The Shadowy Horses

by Susanna Kearsley

  I frowned harder. “But I still don’t understand how Robbie—”

  “Robbie sees things that the rest of us can’t. You can test him any way you want to, laboratory or no, and you’ll get the same result.” He lifted one shoulder, dismissively. “It’s uncomfortable, aye, when a thing won’t fit into our orderly world, but then Western society’s always been skeptical. And not very bright,” he reminded me, wryly. “It took us till the sixteenth century to figure out the earth went round the sun.”

  He had a point, I thought. “So you’re saying I should just accept the fact that Robbie’s psychic.”

  “Christ, no. If we didn’t have doubts we’d have no science at all, no reason to experiment. I’m only saying you should keep an open mind.”

  I promised to do my best. “And does the head of your department… what’s his name? The one who’s coming to lunch at the end of the month.”

  “Dr. Connelly.”

  “Right. Does he also have an open mind?”

  “What d’ye mean?”

  “Well, if we told him Robbie saw a Roman walking on the hill…”

  “He’d have us all committed.” David grinned. “No, we’ll have to find some harder evidence afore Connelly will give his approval.”

  “I do wish we had more time.”

  “We’ve got two full weeks yet, lots of time. Besides, we’re very close to something, I can feel it in my bones.”

  “You sound like Peter.”

  “Aye, well, it rubs off on you, after a while. And I was howking with Peter afore I could walk.”

  “Howking?”

  He shot me a mischievous glance. “D’ye not have your dictionary with you? My mother said you were fair having fun with it on Sunday.”

  I couldn’t help smiling back. “Sorry, no, it’s back at the house. What’s ‘howking’?”

  “Digging. To howk something means to dig it up out of the ground.” He lifted his coffee mug again and grimaced. “God, that’s awful stuff. I’ll make another pot. Did you want a cup, as well?”

  “Yes, please, if you don’t mind. Cream and sugar.”

  “Right.” David rose and stretched to his full height before disappearing in the direction of the common room, and while I waited for him to return I carefully arranged the four new potsherds on my desk and bent over them, thoughtfully.

  The furtive pad of footsteps broke my concentration.

  I felt the hair rise prickling on the back of my neck, and glanced up sharply, seeing nothing. “Hello?”

  No one answered. The silence stretched my nerves to breaking point, and when I felt the brush of cold against my hand I nearly shot straight up into the rafters. Recovering, I looked down at my hand and the thing that had touched me. A pair of liquid brown eyes stared back in mild inquisition, and Kip’s long feathered tail gave a tentative wag. Collies, I thought, always looked so damned intelligent, and this one appeared to be weighing the wisdom of making friends with someone this jumpy and unpredictable.

  Since I’d always liked the company of dogs, I settled the matter by scratching his ears. “Hello, Kip. God, you didn’t half give me a scare. Where’s your master, then?”

  I could have sworn the collie shrugged, as if to say he didn’t know. At any rate, I saw no sign of either Robbie or Wally, and when I went on stroking him the dog collapsed like a spent balloon on my feet, rolling over slightly to make his tummy more accessible.

  “You’ll want to watch him,” David warned me, returning along the aisle. “He’ll stay like that for hours if you let him.”

  Adrian, coming through the main door, heard the warning and laughed. “Oh, Verity won’t mind. She’s a right pushover, when it comes to animals.”

  And crossing to my desk he set a covered plate in front of me. “Your breakfast,” he announced, whisking off the cover with a flourish. “Jeannie said I was to be sure you ate it, seeing as you sneaked off without eating this morning.”

  Sighing heavily, I looked down at the heaping great mound of square sausage and fried eggs, rimmed with strips of toast and rounds of tomato. “But I never eat breakfast, you know that. A little toast, maybe, but…”

  “I have my orders,” Adrian said, setting down a knife and fork.

  David grinned, and handed me my mug. “Here’s your coffee.”

  “I’ll give you five pounds if you eat this for me.” I made the offer hopefully, but he refused to play.

