The Shadowy Horses

by Susanna Kearsley

  He leaned back, rather smugly. “Well, I warned you, didn’t I? I told you something else was bound to happen. Bad luck, my darling, comes in threes—remember?” When I ignored him, starting on my search again with even greater vigor, he sighed and turned his chair from the computer. “Right, I’ll help you hunt,” he said. “Just let me get another cup of coffee, first. Want one?”

  “No thanks.” Returning to the tall steel filing cabinet on the end wall, I yanked the top drawer open for another look, even though I knew the odds of Peter’s field notes being filed by mistake were slim. At any rate, the drawer was nearly empty. I was closing it again when I heard Adrian come back. “God, that was quick,” I told him. “Look, I don’t suppose that you could—”

  I didn’t manage to finish the sentence. Without warning, the drawer handle was wrenched from my hand as the filing cabinet slid a good foot sideways, scraping heavily along the hard clay floor. Startled, I spun round to look at Adrian, and found he wasn’t there.

  Nobody was.

  And yet I knew, as I struggled to speak, to move a finger, anything… I knew that I wasn’t alone. I screwed my eyes tight shut and pressed my back to the unyielding bulk of the filing cabinet, drawing reassurance from its cold solidity while phantom footsteps, faint but certain, slowly moved toward me… paused… and finally passed me by. Only when the sound had died completely did I dare to even breathe.

  The clink of a spoon in a coffee mug brought my eyes open. “You’ll put your back out, doing that,” said Adrian, not noticing that anything was wrong.

  I licked my lips, to make them move. “Doing what?”

  “Shifting furniture.” He nodded at the filing cabinet. “That’s too heavy for you.”

  “Yes, well, I didn’t…”

  “Still, I see you managed to find it,” he said, cheerfully. “Well done.”

  Still rather numb, I peered round at the blank wall where the cabinet had been, and stared, transfixed, at the large red notebook lying there.

  Adrian bent to pick it up, flipping through the dog-eared pages. “Quinnell must have left this on the cabinet, and somehow it got joggled and fell down behind. You see?” Handing me the notebook, he hid his superior smile behind the coffee mug. “Not everything,” said Adrian, “can be the work of ghosts.”

  ***

  I could have told the truth to Peter—he would have believed me. But when I handed him his notebook he was so delighted I could barely get a word in edgeways, so I let the matter drop. Instead I sat with Peter in the comfort of his sitting room and had a gin-and-it to calm my shakes.

  And if the ghost was on the prowl in the Principia, he didn’t seem to interfere with Adrian, who, in an unexpected show of diligence, stayed up there working straight through until dinnertime. He didn’t simply print off David’s notes, as I had thought he would—he also took the time to summarize them, creating an impressive brief report, illustrated at appropriate intervals with sections of his own surveys and my drawings of our Roman-era finds.

  Peter, scanning through the pages as we lingered over after-dinner coffee, was ecstatic. “Brilliant!” he pronounced it. “Marvelous, my boy. I knew those damned computers would be useful. Now, we just have to combine your report with this,” he said, waving his own thick sheaf of handwritten jottings, “and we’re all set.”

  Adrian’s face sagged a little, but I had no doubt he’d manage the revisions. He did his best work when he stood to profit by it, and he had a vested interest in our learned lunch guest’s final judgment of our site. If Dr. Connelly agreed to approve the Rosehill excavation, to let students from Edinburgh do their vacation work here, then our jobs would be safe for the season. But if Connelly refused… well, Peter was a proud man. I didn’t know, myself, how he’d react.

  Which left me feeling rather like poor Damocles beneath the hanging sword, expecting any moment that the slender thread might snap.

  We all of us felt it, I think. David, freshly showered but still unshaved, sat silently across from me, head lowered, deep in thought. And even Fabia, who’d arrived home in a relatively good mood just as we sat down to eat, showed signs of growing restlessness.

  “I’ll give him a hand,” she said, suddenly, and Peter glanced up distractedly from his papers.

  “Give who a hand?”

