The Shadowy Horses

I cocked an eyebrow. "Even if half those students are nubile young women?"

"My dear girl, what can one do with a nubile young woman in a leaky tent? Besides, I don't think that was the deciding factor where our Mr. Fortune was concerned."

I ignored the meaningful look. "No, you're right. He just thought one of us should be there, close at hand, in case the students needed anything."

"And the location of the camp," said Adrian slyly, "is so very convenient. You can see it from your bedroom window, can't you? And vice versa."

Robbie came to my rescue. Clasping the post that divided two of the box-stall offices, he swung himself from side to side and looked at Adrian. "Why don't they put the tents up here?"

Adrian knew as well as I did why the camp was where it was, but after a quick glance at me he proceeded to give Robbie a more complex explanation. "Well, the ground is much more level over across the road, and the stream runs right along there, and it's very important to keep tent pegs and open fires away from the digging site, and ..."

"Is it because the Sentinel doesn't go over there?" Robbie wanted to know.

Adrian paused, looking to me for assistance.

"Some people," I put in, "don't like ghosts, Robbie. Peter thought it might be better if we put the students where the Sentinel wasn't likely to bother them."

He thought about this. "He wouldn't hurt them. He just watches, like."

Resisting the sudden urge to look over my own shoulder, I gathered up a stack of notes and shoved them into a drawer. "Some people," I said evenly, "might not want to be watched."

He pondered this as well, then seemed to dismiss the idea as one of those queer conundrums of the adult world. Still swinging back and forth around his post, he watched me working at my desk. "I'm going to be a finds supervisor, when I grow up," he announced.

Adrian, in a dry voice, reminded Robbie he'd already promised himself to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

"I can do both," said Robbie, confidently. "Lifeboat men are volunteers, like, so I can work on the lifeboat, and be a finds supervisor, and live in a tent."

"I don't suppose," ventured Adrian, "you'd also want to learn computer maintenance?"

"What?"

"Because my computer's going to need repair, if you keep banging around my wall like that."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Come on, then," I invited, shifting my chair to make room for Robbie in my cubicle. Taking a few of the less impressive potsherds from the shelf beside me, I set them neatly on my desk and gave the boy a drawing tablet. "If you're going to do my job, I'd best start training you. Draw me some pictures of those, all right?''

He happily complied. Adrian, across the aisle, threw me a grateful glance and in the blissful silence gave his concentration back to the computer.

It took me less than half an hour to sort the students into threesomes for their tents. To my relief the twelve young women and six young men divided evenly, not leaving any stragglers to clutter up my chart. As I finished jotting down the tent numbers beside the names, Robbie proudly thrust his drawings in front of me.

"There," he said.

"Well done." I studied the papers solemnly. "And what do you make of our finds, then, Mr. McMorran?"

"They're OK."

"Come now, dear boy," I said, in a fair imitation of Dr. Connelly, "that's not very scientific."

Robbie giggled.

Continuing my gruff impersonation, I chose a sherd and handed it to him, peering closely at him through imaginary spectacles. “Now, what would your impressions be of this piece, for example?" Playing along with the game, Robbie frowned in a way that made his small face, for an instant, look like David's. Rubbing his jaw as he'd seen David do a hundred times, he turned the broken bit of pottery over twice, and frowned still harder. "It's from a pot, like."

"Brilliant!" I applauded him.

"And it's red."

"Well spotted! Anything else?"

"He didn't like it here."

Across the aisle the steady clacking sound of Adrian's computer keyboard stopped abruptly, and in the small, surprised silence I dropped my Dr. Connelly impersonation. "Come again?"

"The man who used this pot," said Robbie, handing back the tiny Samian-ware fragment, "he didn't like it here. He was always cold, ken, and his tooth hurt."

"Psychometry."

Peter rolled the word out in his glorious voice, balancing the heavy dictionary in one hand as he ran his finger down the definition. The daylight had grown flatter, which meant clouds were moving in, and the red walls of the sitting room looked cheerless until Peter put the light on, to read by. "Yes, psychometry. I thought that was it. 'The divination of facts about an object from the touching of that object.' "

"Well, whatever it's called, Robbie can do it." I tossed a little ball of paper onto the carpet for the cats to chase, and tucked my feet beneath me on the sofa, leaning back against the leather with a tired sigh. "Mind you, he didn't rattle off the chap's name, rank and regiment, and of course we have no way of knowing just how accurate his observations are, but I just thought you'd like to know."

"Yes, quite." He closed the dictionary and hefted it back into place on the shelves. "I'm sure it will be very useful, when we're sifting through our finds."