  “I’ve had mine, thanks. So, what did you make of the sherds, then?”

  I moved the plate to one side, temporarily, out of the way of the four small jagged fragments of bloodred pottery. “Well, they’re definitely Samian ware—a small pot, I’d think, from the degree of curve. Maybe two pots. This one,” I said, touching one end piece lightly, “doesn’t seem to match the others.”

  “And what date would you estimate?”

  I chewed my lip. “Offhand, I’d say they’re earlier than what we’re looking for. But then again…” Without the support of laboratory analysis, dating pottery could be a rather imperfect science. If the piece wasn’t actually stamped by a known maker, one had to rely on comparisons to other bits of pottery dug up at other sites.

  In the case of Samian ware my task was made somewhat simpler by the fact that German archaeologists had spent most of the last century studying and classifying artifacts found on Roman sites in that country, and had managed to work out a very useful and detailed typology of Roman era pottery. The advance and decline of the Roman frontier in Germany had been so well documented by historians like Tacitus that archaeologists could say with reasonable certainty when each site had been occupied, making it easy to fix a date upon the bits of pottery found there. All that remained for me to do was to try to match my own sherds to a documented German find.

  Again I touched the suspect sherd. It was a rim fragment, broken from the top edge of a pot or bowl. “This one… I don’t know, it strikes me as a later piece. I ought to ask Howard. A friend of mine,” I explained, “at the British Museum. He’s absolutely mad about Samian ware—knows the name of every potter. He could give these sherds a glance at fifty paces and tell us exactly what they were part of and when it was made. I could send him some sketches, and ask his opinion. And perhaps, if Fabia would take a few photographs…?”

  Adrian, rummaging at his desk, glanced round in mid-yawn.

  “What a good idea. Why don’t I go and get her now, for you—no point in letting it wait.”

  “We can tell her on the way,” said David. “Peter will be thinking we’ve forgotten all about him.”

  “Oh, right.” Adrian looked disappointed.

  His survey equipment was stored safe behind the locked door of the finds room, and while he went to retrieve it I took a thoughtful sip of coffee, touching the sherds again, feeling the raised impression of what appeared to be a flower petal. I’d seen a pattern similar to this one when I’d worked on Dr. Lazenby’s excavations in the south of England, but that site had been Agricolan, dating from the seven-year period during which Gnaeus Julius Agricola had served as governor of Britain. And Agricola had been recalled in AD 84—forty years or so before the disappearance of the Ninth.

  “Well, that’s us away, then,” said David, shouldering his probe. “We’ll leave you in peace to eat your breakfast. And it’s no good trying to give it away to the dog—he can’t eat eggs. Bloats up like a balloon, he does.”

  His pale eyes were teasing, and I toyed with the idea of pitching a sausage at him, but instead, I took a bite of toast and chased it down with coffee, smiling my most amenable smile. “Right then. Have a good time.”

  I waited until I couldn’t hear his cheerful whistling anymore before I glanced down at the dog sprawled beneath my chair. Kip’s one visible eye met mine hopefully, and his tail thumped once against the floor. “Look love,”
I offered, “here’s the deal. I’ll eat the eggs, if you’ll eat everything else. How does that suit you?”

  Evidently, it suited the collie fine. The empty plate was positively shining when I set it on the corner of my desk.

  Well satisfied, I washed my hands and settled down to start my labored drawings of the sherds.

  Chapter 14

  I sent the drawings and photographs off by the afternoon post, then sat back and waited for Howard’s reply. He’d always been frightfully efficient. I half expected him to ring me the following day, when the envelope hit his desk, but it wasn’t until Friday morning that I got my call from the British Museum.

  “Before I give you my opinion on these sherds,” he said, “I simply have to ask: What the devil are you doing up there? We had to look Eyemouth up on the map, for heaven’s sake. Pondered it all through tea break yesterday, but no one could recall an excavation going on in your area.”

