Ariana Franklin [Mistress of Grave (epub)

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.PENGUIN CANADAGRAVE GOODSARIANA FRANKLIN, a former journalist, is a biographer and author of the novels City of Shadows, Mistress of the Art of Death, and The Serpent’s Tale.She is married with two daughters and lives in England.GRAVE GOODSALSO BY ARIANA FRANKLINThe Serpent’s TaleMistress of the Art of DeathCity of ShadowsARIANA FRANKLINPENGUIN CANADAPublished by the Penguin GroupPenguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, EnglandPenguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, IndiaPenguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South AfricaPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, EnglandPublished in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2009.Simultaneously published in the U.S.A.by G.P.Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10Copyright © 2009 by Ariana FranklinAll rights reserved.Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction.Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.Manufactured in CanadaISBN: 978-0-I4-317001-3Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data available on request to the publisher.American Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data available.Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.caSpecial and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call I-800-810-3104, ext.477 or 474To DatchworthONE“And God was angry with His people of Somerset so that, in the year of Our Lord 1154, on the day after the feast of Saint Stephen, He caused an earthquake that it might punish them for their sins.…”Thus wrote Brother Caradoc in Saint Michael’s chapel on top of Glastonbury Tor, to which he’d scrambled, gasping and sobbing, so as to escape the devastation that God with His earthquake had wrought on everything below it.For two days he and his fellow monks had been up there, not daring to descend because they could still hear aftershocks making their abbey tremble and look down, appalled, at more giant waves submerging the little island villages in the Avalon marshes beyond it.Two days, and Caradoc was still wet and had a pain in his poor old chest.When the earthquake struck and his fellow monks had scampered from the shivering abbey, making for the Tor that was always their refuge in times of danger, he’d run with them, hearing Saint Dunstan, strictest of saints though dead these one hundred sixty-six years, telling him to rescue the Book of Glastonbury first.“Caradoc, Caradoc, do your duty though the sky falls.”But it was bits of masonry that had been falling, and Caradoc had not dared to run into the abbey library and fetch the great jewel-studded book—it would have been too heavy for him to carry up the hill anyway.The slate book that was always attached to the rope girdle round his waist had been weighty enough, almost too much for an old man laboring up a five-hundred-foot steeply conical hill.His nephew Rhys had helped him, pushing, dragging, shouting at him to go faster, but it had been a terrible climb, terrible.And now, in the cold, dry but unshaken shelter of the chapel that Joseph of Arimathea had built when he’d brought the cruets containing Christ’s sacred blood and sweat from the Holy Land, Brother Caradoc did his duty as the abbey’s annalist.In feeble taper light and apologetically using Saint Michael’s altar as a table, he chalked this latest event in Glastonbury’s history onto slate pages so that, later, he could transcribe them onto the vellum of the Great Book.“And the Lord’s voice was heard in the screams of people and the squealing of animals as the ground undulated and opened beneath them, in the fall of great trees, in the toppling of candles and the roar of resultant flames as houses burned.”The pain in his chest increased, and the shade of Saint Dunstan went on nagging him.“The Book must be saved, Caradoc.The history of all our saints cannot be lost.”“I haven’t got to the wave yet, my lord.At least let there be some record of it.” He went on writing.“Loudest of all, our Lord spoke in the noise of an approaching wave that raised itself higher than a cathedral in the bay and ran up the tidal rivers of the Somerset Levels, sweeping away bridges as it came and drowning all in its path.Through His mercy, it only reached the lower reaches of our Abbey so that it still stands, but …”“The Book, Caradoc.Tell that idle nephew of yours to fetch it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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