“The chamber was more like a cave than the rest of the Priory, dimmed to calm the mind. Passage from one womb to another – that was how she had seen it then, in the first clouded hour of holding him close. After the clearing, in her dreams, she remembered this room not as womb, but as tomb, as comb. No honey in a womb. No bees. She had brought him from the darkness to his end.”
