Shadowy Horses (31 page)

"How curious," Peter said. He was sitting in his own chair with Murphy draped across his knees, as usual. “I wonder what he meant."

"Gosh," said Adrian, stretching his legs out and tipping his head back. "Let's think this one through. He arranges for you to find a medallion of Fortuna, or Fortune, then tells you, "That way's dangerous.' Now who could he be warning you
about,
I wonder?"

I rolled my eyes sideways to look at him. "Must you always be annoying?"

Fabia frowned. "Davy's not dangerous."

Adrian, swirling his drink with great dignity, remarked that it depended entirely upon one's point of view.

Fabia made a great show of studying Adrian as she lifted her own glass. "Your eyes are awfully green, aren't they?"

"Frequently." Across the room their eyes met, and she looked away abruptly.

"Via est periculosa,"
Peter repeated, thoughtfully. "Of course,
via
has several meanings, doesn't it? The road, the way, the method."

“

“The road is dangerous'?" Fabia tried the translation. "That sounds more a warning against your driving, Adrian."

"Very funny."

She curled herself into her armchair, like one of the cats. "Where is Davy, anyway?"

Adrian shrugged. "Still playing scoutmaster, out in the field. He'll be in when he feels like it."

Out in the field ...

I closed my eyes a moment, fighting the image that formed in my brain—the image of a solitary Roman soldier walking back and forth across the waving grass for all eternity, unheard and unseen, with no companions but the silent dead. How lonely that would be, I thought... how horribly lonely. I tried to clear my mind, but the soldier would not leave. He walked a little further, looked across the field and thought
he saw his sister standing, waiting for him, only it wasn't her... not Claudia ... a young woman with long hair, but not Claudia. Close enough, perhaps, to stir the coals of memory. Did ghosts have memories, I wondered? Did they love?

I opened my eyes, and knew from the dreamy expression on Peter's face that he was wondering the same thing. "Extraordinary," was his final pronouncement. "Quite extraordinary."

"Yes." Adrian looked at me, lazily. "So I suppose Brian's banned you from the premises now, has he?"

"Not at all. He handled the whole thing rather well, I thought. No recriminations."

Peter arched an eyebrow. "My dear girl, you do work miracles, don't you? First Connelly, and now Brian. You have a great facility for dealing with difficult men."

I couldn't help but smile at that. "I've had a lot of practice."

Adrian cast a sharp eye in my direction. "Watch it."

Fabia leaned forward. "Have you still got the pendant, Verity? I haven't had a chance to really look at it yet."

I shook my head. "I gave it to one of my students, to put in the finds room."

"Trusting soul," Adrian said.

"There's a lock on the finds room door," I defended my action.

"I meant giving it to a student. I'm surprised you gave it to anyone, actually, after what Robbie said." His tone was dry. "If it's supposed to be keeping you safe..."

"I feel safer," I said, "with it locked in the finds room, thanks all the same."

Peter stretched his hand out. "May I see your notes again, my dear? There's one point in there that makes me rather curious.''

"Of course. They're on the table there, beside you."

"Ah." He flipped the page and frowned. "Yes, here it is. 'He said the ship would come'... that's the bit I'm after. "The ship.' Now, I wonder... ?" And with that he lapsed into a sort of trance, unspeaking, drinking steadily and staring at the carpet.

Archaeologists, I thought, were a breed apart. There was David, still out in the field in a bone-chilling wind with the rain coming on, because he didn't want to stop what he was doing; and here sat Peter, completely oblivious to the world around him while he rebuilt the past in his mind.

Neither one of them sat down to supper.

David stayed out until it grew dark, then came and grabbed a plate of food to take up to his desk in the Principia. He took a plate in to Peter as well, but when I stopped by the sitting room later I found that plate untouched, the meat and vegetables turned cold and unappetizing. Peter, lost in his own world, didn't seem to mind. He still had Murphy on his lap, and the vodka bottle was very nearly empty. He surfaced at the sound of my voice.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Goodnight," I repeated.

"Not off to bed already, are you?"

