Читать книгу The Silence - Joss Stirling - Страница 19

‘You’ve dug deep enough,’ Captain Jack told his men. ‘Now you can start to build her.’

And they obeyed, birthing me from course of brick and seam of mortar, eyelets of windows, ear flaps of doors. Seasons changed as my skeleton rose from the heath. The next spring, my head they tiled with slate brought from Wales on the slow-running arteries of canals once the ice had broken. Finally, the churned earth was turfed and gardens planted and I stood proud: a gentleman’s residence.

Gallant House.

But I know those earlier people are with me still, the cave dwellers, Vikings, failed rebels and heedless maids. They lie in the soil with my foundations, whispering their secrets to the black heath.