Читать книгу The Red Saint онлайн

25 страница из 75

Perhaps Denise’s power lay largely in her youth, for she was no ulcerous and lean recluse, but a woman in the morning of her beauty, a beauty that was strange and elfin-like, rich as an autumn in red leaf. She had but to look at men, and they felt an awe of her; at children, and they came to her like birds to a witch. The hair under the grey hood had the colour of copper, with tinges of red and of gold. Her eyes were between amber and the brown of a woodland pool, her skin so clear and white, despite the sun and the wind, that men believed her heart could be seen shining like a red gem beneath. Denise was tall, and broad across the bosom. Her fingers were so long, and slim, and white, that the superstitious believed that pearls might drop from them, and that not even the brown soil of her garden could cling to those miraculous hands.

Denise carried her pitcher to the spring the morning after they had brought Waleran’s boy to her with an arrow through his heart. She stripped herself at the pool, and washed her body, scooping up the water in her palms, her hair knotted over her neck. Denise’s naked figure might have stood as the symbol of her womanhood, clean, comely, unshadowed by self-consciousness. It was part of the infinite mystery of things, a mystery that dwelt in Denise’s heart, and gave her power over women and over men.