Fortune Like the Moon

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Dead, she was a pattern of black, white and red on the sparse, short grass of a dry July.

Black for the fine wool habit, still quite new. It bore none of the darns in the front panel of the skirt that told of years spent kneeling in prayer, and the rear hem was still pristine, not yet worn by careless contact with stone steps. White for the wimple and barbette which had framed the face, although the wimple was no longer secured around the throat and chin but torn away. White, too, for the pale, pale skin. For the face, frozen into the expression of abject terror that it would wear until the flesh rotted from the skull. For the shockingly exposed legs and loins, from which habit and underskirt had been thrown back. In death she was immodest, poor lass, lying there with her thin white legs wide apart. It was as if her corpse had been arranged deliberately so as to make a pleasing pattern, for the outflung arms matched the angle of the spread legs.

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