The Shadowy Horses

"And then he buggered off, right?"

"Oldest trick in the book."

"You are a cynic, aren't you?" Adrian commented. "Fabia's coming back."

By the time we'd started into the second bucket he'd brought, his frowning glances up toward the house had grown more frequent and his voice held none of its former confidence. "She is coming back."

"Of course she is. Could you hold your end up properly, please? You're spilling all the soil."

"Sorry. I'd really forgotten how much I disliked . .. hang on, what was that?" He stopped shaking, peering closely at the sieve.

"What was what?"

"Blast, it's gone under again. I shook too hard. A piece about this big," he identified the mystery object, making a circle with thumb and forefinger, "a sort of triangle. I think it's down near you, now."

Ft took me a moment to find it. Frowning, I held the hard flat lump with careful fingers and gingerly brushed away most of the clinging dirt. It was a small potsherd with still-sharp edges and the worn remnants of a fine glaze. On any other site, I would have been excited by such a find. But now, as I stared down at it, I felt the pricking of irrational anger.

Adrian held out his hand. "Can I have a look?"

In stony-faced silence I passed him the sherd and watched him weigh it in the palm of his hand. Head bent, he lowered his eyebrows in the frown of concentration that I still found more attractive than his smile. "It's Samian ware, isn't it?"

"It certainly appears to be."

"But that's encouraging, surely? I mean, one expects to find Samian ware on a Roman site."

"Yes. How clever of you to remember."

He glanced up. "What?"

"Were you planning," I asked him coldly, "to fake the whole of this excavation?"

"Verity..."

"Just so I know."

"Verity..."

"Mind you, it's not a perfect plant. Samian ware might have been scattered throughout Roman Britain, but I'd think it more common to villas and forts than to marching camps."

"Verity, I swear." He raised his right hand in defense. "This is not my doing."

"Please. Fabia may have the brains, but she doesn't have your access to artifacts. Where'd you nick this from?"

He sighed, and sent me a look that mingled exasperation and amusement. "What makes you so bloody sure it's not a genuine find?"

"Oh, don't play the innocent. You know as well as I do that there's nothing here to find."

Quinnell, I thought later, could not have had a better cue.

I'd barely finished my sentence when his shout of delight went rolling up the green hill like a thunderclap. Forgetting Adrian, I turned toward the sound. Robbie and Kip had returned to crouch near the far edge of the deepening trench, and I saw Robbie lean forward excitedly, pointing.

"Good God," said Adrian. He set the potsherd back on its bed of dirt and let go his end of the sieve, forcing me to shift my grip or drop the thing altogether. "They've found something.''

"Damn it, Adrian," I began, staggering beneath the weight of the framed square of screening, but he was already gone, hurrying over the grass to investigate. With a muttered curse I lowered the sieve to the ground and creaked upright again, massaging my strained back muscles as I rounded the edge of the trench.

The collie met me halfway, feathered tail waving a welcome. "Careful, Kip," I warned as he bumped against my legs, but the dog just drew its lips back in a grin and danced a few steps further on, urging me to follow.

Quinnell looked up, beaming. "We've found the ditch," he announced. "Right where we expected it to be." Adrian was plainly stunned. "Right where we expected it..."

"Yes." Quinnell beckoned me closer. "Just there, do you see? I'm afraid the rampart itself has been levelled at some point, there's nothing left of it at all, but you can clearly trace its edge against the dark fill of the ditch."

I looked, enthralled. They'd done an expert job of excavating, arid the line where ditch and rampart had once met stood out quite clearly, running crosswise at the bottom of the trench.

The Romans had dug ditches all the way around their marching camps, great ditches nine feet wide and seven feet deep, piling the earth and turf to one side to create a soaring rampart. It must have looked a daunting obstacle, to any barbarians trying to attack the Roman camp.

And now nothing was left but a line in the soil.

Wally Tyler hoisted himself out of the trench, and David's eyes tipped up to scan the waving rim of grass. "Wally, would you hand me down that brush, there?"

"Aye." The old man complied, nearly tripping over his grandson in the process. "A body canna move with ye aboot," he complained. He gave the boy a nudge with one foot. "Shift yerself forrit a wee bit."

Robbie obligingly shifted himself forward, careful not to get too close to the edge of the trench. Someone had obviously explained to him how important it was not to collapse the trench wall and lose all the information contained in its various strata. Leaning over cautiously, he watched the work below him. "Davy ..."

"Aye, lad?"

"How could that"—he pointed one shoe at the eroded rampart—"keep anybody out?"

David smiled. "Well, it used to be much bigger, lad. Like a hill, ken—nearly ten feet tall. And on top the Romans built a wall of wooden poles, to make it taller. And all this," he added, waving his trowel over the darker area, "this was a ditch then, like the moats you see around castles."