The Shadowy Horses

by Susanna Kearsley

  In fact, one scarcely saw the wallpaper, there were so many pictures, and with the weathered Oriental carpet on the floor the overall effect was one of cultured and eclectic taste.

  Ahead I saw the glimmer of a window, and a gaping darkness that might have been a stairway, and the corner of a passage, but my host didn’t force me into a guided tour. Of the three closed doorways leading off the entrance hall he chose the nearest on my left. “The sitting room,” he told me, as he fumbled for the wall switch. “Not the posh one, I’m afraid—that’s over there,” he nodded across the hall, “but it isn’t very comfortable for sitting. I much prefer this one.”

  When the light snapped on, I saw why. Deep red walls hugged round on every side, set off by more Oriental carpeting and a leather sofa, creased and weathered from years of use, on which two cats were curled around each other, sleeping. A matching armchair sat surrounded in its corner by bookshelves crammed with volumes old and new, and more prints and drawings hung haphazardly about the room. The one large window had been simply hung with panels of a floral-patterned chintz, worn in spots and faded from the sun. When the curtains were open, I thought, one would be able to look out over the drive.

  Even as I formed the thought, the front door banged and Adrian went thumping past with my suitcase. His footsteps faded up an unseen flight of stairs.

  “Please, do sit down.” Peter Quinnell waited until I had settled myself on the sofa beside the cats before he folded his own long frame into the armchair, slinging one loose-jointed leg over the other and tilting his head back to rest against the leather.

  This was his room, I thought—it had the stamp of him, somehow, in all its corners. Not pristine and tidy, but comfortably masculine, the sort of room that men of old had taken refuge in when wives began to scurry round the house with purpose. Here papers could be left spread out on chairs without reproach, and one could smoke, or drop a biscuit crumb onto the carpet.

  “Don’t mind the cats,” he told me, “they’re quite harmless. Stupid creatures, really, but I’m fond of them. Murphy—that’s the big black beast, there—he’s been with me seven years now, and his girlfriend Charlie came to us last winter, when we bought this house.” A sudden thought struck him, and he frowned. “You’re not allergic, are you?”

  I assured him I was not.

  “Good. I had an aunt once who was. Most distressing for her. Ah,” he said, as Adrian appeared in the doorway, “that’s done, is it? I don’t suppose, my boy, that you’d be kind enough to fetch us all a drink? I’m afraid I am forgetting my manners, and no doubt Miss Grey is parched.”

  I caught the faint stiffening of Adrian’s shoulders, but again he surprised me by taking the request in his stride. Peter Quinnell’s pay, I reflected, must be very good indeed. Adrian hated playing butler. Still, he sent me a winning smile. “Gin and it for you, darling? And Peter, what will you have? Vodka?”

  “Please. And perhaps a cheese biscuit or two?” He waited until Adrian had gone again before he slid his long eyes slowly back to me. Once again I was reminded of an actor in the theater, not just because of the artistic setting, the elegant arrangement of man-in-armchair and the rolling, cultured voice, but because I had the strong impression more was going on behind those eyes than I was meant to think. “Adrian,” he said, “did mention, I believe, that you and he were once an item.”

  Adrian, I thought, deserved a swift kick, sometimes. I forced a smile. “Yes, of sorts.”

  “But not now?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. Friends, though?”

  “Yes, great friends.”

  He paused, and narrowed his eyes as though trying to remember something. “You met in Suffolk, did you not? On one of Lazenby’s digs?”

  “Yes. Though I’m afraid I didn’t spend much time at the dig, myself. I’d just started working for Dr. Lazenby, then, at the British Museum, and I was rather green when it came to fieldwork.”

  “Suffolk,” he said again, thinking harder. “That was the Roman fort?”

  “It was. They built a bypass over it.”

  “Ah.” The great black tomcat stretched and shifted, looked about, and arched to its feet, yawning. With a placid look in my direction it stepped neatly to the carpet and marched a little stiffly toward Peter Quinnell’s corner. Quinnell moved his hand aside so the cat could jump onto his lap, but he didn’t take his quiet gaze from my face.