  “Adrian. With the report. I’m much quicker on the keyboard than he is, it’ll take him an age to type all that into the computer.”

  “Oh, right.” Her grandfather nodded his assent. “A good idea.”

  That opinion was shared, predictably, by Adrian himself, who wasted no time in finishing his own coffee. His face, as he guided Fabia from the room, put me in mind of an indolent cat who’d just been handed the keys to the canary cage.

  David leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, awaiting instructions. “And what can I do?”

  “You, my boy,” said Peter, glancing at his watch, “can drive me into Berwick, if you’d be so kind. I promised your mother I’d look in on her this evening. We can take the Range Rover, if Fabia’s left any petrol in it.”

  “Aye, all right.” David pushed his chair back, looked at me. “You’re welcome to come, if you like, but be warned. My mother hates being in hospital, especially Berwick hospital.”

  Peter commented that Berwick hospital was, in his opinion, rather nice.

  “Aye, but if you die there,” David said, “you die in England. That’s a terrible fate for a Scot. So my mother’s been giving them hell, all the nurses and doctors, in hopes they’ll send her home. And unless they’ve shot her with a tranquilizer dart,” he told me, “I’m not sure that she’ll be fit for you to meet.”

  I smiled. “That’s all right. I should probably stay here, anyway. I’ve plenty of work to do myself, before tomorrow.”

  But when everyone had gone, I couldn’t find a single bit of really useful work that needed to be done. I had no desire to wander up to the Principia, not in the dark, and anyway, I knew it was more than my life was worth to spoil Adrian’s seduction scene. I would have cleared the dishes from the dining room and done the washing up, only Jeannie wouldn’t hear of it.

  So, thwarted in my efforts to be useful, I retreated to the red-walled sitting room, where Peter kept his television.

  The cats, at least, were glad of my company. They’d been ignored for most of the day, while Peter worked on his report, and as usual they’d been banned from the dining room during our evening meal. I found them sulking on the sofa, curled like serpents round each other with their eyes shut tight, deliberately shunning humanity. But when I sat beside them, Murphy strolled over to settle himself on my lap, and Charlie stretched her graceful form out full length, purring like a motorboat, while I searched the television channels for something watchable.

  My best bet seemed to be the nine o’clock news, followed by a supposedly suspenseful film that proved a disappointment. It was an American film, with a murky plot and a pace that dragged intolerably. Pure tosh, about some man who’d programmed his computer to commit the perfect murder…

  Computers…

  I sat upright. That was it. That’s what had niggled at my brain last night, when I’d rung off from talking with my sister Alison. She’d mentioned Philip Quinnell, and the fact that, in the book she’d bought, he’d used computers to enhance his photographs. And since he’d passed his photographic skills on to Fabia, presumably she’d also learned a bit about computers. But had she learned enough, I wondered, to tamper with the system here at Rosehill?

  The credits of the film began to roll, and Murphy yawned. “I know,” I said, and switched the television off. “I’m only being paranoid.” Practically everyone used computers in their work these days—it wasn’t any crime. And just because somebody had the knowledge, didn’t mean that they would use it. I might not like Fabia, I told myself, but that
hardly gave me reason to believe she’d want to sabotage the dig.

  Puttering through to the kitchen, I made myself a cup of tea, and then, since there was still no sign of anyone returning, I went upstairs to bed. At least one of us, I reasoned, ought to have a good night’s sleep, so as to be alert for Dr. Connelly tomorrow.

  My bed looked different, sheets and coverlet pulled up unevenly, as though someone had turned it down and made it up again. And then I realized that was exactly what had happened. David hadn’t used the spare bed, by the window, to take his nap. He’d used mine. Not that he’d have any way of knowing which bed was which, I reasoned—they looked identical. And not that I really minded, come to that.

  There was a certain sinful pleasure in knowing he’d been sleeping in my bed; in sliding between sheets that his body had recently warmed, and pressing my face to the pillow that still smelt faintly of his hair, his aftershave. I tugged the blankets up and rolled to switch the light off, feeling drowsy and at peace.

