‘And all at the same time, remember. Those radio carbon dates are pretty much identical. But there was more to it than that. They were all killed in different ways.’

‘Well, two of them were,’ Clare corrected him. ‘Jo said she couldn’t find the cause of death for the third one. It could have died of natural causes. The infant mortality rate must have been sky high in the Iron Age.’

‘True enough, but there is another explanation. Do you remember that chap they found in a peat bog in Cheshire in the eighties, Lindow Man?’ Clare nodded. ‘Well, he’d been hit on the head, garrotted and then had his throat cut. And we know from later written sources that sometimes the third mode of sacrifice was poison or drowning. They may have thought that the three deaths together somehow boosted the value of their offering to the gods.’ David shook his head. ‘Didn’t do the poor sods any bloody good though. Within four years of Claudius invading there was a legionary fortress up the road in Gloucester.’

This place had a dark history. There weren’t just the babies. There was Beth Kinsella too. They may have been separated by two thousand years, but none of them had deserved to die.

Clare shivered.

David said, ‘You OK?’

‘Just thinking about Beth.’ He ushered her away from the back of the Land Rover and into the sunshine. ‘Do you believe what happens somewhere can leave an imprint on a place, David?’

‘Everything that happens somewhere shapes a place. Just as much as it shapes the people that lived and worked there.’

‘And worshipped there,’ Clare said.

He nodded. ‘That’s what it’s all about for me. The way people shape things and places, and the places and things that shape people. Places make people and people make places.’

Had David deliberately misconstrued what she was saying? She looked around her at the picture-postcard-perfect Cotswold hillside. Was her imagination running away with her or had what happened here two millennia ago really left its mark in ways she didn’t fully understand?

David put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Come on. What you need is a cuppa.’

One of David’s avowed beliefs was that there wasn’t much a good strong cup of tea or a pint couldn’t put right. Though there were times when she suspected he used it as a diversionary tactic. ‘You go ahead. I’ll be down in a minute. I want to have another look at the camera rig on the drone.’

She turned to make her way round the side of the Land Rover towards the area where Flyboy had landed the drone. But now that the thrumming overhead had ceased she could hear someone talking – arguing – on the far side of the vehicle.