The Shadowy Horses

Fabia, having sensibly decided there was nothing she could do, had long since said goodnight and gone to bed. I'd expected Adrian, still worrying about his precious car, to wait up longer with me, but after comforting himself with a well-aged brandy from Peter's drinks cabinet, he had drifted off as well. I'd left him snoring in the sitting room, stretched out full length on the old sofa. Even Wally, who'd displayed no great desire to hurry home with the McMorrans, had eventually taken his leave, and the little cottage slumbered now in darkness at the bottom of the drive.

Which left me on my own, fretful and sleepless, wandering from room to room with only the cats for company.

And even the cats lacked a certain enthusiasm, I thought. Murphy had given up following me in favor of a warm seat in the kitchen, where he patiently waited for me to reappear as I made my restless rounds. Charlie, more persistent, had begun to gently protest my constant movement by simply flopping onto my lap whenever I sat. This time, as I prepared

to leave the window seat, the little gray cat tested her claws on my knee and let out a plaintive meow.

"Sorry, love." I scooped her up and held her while I stood, turning away from my reflection in the tall glittering window.

In the kitchen, I set Charlie down on the chair beside the big black torn, and put the kettle on for yet another pot of tea. The two cats exchanged a rather long-suffering glance, and I rather fancied Murphy sighed before he began to clean himself. I was disrupting their nightly schedule, and I knew it. Ordinarily at this hour they would be peacefully asleep on my bed, or on Peter's.

But Peter wasn't here, and after what I'd experienced out in the field, I knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep. To go upstairs to bed would prove a total waste of time. Even with the light left on, I'd be aware of every tiny seeping draft within the room, of every creaking floorboard, and of every slanting shadow.

A month ago, I reminded myself, I hadn't believed in ghosts. Now I heard them breathing in the silent air behind me, and felt the cold slow crawl of fear along my neck.

It wasn't the Sentinel himself that made me jumpy. It was the idea of the Sentinel—the knowledge that beyond the window, in the blackness, something walked, and watched, and waited ...

The kettle boiled. I turned from the window and forced my trembling hands to make the tea. Don't be such a coward, I reproved myself. Fabia's upstairs, and Adrian's only a couple of rooms away, and Peter will be back soon.

The thought of Peter was a welcome distraction. Frowning, I glanced up at the kitchen clock to check the time again. Four-twenty. More than three hours now since Peter and David had roared away from Rosehill, and still no word from either of them.

"I'm sure she'll be all right," I told the cats out loud, in an attempt to reassure myself. "She seemed like such a strong woman."

But my brave thoughts failed to convince me, and worrying about David's mother only led to worrying about David, which was rather worse than thinking about the ghost. I sat heavily at the table and Charlie slipped onto my lap with a weary yawn, rolling and stretching in an effort to find comfort.

The cats, at least, were quiet. They hadn't once looked out toward the field, or arched their backs, or hissed, so I felt fairly sure the Sentinel was not pressed up against the window, peering in. But far off, fading in and out between the mournful moanings of the wind, I swore I heard the hoof-beats of a lone horse, galloping.

I'd searched the fields around Rosehill for horses, and found Peter had been quite right—there were none. Only a small herd of mild-eyed cows, grazing drowsily down by the river, and a disgruntled-looking black pig in a fenced yard further up the road. But the horses came anyway, out of the darkness, galloping over the high waving grass.

I listened again, straining my ears to catch the rhythm of the running hooves. More than one, now, surely. / hear the Shadowy Horses ... I summoned the line of the Yeats poem that Peter had quoted, wishing my imagination wasn't working overtime. After all that had happened tonight, I could almost believe in those Irish sea-horses, the horses of Manannan, coming to carry the living away. It gave me the creeps, sitting there in the old house and hearing that sound drawing steadily nearer.

By the time I'd finished my second cup of tea, my nerves were so completely frayed I chose a desperate remedy—I dragged the kitchen telephone off its stand and dialed the number of my London flat.

My sister Alison answered on the third ring, her voice clear and coherent despite the fact that she had, I knew, just woken from a sound sleep.

"How can you do that?" I asked her, skipping the preliminaries.

"Do what?"

"Sound so bloody alert when you've just woken up?"

"It's a gift. Are you all right?"

"Just having trouble sleeping."

"Ah. Wanted to share it, did you?”

"Brat." Feeling better already, I settled back and poured another cup of tea. "How are you getting on down there?"

"Marvellously, thanks. Your flat's brilliant. I'm never going to leave."

I smiled. "Well, it won't want me back, after you. I'm sure the place has never been cleaner."

"Dusting things," my sister told me loftily, "does make a difference, Verity. Oh, and your African violet's in bloom. Remember how you said you couldn't ever..."

"How on earth did you get it to bloom?"

"I watered it."

"Ah." I smiled again, feeling much less lonely. "That's the secret, is it? And how is school?"