The Shadowy Horses

by Susanna Kearsley

  “And mislaid Peter’s notebook,” I added. “And told Connelly about our ghost hunt in the field, that night, saying it was all Peter’s idea. She would have done anything, I think, to be sure our dig didn’t succeed.”

  Peter, from his corner, gently reminded me that he, and not the dig, had been the true target of Fabia’s campaign of sabotage. “At the end of the day,” he said, “it all comes down to her wanting to discredit me, to see me—as she put it—suffer.”

  Had she been able to see him now, I thought, she would have felt quite satisfied. The lines of suffering were still etched plainly in his handsome face, for all of us to see. Still, Peter, I reflected, had remained consistent in his actions. Saddened but unbowed, he’d spent the afternoon dispensing drinks and comfort, telephoning lawyers, taking care of everything. It was, as Nancy Fortune said, his nature—taking care of things.

  “Good heavens,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Your mother.”

  David looked at me. “Whose mother?”

  “Yours. We forgot all about her. She’ll still be waiting for us to come and fetch her at the cottage, won’t she?”

  “Aye, well,” David shrugged, “I can’t do much of anything until Jeannie and Brian come back—I’ve no car.”

  Peter eyed him thoughtfully. “I really think, my boy, it might be best to let someone else collect your mother. You’ve had bad luck with borrowed cars, today.”

  David raised his drink defensively. “It wasn’t me that wrapped the Jaguar around a fence post.”

  “No, but it was your fault Verity drove out there in the first place,” Peter pointed out, smoothly logical. “So you see…”

  Robbie interrupted, twisting to look up at David’s face. “You didn’t take the necklace,” he said, as if that explained everything. “You were supposed to wear it, like.”

  Besieged on all sides, David drank his whisky with a faint smile. “Aye, well, next time we’re talking to your Sentinel, Robbie, you mind me to tell him why no self-respecting archaeologist wears artifacts.”

  “Why?” Robbie asked.

  Peter explained. “Because we’d damage them. We shouldn’t dig things up at all, unless we can take care of them.” He was silent a moment, mulling something over. “Can he really hear us, when we speak? The Sentinel, I mean.”

  Robbie nodded. “He can see you and all. Only you’ve got to speak Latin, or he doesn’t ken what you’re saying. I can say ‘hello,’” he announced proudly.

  “Well done,” said Peter vaguely, deep in thought. The crunch of tires on the gravel roused him, and he raised his head expectantly. “Ah, here are Jeannie and Brian now.”

  Jeannie looked relieved to have the whole thing over with. “It wasn’t so bad,” she said. “It was just an identification, like.”

  “It did take us a while, though,” Brian admitted. “Just to be sure, with the bandages and all. What the devil did your mother hit him with, anyway?”

  “Teapot,” said David. “Her famous tin teapot.”

  Peter smiled, faintly. “And I rather suspect it was full at the time.”

  Brian winced. “Bloody hell!”

  “Will they have enough,” asked Adrian, “to make the charges stick?”

  “Oh, aye,” Brian nodded.

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “Well, for one thing,” said Brian, leaning back with a thoughtful expression, “the police are going to find Mick’s caravan is filled near to bursting with black market vodka and cigarettes.”

  David looked at him. “Brian, you didn’t.”

  “I did. He’s a right sodding bastard, and he needs to get more than your mother’s blinking teapot in his eye.”

  Peter stopped swirling the vodka in his glass, and glanced at Jeannie, suddenly remembering. “I do hate to ask you this, my dear, because I know you’ve just got back, but would you mind very much driving over to fetch Nancy?”

  “Of course not.” Picking up the car keys, she held out her free hand. “Come on, Robbie, let’s go get Granny Nan.”

  “And don’t take her to Saltgreens. You’re to bring her back here,” Peter said. “For dinner. It’s high time she had a look at what we’ve been up to.”

  So much for Peter remaining predictable, I thought. Even Jeannie stared at him for a long moment, and her slowly spreading smile was beautiful. “Aye,” she said, “I think you’re right.”

