Marshall said, ‘Then let me make it simple. I’ve had that arsehole in charge of the unit round trying to come the heavy with me. No one tries to make me look like a fucking idiot and gets away with it. No one. Do you understand?’

There was silence on the other end of the phone line.

This time he screamed, ‘Do you understand!’

There was a quiet, ‘Yes.’

‘Then get it done!’

Jo was feeling distinctly pleased with herself. Things had been ticking along nicely on-site while Clare was away. And she’d even managed to persuade most of the team to come in and work on Saturday to try to get them back on track. They’d all seen Marshall’s antics when he’d turned up on-site. And while in Malc’s stated opinion they should tell him to ‘Go shove it’, that wasn’t going to help them hit their deadline. And, more importantly, it wasn’t going to help take the pressure off Clare.

Most of them were only too willing to keep going over the weekend – digging a site like this was a once-in-a-career opportunity and they wanted to make the most of it. Even the few that had initially been reluctant had been won over by Jo’s promise of a bonus. Though as yet she had no idea how the unit was going to pay for it.

They’d been fortunate in that a fair chunk of the shrine looked as if it lay outside of the footprint of the development. So with a bit of luck they should be able to persuade the county archaeologist and the planning department that it wasn’t under threat and didn’t need excavating. But if they were going to do the site justice they still had a supersized task on their hands trying to dig the rest of the site.

It wasn’t only the site they had to worry about; there were the finds too. The post-excavation team back at the university came to the sum total of two: Jo and Clare. And even if they could find the money to employ Neil for a while after the dig finished, the finds coming up now were extraordinary. They’d had more horse fittings, brooches and even a handful of Dobunnic and Roman coins. So, it was looking as if the site had continued in use even after the Romans arrived. But what they were really struggling with was the pottery. There were vast quantities of Roman pot coming up from the periphery of the site now. And if they didn’t get it processed now there was no way they’d get it done back at the department.

Which was why Jo found herself, despite the glorious sunshine that had miraculously appeared after the morning showers, tucked away in the site office alongside Val, their finds supervisor, scrubbing away furiously at a bowlful of sherds of assorted Roman tableware.