"Well, it is"—I checked my watch—"nearly half-past eleven, and I was up rather late last night."

"Oh." He sounded disappointed, and I hesitated.

"I suppose ... I suppose I
could
stay up a little longer, if you wanted company."

"No, no." One hand waved the offer aside, with a tragic air. "No, I'm quite all right, here by myself."

"In fact," I said, more firmly, looking at his face, "I rather fancy a cup of coffee."

"No need to trouble yourself..."

"Or perhaps a drink."

He beamed at me, delighted. "Well, if you're absolutely certain. Because I've just been sitting here thinking, you know, about the fate of the
Hispana,
and I've hit upon a most intriguing theory..."

XXXI

"Has Peter
always
drunk like that?" I asked David's mother, the following Wednesday.

"Like what?"

"Well, huge amounts."

Nancy Fortune smiled and stepped backwards, hammer in hand, to be sure that the picture she'd just hung was level. We'd been left to ourselves on the mezzanine floor of the Eyemouth Museum, in the large bright room used for temporary displays. "Aye, he does fair like his vodka," she admitted, "but he holds it well, he always has. You'll not see Peter act the fool. And you'll rarely see him take a drink alone. If he does
that,"
she warned me, "it means deep thought, and that's when you want to watch out, because when he's done thinking he ..."

"Talks," I supplied, rubbing my head at the memory. "Yes, I know. He kept me up till dawn, last week."

"Had a new theory, did he?" Her dancing eyes held sympathy. "He does like to talk them through. Used to be me that bore the brunt of it. He'd ring me up at all hours—still did, up until a few years back, but after the first heart attack he stopped all that. Never tells me anything now, for fear it might excite me. And Davy's just as bad." She hammered
in another nail, with a vengeance. "If it wasn't for you and Robbie I'd not have a clue what was going on up at Rose-hill."

I caught the frustration in her voice. I'd never been able to understand why she didn't visit, or why Peter and David didn't seem to want her at the house. David loved his mother, and Peter was terribly fond of her, and her interest in our work was undeniable. I fitted my back to the wall, contemplatively. "Why don't you come up and see for yourself? I'd be happy to show you just what we've been up to."

Her mouth pulled down at the corners. "Then Peter'd have a coronary, worrying I'd overdo the walking. No, until the damn fool doctor says I'm fit to run a mile, I'd not be welcome at Rosehill." She leveled the second picture and looked at me. "There, how's that looking?"

"Lovely."

It really was, which relieved me no end. I'd only met the head of the Eyemouth Museum briefly this morning, but she was clearly expecting great things from the "visiting expert" that David's mother had brought in to help, and I'd been trying my best to live up to her expectations. Attractive exhibits, unfortunately, had never been my forte. I was fine when it came to the actual artifacts—how to support them, what light levels to use, that sort of thing—but I fell all to pieces on proper design.

Still, I hadn't done too badly. The jumble of photographs and long formal gowns that we'd started with earlier had become a rather professional looking display that traced the history of Herring Queen Week.

And Herring Queen Week, David's mother had informed me, was
the
big event in Eyemouth's summer calendar.

From what I'd heard, the traditional choosing of a local girl to be the new year's Herring Queen sounded rather splendid—the girl and her attendant maids in gorgeous gowns and sashes, the careful ritual played out against a general air of festival. David's mother had done her best to explain what went on, but in the end she'd said I ought to ask Jeannie. "Jeannie was Herring Queen, she'll be able to tell
you all about it. This was her frock, the purple one. I mind her mother making it."

At the British Museum I'd handled some marvelous artifacts—ancient mosaics and old Roman glassware, rare things beyond price. But the feeling I'd had when I'd set them on display was nothing compared to the satisfaction it gave me to take that one Herring Queen gown—a hideous flounced thing in grape-colored taffeta—and carefully arrange it in its place in the exhibition.

