]
The Younger Woman:
We were listening. We were listening.
The Elder Woman:
We were both listening.
The Younger Woman:
Did she struggle?
The Elder Woman:
She could not struggle long.
[They set down the cauldron at the foot of the bed.]
The Elder Woman (curtseying to the Queen's body):
Saving your presence, Madam, we are come
To make you sweeter than you'll be hereafter,
And then be done with you.
The Younger Woman (curtseying in turn):
Three days together, my Lady, y'have had me ducked
For easing a foolish maid at the wrong time;
But now your breath is stopped and you are colder,
And you shall be as wet as a drowned rat
Ere I have done with you.
The Elder Woman (fumbling in the folds of the robe that hangs on the
wall):
Her pocket is empty; Merryn has been here first.
Hearken, and then begin:
You have not touched a royal corpse before,
But I have stretched a king and an old queen,
A king's aunt and a king's brother too,
Without much boasting of a still-born princess;
So that I know, as a priest knows his prayers,
All that is written in the chamberlain's book
About the handling of exalted corpses,
Stripping them and trussing them for the grave:
And there it says that the chief corpse-washer
Shall take for her own use by sacred right
The coverlid, the upper sheet, the mattress
Of any bed in which a queen has died,
And the last robe of state the body wore;
While humbler helpers may divide among them
The under sheet, the pillow, and the bed-gown
Stript from the cooling queen.
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