"Filled with water?"
"No, just dry. It made it difficult enough, to scramble up."
Robbie pondered this a moment. "Where'd they get the wood from?"
"What?"
"The wooden poles. Where'd they come from?"
"Oh." David's face cleared, and he lowered his head to concentrate on brushing loose dirt from the leveled rampart's edge. "The Romans were like Boy Scouts, lad. They came prepared. The legionaries carried two poles each when they were on the march."
"What, on their backs, like?"
"Aye. Along with their armor and their weapons and the things they used for cooking—"
Adrian cut him off abruptly. “We found a sherd,'' he said, as if he'd only just remembered. Not that one could blame him for forgetting, really. Our find had been so small compared to this one, and if the sight of the ditch had astounded me, it must have stunned Adrian speechless. It wasn't every day one's lie turned out to be the truth.
Quinnell brought his head round, interested. "What did you say?"
"A sherd," repeated Adrian. "Samian ware, we think."
"Oh, yes? Perhaps, David, you might take a look at it? You're so much better with pottery than I am. And I do want to get this trench photographed, in case it starts to rain. Wally, do you think that you could bring the stepladder round, so Fabia can get a shot from higher up?"
"Aye." The wiry Scotsman rolled a cigarette between his stained fingers, placed it in his mouth unlit, and shuffled off, no doubt glad of the opportunity to leave the field for a smoke. Most archaeologists didn't allow smoking on their sites, as radio-carbon dates would be contaminated by the ashes.
"And Fabia ..." Quinnell paused, his eyes resting rather vaguely on Adrian and myself. "Where is Fabia?"
Adrian informed him she'd gone back up to the house. "Shall I fetch her?"
"Please. And Verity, if you wouldn't mind showing this sherd of yours to David?'' Robbie, still crouched beside the trench, looked up hopefully. "And what can / do?"
"You," David said solemnly, handing over his brush, "can lend a hand to Mr. Quinnell, lad."
"Really?"
"Aye. He likes a bit of help, don't you, Peter?"
"What?" The older man glanced round. "Oh, yes, indeed I do. Come down here, Robbie, let me show you ..."
David Fortune smiled. In one easy motion he pulled himself out of the trench like a swimmer stepping out of a pool, and wiping his hands on his sturdy cotton trousers he came across to join me. "Peter does love teaching things," he confided. "He had me out on digs when I was half Robbie's age."
I couldn't imagine him at half Robbie's age. I looked behind me at the small dark tousled head bent close by Quinnell's in the trench, and thought: impossible. A man as big as David Fortune could never have been Robbie's size. He must have sprung from somewhere fully grown.
He towered beside me as we walked, our silence broken by the thump and scuffle of our shoes falling on the thick green grass that cloaked the pitted ground. Kip came with us, tail wagging, eager to be off on some adventure, but when we stopped a few yards on at the end of the trench, the collie lost interest and trotted off on a new course.
The sieving screen was right where I had left it, balanced on the spoil heap, and David bent to examine the small bit of broken pottery lying nestled on its bed of dirt.
"That was in the last load of soil Adrian brought over," I told him.
"Careless of us to miss it in the digging."
I studied the back of his head for a moment. "You weren't at all surprised, were you?''
"That we found something, d'you mean?" He glanced round, his eyes touching mine with level honesty. "No."
"But it's ... I mean, it seems so incredible, when you think about it—Adrian and Fabia going to all that trouble to fake the survey results, and in the end the bloody ditch is exactly where . .. exactly ..." My voice trailed off ineffectually as I brushed a hand across my forehead, smoothing a small frown. "Incredible," I said again.
"Not so incredible." His voice held the gentle insistence of a teacher reminding his pupils of a lesson they'd forgotten. "Robbie said there was something there."
"Yes, but..."
"When you've known Robbie longer, you'll understand. I'm not a man of faith," he said, "but if Robbie said the flood was coming, I'd build myself an ark." He turned the sherd over carefully in his fingers. "Is this all you found?"
"That, and a few fragments of animal bone—birds and mice, mostly, I think."
"Right then, let me fetch my notebook, and we'll get this properly recorded. I won't be a minute."
Left alone by half-empty sieve, I folded my arms across my chest and frowned harder at the pottery fragment, without really seeing it. I ought to have been pleased, I told myself. It was, after all, beginning to look very much as if there really was a marching camp at Rosehill, and Ninth Legion or no, the discovery of a Roman camp was something. So why, I wondered, was I suddenly feeling uneasy?
I stood there a long moment, thinking, so absorbed in thought that when the footsteps rustled through the grass behind me, I didn't turn round. It wasn't until I heard the half-sigh of an indrawn breath close by my shoulder that I realized someone else had come to join me. Shaking off my foolish fancies, I fixed a smile of welcome on my face and turned to say hello.