Local history museums, I thought, did have advantages over their larger cousins. They were, if nothing else, a great deal friendlier. I didn't belong to Eyemouth, as the locals would say—but standing here in the fishing museum with Nancy Fortune's cheerful talk like a bracing breeze off the sea and Jeannie's gown on a stand in the corner and the whole past of the community pressing in around me, I did feel a curious sense of belonging.

It crept over me with the comfort of a woolly blanket, and I snuggled deep for a moment before practicality drove me to push it aside.
You 're only here for the summer, really,
I reminded myself. When the digging season ended and the field crew had disbanded for the unworkable winter months, I'd have to go back home, and then ... well, there was always Dr. Lazenby's new dig in Alexandria—I couldn't keep avoiding him forever. Sooner or later he would track me down, and I would have to give the man an answer.
Alexandria.
I sighed. But then, the whole point of my leaving the British Museum had been the quest for change, for new adventures, for...

"... a breath of air," Nancy Fortune was saying.

I looked up. "Sorry?"

She smiled at my inattentiveness. "That's perfect proof, that. I just said we've been cruived in too long: four hours of this work is far too long. D'ye fancy a bit of a walk?"

I had grown accustomed to the wind and almost welcomed it as we stepped outside, lifting my face to the freshening scent of the sea and the sun that fell warm on my skin. Now, in midsummer, the streets seemed too crowded, and the harbor behind us bustled with the preparations for Saturday's
crowning of the Herring Queen, and so instead of walking in that direction, we turned and went through the town's center, coming out at length onto the Bantry—the smooth paved promenade that ran from Eyemouth harbor to the beach, along the sea.

There were people here as well, but not so many, and the sound of their chatter was drowned by the roar of the surf. The tide, coming in, rode on high rolling waves that broke like thunder against the harbor mouth. It proved too much to resist for one young girl playing at the end of the sea wall. Laughing, she darted like a bullet back and forth through the narrow gap between the wall and the harbor's parade, testing her speed against the incoming waves and getting well soaked in the process.

Below us, the empty beach, growing narrower by the minute, curved away to meet the blood-red cliffs that rose immovable against the sea, supporting the ruins of Eyemouth Fort, the playground of David's childhood.

I sighed, a little happy sigh, and rested my hands on the smooth stone wall that ran waist-high along the Bantry. "What a beautiful day," I said.

David's mother smiled. "I take it you're not keen to get back?"

For an instant I thought she meant back to London, and fancied she had read my mind, but then I realized she was only speaking of Rosehill, and my work.

"Peter did say I should take the day," I told her. "He thinks I've been looking tired, lately."

"And small surprise, if he's been keeping you up nights expounding his theories."

Conscience and fondness made me come to Peter's defense. "It was a good theory, actually. Would you like to hear it?"

"If you think my heart can stand it," she said, leaning beside me on the sea wall.

"Right. Well, you know we found the gold medallion, with the image of Fortuna on it?"

"Aye, Robbie told me."

"There's a bit more story to the piece than even Robbie
knows," I said, and proceeded to fill her in on all the details, before moving on. "And so after I came back up from Rose Cottage, that's when Peter began to think deeply, as you put it." My lips twitched. "He thought himself right through a whole bottle of vodka."

"It's not uncommon. But I'll lay odds his mind touched on genius."

"Well, he does think that the reason why we haven't yet found any trace of bodies is because the men were cremated. You know, the fact that Rosehill used to be 'Rogue's Hill,' which could come from
rogus,
or funeral pyre."

"That would fit with Robbie saying that the Sentinel put his friend on the fire," she agreed. "But still, there were thousands of men."

"Yes, I know, but... maybe I should just run through it all, like Peter did, from the beginning. We're assuming that the Ninth came marching north and set up camp at Rosehill, within the ramparts of the old Agricolan vexillation fortress, which presumably had disappeared by then, right?''

"Aye."

"And one of the reasons Agricola probably built here in the first place was because of the harbor," I said. "The Roman navy had to be able to send in ships, to supply the legions on the northward march." The critical role that the navy had played in the conquest of Britain was all too often overlooked. Absorbed as I was in land based excavations, I'll admit I hadn't thought much about the naval connection myself until Peter had leapt on that statement of Robbie's.