  The cats, curled at my feet, slept soundly, deeply, silently. And if the horses came that night, I didn’t hear them.

  Chapter 24

  It was the birdsong that woke me, as the first pale rays of sunlight crept across my windowsill and spread their gentle shadows through my room. Smiling, I nudged aside the sleeping cats and rose and stretched and went to greet the day. Through my window I could see a cloudless sky arched wide above a world of brilliant green; the distant edge of blue that was the sea; the scattering of primroses beneath the dancing branches of the chestnut tree; and Peter, leaning on the stone fence with his back toward me, watching the empty field.

  He looked old, suddenly, seen from a distance. Old and tired, and very much alone.

  It didn’t take me long to dress. My feet made very little noise as I crossed the dew-sprinkled garden to join Peter at the fence, but he heard me nonetheless. He half turned, showing me an absent smile of welcome.

  “You’ll catch your death of cold, my dear, coming out without your sweater.”

  “Nonsense. It’s a warm shirt.” I lifted a thick cotton fold to show him. “Besides, it’s nearly June. One shouldn’t have to wear a sweater, this late in the spring.”

  Peter accepted my statement with tolerant eyes that slid away from mine again to gaze across the field. I leaned my elbows on the crumbling bit of wall beside him and looked out, too. Long shadows feathered the far edge of the field, where another broad hill rose beneath a tiny, neat white farmhouse, but everywhere else the sun played softly upon the rippling grass. The field appeared serenely innocent, deserted.

  Only both of us knew that it wasn’t deserted. The Sentinel, I thought, might be standing on the other side of the wall this very minute, watching us…

  Hunching deeper into my sleeves, I quickly glanced at Peter. “Are you worried?”

  “Hmm?”

  “About this lunch with Dr. Connelly.”

  His smile was so faint I almost missed it. “He thinks the Ninth went on to Palestine.”

  “I see. Well…”

  “Fragments of it, possibly. That’s what I told him. Fragments of the legion, units, those who didn’t perish. But the Ninth itself?” He shook his head. “They’re here. I know they’re here.” Pushing himself away from the wall, he straightened with a sigh. “I only wish we’d found some scrap of evidence. Besides the ghost, I mean. Some concrete bit of evidence to put before old Connelly. I’d have dearly loved to knock the bottom out of his beliefs, smug bastard.”

  He spoke lightly, without violence, but I heard the bitter current in his voice. And suddenly I felt very sure that, whatever Connelly decided after today’s meeting, Peter would have his excavation notwithstanding. It wasn’t just the dream that he was grasping for, it was the more elusive garland that he’d worn when young, and lost along the way. Respect, I thought—that’s what he wants. Respect and recognition.

  I looked away again, and rested my chin on my hands. “We’re bound to find something before the season’s done. And anyway,” I added, my tone brightening, “at least you’ll have the satisfaction of telling Connelly we’ve probably found a vexillation fortress, where nobody knew there was one.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “I will have that. And Robbie did tell me, a long time ago, that our field would be full of people.”

  “There you are, then.” My nod was happily certain. “It must have been the students he was seeing. So you’ve nothing to worry about. Robbie,” I reminded him, “is always right.”

  “Yes.” Peter’s languid gaze was drawn outward once again, to the silent green expanse beyond the wall. “But with Robbie, one is never sure,” he said slowly, “whether what he sees are shadows of the future, or the past.”

  ***

  “Remarkable.” Dr. Connelly excavated a small trench in the middle of his creamed potatoes and pushed in a pat of butter, neatly sealing up the mound again with surgical precision. He was a tidy man, with spectacles, his thinning hair kept closely trimmed to match his still-dark beard. “It’s quite remarkable,” he said again, “that you’ve found anything at all. A vexillation fortress, do you say?”

  Peter eyed him like a gladiator sizing up a lion. Or was it, I wondered, taking a closer look at Peter’s face, the other way around? Still, when he replied his voice was smooth and cultured with no hint of condescension. “We have come to that conclusion, yes.”

