The Shadowy Horses

by Susanna Kearsley

  The students, uncomplaining, soldiered on. They looked like little limpets, clinging bravely to the sloping field, their heads bent low as they worked in groups at the patches of excavated ground.

  Here in the finds room, at least, I was warm and dry and only had to contend with one draft that struck like a pillar of cold near the open door—the fault of the wind, no doubt. At any rate, it was easy enough to avoid.

  I was down on my knees with bucket and sponge, starting in on the bottom shelves, when one of my assistants poked her head in. “Thought you might fancy a cup of tea,” she told me, kindly holding up a steaming mug.

  “Brilliant. Thanks very much.”

  “I’ll just leave it here, then, shall I?” She set it down at one end of the long work table and hovered in the doorway a moment, watching me. “Are you sure you don’t want us to do that, Miss Grey?”

  “And why should you have all the fun?” I asked her, smiling over my shoulder. “Besides, you’re both much faster on the computer than I am, it makes more sense for you to be doing what you’re doing.”

  “Yes, well…”

  “Aren’t you freezing to death in that draft?” I asked, sounding disturbingly like my own mother.

  The young woman frowned. “What draft?”

  “The one that you’re standing in.”

  “I don’t feel anything.”

  “Well, they do breed you hardier, up here in Scotland.”

  “I’m from Yorkshire, Miss Grey.”

  “Even better,” I told her. “And I’m quite all right, really—you needn’t keep looking so guilty. I like cleaning things.” Which was a colossal lie, of course, but it did succeed in shifting her out of the doorway.

  As her footsteps retreated, I slopped the sponge into the pail at my feet and stood, humming tunelessly as I turned to walk across to where she’d left my tea.

  The pillar of cold had moved.

  I walked through it and out the other side before my mind had time to register its presence; before I remembered that, scarcely ten minutes ago, the same spot had been perfectly warm.

  Silly, I chided myself. Drafts don’t follow a person around…

  “Jesus,” I breathed, as the sudden realization hit me. My heart surged painfully upwards and lodged beneath my collarbone as I spun to stare behind me at the innocently empty air. I put out a shaking hand, not really wanting to, but unable to stop myself… and touched nothing but warmth. With the back of my neck prickling, I wheeled and stretched my hand out searchingly. Into the cold, and back again.

  I took a hasty backward step, then thought how foolishly futile that was, and hugging my rib cage defensively I stopped and held my ground. Three months ago, if someone had tried to convince me I was facing down a ghost I would have laughed out loud at the very idea; now I had no doubt at all that he was there, directly in front of me, trying to touch me, perhaps; trying to talk to me…

  This has to stop, my mind cried silently. I can’t keep on with this, it has to stop.

  “I can’t,” I said aloud, in a raspy voice I hardly recognized as mine. Closing my eyes for a moment, I struggled to concentrate, and stammered out the words again in Latin. “I can’t hear you. I’m sorry. I can’t hear you or see you—the boy’s the only one who can do that, and I can’t use him because it does him harm. Do you understand?”

  Only the silence answered me. I hugged myself tighter to ward off the shivers, my voice dwindling to a pleading sort of whisper. “Look, I know you want to tell me something, but you’ll have to find another way… this just won’t work. Do you understand? You’ll have to find another way…”

  “Miss Grey?” The living voice, close outside the doorway, made me jump.

  I turned my head. “Yes?”

  “You all right?” My student’s head appeared around the corner for the second time, her expression wary. “We heard you talking, but we weren’t sure whether you were saying something to us, or—”

  “No,” I told her, “sorry. I was talking to myself.”

  “Oh right.” She paused a minute. “It’s just that you sounded different, you know…”

  “Yes, I imagine I would have.” I forced a smile. “I was speaking Latin.”

  Her look made it clear she considered me strange—a fusty old bluestocking, maybe, or a plain raving idiot. But she withdrew again politely, saying nothing.

