I walk around the room, tapping, touching. The joints are almost seamless. The wood is solid, with no hollow spaces to allow for machinery. I wonder about cords, and even jets of water. I have heard water, forced through a small enough aperture, can be sharp enough to cut. I feel the gold, the lapis, the diamonds; I inhale the rich odours of wood resin and orpiment, ochre, azurite and malachite, the flavours of art. Those flavours, not blood. No fine spray has touched these walls, I will swear to it, and yet he died here, must have done, there was not time for anything else. No more than there was any way for him to bleed salt water, or be quinsected.