Shadowy Horses (7 page)

I looked at him, questioning. "Connelly?"

"Dr. John Connelly." Quinnell leaned back, a faint smile on his lips. "Head of the Department of Archaeology at Edinburgh University. He was a student of mine, once, you know." The smile grew more pronounced. "My dark angel. His own opinion of the Ninth is widely published, well supported. He claims there was no British battle; that the Ninth was simply transferred to Nijmegen, in Lower Germany, and later perished in the East, fighting Parthians, or some such nonsense."

David sent him an indulgent look. "Not a bad theory, as theories go. They did find a tile-stamp of the Ninth at Nijmegen."

"A what?" asked Fabia.

Peter, pleased by her show of interest, explained that legions didn't only fight, they built as well. Each legion, in its settled fortress, made and stamped its own individual bricks and mortar. "A tile-stamp," said Peter, "is a legion's signature."

Fabia absorbed this. "So if they found one at Ni... at Nima..."

"Nijmegen."

"... it means the Ninth was there."

"Possibly." Quinnell shrugged. "It is suggestive, yes. But I can think of other ways the tile-stamp could have got there, can't you? One must keep an open mind."

"Like you do," David said, his blue eyes teasing.

"My dear boy, if I believed me answer lay in Nijmegen, I'd not be here at Rosehill. Anyway," he added, brightening, "we've got a fortnight before Connelly comes, to find our own evidence."

I lowered my drink. "Only a fortnight?"

"Well, a fortnight and a few days. Connelly's coming to lunch on the twenty-first."

Adrian, standing by the fireplace, turned toward me to explain. "Connelly has to approve any vacation work his students apply for, you see. Even Fortune's only here on sufferance."

"Aye, well," David said, "Connelly's very fair-minded, whatever his faults. I'm sure he'll not be difficult, if we can give him proof."

I wasn't quite so sure. "But in a fortnight?"

"And a few days." Quinnell reminded me, smiling. "Plenty of time. We've already started surveying, remember, and we only need to find enough to justify the dig."

Fabia shifted in her seat. "Not much of a dig so far," she complained. "You haven't even broken ground."

"You've seen too many films," said Quinnell, unoffended. "One does try to preserve a site, these days, not tear it to pieces." He turned to David, thoughtfully. "Of course, having said that, I do think we might start our first trial trench in the morning, if the weather holds. I'd like to see what's down in that southwest corner."

I didn't miss the flicker of a glance that passed between Adrian and Fabia. She shifted in her chair, pushing the soft fall of hair out of her eyes. "The southwest corner? But I thought we'd agreed it was best to start on the ridge, where Robbie says ... where this Sentinel's supposed to be."

Quinnell sipped his drink and shook his head, the picture of innocence, but I caught the quiet smile in the lazy sideways slide of his eyes. He was rather like one of his own cats, I thought, toying with a weaker-minded prey. "The southwest corner," he repeated, with emphasis. "We know something's there, which makes it the logical place to begin, don't you think? And the ground's quite dry enough. We tested it, didn't we, David?"

"Aye." Unlike Quinnell's, David Fortune's eyes gave nothing away. I couldn't tell, from that impassive face, whether he knew, as I did, that Quinnell had spotted the faked image. He reached for his own glass of what looked
to me like straight Scotch, and knocked it back in a single swallow, while Fabia frowned beside him.

"We can talk about it over supper," she said firmly. "What
is
for supper, anyway?"

Quinnell waved one hand in a nonchalant gesture. "Jeannie said something about a roast. She got it all ready for us to put in the oven."

"And did you?" Fabia raised an expectant eyebrow and he blinked at her, as though he didn't speak the language. "Oh, Peter, you haven't left it sitting out? A roast takes simply ages."

Quinnell didn't look too concerned at the prospect of an extended happy hour, but he did mutter some sort of apology as his granddaughter passed him, heading for the kitchen. Then, with eyes that didn't bother to hide their glee, he noticed David's empty glass and rose to fill it.

