The Shadowy Horses

Quinnell subsided into a high-backed chair and swung one long leg over the other. "We can't all be virile, my boy. I say, while you're there, could you make me another as well?"

"You're out of vodka."

"Plenty more in the cellar. Fabia, my dear, would you run down and fetch me a bottle?"

Fabia rose obediently. I, for my part, simply took the drink that Adrian handed me and settled back, flexing my cramped feet.

Ten minutes later, with the vodka duly fetched and poured and David Fortune reinstated in his chair beside the window, Quinnell looked around him with the air of one well satisfied. "Well," he said, raising his glass, "here's to finding the Ninth, or enough of the Ninth to make Connelly give us his blessing."

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.