Clare took the hint. She opened up her laptop. After a couple of taps of the keys she positioned it so both he and Margaret could see the screen. In front of them was a fuzzy grey image with a selection of ill-defined, slightly darker splodges splattered across its surface.

He said, ‘I can see it’s a magnetometer survey, but what’s it meant to be of?’

‘It’s the site. According to Neil, Beth was convinced there was an Iron Age shrine here somewhere.’

David let out a long, low sigh. Iron Age shrines were as rare as hen’s teeth and normally the prospect of digging one would have made his year. But right now what they needed to do was to get in, dig the site and get out again. The last thing they needed was something that would take months to dig and be a bloody nightmare to keep a lid on. It was so good to see Clare excited by something again. The last couple of years since Stephen’s death had been tough on her. But he couldn’t afford for her to get carried away on some wild goose chase looking for a long-lost Iron Age temple.

To his relief Clare sounded matter-of-fact. ‘The trenches that are open at the moment were positioned to see what this is.’ She pointed at one of the darker splodges that seemed to be a little longer than the others. ‘What do you make of it?’

He scoffed. ‘I think she must have had bloody good eyesight!’

Margaret removed her glasses and peered at the image in front of them. ‘Maybe. But I’m not so sure, David. There might be something there. Do you see?’ She pointed a finger at an elongated dark splodge running close to one side of the image.

Clare said, ‘And now you see why I needed to speak to you. But there’s something else. Neil told me that Beth had found a journal article that she reckoned proved this place was a shrine site well before the Romans arrived. So I had a look through her site diaries and found a reference to this.’

With a few more strokes of the keys a scanned image of a journal article appeared in front of them. From the typeface it was obviously of some antiquity.

David asked, ‘What’s this from?’

Clare said, ‘The Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for 1877.’

In the middle of the page was a line drawing of what appeared to be one half of a slab of stone with parts of an inscription on it. It was obvious that the other half must have contained more of the text.

Margaret leant forward. ‘Now that is interesting.’

David asked, ‘Where was it found?’