Peter Quinnell, I decided, knew exactly how to handle people. And no matter how much breath Fabia wasted tonight trying to persuade him to start his excavation on the ridge, I had no doubt that, come the morning, we'd be just where Quinnell wanted us to be—down in the southwest corner, digging for a ditch that wasn't there.

SECOND HORSE

That we may lift from out of dust

A voice as unto him that hears,

A cry above the conquered years

To one that with us works ...

Tennyson,
“In Memoriam”
, CXXX

VII

I woke in darkness, listening. The sound that wrenched me from my sleep had been strange to my city-bred ears. Train-like, yet not a train .. . the rhythm was too wild, too random. A horse, I thought. A horse in the next field over, galloping endlessly around and round, galloping, galloping . . .

My heavy eyelids drifted shut and I burrowed deeper in my pillows. My mind drifted, too, and the hoofbeats took form and became a pale horse ... no, a dark one, a black horse, pure black like the night, black mane and black tail streaming out on the wind as it passed me by, galloping...

It faded and wheeled and came back again, steadily, bringing the others behind it—more hoofbeats, more horses, until it seemed the field must be a sea of heaving flanks and white-rolled eyes and steaming curls of labored breath- Snorting and plunging, they came on like thunder, galloping, galloping, and then in one thick stream they rushed beneath my window and I knew that I was dreaming, so I closed my eyes more tightly, and I slept.

I woke again in daylight. Reaching over in an automatic gesture, I nipped the switch on my alarm clock before the buzzer could sound, and heard the minute hand snap forward: eight o'clock. Yawning, I rolled onto my back, trying to work up the necessary willpower to lift my head.

This room was marvelous for waking up in. The only window faced east, over the field, but the morning sunlight edged its way in softly through the screening chestnut tree, not stabbing one in the eyes as it did in my London flat. The yellow walls danced with a dappled play of shadow and light as the tree's branches shifted and dipped against an encouragingly blue sky.

It looked a proper day for early May, warm and clear, but still I shivered in the chill outside my covers. Tugging a shapeless jumper over my standard working uniform of T-shirt and jeans, I quickly washed and went downstairs, where I found Jeannie McMorran alone in the bright kitchen, mixing a bowlful of biscuit dough.

"Do you never stop baking?" I asked. We'd got on rather well together last weekend, Jeannie and I, and I'd decided I liked her very much. She had a buoyant personality, a deliriously sly wit, and a way of putting Adrian in his place that I found particularly endearing. She turned to face me now and grinned.

"What, with all these men about? They'd never let me. Your hair-slide's crooked."

"Is it?" I raised one hand to make the adjustment, then carried on weaving the rest of my hair into its customary plait.

Jeannie sighed. "It makes me miss my own hair, watching you do that. Mine was never so thick, ken, but I could sit on it."

"Really?" Fastening my finished plait with a covered elastic band, I let it fall between my shoulder blades. "What made you cut it?"

"Brian fancied short hair on a woman," she said, with a shrug. "And I was younger then."

Brian, I had learned, was her husband—Robbie's father. Having never actually met the man I'd nonetheless managed to form a rather unbecoming picture of him. He skippered his own fishing boat, I knew, which meant he must be capable of some responsibility, yet it was hard to have a good opinion of a man who appeared to divide his odd weekend

home between the nearest public house and his bed. I changed the subject.

"I take it everyone else is up?"

"Aye. Peter and Fabia were on their way out when I got here, half an hour ago. They've gone down to take some photographs, I think, before they start the digging. I've not seen Adrian's car, yet, but I know Davy's around ... he's been down playing drafts with my Robbie since seven, if you can believe it. Eh, speak of the devil,'' she broke off, flapping her dishcloth toward the kitchen window to direct my attention to the figures walking down the hill outside. "There they go now."

There were three of them—four if one counted Robbie's dog, Kip. The collie ran energetic circles around David Fortune's legs, jumping up every few paces to bring its head within reach of his hand so he could rumple its ears in an absent way without interrupting his conversation with Robbie. Behind them walked an older man I didn't recognize, a short man with a slightly bent back and a dour expression. "Who's that with them?"