  I smiled against the receiver, feeling in my pocket for a pen while balancing my notepad on the narrow front-hall table. “Well,” I told him, “as I’m constantly being reminded by people here, you don’t know everything down there in London.”

  “So it is an excavation? Led by whom?”

  I told him, and waited while he paused for thought. Howard’s memory was slow, but encyclopaedic. It took him less than a minute to place the name. “Good God, not the Peter Quinnell? Don’t tell me he’s still on the trail of the Ninth Legion?”

  “Well…”

  Howard groaned, with feeling. “My dear girl, no one’s taken Quinnell seriously since I was in short pants. And he must be ancient, surely?”

  “Oh, don’t be such a snob,” I replied, picking a barb that I knew would hit home. “He’s only in his seventies, that’s hardly doddering these days. And I find him rather fascinating.”

  “Well, so long as he pays you heaps of money…”

  “The sherds?” I prompted, patiently.

  “Ah. Yes, well, your initial hunch was quite correct.”

  “They’re Agricolan.” I felt a twinge of disappointment even as I spoke the words.

  “Yes.”

  “All of them?”

  “All pieces of the same bowl, I should think.”

  “Oh.” So much, I thought, for my suspicions that the rim sherd didn’t match. Howard’s knowledge of Samian ware was indisputable.

  “Quite a lovely small bowl,” he went on. “A perfect match to one dug up in Germany by—”

  I cut him off. “So what date are we looking at, exactly?”

  “Oh, somewhere between AD 80 and 82, I should think. Not much help to you in finding the Ninth Legion, I’m afraid.”

  “You never know. At least it’s an earlier date, and not a later one. For all we know the pot might have been forty years old when it was broken,” I reasoned stubbornly. “And anyway, we’ve only just begun to map the boundaries of the site. I’m sure we’ll find more pottery when we start the proper digging.”

  “What you want to find,” he coached me, “is a sherd that’s been hammered down a post hole, or something, so you know for certain that it dates from the time of the… what is it, exactly, that you’re excavating?”

  “A marching camp.”

  “Ah,” he said again, without enthusiasm. “Not much chance of finding post holes there, unfortunately. Not ones of any real size.”

  He was, as always, right. Marching camps, constructed for the one night only, had no permanent structures, and even the stakes used on top of the ramparts were smaller than those used in forts. They often left no trace at all.

  “And anyway,” Howard reminded me, “it’s long odds that you’ll even find a marching camp. Not if you’re working for Peter Quinnell.”

  “I’ll bet you a fiver.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “That this is a marching camp.”

  “Make it a bottle of Bell’s and you’re on.”

  “A fiver,” I repeated firmly.

  “Fair enough. Oh, by the way,” he said, remembering, “you do know Lazenby is looking for you?”

  “Dr. Lazenby? Whatever for?”

  “He’s taking a team out to Alexandria in September. Quite a high-profile venture, from what I’ve been hearing. The Beeb’s sending a film crew along, and everything.”

  “And?”

  “And he wants you as part of his team,” Howard explained, speaking as if to a child.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Darling,” he chastised me. “I never joke.”

  “Alexandria…”

  “Mmm. Shall I give him your number?”

  I thought of Quinnell, and shook my head. “No, not just yet. I’ll… I’ll give him a ring in a few days, all right? And Howard?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks. For the expert opinion, I mean.”

  “Any time.” The smile in his voice almost made me miss my days at the museum, and I rang off with a small sigh.

  The little gray cat, Charlie, neatly leaped onto the hall table to investigate my notebook, and I stroked her dainty chin, forcing the nostalgic mist from my eyes. I had made the right decision, after all, in leaving the museum, leaving Lazenby.

  Charlie made a small sound like the squeak of a closing door, as though approving my desire for independence. A cat, I thought, was the very model of an independent animal, so long as someone remembered to scratch round its chin, just there…

  Charlie’s eyes snapped open and she raised her head, alarmed. Ears flattening, she arched her back and gave a sharp, high-pitched meow.

