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.
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.
The ELDER WOMAN draws down the bedclothes from the Queen's body, loosens them from the bed, and throws them on the floor.
The Elder Woman:
Pull her feet straight: is your mind wandering?
She commences to fold the bedclothes, singing as she moves about.
A louse crept out of my lady's shift —
Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee —
Crying "Oi! Oi! We are turned adrift;
The lady's bosom is cold and stiffed,
And her arm-pit's cold for me."