"That's my dad," Jeannie informed me, in a voice that held affection. "I forgot, you've not met him yet, have you? He made himself scarce, last weekend."

Scarce, I thought dryly, was hardly the word. I hadn't caught so much as a glimpse of the groundskeeper of Rose-hill, although Jeannie assured me that was not uncommon. There were, according to Jeannie, two things that Wally Tyler hated—living on his own, and living within sight of his son-in-law. Which had left him, after his wife's death several years ago, facing a dilemma. Inviting his daughter and grandson to fill the empty comers of Rose Cottage meant inviting Brian, too.

And so Wally Tyler had reached his own compromise. When Brian McMorran came home, Wally went elsewhere.

"It's not so bad as it sounds," Jeannie told me, smiling at my expression. "Brian's away to the fish most of the time—he keeps the boat out for a fortnight when the fishing's good. And Dad has friends in town." She wiped the last plate and set it in the rack to dry. “Right, what will you have for your breakfast? There's porridge made, or I can fix you some eggs—''

"I usually just have toast."

"You're never thinking to spend a whole day running around after Peter with nothing but toast in your stomach!" She fixed me with a look that made me feel about as old as Robbie, and repeated her offer of porridge or eggs.

Meekly, I opted for a boiled egg.

"Hard or soft?"

"Middling, please." Taking a seat at the kitchen table, I glanced out the window again at the disappearing cluster of men, boy, and bouncing dog. Jeannie dropped bread in the toaster and smiled.

"They won't start the digging without you," she promised me. "Peter and Davy will be busy for a bit yet, organizing things, and with my dad down there it'll be a miracle if they've done so much as break the turf by the time you finish your breakfast. Sausages or bacon?"

"You needn't go to so much trouble ..."

"It's no trouble. This is what I do," she explained patiently, her eyes amused. "I cook the food, and you eat it. Now which will it be, sausages or bacon? Or will I give you both?"

One simply couldn't argue with a woman like that, I decided. And the plate of egg and sausages she finally set in front of me did draw a hungry rumble from my normally spartan stomach. "This is marvelous," I admitted, after the third sausage. "Thanks."

"Oh, any fool can boil an egg." From her tone of voice I knew she honestly believed that, so I chose not to disillusion her by telling her that boiled eggs were quite beyond my own skills. Instead, I speared a piece of fried tomato and watched while she wiped the newly used pans.

"You haven't always worked for Quinnell, then?" I asked her.

"What? Oh, no,'' she replied, with another flash of amusement. "No, I come with the house, like my dad. Afore Peter it was old Mrs. Finlay lived up here, but then she fell ill and had to go into hospital. Her son managed things after that,

but he only came down weekends, from Edinburgh. And then last September Peter came and waved a stack of pound notes under Mr. Finlay's nose, and that was that."

Money, I agreed, could be so wonderfully persuasive, and Peter Quinnell seemed to have money to burn. His family's fortune, no doubt. He had the sort of cultured look that only comes with centuries of privilege.

"Anyway," Jeannie went on, "he's a good man to work for, is Peter. It's a pity that Fabia's learned nothing from him."

I smiled, understanding. "I don't think she likes me much."

"Aye, well, she wouldn't. You're a woman," Jeannie said, matter-of-factly. "Still, I suppose I shouldn't be too unkind. She did lose her father, poor lass.”

“Recently?"

"Just last summer. It must have been fair hard on Peter as well, to lose his only son like that, but at least he's got Davy to lean on. They're almost like family, those two."

I pondered this, spooning the top off my second egg. "Was David a student of Quinnell's, or something?"

"I couldn't tell you," she admitted. "I don't mind where Davy went to university—he was years ahead of me at school. But he's kent Peter all his life. Davy's mum was Peter's secretary, like. Afore she married onto Davy's father."

"Oh. I see."

The relationships, I thought, were rather hard to disentangle. Jeannie, growing up in Eyemouth, had known David, who knew Peter, who had once employed David's mother, who now knew young Robbie . ..

