Читать онлайн «The Ancient»
Автор Muriel Gray
MURIEL GRAY
The Ancient
Harper
HarperCollins
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Harper
Copyright © Muriel Gray 2002, 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollins
Muriel Gray asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008158262
Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780007404438
Version: 2015-10-29
For
Hamish, Hector, Rowan and
Angus James Barbour, with love
Contents
In other circumstances, Eugenio might have given the rat a name.
Rats, and the bold rats of this sun-baked slum more than most, were hard to capture. He might have kept it under a crate and thrown it pieces of food, simply to be its master, to control it, to confine it, the way his own life was determined by pinched-faced adults.But this rat was to die. It was their sacrifice, and as such, it needed no name.
The creature writhed and thrashed in the soiled canvas bag that Eugenio held out from his body. His two companions watched, eyes big in anticipation, waiting for their leader, their priest, to guide them.
As the oldest at nine years of age, Eugenio felt the weight of that responsibility: he moulded his face into an expression of suitable solemnity as he kicked at a piece of hardboard in the rubbish.
