So this is how history gets rewritten, she thought. This is how it begins, with exaltation. Now it is not enough for a man merely to have been a man; now the etiquette of grief demands that we change him into a prince, a king. Now the flaws of a man have to be ironed out like the creases in a suit, until he is spread out before us as smooth and unblemished as the day he was born. As if the earth would refuse to receive him, as if the vultures at the Tower of Silence would refuse to peck at him, unless he was restored to his original glory. In death, all men become saints, she thought, and she both welcomed and rebelled against the thought. Perhaps it was better this way--this erasing of bad memories, this replacement with happier ones, like changing a dirty tablecloth. But if this was true, what to do about this heavy, lumpen body of hers, this body that cried out its true history, this body that wanted to testify, to bear witness to what had been done to it? [...] would this body have to be dead, would its blood have to freeze into immobility before anyone sang its praises and called it the body of a princess or a queen?