Kate Kennedy, intent on finishing her new book on Byron and suffering from the aftermath of an affair, rents a cottage on the bleak Essex coast. But Alison Lindsey, daughter of the people who own it, has been excavating what she thinks is a Roman grave in the nearby dunes. Kate's arrival precipitates the terror that follows as the spirits of the Roman, Marcus Severus Secundus, his wife Claudia and her lover, the Druid prince, Nion seeks to work out their vengeance on one another two thousand years after their deaths...

"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."