  Connelly savored a mouthful of sole, and thought for a moment. “And is it then your theory that the Ninth Hispana came upon this fortress on their northward march, and made their camp here, and were then engaged in battle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting,” Connelly admitted. “Unorthodox, but interesting.”

  Across the table from me, David shifted forward and assumed the role of spokesman. “We’re fairly sure the fortress is Agricolan, and Agricola did bring the Ninth north during his campaigns. It’s not so great a leap of logic to suppose that, forty years later, when the Ninth was ordered north again, it chose to camp where it had built before. The land is good here, near a river, and the ramparts and ditch would probably still have been standing.”

  Connelly’s eyes were sharp behind the spectacles. “And have you proof, that this is what the legion did?”

  I looked at Adrian, who looked at Fabia, and for a moment silence hung between us all; a curiously apprehensive silence, as though each of us expected the other to blurt out: “Well, there’s this ghost, you see, who might just be a soldier of the Ninth Hispana…” Hardly proof, I thought, for someone as meticulous as Dr. Connelly. Any man who cut his carrots into cubes before he ate them was unlikely to put faith in walking ghosts.

  Fabia began to point out, rather huffily, that we had only been working on site a short time, but Peter cut across her in a ringing voice that sounded not the slightest bit ashamed. “We have no proof.”

  “None whatsoever?”

  “None.”

  “I see.”

  Adrian’s smile had lost some of its certainty. “We have prepared a brief report,” he said, “that summarizes what we’ve found, in this initial survey. Perhaps, if you would care to look through that…”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I’ll give it a read after lunch. You do realize,” he said, peering over his spectacles at Peter, “that your finding of the fortress might create a difficulty for you, even with your permits. The site might be scheduled.”

  He meant that Rosehill might be designated an ancient monument, and that might in turn stop our dig cold. Preservation of a site was, after all, the prime concern of archaeology, and digging, by its nature, was destructive. We kept notes, of course, and scrupulously published what we found, but still, a site once excavated could not be restored. Schliemann, in his search for Troy, had shattered several layers of the ancient town above.

  So now there were rules, to protect im
portant monuments—like Roman fortresses—from being unnecessarily disturbed.

  “Because it’s not only me that you need to impress,” Dr. Connelly explained. “You’ll want to get Historic Scotland on your side as well, and the regional Archaeologist over at Newtown St. Boswells. And unless the site is being threatened by development or road-building, they might well not approve of your digging.”

  Peter refused to blink. “Did I mention,” he said, in his elegant voice, “that I’m thinking of having a swimming pool built? In the field, as it happens.”

  It was his way of saying that, if he couldn’t dig unless the site was in imminent danger of being damaged, he was willing to invent an urgent threat.

  Dr. Connelly shook his head, and sighed. “You can’t always have things your own way, you know.”

  But he did read the report. We gave him Peter’s sitting room, for privacy, while the rest of us waited across the hall. It was, I think, the most unnerving hour I’d spent since my first interview at the British Museum. Fabia paced ceaselessly, like something in a cage, while Adrian straightened picture frames and rearranged the objects on the mantelpiece. David, slightly more relaxed, put Chopin’s Etudes on the hi-fi, and leaned back, eyes closed, to listen. And Peter simply waited patiently, his hand quite still upon the black cat stretched across his knees.

  At length the door to our sitting room creaked open, and Connelly’s head came round it. His expression, I thought, was preoccupied—carefully bland. “Right,” he said. “I’d like to see the site now, if I may. Just Miss Grey and myself,” he added, as everyone made to rise, “if that’s all right.”

  Surprised, I looked at Peter, and he nodded.

  This must be how an Olympic torch-bearer feels, I thought uncomfortably, as I led Dr. Connelly up the grassy slope to the Principia. I tried hard not to stumble over any of my explanations, but it was difficult to keep my nervousness from showing, and when we finally stepped outside again and a figure leaped from the building’s shadow, I nearly jumped a mile.