The basin was brimful of a dark red fluid. He lifted his eye a little and looked at the bed. A woman was lying on it, half-naked. Her nightdress, delicately wrought with lacework all over, was drawn back and folded tight, wrapped around her stiffened limbs and body. Her ankles, firmly lashed together with a thin cord that cut into the flesh, were attached to the near bedpost. Her right arm, drawn out at full stretch, was attached by the wrist in the same way to the bedpost opposite . . .