  “How much have you been told,” he asked, “about the job?”

  I answered honestly. “Not much.”

  “And about myself?”

  “A little less.”

  The shrewd eyes smiled. “You needn’t spare my feelings, my dear. Surely someone will have mentioned that I’m mad?”

  What did one say to that? I wondered. Luckily, he didn’t appear to expect an answer, for he went on stroking the black cat and speaking pleasantly.

  “It was your work with Lazenby, you see, that caught my attention in the first place. He trains only the best. Adrian says you did most of the cataloging yourself, for the Suffolk dig—and the drawings. Is that right? Impressive,” he said, when I nodded. “Very impressive. I’d be thrilled if you could do the same for us, here at Rosehill. Of course, we won’t have quite the range of artifacts that Lazenby turned up—the Romans weren’t here that long—but we’re bound to find a few good pieces in among the everyday, and a battlefield does have an interest all its own, don’t you agree?”

  I didn’t answer straight away. I was too busy trying to sort out my whirling thoughts. A battlefield? A… good God, not a Roman battlefield? Right here in Eyemouth? It seemed incredible, and yet… my stomach flipped excitedly. I took a breath. “I hope you don’t mind my asking,” I began, “but what exactly is your team excavating?”

  The hand upon the black cat stilled, surprised. “I am so sorry,” Peter Quinnell said. “I thought you knew. It’s a marching camp, my dear. A Roman marching camp. Early second-century. Though in actual fact I suppose it’s more of a burial ground, really.” His eyes captured mine, intense, and for the first time I believed, truly believed, that he might indeed be mad. “We’ve found the final resting place of Legio IX Hispana.”

  Chapter 3

  If he’d told me they had found the Holy Grail, I couldn’t have been more astonished. The Ninth Legion—the Hispana—here! It hardly seemed credible. Not when so many people had searched for so long, and in vain. I myself had come to believe that the fate of the lost legion would remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time.

  Historians the world over had hotly debated dozens of theories, but the facts themselves were few. All anyone could say for certain was that, some time in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, Legio IX Hispana had been ordered north from its fortress at York.

  The soldiers of the Ninth, already veterans of the long campaigns in Wales and the brutal war with Boudicca, were crack troops, rarely called upon to deal with minor skirmishes—the task of day-to-day front-line defense was left to the auxiliaries. It took a true emergency to set a legion on the march.

  And when several thousand men marched out to do battle, the spectacle would have been stunning. At dawn would come the auxiliary units of archers and cavalry, forming an all-seeing shield for the legion behind. Then the standard-bearer, holding high the sacred golden Eagle of the Empire, symbol of honor and victory. If an enemy touched the eagle he disgraced the legion; if a legion lost the eagle it disgraced Rome. Close round the eagle marched the other standard-bearers, followed by the trumpeters, and then, in ordered ranks, six men abreast, came the legionaries, ripe for war.

  They’d been trained to march twenty-four Roman miles in five hours, fully armored, weighted with weapons and tools and heavy packs, and then at the end of the day’s march to build the night’s camp—no small task, since a camp needed trenches and ramparts and palisades to protect
the leather tents inside.

  These were hard men, hard fighting men, and a legion on the march with all its baggage train and brilliant armor would have been a sight that one remembered.

  Which made the disappearance of the Ninth Legion all the more puzzling, I thought. Because nobody had remembered. At least, no one had bothered to keep a record of what became of the Ninth in its northern battle, and the legion itself had been struck from the military lists. Modern historians offered several explanations—the men of the Hispana might have mutinied, or disgraced themselves by losing the eagle in battle… or else, in that barbaric wilderness, they’d met an end so terrible that the survivors could not bear to speak of it.

