Читать онлайн «The Dead Men Stood Together»

Also by Chris Priestley

Prologue

The old man shuffles to a halt and stands for a moment, head bowed, shaking a little, holding on to his staff. He looks at the end of his days – but then he’s looked that way for a long, long time.

Is he more exhausted by the walk he’s just made across the moors, or by the thought of the miles he will walk tomorrow? Maybe it’s just the weight of all those years of guilt. I don’t much care.

He’s suffered long and hard, but so have I. I’ll waste no sympathy on him. His death would free us both, but, spiteful to the last, he seems to go on and on. Maybe he’s immortal, for we’ve walked together for centuries now. Soon it will be nineteen hundred years since the birth of Jesus.

Our dress is very different from those about us, but there is something in the magic that surrounds us that means I’m hardly noticed at all. I’m seen and yet not seen. I flit like a thought into the heads of those I pass, and then that thought flies on and I am forgotten in an instant.

The old man’s clothes are no more than shabby rags and his long hair and beard, both frosted white, mark him as a travelling beggar and nothing more. There are plenty enough of them in this new age, just as there were of old.

We’re back in our own country. We’re once again in England after so many years in foreign parts. It’s different now, and yet the same, like the ghost of the girl still visible in an old woman’s face.

The old fellow sits down on a low wall and leans the tall staff against it, resting his bony arms on his wasted thighs. I can see his lips moving silently. Is he praying? Are you praying, you old sinner?

It’s cold.

He pretends he doesn’t know I’m here, but we both know he does. I’m always here. We’re tied together and he knows it. We might each of us wish it weren’t so, but it is and there’s not a thing either of us can do about it.

He lifts his head. He raises his eyes and looks at me. As soon as he sees me, I watch the usual burst of pain rack his body. After a moment, he looks at me again, his face pale and contorted, his eyes sunken. He searches my face for something – pity? – but finds nothing of comfort. He closes his eyes and hangs his head.

A young man walks past me, dressed in black, a scarf tied round his neck. He pays me no heed. He seems caught up in his own thoughts, muttering quietly to himself.

He’s a big man, with black unruly hair. His clothes, though respectable, are also a little shabby. He seems absent-minded. His large eyes are watery and he has the air of a sleepwalker about him.