The Shadowy Horses

Slowly, I brought my gaze back to Dr. Connelly's. "I've never been so sure of anything in all my life."

He studied my face for a long moment, and what he saw there must have satisfied him because at last he gave a fatalistic nod. "Then I must bow to your conviction," he said grandly. "You shall have my students for this digging season. And God help both our reputations, if you find there's nothing here."

XXV

The next three weeks sped past me like a whirlwind, in one long connected blur of motion and emotion and that tingling raw excitement that one feels when starting any voyage.

Bank Holiday weekend came and went, and no one really noticed. David's mother came out of hospital and surprised everyone by checking herself into Saltgreens, the local home for the aged, for a few months' convalescence. That is, she surprised everyone except Jeannie.

"Have you seen Saltgreens?" Jeannie'd asked me, grinning.

"Isn't it that modern building, the brick and glass one, beside the museum?''

"Aye, with its front end facing onto the harbor, across from the Ship Hotel's car park. You'd think it was luxury flats, to look at it. She'll not be suffering in there, I expect," Jeannie had added, turning away to chop an onion, "she's only doing it to get a bit of peace."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, she's got Davy on the one hand, saying he'll hire someone to live in at the cottage, so she'll not be on her own; and Peter on the other hand, saying that she ought to sell the cottage, and let him buy her something in the town."

Jeannie smiled. "But she's an independent woman, Davy's mother, and she'll not be a burden to anyone."

A woman cut from my own cloth, I'd thought approvingly. "Will she sell her cottage, do you think?"

"Oh, I have my doubts. She'll probably stay on at Salt-greens for the summer, like, then go back home and get a wee companion in. But not with Davy's money. She's an independent woman," Jeannie had repeated, as though it bore repeating, like the bold refrain of some old Scottish ballad. "Whatever she does, it'll be Nancy Fortune's choice and Nancy Fortune's money paying for it."

Robbie, I was sure, already knew what David's mother would decide, but he was much too excited by all the preparations for the arrival of the university students to waste time telling fortunes on demand. This morning he and Kip had been my shadows, dancing up and down and up again between the house and the Principia. Now, as we came into the offices for the third time, with Robbie's constant chatter ringing cheerfully behind me, Adrian looked up from his computer and sighed, with feeling.

"Robbie."

"Aye, Mr. Sutton-Clarke?"

"Do you know what a filibuster is?"

"No, Mr. Sutton-Clarke."

"Well, when you grow up," Adrian suggested darkly, "you must really stand for parliament. You'd make a cracking good MP."

Robbie replied that he'd rather join the lifeboat brigade. "I really like the lifeboat. Ours doesn't go wheeching down a ramp, like some of them do, but I think it's magic."

"Marvelous." Adrian looked at his watch. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

"It's Saturday."

"Ah."

"The people come tomorrow."

"Do they, really?"

But all attempts at sarcasm were wasted breath with Robbie. "Aye," the boy said, sagely. "Grandad and Davy are putting up the tents. Will you be living in a tent, Mr. Sutton-Clarke?"

"No," said Adrian.

"Wouldn't you like to live in a tent?"

"No," said Adrian.

I smiled, moving past them to my desk. "Mr. Sutton-Clarke would miss his nice room at the Ship Hotel, Robbie.''

"Mmm." Adrian swivelled in his chair and leaned back, hands linked comfortably behind his head. "Not to mention the bar. D'you know, my love, if you cleared your desk once in a while, you'd not have to shift a mountain of papers every time you needed something. What have you lost this time?"

I frowned. "The list of the students. Have you seen it?"

"No, but it's a simple thing to print you off another one." Clicking into his database, he punched a key and set the printer humming. "What do you want it for? Counting numbers again? Because I think there were seventeen ..."

"Eighteen," I corrected him. "And it's not for that. Peter asked me if I'd go through all the names and group them into threes, for sharing tents."

"Oh, well, I can do that..."

"Give it up." I tore the paper from his hand and grinned. "You'd have them all mixed in together, boys among the girls—I know you."

"It is meant to be an educational experience."

“How they choose to educate themselves is their business. But when they sleep," I said, with matronly firmness, "it's boys with boys and girls with girls, and good strong canvas in between them."

"I'd like to live in a tent," said Robbie, essentially picking up his train of thought where he'd left off. "Davy's got his own tent, did you see it? It's a barrie big tent, with a window and all."

"Yes, well, Davy is an idiot," Adrian replied, rocking back in his soft padded chair.

"Mr. Sutton-Clarke is only joking, Robbie," I assured the boy, not looking up.

"Mr. Sutton-Clarke," said Adrian, "is wholly serious. Any man who throws over a nice wide bed in a warm room—with private toilet, I might add—in favor of a leaky tent on soggy ground, with students for neighbors, is indisputably an idiot."