Now he sought to answer three questions: Why had the hill fort been abandoned after only a hundred years? What was the significance of the large number of severed heads, some real and some rendered in stone, that he had discovered in the vicinity of the central meeting house? Were they merely the battle trophies of a barbarian Iron Age people, or were they religious in nature, linked somehow to the mysterious Celtic “severed head” cult? Martineau suspected the cult may have had a hand in the hill fort’s rapid demise, which is why he had ordered the other members of the team to alert him the moment a “head” was discovered—and why he handled the excavations personally. He had learned through hard experience that no clue, no matter how insignificant, could be ignored. What was the disposition of the head? What other artifacts or fragments were found in the vicinity? Was there trace evidence contained in the surrounding soil? Such matters could not be left in the hands of a graduate student, even one as talented as Yvette Debré.

They arrived at an excavation trench, about six feet in length and shoulder-width across. Martineau lowered himself in, careful not to disturb the surrounding earth. Protruding from the hard subsoil was the easily recognizable shape of a human nose. Martineau, from his back pocket, removed a small hand pick and a brush and went to work.

For the next six hours he did not rise from his pit. Yvette sat cross-legged at the edge. Occasionally she offered him mineral water or coffee, which he also refused. Every few minutes one of the other team members would wander by and inquire about his progress. Their questions were met by silence. Only the sound of Martineau’s work emanated from the trench. Pick, pick, brush, brush, blow. Pick, pick, brush, brush, blow . . .

Slowly the face rose toward him from the depths of the ancient soil, mouth drawn in final anguish, eyes closed in death. As the morning wore on he probed deeper into the soil and found, as he had expected, that the head was held by a hand. Those gathered on the edge of the excavation trench did not realize that for Paul Martineau, the face represented more than an intriguing artifact from the distant past. Martineau, in the dark soil, saw the face of his enemy—and one day soon, he thought, he too would be holding a severed head in the palm of his hand.

THE STORM CAME DOWN from the Rhône Valley at midday. The rain, cold and driven by a harsh wind, swept over the excavation site like a Vandal raiding party. Martineau climbed out of his trench and hastened up the hill, where he found the rest of his team sheltering in the lee of the ancient wall.

“Pack up,” he said. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”