  I drew a deep breath, took up my mug of tea with a trembling hand and dived with purpose through the doorway, out of the finds room, out of the Principia, crossing the field with swift steps that were just this side of an actual run.

  David didn’t notice anything amiss when I appeared at the edge of his barracks trench—but then he wouldn’t have noticed, anyway. He was deeply, happily absorbed in the dirt, like a small boy with bucket and spade at the beach. “Heyah,” he greeted me, his eyes crinkling against the wind. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Bring me tea.”

  “Oh. I didn’t,” I assured him, wrapping my hands more closely around the warmth. “It’s my tea. But you’re welcome to share it, if you like.”

  “I do like. Thanks.” He prized the mug out of my fingers and drank, crouching back on his heels. “Wicked weather.”

  I nodded. “Having any luck?”

  “Aye. We’ve cleared the outline of one of the barracks blocks—I’ve got the lads putting golf tees in all of the post molds so that Fabia can take a photograph afore it rains.”

  “Yes, I see that. So what are you doing down here, with your trowel?”

  He grinned. “Mucking about. I thought this looked interesting, this darker bit here, so I’m checking it out. You never ken what you’ll find, on this blasted site. You can have this back now,” he added, handing over the half-empty mug. “Thanks.”

  The dark head bent again and for a while I watched him work in silence, drawing comfort from his company, his quiet calming strength. I’m safe here with David, I thought, and the words became a lulling litany as I sipped the warm tea and relaxed: Safe, safe, perfectly safe…

  The cold passed through me like a knife blade, and I jerked upright. “David.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, in an excited tone, not looking up. “I see it.”

  I stared down at him, watching his motions without really seeing them, trying to focus on what he was doing. He had tossed his trowel aside and was brushing the dirt away now with his fingers, trying to free something small from the soil. And then he raised his head to whistle sharply across the trench, catching the attention of one of his students. “Go get Mr. Quinnell, lad.”

  “David, what is it?” I leaned closer, trying to stop shaking. “What have you found?”

  For an answer he held out his hand, and I saw the small medallion, the shred of a chain and the glitter of gold, and the tiny stamped figure of a woman, holding what looked like a ship’s rudder.

  “It’s Fortuna,” David told me.

  “Yes, I know.”

  I’d come across her image countless times in my career—one of the first things I’d been asked to draw for Dr. Lazenby, on the Suffolk dig, had been an altar erected by some unnamed Roman soldier, inscribed ‘To Fortune, Who Brings Men Home.’ Those few words had moved me, and I’d wished that I could meet the man who’d had them carved in stone.

  Be careful what you wish for, that’s what my father always said. I ought to have listened to him. Because standing now and looking at the image of Fortuna, goddess of good luck and destiny, steering her ship of fate over the waters, I felt certain I’d already met the man to whom the golden pendant once belonged.

  Chapter 30

  Brian wasn’t pleased to see me coming down the drive. He’d been making a savage attack on the weeds that grew to either side of the cottage path, his head bent
low into the wind that carried away the small regular puffs of white smoke from the cigarette clamped at the corner of his mouth, but when he saw me he switched off the strimmer and straightened his back, belligerent.

  Jeannie hadn’t been lying about the black eye. It stood out angrily against the tan of his cheekbone, seared along its bottom edge by a nasty-looking scrape on which the blood had dried. Still, I thought, he wore it like a badge of honor; even raised a hand to rake the silver hair back from his face, so I could have a clear view of that eye.

  I was meant to make some comment, I felt sure. Halting my steps a few feet away, I searched for an appropriate compliment. “That looks painful.”

  “Not your handiwork,” he shot back, shortly. Lifting one hand he plucked the cigarette from his lips and narrowed his eyes. “Got it down the pub, last night. Had to put a couple of buggers from Burnmouth in their place.”

  “Ah.” I looked again at the set jaw and the hardened muscles of his arms, and said honestly: “I imagine they look rather worse than you, then.”

