Atonement

She did not feel beautiful, though. She felt old, used, filthy, ugly. There were stretchmarks on her belly from the children she had borne, and her breasts were not as firm as they had been when she was younger. Without a gown to hold them up, they sagged against her chest. ‘I should not have done this. I was their queen, but now they’ve seen, they’ve seen, they’ve seen. I should never have let them see.’ Gowned and crowned, she was a queen. Naked, bloody, limping, she was only a woman, not so very different from their wives, more like their mothers than their pretty little maiden daughters. 'What have I done?’