  Those few survivors—a pitiable scattering of them, identified by stray tombstones crumbling at the farthest corners of the fallen Empire—had kept their secret well. So well, in fact, that nearly two thousand years later, the full fate of Legio IX Hispana—all those thousands of men—continued to elude historians like a ghost in the mist of a barren moor.

  I looked at Peter Quinnell, cleared my throat. “The Hispana? Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes. Quite sure. Adrian can show you the results of his initial survey. Can’t you, my boy?”

  “What?” Adrian, just coming through the door with our drinks, glanced round in mild enquiry.

  “Your radar survey,” Quinnell elaborated, “down in the southwest corner.”

  “Ah.” His eyes came to rest on my face, trying to gauge my reaction. “You’ve told her, then.”

  “Well, naturally. Quite unforgivable, your keeping her in the dark like that. I was just telling her that you could show her what you’d found.”

  “Certainly,” said Adrian. “It’s all on computer. I’ll show you tomorrow,” he promised, pressing a glass into my waiting hand.

  He must have known I’d hear about the Hispana while he was out of the room—he’d made my drink a double. Relaxing back into the sofa, I took a long sip of cool gin and vermouth and looked across at Peter Quinnell. “You have a lab set up, then, here on site?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve converted the old stables, behind the house. Plenty of room up there.”

  “You’ll die, you know,” Adrian warned me. “Not one but two microscopes, and the computers—I’ve never seen anything like it, on a field excavation.”

  Quinnell’s eyes slid sideways to Adrian, and again I caught the canny glint behind the old man’s indulgent gaze. He knew, I thought, exactly what made Adrian tick—the clink of coins, the smell of money, the promise of a comfortable position. “Yes, well,” he said, in a mild voice, “I do like my little gadgets, you know. Sit down, my boy, for heaven’s sake—you’re making my neck stiff. And mind the cat,” he added, as Adrian narrowly missed sitting on the still-sleeping tabby. I shifted over, making space on the sofa.

  “You realize, of course,” Adrian informed me, “that we’ll have to shoot you, now, if you don’t join our little digging team. Can’t risk having our secret leak out.”

  They had kept the secret remarkably well, I thought, and told them so. “I haven’t heard so much as a whisper of it, in London, and I don’t remember reading anything in any of the journals.”

  “The journals, my dear, are singularly uninterested in where I choose to dig.” Peter Quinnell stroked the black cat’s ears, smiling. “Forty years ago they thought my theories fascinating, but now most of my colleagues couldn’t care less. The ones who shared my faith are dead, and the younger set are slaves of modern science, I’m afraid. No place for instinct, in their books. No place for hunches.” His lazy eyes forgave my youthful ignorance as he lifted his glass of vodka. “These days, I’m considered a rather less successful Schliemann, chasing after fairy tales. Except where Schliemann had his Homer, I have nothing.” He paused and drank, letting his chin droop thoughtfully down to his chest. “No, that’s not exactly true,” he said, at length. “I do have Robbie.”

  Adrian shot me a watchful glance, and leaned back against the cushions of the sofa, nearly crushing the sleeping cat. Indignantly, the little gray tabby stood and stretched and marched straight over Adrian onto my knees, where she settled herself with an irritable thump.

  Adrian glanced pointedly from my face to the cat, and back again. “I don’t know which of the two of you looks the more exhausted,” he commented. I had the oddest impression that he was making a calculated maneuver, and a moment later, when Quinnell looked over and said, “Oh, quite,” in tones of vague concern, I knew my suspicions were right. Adrian, in his smooth and wholly manipulative way, was trying to bring the evening to a close.

  No doubt he’d had something more exciting planned for his own Thursday night, and since Quinnell seemed fully capable of chatting on for hours yet, Adrian had boldly decided to move things along.

  I sent him a guileless smile. “I’m not the least bit tired.”

  Undaunted, he tried another tack. “You want to be sharp for your interview tomorrow, don’t you?”