  “Any chance of a lift into town?” Adrian asked, rising with a self-indulgent stretch. “I have a dinner date myself, as I recall, with a rather smashing redhead.”

  I sent him a mildly suspicious glance. “One of my finds assistants is a redhead.”

  “Is she? What a coincidence.”

  “Hmm. Just see that she’s not late for work in the morning, will you?”

  “My dear girl,” he asked me, “do I look like the sort of person who’d corrupt an innocent student?”

  None of us answered him, but his words set Peter off on a new train of thought. “The students,” he mused. “I must go and check on them, see that they’re comfortable. I don’t believe we’ll have the tents set up again before tomorrow, but—”

  “Aye, well,” said David, stretching himself, “maybe Wally and I can go down now and take a look round at the damage.”

  Brian went with them. Which left only me, sitting there with the cats, in no hurry to do much of anything.

  It was the telephone, jangling in the front hall, that finally got me off the sofa. With a sigh, I lifted the receiver, wishing the thing could have stayed out of order till dinnertime, at least.

  “Verity?” A voice I knew. “It’s Howard. You’re not an easy woman to get hold of, are you? I’ve been trying for days,” he complained. “Your sister thinks I’m some sort of maniac, you know.”

  I smiled. “Yes, well. She’s a bit protective, is Alison.”

  “Protective,” Howard said, “is not the word. I’d rather face a rottweiler.”

  “She did tell me you’d called,” I defended my sister.

  “Well, I should hope so. I told her it was damned important.”

  “What was?”

  “I’ve been feeling like an idiot all week.”

  “Howard…” I warned him.

  “What? Oh, sorry. I’ll get to the point. Do you remember those photographs you sent me a while back—the Samian sherds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.” He coughed. “The thing is, I was clearing my desk up last Friday… you know how my desk gets, and people had begun to, well, say things… and anyway, I found the envelope you’d sent the photos in, and I was just about to tear it up when I realized there was a photograph still stuck inside it. Got wedged in the bottom somehow, against the cardboard backing, and I simply hadn’t noticed…”

  “Howard.” I cut him off again. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “I told you those sherds were Agricolan, didn’t I?”

  “Aren’t they?”

  “Yes, the ones that I saw were,” he told me. “Of course they were. But this last one, darling… the one in the photograph I didn’t see, it’s entirely different.”

  Remembering the one sherd that I’d thought was younger than the others, I gripped the handset tighter, hoping. “In what way?”

  “The rim pattern is quite distinctive, you know, and… well, I’d have to see the actual sherd, naturally, before I could give it a positive date… but it certainly couldn’t have been made before AD 115.”

  My heart gave a tiny, joyful leap. “You’re sure?”

  “It is my job,” he reminded me drily.

  “Not before 115?”

  “Not a chance.”

  I smiled, not caring that he couldn’t see it. “Oh Howard, that’s wonderful.”

  “Hel
pful, is it?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “You still owe me five pounds,” he said. “As I recall, the bet was that you’d find a marching camp, and the word down here is you’ve found a good deal more.”

  He meant our digging team, of course, but the statement struck me personally. “Yes,” I told him. “Yes, I have.”

  “Well, well,” said Howard.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Look, just send that sherd to me tomorrow, will you?”

  “Right.”

  “And my fiver.”

  “And your fiver,” I promised. “And Howard?”

  “Yes?”

  “If you’re talking to Dr. Lazenby…”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you tell him I’m not interested in Alexandria?”

  A pause. “Are you ill?”

  “No, I’m perfectly healthy. And perfectly happy, right here.”

  I did feel almost ridiculously happy as I rang off. Odd, I thought, how good and bad things always seemed to come at once, as if some unseen force were seeking balance. Peter, for all his brave exterior, had suffered today as no man deserved to suffer. And now, after all that, he was about to learn that Rosehill had been twice occupied—not only during the Agricolan campaigns, but later, after AD 115, around the time the Ninth Hispana had started its fateful march northwards.

