Rise. Come, for here there is no more to do,
And let us seek your chamber, if you will,
There to confer in greater privacy;
For we have now interment to prepare.
She leads Gormflaith to the door near the bed.
You must walk first, you are still the Queen elect.
When Gormflaith has passed before her Goneril unsheathes her hunting knife.
Gormflaith, turning in the doorway.
What will you do?
Goneril, thrusting her forward with the haft of the knife.
On. On. On. Go in.
She follows Gormflaith out.
After a moments interval two elderly women, one a little younger than the other, enter by the same door: they wear black hoods and shapeless black gowns with large sleeves that flap like the wings of ungainly birds: between them they carry a heavy cauldron of hot water.
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 cat
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.
Be thankful, then, and praise me every day
That I have brought no other women with me
To spoil you of your share.
The Younger Woman.
Ah, you have always been a friend to me:
Many's the time I have said I did not know
How I could even have lived but for your kindness.