As she climbed towards the top of the hill, the scenery was breathtaking. Surrounding two sides of the central ridge, Clare could still clearly make out the remains of what must once have been a substantial bank and, following them round, she began to find traces of a second circuit lying just outside the first. But the biggest surprise came when she crested the top of the hill. Plunging away on two sides below her was the river carving its way through the solid limestone of the valley below. The scene was dizzying, and in truth stunning, though it was a little too dizzying for Clare to stomach. She stepped back and pulling her waterproof from her rucksack, spread it on the damp grass and settled down to admire the view from a comfortable distance.

On a day like today this place was serenely beautiful; a patchwork of fields with their drystone walls dissecting the landscape. It was a photographer’s dream. But Clare knew from David’s tales of winter blizzards and Peak District villages marooned by snowdrifts that this place could be savage too. And when Beth had dug here, the limestone ditches had given up an unexpectedly savage secret.

Within the short stretch of the defences that she’d dug, and trapped beneath the fallen rampart for the last two thousand years, Beth had discovered the remains of nine women and children who, it seemed, had been dispatched and disposed of like so much discarded rubbish. When she’d spoken to Jo about it she’d said there had been no outward signs of violence on their bones. And Clare liked to think they might at least have had their throats cut before the many tonnes of drystone walling had entombed them.

Despite the tranquillity of the scene, she knew that in all probability dozens if not hundreds of victims of that Iron Age massacre lay in the ditches all around her. What sort of impact, she wondered, had the discovery made on Beth? Had she felt for the victims, or did she view the skeletons of those who had perished as so much data to fuel her research? Clare suspected she knew the answer, though she could never prove it. How could anyone fail to be changed by a discovery like that?