  It wasn’t proof, not concrete proof, but still it was enough to make the archaeological establishment show some respect, however small, for Peter Quinnell. Even those who mocked his theories could no longer call him mad.

  Not that he was entirely sane, I thought fondly, when I went outside to find him.

  He was standing in the field, alone, a rather tragic figure with his white hair blowing in the wind, his jaw set high and proud. Like King Lear raging at the elements, only the elements by now were fairly tame, and Peter, while he would have made a smashing Lear, was only Peter. He looked round as I approached, and smiled wistfully.

  “And they say the gods don’t hear us.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’ve been pondering the truth, my dear,” he said. “And here you are. In Latin, truth is feminine, is it not? Veritas. Verity.” My name flowed out in his melodic voice like a phrase from a very old song, and he turned his gaze away again. “The truth is buried in this field, somewhere. But if I fail to prove it, can it still be called a truth?”

  I considered the question. “Well… I can’t see the Sentinel, and I’ve no scientific proof he exists, but I do know that he’s there.”

  “Ah, but you did see him, didn’t you? However vaguely, you did see him. Whereas I…” His words hung sadly on the shifting wind.

  “Whereas you have a potsherd that dates from the end of Trajan’s reign,” I said, and smiled as he turned again to stare at me.

  “I beg your pardon? I have what?”

  I repeated the statement, and told him about Howard’s telephone call. “He said he’d be happy to give us a firm date, if we could send him down the sherd.”

  “Good heavens.” He stared at me a moment longer, and then crushed me with a hug. “That’s marvelous, my dear. That’s absolutely—”

  The slam of a car door interrupted us, and Robbie came running over the blowing grass with Kip bounding close at his heels. “Heyah,” said Robbie. “We got Granny Nan. She’s going to change her shoes, she says, and then come out.”

  “Wonderful,” Peter said.

  The collie brushed past us, tail wagging, and Robbie nodded at the field. “You found him, did you?”

  I looked where he was looking, and saw nothing. “Who do you mean, Robbie? The Sentinel? Where is he?”

  “Just there, where Kip is.”

  Not ten feet in front of us.

  Peter looked, too. “Poor chap,” he said. “I would have thought he’d find some peace, after what he did today. Putting things to rights, as it were. I would have thought that he could rest.”

  Robbie wrinkled his freckled nose, looking up. “He doesn’t want to rest,” he said. “He wants to take care of us.”

  “Does he, indeed?” Peter’s smile was faint. “Well, I can understand that, I suppose.”

  I thought I understood, as well. And where I’d once been frightened by the thought of being watched, I now took comfort in the presence of the Sentinel. I felt a satisfaction, too, in knowing that today he had been able to redeem himself, to keep his promise, saving the life of the man that his “Claudia” loved. And he would go on protecting us, here at Rosehill. He’d see that we came to no harm. The shadowy horses could run all they wanted; they’d never come near while the Sentinel walked.

  Kip suddenly sat and whined an eager little whine, eyes trained upwards, waiting. And then, as though someone had given him a signal, he broke away and bounded off to meet the older woman coming round the house behind us. Robbie turned and said: “Granny Nan’s coming.” And I was turning myself, to wave hello, so I might have imagined what Peter said next.

  His words were quiet, very low, and at any rate I wasn’t meant to hear them.

  He was speaking to the Sentinel. “Thank you,” he said simply, in his lovely, cultured Latin. “Thank you for saving my son.”

  He dropped his gaze, but not before I saw his wise and weary eyes, and knew for certain that he knew. And then his eyes lifted again, and in place of the sadness there was only a smile, as he held out his hands to greet David’s mother.

  ***

  David was sitting on the bank of the Eye Water, watching the swans. The harbor must have been too rough for them, during the storm, so they’d swum farther upriver in search of calmer waters. They drifted now under the trees, snow-white and regal, heads modestly bowed.

  I spread my anorak over the wet grass and sat down beside him. “Your mother’s here.”

  “Oh, aye?”

