copies of this letter. But she has an ample estate, it's said, thanks to two dead husbands. Now, Matt, some will say that two dead rich husbands are the will of God. Yet I have witnessed all the late troubles in this land, and have seen death come in a thousand ways or more, and I wonder—can two dead husbands truly be the will of God, or the will of the Lady Louise? And thus, what intentions might she harbour toward her third?

→The walls of the governor's house swam before me, and only a brusque cry from Lord Teviot, who must have seen the blood drain from my face, saved me from the disgrace of fainting. A match for your brother. Charles, Earl of Ravensden, one of the most intimate (and by far the most discreet) of our King's very few close friends. My dearest delicate brother, twelve years older than myself, who had taken enough wounds for that king on Worcester field to kill many men with constitutions far stronger than his. Earl Charles, half of whose manhood had been shot away by Cromwell's dragoons, and the remaining half of which was pledged to a circumspect young actor of Betteridge's company. In short, my brother was as likely a candidate for the marriage bed as I was to be the next King of Poland.

→'Look at them, Matthew. Look at this place. Oh, it will hold, because those Moors can shout all they wish, but they don't have the cannon to bring down these walls and they don't have the ships to starve us out with a blockade. But they will wear us down, strike at a fort at a time, kill good men by the score, and then by the hundreds, so the King will have to build more forts, and send more men, and one day, the whole place will become so expensive that our King will be glad to sell it to the Dutch or the Spanish. Or the French, as he did with Dunkirk.' Teviot knew that better than any man; he had been governor of the short-lived English garrison at Dunkirk. 'We are soldiers,' he continued, 'and we can look around at what we see in this place, and know that yet again, we will fight and die for a hopeless cause. But that, my dear Matthew, is what soldiers do. After all, isn't that what your father did?'

→Teviot leaned on the parapet, looking down on a particularly bold party of turbaned riders.

→He spoke at first in French, which was evidently his native tongue, then in Latin, then in Italian, all fluently, then in a somewhat more broken Dutch, and lastly in a halting and reluctant English. Too late, I realised that his linguistic recitation was occasioned by the simple fact that I had forgotten to order our ensign hoisted as soon as I came on deck. 'Monsieur,;' he said in his rasping voice, I am Gaspard, Seigneur de Montnoir, captain of the galley San Giacomo in the service of his Most Eminent and Serene Highness Rafael Cotoner, Grand Master of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta. To whom do I have the honour of speaking?'

→He was a man of middling height and middling age, this Knight of Malta, so thin as to be almost skeletal. His long, watchful face betrayed nothing but disdain for this young captain and his man-of-war, so ugly and towering alongside the shattered but slender galleys. He looked about him with the unnervingly self-confident arrogance of those who are supremely aware of their own power, and with something else, too. Contempt, certainly, but more than that. He had the look of a priest-executioner, weighing up precisely how long it would take his latest batch of faggot-fodder to burn at the stake; and to this day, I retain the uncomfortable suspicion that this was exactly what he was doing. The dark knight looked me up and down. Although it was one of the hottest days I have ever known, I shivered.

→Musk had clad me in my finest silk frock-coat. In that heat, and despite the awning stretched a few feet above the quarterdeck, the sweat was pouring down my flesh well before my guest stepped onto the deck, where he was greeted by Boatswain Fuller's whistle. He seemed entirely oblivious to the heat, despite wearing attire even less sensible than my own. It was as though the thick black cloak with its single silver Cross of Malta somehow rendered him immune to the world around him. The gleaming hilt of a sword protruded from the cloak. This magnificent galley-knight raised a splendidly befeathered hat to salute the Wessex and its captain, and I stepped forward, doffing my own hat and bowing low in deference.

→Two

→But as I stepped out into the sunlight, the Irishman's plausible words had somehow already planted the thought in my head. What if—?

→As we strode toward the quarterdeck, Musk began to berate me for a fool, but I cut him off. 'What matter can it be if he hangs now or in an hour? It's all fantasy, of course.'

→So he would hang; but, perhaps, not quite yet. I donned my broad hat, and came to a decision for good or ill. 'Well, Irishman, as liars go, I have met few to equal you. But your lies have a certain diverting quality to them, and God knows, the Levant trade is tedious work, so I require a little diversion. You will tell me more of your imaginary mountain of gold after I have spoken with this Knight of Malta. Mister Lanherne, see this man chained in the hold.'

→This was indeed a brazen, audacious speech, but even though I was then still but young and foolish, I knew enough of the world to remain sceptical of the Irishman's serpentine words. After all, I reasoned, why was this Omar, or O'Dwyer, but captain of a galley, and that not the largest, rather than the dey of Algier or the Grand Vizier himself?

→'My old Arab, Captain, he says to me it's the prize that they've all sought, down the centuries. Alexander himself, the Caesars of Old Rome, David and Solomon alike, Prester John, the Grand Turk. All of them searched for it. And now King Louis and Emperor Leopold both seek it, for they know what it will bring its owner. Gold without equal, Captain Quinton.' His voice was now an insinuating, plausible whisper. 'Unlimited gold, and with it, unlimited power. No white man has seen it, other than your humble servant, here. No other white man knows where it is, and can lead an army right to it. Now wouldn't it just be the grandest shame if you strung up the man who could make your King Charles the richest and most feared sovereign in all the world?'

→His eyes blazed, as though reflecting the gleam of that golden mountain.