  Quinnell appeared shocked by the idea. “My dear boy,” he cut in, eyebrows raised, “there isn’t going to be an interview. Good heavens, no. No,” he said again, with emphasis, as I raised my startled gaze to his, “the job is yours, if you’ll have it. But I expect you’d like to take a day or so to look around, to think it over. You can give me your answer this weekend, all right?”

  The job was mine, I thought. A legendary battlefield and steady pay besides. I already knew what my answer would be, but I tried to keep my reaction professional. “All right,” I said, and nodded.

  “Good. And now, though you’ve been terribly polite to sit here listening to me, I’m sure you really are quite tired from your travels. I’ll show you to your room.”

  “I’ll take her up,” Adrian offered.

  “You most certainly will not.” Quinnell’s voice was firm. “I’d be a thoughtless cad to deliver any woman into your clutches, even one familiar with your Casanova ways. No, you may say good night to her, and I will take her upstairs, when she’s ready.”

  Adrian was still smiling several minutes later, as he shrugged his coat on in the vestibule and bent to brush my cheek with a chaste kiss. “So,” he murmured, with a quick glance over my shoulder to where Quinnell stood waiting in the entrance hall, “what do you think?”

  “I think he’s rather marvelous.”

  “I’m glad. Verity…”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.” He tossed his dark head back and fastened the final snap of his coat. “Never mind. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

  I watched him go, then turned and followed Peter Quinnell through the hall and up a winding stone stairway to the first floor. My footsteps dragged a little on the hard steps, and I realized that I actually was tired. By the time Quinnell had shown me where the bathroom was and introduced me to the plumbing, I was stifling yawns. And although his granddaughter had no doubt taken great pains to match my curtains to my coverlet, I’m afraid that when the door to my spacious back bedroom swung open, I saw only the plump twin beds.

  Quinnell fussed around for a few minutes longer, demonstrating drawers and cupboard doors and making certain I had everything I needed for the night, and then with a final weary smile he gallantly withdrew and left me on my own.

  Well, not entirely on my own.

  One of the cats had come upstairs with us, and when I’d finished in the bathroom I returned to find it perched upon my window ledge, long tail twitching as it stared transfixed at the ink-black pane of glass. It was the tomcat, the big black one, and not the dainty gray tabby that had slept on my lap earlier. The gray one was Charlie, I remembered, and… oh, what was the black one called? The name was vaguely Irish, I thought. Mickey? Mooney? “Murphy,” I pronounced, with satisfaction, and the cat flicked an ear in response.

  “You like that window, do you, Murphy? What is it you see?�
�

  I myself could see only my own reflection, and the cat’s, until I switched the lamp off. Even then, the view looked ordinary enough. Close by, a large tree shuddered with the wind, above a sea of ghostly daffodils that dipped and danced in waves. And beyond that, the fickle moonlight caught a sweep of field that slanted gently up to meet a darkly cresting ridge. “You see?” I said. “There’s nothing…”

  The cat’s hair bristled suddenly as it arched itself upon the window ledge, eyes flaming as its lips curled sharply back, fangs baring in a vicious hiss.

  I know I jumped. And though the hiss had not been aimed at me, I felt my gooseflesh rising in response and fought to calm the jerky rhythm of my heart. “Murphy,” I said sternly, “stop that.”

  He swiveled his head to stare at me, eyes glowing, then turned away again to watch the night. The second hiss came fiercer than the first, and rattled me so badly that I snapped the window blind down and nudged the black cat from the ledge with a less than steady hand.

  Murphy settled benignly at the foot of my bed and blinked without expression. Stupid animal, I thought. There had been nothing out there, nothing at all. Only the tree and the daffodils, and the dark, deserted field.

  Nevertheless, I was glad of the tomcat’s company when I crawled beneath my blankets, having chosen the twin bed farther from the window. And for the first time since my nursery days, I didn’t reach to turn off the bedside lamp.

  ***

  “Do you always sleep with your light on?” Fabia Quinnell asked me next morning, at breakfast. Waiting for me to finish my toast and coffee, she leaned an elbow on the kitchen counter and nibbled a dried apricot.