  “Mmm. Peter’s giving her the grand tour.”

  “We’ll be waiting for our dinner, then.”

  I smiled. “Jeannie says eight o’clock.”

  David checked his watch, and leaned back comfortably.

  “Plenty of time.”

  “I see you got your tent back up.”

  “Aye. The rest’ll be no trouble at all, there’s hardly any damage done. Tomorrow morning I’ll get a few of the lads to give me a hand.”

  I nodded, hugging my knees. I ought to have told him about Howard’s discovery, really, only I knew that if I did we’d end up talking about the dig, and I didn’t want to talk about the dig right now. Instead I watched the pale swans drifting in the shallows. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “Aye.”

  “I’m glad there are two of them. The one looked so lonely, by himself.”

  David smiled, not looking at me. “He’ll not be lonely again. They mate for life, swans do. She’s stuck with him now.”

  And I was stuck with David Fortune, I thought fondly, studying his now familiar face—the deep lines of laughter that crinkled his eyes, the thick slanting fall of black eyelashes touching his cheekbone, the firm, unyielding angle of his jaw, and the nose that, in profile, was not quite straight, as though it had been broken in a fight. I would ask him about that nose, one day, I promised myself. One day, when we were sitting in the red-walled room at Rosehill, watching Peter and Nancy dandle their first-born grandchild, I would ask my husband how he’d broken his nose.

  But till then, I could wait—I was in no great hurry. Like the swans, I had mated for life.

  David, whose thoughts had obviously been drifting along the same lines, turned his head, and his blue eyes caught mine, very warm. “D’ye ken that in Eyemouth, when a woman marries a man, she takes his bye-name as well? Verity Deid-Banes,” he tried the combination on his tongue, and grinned. “It’s a fair mouthful
, that.”

  “David…”

  “Of course, you could always be just Davy’s Verity.”

  Since I clearly wasn’t going to be given a voice in this decision, I rested my chin on my knees and tilted my head to smile back at him. “Oh?”

  “Aye. Davy’s Verity.” He said it again and nodded firmly, satisfied. “That’s what you’ll be.”

  So much for independence, I thought. Still, I took a final stab at it. “I am not,” I said, setting him straight, “Davy’s Verity.”

  But my protest had no real effect. He only laughed, and rolling to his side he reached for me, his big hand tangling in my hair as he drew me down toward him. “The hell you’re not,” he said.

  And proved it.

  Author’s Note

  This book could not have been written without the expert advice and assistance of my own “field crew” of archaeologists: in Scotland, Pat Storey and Dr. Bill Finlayson, of the University of Edinburgh; and in Canada, Dr. James Barrett, and especially Heather Henderson, who guided me from the beginning and very kindly sieved my manuscript for errors. Many thanks.

  I’m also indebted to Margaret McGovern, for so many things, and to the late Jimmy McGovern, for choosing Davy’s bye-name and for always taking care of me.

  Read on for an excerpt from Susanna Kearsley’s exciting new time-slip romance

  The Firebird

  Available June 2013 from Sourcebooks Landmark

  He was walking her home.

  It felt strange to be following people I couldn’t see, but I had faith that Rob, walking behind me, saw clearly enough for the both of us, so when he said Colonel Graeme and Anna were just up ahead I believed him. They were, from the angle at which he was watching them, slightly more inland and not quite so close to the cliff’s edge as we were, but they were three hundred years in the past where no fenced fields impeded them, blocking their access and forcing them onto the coast path.

  I saw them as Rob was describing them, Anna on restlessly dancing feet leading the weathered old soldier along.

  Rob said, “He’s not a tall man. He’s not all that old, either, not by our standards. He’d be in his sixties, I’d guess. And he’s not walking now like an old man at all, but like someone who’s spent his life marching—his back’s straight, his head’s up except when he bends it to listen to her. He’s got gray hair, combed back and tied here,” Rob said, putting one hand at the nape of his neck, “into one of those, what d’ye call them? The wee braided tail things.”