دانلود رمان انگلیسی “Isola”

I never knew my mother. She died the night that I was born, and so we passed each other in the dark. She left me her name, Marguerite, and her ruby ring, but no memory of her. I did not know my father either. When I was three years old, he was killed fighting for the King at Pavia. Then I was rich, although I did not know it, and poor, although I did not know it. I was heir to a château in Périgord with its own villages, vineyards, and sunny fields, but I had no parents, aunts, or uncles living. Servants surrounded me, but I had no sisters or brothers, and so I was alone. My nurse, Damienne, was my first teacher. She was an old woman, at least forty, and her hair, once red, was faded like brick. Her eyes were shrewd but tired, and all around her mouth her skin was creased in little lines like unpressed linen. My nurse was stout, her stomach soft, her bosom pillowy. When we lay down to sleep, she held me close as though I were her own—and if I was not her child, then certainly she belonged to me, for she had served my family since she was a girl. She said my father had been noble, not just in name but on the battlefield. When his horse was killed under him, he fought on with sword and pike until an archer shot him in the neck. Wounded, my father fell, but his men broke off the arrow’s shaft and bore him away. In his tent, even as a surgeon cut out the arrowhead, my father demanded to return to fight. “Take me back,” he gasped while his blood streamed out in rivulets. I imagined his blood ruby red.