The Shadowy Horses

But still the footsteps came on, climbing, bold and clearly audible.

My mind raced swiftly through the possibilities. The ghost... oh, God, don't let it be the ghost. A burglar... there, that was more probable, and in my muddled state of mind seemed much less frightening. My brain found reason, told my feet to move, but the message took a moment to reach its mark and in that moment the man came up the final stair and into the entrance hall.

He seemed, to his credit, more shocked by my presence than I was by his. "Jesus!" he said, then recovered and came forward, wiping one hand on the back of his denim jeans before holding it out in a friendly greeting. "Sorry," he apologized, with a self-deprecating grin, "I thought you were all down in the field. You must be Miss Grey, am I right? My son's not stopped talking about you."

So this, I thought, was Brian McMorran. I studied him with interest over the handshake.

He was nothing like I had expected. He was older, for one thing—nearing forty, I judged, with silvered brown hair and rather an appealing sort of face. Not a tall man either, though his body had the hardness of a lifetime of labor and I wouldn't have wanted to take sides against him in a fight He wore an earring, which looked somewhat out of place; a small gold hoop that glinted dashingly against his graying hair, and below the rolled sleeves of his flannel work shirt his forearms were a fascinating canvas of dark tattoos.

Releasing his grip, he raised a hand to rake it through his hair, his brown eyes crinkling with surprising charm. He didn't look a drunkard or a bully, and I found it hard to reconcile the image I had formed with the reality.

"I expect," he said, "that I gave you a fright as well. You'd not have known I'd come home."

"No," I admitted. "No, I didn't."

"Eh, well. I don't imagine anybody's noticed, yet. I just got in. Is Jeannie anywhere about? I've looked, but—"

"She's down with Quinnell."

"Is she? Heading back yourself, then, are you? Good, I'll tag along."

He didn't talk much, while we walked. A brief exchange of comments on the warming of the weather was the closest that we came to conversation.

David saw us coming first. Leaning full on the handle of the hollow probe, he glanced up briefly, stopped and looked again. "Heyah, Brian," he said, coolly. "When did you get back?"

"About an hour ago. Stealing my wife again, are you?"

"Of course he isn't." Jeannie moved from David's side to give her husband a welcoming kiss in spite of her father's scowl. "Don't be daft. How did it go?"

Brian shrugged. "Not bad. We netted a fair haul, this trip."

"Any fish?" Wally asked sourly. I didn't understand the barb behind the comment but it glanced off Brian harmlessly, and he whistled a snatch of a tune through his teeth, ignoring the old man completely.

"You've been busy," he noted, looking back at the trail of brightly colored golf tees that marked our progress along the buried ditch.

From the trial trench in the southwest corner, the western ditch ran roughly parallel to the long drive, traveling up at a slight diagonal for some three hundred yards before it turned a rounded, playing-card-shaped corner, just below the ridge, and started back across the field.

Quinnell followed Brian McMorran's gaze proudly, not appearing to mind the man's presence. "Yes, we're making good progress."

"Looks like it. Is that where the walls were, then—where you've stuck all them tees? Bloody big camp, wasn't it?"

"About twenty acres," Quinnell estimated. "It's not like a fort, you understand. Forts were built smaller. They only had to house an auxiliary force, but a marching camp was meant to hold the whole legion, on campaign. It had to be huge."

"I see." Brian's eyes swung back across the field to the southwest comer, where the green thorn hedge blocked the noise of the road, and the russet walls of Rose Cottage showed plainly through the frieze of trees edging the drive. "And what's our Mr. Sutton-Clarke up to, over there?"

Fabia tossed the short fall of hair from her face. “Doing a survey, what else?''

I hadn't even noticed, to be honest, that Adrian wasn't with us. I'd been too absorbed in watching David, admiring the unholy force with which he rammed the steel probe home.

It was easy to see why the act of probing held little appeal for Adrian. His interest lay in the larger picture of what lay beneath the landscape, not in the soil itself. And he'd never liked getting his hands dirty. For a man who'd spent so many hours on archaeological sites, patiently mapping and measuring, he had a surprising lack of patience with the actual work of excavation. Give him good clean technology every time.

Indeed, when I wandered down to join him a few minutes later, I found him preparing the section of field for another pass with the ground-penetrating radar unit, happily laying out neat lines of nonmagnetic tape for guidance, and humming to himself.

"Guilty conscience?" I asked him.

"What?"

"You've already done this bit of the field, remember? Produced a smashing image."

"Sarcasm," he informed me, "doesn't suit you. And if you must know, Peter asked me to repeat the survey. It seems he's misplaced the initial results, and he wants to have a record for his files."

"And how did he come to misplace them?" I asked, suspiciously.

"I had nothing to do with it." He raised a hand in Boy Scout fashion, as proof of his sincerity. "I'm rather pleased the damn thing's gone, mind you, but I had nothing to do with it."