"And Peter was best man at Davy's wedding," she continued. “I do mind that, because he had to come all the way over from—"

"David is married?" I couldn't help the interruption, though it relieved me to hear that my own voice was admirably calm.

And I was even more relieved when Jeannie replied with
a shake of her head. "He was, aye, but not anymore. She left him, stupid lass."

Stupid lass, indeed, I thought.

Half an hour later, when I made my way down the gently sloping field to where the men had gathered in the southwest comer and was met by David Fortune's almost welcoming smile, I decided that stupid was an understatement.

"What kind of time d'ye call this, then?" he asked me.

"It's not my fault. Jeannie made me stop and eat a huge cooked breakfast." Something bounced at my knees and I bent to greet the collie. Kip. Scratching his shaggy mane, I took a quick look around. "Where's Fabia? I thought she was with you."

Quinnell glanced up. "What? Oh, she's gone to ring Adrian. He seems to be having a lie-in this morning, and I want to make certain I've positioned this properly."

By "this" he meant the long strip of ground at his feet, staked out with string to make a rectangle.

Every excavation took place within an imaginary grid, an unseen plan of lines and squares created by the survey, drawn over the field like a giant invisible graph. Everything we found at Rosehill, no matter how small, would be carefully mapped in relation to that graph. Quinnell had already plotted the location of what
would
be his trial trench against Adrian's survey markers, and set his own stakes at the four widely spaced comers, but he obviously didn't want to cut the turf until he'd checked his measurements.

Jeannie's father waited patiently to one side, leaning on his spade. In spite of the bent back he had the tough look of a man who'd done hard work his whole life and had no intention of letting up now. He looked at me with sharp gray eyes that glittered in his creased and weathered face, and raised his eyebrows. "This isnae the lass fae London?"

Quinnell assured him that I was. "Verity, this is Wally Tyler. Jeannie's father."

She didn't resemble him much. Where her features were soft, his were sharp, and his thinning hair had once been red. But his eyes, like his daughter's, were alive with canny good humor, and they crinkled kindly at the comers as he took
my hand in a firm and certain grip, looking accusingly at Quinnell. "She's no blond."

"Yes, I know."

David smiled broadly. "Did Jeannie not tell you, Wally?"

"She never let dab. And Robbie only said the new lass was a stoater."

Robbie stopped poking around in the hedgerow and turned, his face coloring. "Aw, Grandad!"

Quinnell laughed, a warm melodic sound. "It's all right, Robbie. I don't think our Miss Grey can speak Scots, can you, my dear? No. So there you are, you see? She likely won't know what a stoater is."

He was quite right, of course—I didn't have a clue, but as no one seemed inclined to enlighten me I tried my best to act as though I didn't care.

Instead I looked down, at the broad rectangle marked in the grass. The pungent smell of damp earth touched my nostrils like a sweet seductive scent, and I couldn't help but feel that tiny catch of excitement deep in my chest, that tingling thrill that all explorers must have felt from time immemorial. Because you never knew what worlds were waiting underneath that ground, to be discovered. That was the beauty of it—you never really knew.

And on this perfect spring morning, with my breath leaving mist in the air and the sun warming my shoulders and a little bird singing for all he was worth in the may-blossom hedge at my back, it was easy to forget there wasn't a shred of hard evidence to support this excavation. Easy to forget that we didn't have a hope of finding anything. I simply wanted to pick up a spade and get on with it, to start the actual digging.

"Adrian's coming," Robbie announced, swinging himself down from the fencing that ran behind the hedge.

Quinnell relaxed. "Good, good. Overslept, I imagine."

Fabia's firm voice corrected him. "Car trouble."

She spoke from directly behind me, her sudden arrival startling until I realized she had come, not from the house, but from Rose Cottage, just the other side of the drive. It meant a bit of a scramble over a crumbling stone wall and
a sagging wire fence, but Fabia looked as though she'd rather enjoyed the challenge, and the telephone at the cottage was, at any rate, closer than the one at Rosehill House.

"Morning," she greeted me shortly. "Finally got tree of the kitchen, I see. Did Jeannie force you to eat her horrid porridge?"