"Matrix" for the Latin for Mother.
One of those exceptional books that tell the whole lifetime of a character and you actually believe it. Marie de France, unknown who she was according to wikipedia, but so influential in the 12th century....
But Goda needs to punish someone, and so the grave is dug in the unconsecrated ground outside the churchyard, without ceremony, Avice is lowered into it in her shroud facedown with her babe at her feet, so that in the Revelations her bones will never be able to rise to the hands of the Angels of the Resurrection. Such pitilessness, Marie thinks, for a sin of flesh.
At last, she shees a clump of darkness on a rise that, when Marie nears, revels the sheep saved, nuns running into the sodden fields waist deep to save more. Palenesses floating in the dark are drowned sheep. Marie wades out into the icy water to her waist, to her ribs. Cold sezies her and the wet habit grasps at her legs. She finds a ewe standing upon a dead sister, paddling with its front legs in panic, and though the beast is twice the size of an ordinary child and thashes in her frenzy, Marie picks her up in her arms and carriers her to the rise.
And her smell was strong, the soap of lemon balm and lavender at the heart of her braid, skin with honey and wild onions and leaf rot in it.
So hungry, the nun's faces are skulls skinned of flesh in the dark dortoir. There are soups in which meat is boiled and removed to save for future soups. Fingernails the cold blue of sky.
