“How should I know?” The tavernkeeper shrugged heavy shoulders, eyeing the blood that had run from the table to pool and dry on the floor. Behind the kitchen door at his back, I could hear the other maidservants twittering and wailing. “One of the other girls said there were three men in for a bit of fun late last night—throwing dice, spreading money around, eyeing the girls. Maybe Anna stayed to wait on them.”

“You were here?”

“I went to midnight Mass,” the tavernkeeper said virtuously.

“You went to fuck that carter’s wife you like to visit when her husband leaves Rome with his mules, but no matter. These three boys—did your girls say anything else about them?”

“Well dressed. Anna could have turned a pretty profit, pulling up her skirts for something better than dwarves and fishmongers. Things got out of hand, I imagine.”

“No, she wasn’t raped.” I tugged her rumpled skirts down to cover her ankles. She had no blood under her skirts or bruises on her thighs. Bruises on her knees, as though someone had tried to force them apart, but Anna must have fought too hard. The knives through her hands, I guessed, had been to hold her still . . .

“Who’s going to take care of this mess, I’d like to know?” The tavernkeeper went back to his complaining. “I’ll have to pay double to those maids, just to get them in here to clean that floor! And they won’t go touching that body, not a whore who’s died unshriven.”

“I’ll tend the body.” I crossed the kitchen, climbing up on a chair to reach the box where the tapers were kept. I took a handful and hopped down from the chair. “I’ll pay,” I said, forestalling the tavernkeeper’s sputtering, and began setting the tapers about Anna’s still body. Cheap tapers, made of rancid-smelling tallow. She deserved beeswax for her death vigil. Of course, Anna had deserved a great many things. A silk dress, like that lovely young bride we’d watched in her wedding procession a fortnight ago. A caring husband, a loyal family. A kind death in a soft bed at sixty, not a horror of a death staked to a kitchen table at twenty-five.

“Close the tavern today,” I told the tavernkeeper, who had started to fuss again. “I’ll stand vigil for her tonight, and see her buried on the morrow.”

“I believe the dwarf’s in love!” The man raised an eyebrow, starting to grin.

“Keep that filthy tongue in your head before I saw it off,” I said evenly. “She has no family to bury her, so I will.”

“Well, it’s your money.”