The Shadowy Horses

I assured him I was not.

"Good. I had an aunt once, who was. Most distressing for her. Ah," he said, as Adrian appeared in the doorway, "that's done, is it? I don't suppose, my boy, that you'd be kind enough to fetch us all a drink? I'm afraid I am forgetting my manners, and no doubt Miss Grey is parched."

I caught the faint stiffening of Adrian's shoulders, but again he surprised me by taking the request in his stride. Peter Quinnell's pay, I reflected, must be very good indeed. Adrian hated playing butler. Still, he sent me a winning smile. "Gin and it for you, darling? And Peter, what will you have? Vodka?"

"Please. And perhaps a cheese biscuit or two?" He waited until Adrian had gone again before he slid his long eyes slowly back to me. Once again I was reminded of an actor in the theater, not just because of the artistic setting, the elegant arrangement of man-in-armchair and the rolling, cultured voice, but because I had the strong impression more was going on behind those eyes than I was meant to think. "Adrian," he said, "did mention, I believe, that you and he were once an item."

Adrian, I thought, deserved a swift kick, sometimes. I forced a smile. "Yes, of sorts."

“But not now?''

"No."

“I thought not. Friends, though?''

"Yes, great friends."

He paused, and narrowed his eyes as though trying to remember something. "You met in Suffolk, did you not? On one of Lazenby's digs?"

"Yes. Though I'm afraid I didn't spend much time at the dig, myself. I'd just started working for Dr. Lazenby, then, at the British Museum, and I was rather green when it came to fieldwork."

"Suffolk," he said again, thinking harder. "That was the Roman fort?"

"It was. They built a bypass over it."

"Ah." The great black tomcat stretched and shifted, looked about, and arched to its feet, yawning. With a placid look in my direction it stepped neatly to the carpet and marched a little stiffly toward Peter Quinnell's corner. Quinnell moved his hand aside so the cat could jump onto his lap, but he didn't take his quiet gaze from ray face.

"How much have you been told," he asked, "about the job?"

I answered honestly. "Not much."

"And about myself?"

"A little less."

The shrewd eyes smiled. “You needn't spare my feelings, my dear. Surely someone will have mentioned that I'm mad?"

What did one say to that, I wondered? Luckily, he didn't appear to expect an answer, for he went on stroking the black cat and speaking pleasantly.

"It was your work with Lazenby, you see, that caught my attention in the first place. He only trains the best. Adrian says you did most of the cataloguing yourself, for the Suffolk dig—and the drawings. Is that right? Impressive," he said, when I nodded. "Very impressive. I'd be thrilled if you could do the same for us, here at Rosehill. Of course, we won't have quite the range of artifacts that Lazenby turned up—the Romans weren't here that long—but we're bound to find a few good pieces in among the everyday, and a battlefield does have an interest all its own, don't you e?"

I didn't answer straight away. I was too busy trying to sort out my whirling thoughts. A battlefield? A ... good God, not a Roman battlefield? Right here in Eyemouth? It seemed incredible, and yet... my stomach flipped excitedly. I took a breath. "I hope you don't mind my asking," I began, "but what exactly is your team excavating?''

The hand upon the black cat stilled, surprised. "I am so sorry," Peter Quinnell said. "I thought you knew. It's a marching camp, my dear. A Roman marching camp. Early second-century. Though in actual fact I suppose it's more of a burial ground, really." His eyes captured mine, intense, and for the first time I believed, truly believed, that he might indeed be mad. "We've found the final resting place of Legio IX Hispana."

III

If he'd told me they had found the Holy Grail, I couldn't have been more astonished. The Ninth Legion—the Hispana—here! It hardly seemed credible. Not when so many people had searched for so long, and in vain. I myself had come to believe that the fate of the lost legion would remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time.

Historians the world over had hotly debated dozens of theories, but the facts themselves were few. All anyone could say for certain was that, some time in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, Legio IX Hispana had been ordered north from its fortress at York.

The soldiers of the Ninth, already veterans of the long campaigns in Wales and the brutal war with Boudicca, were crack troops, rarely called upon to deal with minor skirmishes—the task of day to day front-line defense was left to the auxiliaries. It took a true emergency to set a legion on the march.

And when several thousand men marched out to do battle, the spectacle would have been stunning. At dawn would come the auxiliary units of archers and cavalry, forming an all-seeing shield for the legion behind. Then the standard-bearer, holding high the sacred golden Eagle of the Empire, symbol of honor and victory. If an enemy touched the eagle he disgraced the legion; if a legion lost the eagle it disgraced Rome. Close around the eagle marched the other standard-bearers, followed by the trumpeters, and then, in ordered ranks, six men abreast, came the legionaries, ripe for war.

They'd been trained to march twenty-four Roman miles in five hours, fully armored, weighted with weapons and tools and heavy packs, and then at the end of the day's march to build the night's camp—no small task, since a camp needed trenches and ramparts and palisades to protect the leather tents inside.