  “Bloody right.” His gaze moved down, to my hands, to the notebook I carried and the tiny square packet of tissue paper. But he didn’t say anything. He just went on standing there, smoking, waiting for me to explain why I’d come.

  “I was wondering,” I said, “if I could talk to Robbie, for a minute.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yes. We found something this morning, in one of the trenches, and it might be something quite important, so—”

  He cut across my speech, impassive. “The lad’s just home from school,” he said. “He’s not had his tea yet.”

  “Well yes, I know, but Jeannie said…” I stopped myself, seeing from his expression that it made little difference what Jeannie had said. “I won’t stop long, Brian, I promise. It’s just that… well, it could be important, and everyone’s curious to hear what Robbie has to say, and nobody wanted to wait till this evening.”

  Jeannie had actually put my chances of getting past Brian at slim to none, and looking at him now I was inclined to agree with her odds.

  He stared at me, stony-faced, for a long moment, then glanced at the small wrapped packet. “That it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  I unwrapped the paper and let him examine the tiny pendant. “Gold, is it?” he asked, not touching it.

  “Yes.”

  He frowned, and shifted his gaze to study the air past my shoulder. “When I was Robbie’s age… younger than Robbie, even, I used to be a wizard with the horses. My dad and his mates, they’d show me a betting slip and I could pick the winners, every time. They must have made a bloody fortune,” he said, sourly. “Never showed me a penny of it, nor my mum. Dad left us both when I was ten.” He paused, drawing deep on the cigarette, and brought his hard eyes back to mine. “You can think what you like of me, of what I do for a living, but I’ve never used my boy to line my pockets. Never have, and never will. Nobody uses my boy.”

  “Yes, I understand that. But I thought we agreed…”

  “I was legless.”

  “You said I could do this.” My tone pleaded with him to be reasonable. “You said that if I came down on my own, I could—”

  “I know what I said.” He exhaled sharply, discontented. “All right, you can have ten minutes with the lad. But only ten minutes, and I’ll be there counting them, d’you hear?”

  “Thanks.”

  Wading through an untidy pile of weeds, he leaned the strimmer upright against the cottage wall and walked round to open the door to the kitchen.

  It seemed strange to be here when Jeannie was absent—the cozy little room looked less inviting, but that might have simply been the lack of sunlight. Brian kicked off his boots and called to Robbie.

  “Wally’s out, is he?” I guessed, noticing the empty place under the table, where Kip usually lay.

  Brian’s mouth quirked briefly, the shade of a smile. “That’s right. He makes himself scarce, when I’m home.”

  Robbie came bouncing round the corner and gave me a buoyant greeting. “Heyah,” he said. “Are you and Dad still fighting?”

  I smiled. “No.”

  “Good. Did you see Dad’s black eye?”

  I assured him I had.

  “She was very impressed,” Brian told his son. “Now, sit yourself down on that chair there and look what Miss Grey’s got to show you.” And with that mild instruction he moved past us to put the kettle on.

  Robbie clambered obediently onto his chair, preparing himself for our game. “Did you find the necklace?”

  I stopped in the act of unwrapping the packet, to stare at him. “The what?”

  “The Sentinel’s necklace.”

  Brian, by the worktop, lit a cigarette and smiled faintly, the proud parent, while I peeled away the final layers of tissue and wordlessly passed the golden scrap of pendant to Robbie.

  “Aye, this is it,” he said, nodding his head. “I thought so.”

  I cleared my throat, casually. “Are you sure it’s the Sentinel’s?”

  Again the nod, quite certain. “He’s always got it on.”

  “I see.”

  “He never takes it off, see, ’cause it belonged to her.”

  I opened my notebook, feeling a sudden need to have something to focus my attention on. “Belonged to who?”

  Brian broke in. “Can you see her name, lad?” To me, he explained: “He can sometimes pick up names and all.”

