Vindex was not happy. ‘Ten of my lads were at the fort waiting for us to come back, just as you ordered,’ he explained. ‘Now they are told that they cannot leave Vindolanda until the details of the attack are established. What’s up? Are they prisoners?’

Ferox had been afraid of this. He had not yet mentioned to anyone else the potion of mistletoe and nightshade or the double death inflicted on the slave girl. He wondered why they had not added the third death of strangulation to make this a proper sacrifice, but then these people were druids and many other things as well, who invoked Isis and used magic from the east and not everything they did followed the old rules.

‘We really are humped, aren’t we?’ Vindex said when he told him.

Half an hour before they got there Ferox knew where the trail was heading. At last they saw the two standing stones, and between the Mother and Daughter there was a woman.

‘Bastards,’ Vindex gasped when they first saw her, and his anger grew as they came close. ‘Bastards, bastards, bastards.’

Two of the Batavians vomited there and then, and another did the same thing a moment later. The soldiers cursed and swore and screamed out the vengeance they would wreak.

‘Bastards,’ Vindex said again.

Ferox said nothing. This was his failure and his fault. If the thought of this being done to Sulpicia Lepidina was a nightmare too appalling to admit, that was little consolation. He had let this happen. Samhain was not yet done, but he felt as if hope was slipping back to the Otherworld with the rest of the spirits. He had failed. These swine were butchering victims in his territory and he was not stopping them. One hand gripped the handle of his sword and he itched to use it.

XXV

FOR ONCE, CAVALRYMEN did not object to digging. Ferox rode to a farm half a mile away and borrowed two spades and a pick because they had no tools. The family living there were nervous, and happy to hand over anything as long as it made him leave. When he got back every man took off his cloak and they wrapped the mutilated body round tightly and buried Fortunata in a deep grave. Such sights needed to be buried away, out of sight. They gathered the local grey stones and piled them over the grave, while one soldier found a fallen tree trunk and carved her name into the wood. They dug another pit, and raised the wooden monument at her head. Vegetus would be able to find his wife’s resting place with ease. Ferox hoped that he could be persuaded not to unearth the body for cremation. Better that he never know what they had done.