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imagined that the body had been washed and oiled, and sprinkled with the herbs.
    Stygius shook his head. ‘The mistress thought that we should leave her for the family to do that – supposing that we find out who they are. My only instructions were to bring the body over here and make it look as decent as I could, so that’s what I’ve tried to do. The face was so awful that I couldn’t look at it, so after I’d got rid of all the ants and things I just brushed the leaves and dust off the clothing to clean it up a bit, and covered her all up with a piece of cloth I found.’
    Junio had been standing patiently at my side through this exchange, but now he stepped forward and asked quietly, ‘You cleaned the clothing up a bit, you say? But weren’t there bloodstains on it, Stygius? Surely, compared to that a bit of dust would hardly signify?’
    Stygius peered at him a moment, and then burst out with a laugh. ‘Why – it’s Master Junio, by all the gods! I knew that they were going to set you free today, but I’d never have known you in that fancy garb – saving your presence, citizen, of course.’
    ‘Junio is wearing garments which befit his rank,’ I said, and then – feeling that the rebuke had been severe – ‘More than this dead girl is doing, it appears. You have sharp eyes, Stygius. Answer his question: were there bloodstains on the clothes?’
    Stygius thought a minute, puzzled, and at last he shook his head. ‘It’s a strange thing, Master Junio, now you come to mention it,’ he said, ‘but I don’t believe there were. A smear or two round the neck, no more. And you would have expected, with her poor face in that appalling state . . . But, here, you’d better see for yourselves.’ He approached the bed, and with a single gesture stripped the cloth back from the shrouded form.
    It was indeed a most appalling sight. The face was nothing but a bloody pulp, battered into formlessness. Nose, chin and cheekbones were all in fragments now and there was so little undamaged skin that the whole face looked as though it had been flayed – though doubtless rats and beetles had played their part in that. If the girl’s parents did arrive to claim her, I thought, the poor souls would find few features that they could recognise. But one thing was quite certain: this was no accident.
    I had still been toying with that possibility, wondering if the girl had really run away – as I had suggested to Julia earlier – and somehow managed to lose her way and plunge down from a height, killing herself and leaving her stricken lover to hide her corpse somehow. But seeing the evidence, I knew there was no chance of that. Someone had wielded a heavy item, with enormous force.
    I drew a little nearer to the corpse and looked more closely. Slight, with a boyish figure and of less than average height, the pathetic victim had clearly not been very old, and the garment she was wearing was too generous for her. Made of coarse woollen fabric in the Celtic style, it was very far from new, heavy and shining in places with years of unwashed grime. The broad plaid was roughly fashioned into a sort of gown, the hems ragged with use and the long sleeves patched and mended at the ends. It was tied in at the waist with a piece of battered rag, and a frayed shawl in a different plaid was tied round the head, so that no hair emerged, making a grotesque frame for that poor damaged face.
    But as Stygius said, there was very little blood. Even in this dim light it was possible to see that. No spreading telltale stain of darkness on the dirt-encrusted chest, no brittleness of dried blood even on the scarf. A tiny smear upon the shoulder, when I looked carefully, and another on the shawl. Almost as if . . .
    ‘She wasn’t wearing those clothes at the time she was attacked.’ That was Junio, echoing my thoughts as usual. ‘Someone must have dressed her in them after she was dead.’
    I nodded. ‘I’m almost sure of it.’ I picked up