My greeting fell on empty air.
My heart lurched. Stopped. Began again. Over the sudden roaring rush of blood that filled my ears I heard a herring gull cry out its warning high above the twisted trees, and then the whispering footsteps passed me by and faded in the softly blowing grass.
IX
"You look as if you'd seen a ghost," said Adrian, surveying me over the top of his drawing tablet. "Are you feeling all right?"
"Fine."
"Because you don't need to stick around for this part, if you're tired. Robbie and Wally have gone home for tea, and as soon as I've done this rough map I'll be taking a break myself."
"I'm fine," I repeated stubbornly.
My hands had finally stopped trembling but I kept them clenched deep in the pockets of the windcheater David had insisted on fetching for me when he'd returned to find me shaking from what he'd assumed was the cold. Not that the afternoon was particularly chilly, but when the sun ducked in behind the passing clouds I found myself grateful for the windcheater. The breeze had developed a bite.
I blamed the breeze, as well, for what I'd heard, or thought I'd heard. The wind could have a human voice, sometimes. It had fooled me often enough in childhood, setting the front gate creaking on its hinges and drawing the branches of our walnut tree across the roof until I would have sworn a gang of thieves was creeping up the old back stair behind my room, while I lay cowering in darkness with the blankets around my ears, too terrified even to call out loud for my mother.
My mother, come to think of it, would have been a welcome sight just now. She was a large, no-nonsense woman with a voice that brooked no opposition. "There are no such things as ghosts," she would have told me, and of course I would have believed her.
But at the moment, surrounded by strangers in a wild landscape, with the remnants of a long-dead civilization spread at my feet, such things as ghosts seemed possible.
Below me in the trial trench David sat back on his heels and dug the point of his trowel into the damp soil, resting a moment. "Feeling any warmer now?" he asked me.
He had beautiful eyes, I thought vaguely. It really was unfair how nature always gave the longest eyelashes to men. His were black, like his hair, and made his eyes look brilliant blue by contrast.
"Much warmer, thanks."
Adrian sent me another assessing glance.”Not got a headache, have you?"
I sighed. "No, I'm fine. Honestly."
"But you've got that little line, just here." He touched a forefinger between his eyebrows. "And usually, when you get that little line, it means you have a headache."
Quinnell, at the far side of the trench, raised his head in enquiry. "Who's got a headache?"
"Verity," supplied Adrian.
David, not to be outdone, explained to Quinnell that I'd just got a wee bit chilled, and I was on the verge of explaining to the lot of them that I was, in actual fact, fine, when the sun abruptly vanished behind a gathering bank of gray cloud.
Quinnell turned, and sniffed the air. "Rain," he pronounced, in a mournful tone.
"Aye." David stood. "I'm done for the moment, at any rate. It's all down to the one level." He looked at me. "That's the last of it, for now," he promised, pointing to the three full buckets to one side of the trench. "I'll just take
them up to the Principia for you, so they'll not get rained on. You don't want to be sieving mud."
I smiled at his casual use of the Latin word. “The Principia? Where's that, the stables?"
"Aye." He smiled back. "The nerve center. Quinnell named it, and the name stuck."
Most appropriate, I thought. Every Roman fort had its principia—the large headquarters building at the center of the complex, where the legionaries gathered to receive the day's commands.
Our own commander, Quinnell, climbed with great reluctance from the trench and watched while David gathered up the heavy buckets. "Taking those up, then, are you? Good lad. Time for a drink, I suppose. There's not much we can do here until the rain passes. We'll meet you back up at the house." Turning, he put a fatherly hand on my shoulder to walk me up the hill. "And I'm sure Jeannie could find some aspirin for you. Bound to be a bottle or two around, somewhere."
It seemed pointless, really, to protest, and after all the arguing about my health it was heaven to sit in the quiet kitchen at Rosehill and let Jeannie serve me my aspirins with a nice hot cup of sugared tea. "Is it very bad?" she asked.
I sipped my tea, uncertain. "Is what very bad?"
"Your headache."
"Oh." My expression cleared. "I don't have a headache, actually."
"But the aspirins ..."
"Adrian's fault. He saw some line between my eyebrows, which he claims beyond a doubt means that I have a headache. Mr. Quinnell suggested the aspirins."
"Peter," she corrected me. "He'll want you to call him Peter. The only one who calls him Mr. Quinnell around here is my Robbie."
"Well, anyway, the point is it's a waste of breath," I told her, "arguing with Adrian. I learned that ages ago. Far easier to take the tablets and be done with it."
She smiled and sat down in the chair opposite. It was, I thought, the first time I had seen her sitting still, not doing something. "Of course," she said. "You went with Adrian at one time, didn't you?"