"Robbie mentioned a ship that didn't come," I explained. "And Peter thinks it might have been a supply ship. Now, if the men depended on that ship, and if they were besieged or something, in their camp ..."

She nodded. "Aye, they might have taken ill, or starved."

"Or even mutinied. The Ninth," I said, "did have a history of mutiny, as I recall. At any rate, they probably weren't in any shape to ward off their attackers, when the final battle happened."

She admitted that, as theories went, it wasn't bad. "So what became of the survivors?''

"That's a mystery, still. But we do know the Sentinel stayed." The sea cast up an arc of spray that spattered cold against my face. Like tears it clung, and tasted salt.

"Love and honor," Nancy Fortune told me, "are a complicated mixture. If he really did promise his sister that he'd keep her man from harm, then he might well have felt he could never go home, that she'd never forgive him for failing."

"Or he might have been mortally wounded, himself," I suggested. "Who knows?"

"He does, I'll wager."

We thought about that for a moment, both of us, in silence, and then she said: "It
is
a shame you can't use Robbie."

"Yes, I know, but after what happened ..." I shook my head, slowly. "No, it's too risky, really. And I'm not sure even he could pin down evidence of mass cremation—bits of charred bone and ashes all over the field, they'd be murder to find. Still, if we're patient, and stick to our digging, I'm sure we'll come up with proof."

The restless wind tore at my hair, and I felt the warm touch of her eyes on my face. "You believe Peter's theories, then."

"Yes, I do. But then it's rather hard
not
to believe Peter, isn't it? I mean, he only has to look at you and give an explanation, and you can't imagine any other way it
could
have happened. You know?"

The faint smile gentled her expression. "Aye, that's what Davy says, too."

I stayed silent a moment longer, thinking, then bit my lip and said, rather tentatively: "They're very much alike, aren't they, Peter and David?"

"Very much," she agreed.

Our eyes met for the briefest instant, then I turned my face away again. It was nothing to do with me, I reminded myself. Whatever suspicions I might have, whatever questions I might want to ask, the answers were none of my business.

Instead I fixed my eyes on the incoming waves, watching the long curling crests of white foam that formed along their tops before they crashed themselves to death upon the sand. They did remind one of the manes of wild horses, I thought,
just like Peter had said. The Irish horses of the sea, coming to gather their dead.

David's mother watched me in her turn, and after a long pause she said, very simply: "He doesn't ken."

My head turned. "I'm sorry?"

"Davy. He doesn't ken who his father is. That's what you're wondering, isn't it?" In the face of my guilty silence she smiled and went on. "It's no shame for me to tell you, lass. You've more right to the truth than anyone, and if you don't ken why,'' she said, cutting me off as I opened my mouth to protest, "then you're not near as clever as I had you pegged." Her gaze raked me rather fondly. "You're very much as I was, Verity Grey. And if you'd gone to work for Peter Quinnell, years ago..."

"If I had worked for Peter then," I told her, honestly, "I should have been in love with him."

"Aye. So you would. And so I was. Only of course, he was married at the time."

"Not happily."

"No, not happily. But there it was." She raised a shoulder dismissively and turned her face seaward.

"Could he not..." I paused to clear my throat. "Surely mental illness, even then, was just cause for divorce."

"Oh, aye," she said. "But there was Philip, too, you see."

"Well yes, but—"

"Philip saw us," she said, slowly. "One day, quite by accident. He had something of his mother's illness, Philip did, and seeing me with Peter made him crazy. It was an awful thing, for Peter—Philip never did forgive him. All his life, if anything went wrong, it was his father's fault. His mother's death, his own bad marriage, all his money problems, everything." She shook her head. "He had a talent, Philip did, for hating."

"All the more reason for Peter to leave," was my comment.

"Perhaps. But Peter loved the lad, I saw the pain it caused him. And I didn't want him torn in two. I kent, see, that he would divorce Elizabeth, if he'd kent I was carrying Davy."