The Shadowy Horses

Since I'd always liked the company of dogs, I settled the matter by scratching his ears. “Hello, Kip. God, you didn't half give me a scare. Where's your master, then?"

I could have sworn the collie shrugged, as if to say he didn't know. At any rate, I saw no sign of either Robbie or Wally, and when I went on stroking him the dog collapsed like a spent balloon on my feet, rolling over slightly to make his tummy more accessible.

"You'll want to watch him," David warned me, returning along the aisle. "He'll stay like that for hours if you let him."

Adrian, coming through the main door, heard the warning and laughed. "Oh, Verity won't mind. She's a right pushover, when it comes to animals."

And crossing to my desk he set a covered plate in front of me. "Your breakfast," he announced, whisking off the cover with a flourish. "Jeannie said I was to be sure you ate it, seeing as you sneaked off without eating this morning."

Sighing heavily, I looked down at the heaping great mound of square sausage and fried eggs, rimmed with strips of toast and rounds of tomato. "But I never eat breakfast, you know that. A little toast, maybe, but..."

"I have my orders," Adrian said, setting down a knife and fork.

David grinned, and handed me my mug. "Here's your coffee."

"I'll give you five pounds if you eat this for me." I made the offer hopefully, but he refused to play.

"I've had mine, thanks. So, what did you make of the sherds, then?"

I moved the plate to one side, temporarily, out of the way of the four small jagged fragments of bloodred pottery. "Well, they're definitely Samian ware—a small pot, I'd think, from the degree of curve. Maybe two pots. This one," I said, touching one end piece lightly, "doesn't seem to match the others."

"And what date would you estimate?"

I chewed my lip. "Offhand, I'd say they're earlier than what we're looking for. But then again. .." Without the support of laboratory analysis, dating pottery could be a rather imperfect science. If the piece wasn't actually stamped by a known maker, one had to rely on comparisons to other bits of pottery dug up at other sites.

In the case of Samian ware my task was made somewhat simpler by the fact that German archaeologists had spent most of the last century studying and classifying artifacts found on Roman sites in that country, and had managed to work out a very useful and detailed typology of Roman era pottery. The advance and decline of the Roman frontier in Germany had been so well documented by historians like Tacitus that archaeologists could say with reasonable certainty when each site had been occupied, making it easy to fix a date upon the bits of pottery found there. All that remained for me to do was to try to match my own sherds to a documented German find.

Again I touched the suspect sherd. It was a rim fragment, broken from the top edge of a pot or bowl. “This one ... I don't know, it strikes me as a later piece. I ought to ask Howard. A friend of mine," I explained, "at the British Museum. He's absolutely mad about Samian ware—knows the name of every potter. He could give these sherds a glance at fifty paces and tell us exactly what they were part of and when it was made. I could send him some sketches, and ask his opinion. And perhaps, if Fabia would take a few photographs ... ?"

Adrian, rummaging at his desk, glanced around in mid-yawn. "What a good idea. Why don't I go and get her now, for you—no point in letting it wait."

"We can tell her on the way," said David. "Peter will be thinking we've forgotten all about him."

"Oh, right." Adrian looked disappointed.

His survey equipment was stored safe behind the locked door of the finds room, and while he went to retrieve it I took a thoughtful sip of coffee, touching the sherds again, feeling the raised impression of what appeared to be a flower petal. I'd seen a pattern similar to this one when I'd worked on Dr. Lazenby's excavations in the south of England, but that site had been Agricolan, dating from the seven-year period during which Gnaeus Julius Agricola had served as governor of Britain. And Agricola had been recalled in AD 84— forty years or so before the disappearance of the Ninth.

"Well, that's us away, then," said David, shouldering his probe. "We'll leave you in peace to eat your breakfast. And it's no good trying to give it away to the dog—he can't eat eggs. Bloats up like a balloon, he does."

His pale eyes were teasing, and I toyed with the idea of pitching a sausage at him, but instead, I took a bite of toast and chased it down with coffee, smiling my most amenable smile. "Right then. Have a good time."

I waited until I couldn't hear his cheerful whistling anymore before I glanced down at the dog sprawled beneath my chair. Kip's one visible eye met mine hopefully, and his tail thumped once against the floor. "Look love," I offered, "here's the deal. I'll eat the eggs, if you'll cat everything else. How does that suit you?"

Evidently, it suited the collie fine. The empty plate was positively shining when I set it on the corner of my desk.

Well satisfied, I washed my hands and settled down to start my labored drawings of the sherds.

XIV

I sent the drawings and photographs off by the afternoon post, then sat back and waited for Howard's reply. He'd always been frightfully efficient. I half expected him to ring me the following day, when the envelope hit his desk, but it wasn't until Friday morning that I got my call from the British Museum.