  Robbie fingered the pendant, screwing up his face as he tried to come up with the answer. “It starts with a C, I think… C-l… here, I can write it out.” Taking my pencil he scrawled in large letters across the open page of my notebook.

  I read the name. “Claudia?”

  “Aye.”

  Brian flicked ash into the sink, where it fell with a whispering hiss. “And the name of the Sentinel, Robbie? D’you know that as well?”

  “It’s a long name,” said Robbie. “Hold on.” Closing his eyes, he stayed silent a full minute, thinking. “Three names. The middle one’s the same as her name, like…”

  “What, Claudius?” I asked, and he opened his eyes.

  “Aye. And then Maxy… Maxy-moose…”

  “Maximus.” I jotted it down with remarkably steady fingers. “And the first name?”

  “It starts with a C, too. It’s… no, I can’t get it. It’s gone. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” I told him. “You’re doing just fine. This is brilliant.” I looked at the name in my notebook: C. Claudius Maximus. No longer a nebulous ghost, but a name. It gave me an odd feeling.

  “Claudia and Claudius,” Brian said drily. “Devoted couple, were they?”

  She wouldn’t be his wife, I thought. Not his legal wife, at any rate. A legionary couldn’t marry until he retired from the army. Still, common-law wives weren’t unheard of—soldiers sometimes had whole families living in the towns outside their forts.

  I was about to ask Robbie whether Claudia had been the Sentinel’s girlfriend, when a new thought struck me. Claudia and Claudius. That was the Sentinel’s second name, Robbie had said. His clan name. Romans named their children according to a fairly rigid custom: an individual first name, then the clan name, and finally the family name. Thus only the first names varied, in a family. C. Claudius Maximus—say his first name was Caius, or something like that—Caius Claudius Maximus might have a brother named Publius Claudius Maximus. And their sisters would most probably be called by their clan name, in its female form. Claudia.

  I looked across at Robbie. “Was this Claudia… was she related to the Sentinel?”

  His brow creased. “Related?”

  “From the same family.”

  “Oh. Aye, she was his sister.”

 
The kettle screamed and Brian moved to make the tea, his eyes meeting mine with a grudging amusement. “Full points for you.”

  Robbie moved his fingers, held the pendant tighter. “She had long hair,” he told me. “Long like yours, and the same color.”

  In the brief silence that followed, Brian voiced the question I was too afraid to ask. It must have crossed his own thoughts, after what had happened yesterday. “Does Miss Grey mind the Sentinel of his sister, then?”

  “Aye.” No hesitation there. “He loves her.”

  I kept my attention fixed on Robbie, my pencil resting on the page. “And she gave him that pend… that necklace?”

  “Nah, she gave it to the other guy,” said Robbie. “For luck, like. So he wouldn’t be hurt.”

  “She gave it to the other…”

  “Aye, the Sentinel’s friend.” Robbie looked at me as though the details were self-evident. “The one she was going to marry.”

  “Ah.”

  Brian raised his eyebrows. “Christ, it’s better than East-Enders, this.”

  My ten minutes, I thought, must surely be up, but Brian appeared to be gaining interest in our little game, and made no move to stop it. He turned his back to the sink and waited for the tea to brew, watching while his son rolled the pendant and chain in his small hand, like dice.

  “He was a soldier, too,” said Robbie, finally.

  “The Sentinel’s friend?” I asked.

  “Aye. He was older, and he kent a lot of things. He said the ship would come. He said…” He paused, his small face falling. “Only it didn’t. And then the horses came, and the Sentinel had to put him on the fire.”

  Enthralled, I leaned forward. “Why, Robbie? Why did he put him on the fire?”

  But the mists through which he viewed these things had swirled again, and Robbie shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, looking up, and I was shocked to see his eyes were filled with tears. “He’s so sorry. He promised her that he’d protect… but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop it.”