The Shadowy Horses

“Tourists,'' she said, with a broad smile, and dusted her hands on her corduroy trousers. "How would you not book a room on Bank Holiday weekend? They're lucky that Margaret and Jimmy could take them."

"They're just sent to test you," said Jeannie. She paused, sniffing the air suspiciously. "You've not been—"

"Certainly not."

"Aye, you have so, I can smell it on you." Jeannie sniffed again, to prove her point, and this time even I caught the faint smell of tobacco smoke, but Granny Nan stood firm.

"You can blame that on your father," she said. "He was around here not an hour ago, stealing my biscuits and telling me about the ongoings up at Rosehill. He told me a lot about this lass," she added with a wink. "I hear our Robbie thinks she's a stoater."

"Aye, well, I don't think he's the only one."

"No, old Wally's fair taken with her. Even my Davy let dab she had bonny long hair, and he rarely notices a lass unless she's three hundred years dead."

After which comment it took all my effort to hold back a blush while I stood through our proper introduction. My one relief was learning that she had a real name—Nancy Fortune. I'd have felt dead silly calling her Granny" Nan.

Over our handshake she nodded at my singing haggis, openly amused. "Found a wee friend, have you?"

"Yes, well..."

Jeannie cut in, grinning. "She's fair taken with it. And you'll want to sell her one of these as well."

This time I saw the book she was pointing to, and reaching out, I took a copy from the shelf. "Oh right," I said. "My Scottish dictionary."

"Scots," Nancy Fortune corrected me firmly. "A Scots dictionary, that's what you've got there. Scottish means anything having to do with Scotland, ken, but Scots is the name of the language. Most Scots speak Scots." She smiled broadly. "Except in the Highlands, it's Gaelic up there. And the way we talk here in the Borders is different again from what you'd hear in Aberdeen."

"Oh." I flipped a page of the pocket-sized paperback, scanning the strange-looking words. Stoater. Fantoosh. Oose. Where did one come up with a word like that, I wondered?

"Oh aye, oose," Jeannie said, when I read the word aloud to them. Lounging against the reception desk she sent me a rueful smile. "Fluffy dust, like. I've plenty of that under my beds. What d'ye call it in England?"

I shrugged rather helplessly. "Dust."

"Such an uninspired language, English," David's mother said. "Though northern English sounds a bit like Scots; we use some words the same. And then there's Ulster Scots as well, in Northern Ireland. Peter always said he had no trouble at all understanding us, when he first came over—it sounded just like home."

I smiled. "He's lived in Scotland a long time, I gather."

"Aye, since the early fifties. He was searching in the west of Scotland then, like all the other Roman experts. When I first went to work for him he'd up and bought a grand old house near Glasgow, to spend his summers in. Ah, those were good days," she said, eyes softening at the memory. "We must have walked every inch of Dumfries and Galloway, the two of us, looking for likely battlefields."

Looking for battlefields along the Scottish-English border, I thought, must be rather like looking for paving stones in the heart of London. They'd be everywhere. Trying to find one specific battlefield among the many—that would be the difficulty. "Did you never get discouraged?"

She shook her head. "We were young then, lass, we didn't ken the meaning of the word. Peter still doesn't. He's a driven man, is Peter—he'll not die afore he's tracked down his Hispana."

I tried to imagine the two of them young. Peter Quinnell, handsome now, would have been irresistible in his thirties, I thought—tall and lean and full of charm. I found myself wondering what sort of man David's father had been, by comparison. "Did your husband work for Peter, as well?" I asked.

"Och, no. My Billy was a fisherman, a lad I'd grown up with. Peter had a right canary," she admitted, "when I left him to get married onto Billy. But I was thirty-five then, and a woman wants a bairn."

Jeannie raised an eyebrow. "He'd have understood that, surely. He was married himself, after all."

"It's different for men," David's mother maintained. “And besides, that was no kind of marriage the two of them had, with Elizabeth biding in Ireland. She never came out of the Castle."

Ordinarily I didn't pry, but Quinnell's life intrigued me. "The Castle?"

"That's what Peter called his family's home," said David's mother, fondly, "in the north of Ireland, near the Giant's Causeway. One of his forefathers made a fair fortune in sugar and slaves in the West Indies, ken, then came back and had someone design him the Castle. Peter never liked it, much. Built with blood money, he said. But Elizabeth—Peter's wife—loved a grand mansion. And Philip used to love that house, as well." I saw a shadow darken Nancy Fortune's eyes. "Poor wee Philip. Such a shame, that was."

I commented that it must have been hard on Quinnell, losing his son.

"Aye, well, he's not lost all his family."

Jeannie's mouth quirked. "Not yet," she said. "I can't say I'm not tempted to stir a few things into Fabia's porridge, some mornings."