  “For heaven’s sake!” I burst out, when my lunging heartbeat paused for breath, “will you stop that? I’ll be a mass of nerves if you cats keep—” And then I too broke off and cocked my head, listening.

  Someone was climbing the cellar stairs.

  The footsteps were heavy—a man’s footsteps—only all the men were down at the far end of the field. I knew that because I’d left them there, a quarter of an hour ago. Not just the men, but Fabia as well… and even Jeannie, who’d come down to fetch me for my telephone call, had stayed behind to watch the crew in progress. I ought to have been alone in the house.

  But still the footsteps came on, climbing, bold and clearly audible.

  My mind raced swiftly through the possibilities. The ghost… oh, God, don’t let it be the ghost. A burglar… there, that was more probable, and in my muddled state of mind seemed much less frightening. My brain found reason, told my feet to move, but the message took a moment to reach its mark and in that moment the man came up the final stair and into the entrance hall.

  He seemed, to his credit, more shocked by my presence than I was by his. “Jesus!” he said, then recovered and came forward, wiping one hand on the back of his denim jeans before holding it out in a friendly greeting. “Sorry,” he apologized, with a self-deprecating grin, “I thought you were all down in the field. You must be Miss Grey, am I right? My son’s not stopped talking about you.”

  So this, I thought, was Brian McMorran. I studied him with interest over the handshake.

  He was nothing like I had expected. He was older, for one thing—nearing forty, I judged, with silvered brown hair and rather an appealing sort of face. Not a tall man either, though his body had the hardness of a lifetime of labor and I wouldn’t have wanted to take sides against him in a fight. He wore an earring, which looked somewhat out of place; a small gold hoop that glinted dashingly against his graying hair, and below the rolled sleeves of his flannel work shirt his forearms were a fascinating canvas of dark tattoos.

  Releasing his grip, he raised a hand to rake it through his hair, his brown eyes crinkling with surprising charm. He didn’t look a drunkard or a bully, and I found it hard to reconcile the image I had formed with the reality.

>   “I expect,” he said, “that I gave you a fright as well. You’d not have known I’d come home.”

  “No,” I admitted. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Eh, well. I don’t imagine anybody’s noticed, yet. I just got in. Is Jeannie anywhere about? I’ve looked, but—”

  “She’s down with Quinnell.”

  “Is she? Heading back yourself, then, are you? Good, I’ll tag along.”

  He didn’t talk much, while we walked. A brief exchange of comments on the warming of the weather was the closest that we came to conversation.

  David saw us coming first. Leaning full on the handle of the hollow probe, he glanced up briefly, stopped and looked again. “Heyah, Brian,” he said, coolly. “When did you get back?”

  “About an hour ago. Stealing my wife again, are you?”

  “Of course he isn’t.” Jeannie moved from David’s side to give her husband a welcoming kiss in spite of her father’s scowl. “Don’t be daft. How did it go?”

  Brian shrugged. “Not bad. We netted a fair haul, this trip.”

  “Any fish?” Wally asked sourly. I didn’t understand the barb behind the comment but it glanced off Brian harmlessly, and he whistled a snatch of a tune through his teeth, ignoring the old man completely.

  “You’ve been busy,” he noted, looking back at the trail of brightly colored golf tees that marked our progress along the buried ditch.

  From the trial trench in the southwest corner, the western ditch ran roughly parallel to the long drive, traveling up at a slight diagonal for some three hundred yards before it turned a rounded, playing-card-shaped corner, just below the ridge, and started back across the field.

  Quinnell followed Brian McMorran’s gaze proudly, not appearing to mind the man’s presence. “Yes, we’re making good progress.”

  “Looks like it. Is that where the walls were, then—where you’ve stuck all them tees? Bloody big camp, wasn’t it?”

  “About twenty acres,” Quinnell estimated. “It’s not like a fort, you understand. Forts were built smaller. They only had to house an auxiliary force, but a marching camp was meant to hold the whole legion, on campaign. It had to be huge.”