Midnight is a Lonely Place. Barbara Erskine

narrative strangely out of place amongst the glass cases beneath the high-beamed roof of the castle. She walked slowly around the ground floor exhibits gazing at Bronze Age and Iron Age artefacts, gradually growing closer to the sound.

      For several minutes she stood watching the video – which told of the Romans in Colchester – then turning away, she began slowly to climb the stairs. At the top were Roman exhibits, life-size models, colourful, larger than life panoramic pictures on the walls, and then another video enactment, this time of Boudicca’s attack and the sack of the town.

      Poor Boudicca. Kate wandered round slowly studying the exhibits, piecing together her life: the wife of Prasutagus; her children; the political background of first-century Britain; her husband’s death; the rape of her daughters and her humiliation as she was flogged by a Roman – the final insult after years of unrest and dissatisfaction in a country under foreign occupation, which caused the revolt which had nearly ended the Roman occupation of Britain. What a story her life made. Suddenly Kate found herself watching the video with heightened excitement. What a biography it would make; what a book, when George Byron was finished … The burning of Colchester, the rampage of Boudicca’s forces across Essex and Hertfordshire as they made their way towards London, and the final hours when she realised that all had failed and she took her own life. And Colchester was the centre of it all – a city where the flames had burned so hot that nearly two thousand years later a layer of blackened death was still clearly visible in the foundations of the town.

      She watched the video through twice, alone in the darkened booth – seeing the huge sketched shapes of the warriors, hearing their shouts and screams, then she stood up and left, intensely aware suddenly of the vaults far beneath the castle which were all that remained apparently of the Temple of Claudius – the temple Boudicca had burned to the ground with most of the population of the town inside it.

      She recognised this feeling: the tight, bone-tingling, breathless excitement as ideas jostled in her head, and under her breath she swore. She had had this feeling before, after she finished Jane; not until she had finished Jane. To get it now, while she was still at the beginning of Lord of Darkness meant she was going to suffer months if not years of suppressed, hidden frustration and worry in case someone else had the idea first; in case her publisher didn’t like the idea; in case the idea took root in her sleep and developed and began to encroach on the work in progress.

      Shaking her head in a small gesture of irritation she moved on past the exhibits. How could a woman – any woman – however hurt and humiliated, order the slaughter of other women, of children, of babies? What kind of person was she, this remote queen who offered human sacrifice to her gods before going to war?

      She stopped abruptly. She was standing in front of a statue of a Roman citizen and her eye had been caught by the name. Frowning, she read the inscription: ‘MARCUS SEVERUS SECUNDUS, one of the very few recorded survivors of the Boudiccan massacre. Instrumental in the rebuilding of Colchester after its sack in A.D. 60, he died full of years and honour and was buried next to his wife Augusta in the year A.D. 72. Their graves were excavated in 1986. See exhibit in case 14.’

      So this was Redall’s former owner. She stared hard at the stone face of Marcus with his patrician nose, slightly chipped, his warrior stance, the carefully sculpted folds of his toga and she wondered what kind of a man he had been. He had been one of those who had survived the massacre and returned to pick up the threads of his life. She felt another sudden frisson of excitement. Had he seen Boudicca? Could he have described the warrior queen of the Iceni with her flowing red hair and her massy torcs, her body armour and her war chariot?

      She jumped suddenly as a disembodied voice, echoing around the castle, announced that the museum would soon be closing and she gave Marcus a last regretful glance. But not too regretful. She had the feeling she would be coming back to see him again.

       IX

      The youngest son of the late King, he had stood head and shoulders above his brothers and he knew he had been the favourite. His love of learning, his memory, his wit had marked him out as a child for study and initiation. His priesthood gave him power. His royal blood marked him for destiny. That was why he had been given lands and authority, and why he was trusted as advisor at Camelodunum to the Roman settlers, even though his brothers led revolt in the west. He wore Roman clothes; he spoke their language; he assimilated their learning and their ways. And he had fallen in love with one of their women. But he hated them and he bided his time.

      He frowned when he saw the detested overlords raising their temple in the heart of Camelodunum: a temple to Claudius; a temple to a man who had declared himself a god. But he kept his views silent. One day the time would come, one day the Romans would be expelled from the land of his ancestors. When that day came, he would kill Claudia’s husband and he would take her back to his hall. But until then, ever the diplomat, he would smile.

      His duties as druid were light. He was royal, rich, in love. The gods would understand. He would serve them in due time when the bluebells had faded and the blood ran more slowly in his veins.

      The old priests disapproved. They frowned and shook their heads first at him, then at the signs from the gods; the gods who despised the Romans who would venerate a man and make him one of them.

      He did not know that the gods, too, were growing angry.

      It was almost dark as Kate drove down the track and into the barn and parked her car next to Diana’s Volvo once more. The farmhouse, she had noticed at once and with a strange sense of loss, was in complete darkness. She had not realised until that moment how much she had been counting on being asked in to sit by their cosy fire and have a cup of tea before she set out on the walk through the wood to her cottage.

      On the drive back she had found a farm shop open where she had managed to buy some bread and milk, crumbly local cheese and Essex honey and, to her great delight, some firelighters and matches.

      Hefting her plastic carrier over her shoulder she was already on the track when she stopped. The torch was still in the car. Turning back she pulled open the barn door once more and, unlocking the Peugeot she rummaged in the glove compartment. The torch was there, and – experimentally she flashed it up into the high rafters – it worked. Comforted, she locked up again and set off at a determined pace into the woods.

      The track ran straight for a few hundred yards and then curved eastwards, narrowing until there was only room for the rutted marks of the Land Rover’s wheels. Her feet slipped and she found she needed the torch to see where to put them in the mud. The evening was very still. There was no wind and the trees were silent. In the distance she heard the warbling call of a curlew from the marshes. The sound echoed in the falling darkness and was answered by the shriek of an owl. She clutched her bag more tightly, her eyes riveted to the track.

      May the gods of all eternity curse you, Marcus Severus Secundus, and bring your putrid body and your rotten soul to judgement for what you have done here this day …

      The woods were still silent, the trees unmoving. The words, as clear and well enunciated as those of a BBC presenter, had been inside her own head. Kate stopped dead, a sheen of sweat on her skin, her heart hammering in her ears. She stared round, her eyes straining into the darkness between the tall tree trunks, very conscious of the smell of rotting wood and damp, dark earth which surrounded her.

      Stupid. The darkness and the silence after the celluloid drama of the museum and the excitement of the new idea had set her imagination working overtime, that was all. She resumed walking, a little more quickly this time, her torch clutched so tightly in her hand that her fingers grew numb.

      When the cottage at last came into view she was breathless. Fumbling in her pocket for her key she let herself in and turned on the light, then she put her shopping bag down on the kitchen table, ran upstairs and grabbed one of her empty boxes from the spare bedroom. Dragging it after her she went straight outside again and made for the log shed. Before she did anything else and before she lost her nerve completely she would