Eco wrinkled his nose. An instant later I did the same. Despite the perfumes and unguents with which the body had been anointed, and the pan of incense set above a low brazier nearby, there was a decided odour of decay in the air. Eco moved to cover his nose with the hem of his sleeve; I batted his hand away and frowned at his rudeness.

Fabius said in a low voice, 'This is the fifth day.' It would be two more days until the funeral then, to allow the seven days of public mourning. The body would be quite pungent by then. With such an ostentatious display of wealth, surely the family had paid for the best anointers to be found in Baiae, or more likely had brought them over from bustling Puteoli, but their skill had not been good enough. There was an added irony in the carelessness with which the deceased was displayed; a few stray tendrils of ivy had fallen over his head, obscuring not only half his face but any laurel crown that he might have been wearing in remembrance of some earthly honour.

'This ivy,' I said, 'looks almost as if it had been placed over his face on purpose…'

Fabius did not stop me as I gently lifted the green tendrils that had been so skilfully arranged to hide the dead man's scalp. The wound beneath was of the sort that makes anointers of the dead throw up their hands in despair – almost impossible to purify and seal, too large to be hidden in any subtle way, too deep and ugly to be looked at for long. Eco made an involuntary sound of disgust and turned his face away, then leaned back to take a closer look.

'Hideous, isn't it?' whispered Fabius, averting his face. 'And Lucius Licinius was such a vain man. A pity he can't look his best in death.'

I steeled myself to look at the dead man's face. A sharp, heavy blow or blows had destroyed the upper right quadrant of his face, tearing the ear, smashing the cheekbone and jaw and ruining the eye, which despite any efforts to close it after death remained narrowly opened and clotted with blood.