The Shadowy Horses

I knew what he was thinking—I'd been thinking it myself, these past few hours. Through methods of pure science we could learn an awful lot about an artifact. Dating methods, simple or sophisticated, helped us fix an object in its place in time. We could learn where it was made, and what culture or group had made it, and identify the tools they'd used to make it with. Quite often, objects spoke to us about their owners. A pair of shoes, for example, when examined for signs of wear, might tell us that someone had walked with a limp. A shattered helmet might reveal, in gruesome detail, how the man who'd worn it had died. But how the man who'd worn it had felt... that was a mystery quite beyond the reach of science.

I envied Robbie terribly. I'd spent years holding bits and pieces of the past, poking them and prodding them and willing them to tell me things. And now this child, this little child, just touched a potsherd and was instantly connected to the person who had held it several centuries before. How wonderful, I thought wistfully.

Aloud, I said: "I did think I might keep a separate notebook, to record what Robbie says about the things we find. A sort of unofficial record, if you like, to complement the finds register. I know the pundits frown on things like this, but..."

"Pundits," Peter told me, "frown on everything. I think your notebook is a very sound idea. Would you like another drink?"

"No thanks." My half-closed eyes drifted guiltily past the empty glass on the coffee table. "One whisky's quite enough for me, this time of day. I think you'll have to wake me up for teatime, as it is."

"Whisky does have that effect," Peter agreed, with an amiable nod. "I can't abide the stuff myself. A traitorous thing for an Irishman to admit, I know, but there it is. I switched to vodka in my Cambridge days. The chap I ^roomed with fancied himself a Marxist, very strange lad, always talking revolution. He'd have gone to Russia himself, I imagine, only he couldn't bear the cold. Das Kapital and vodka was the closest he could get." Peter smiled to himself, remembering, as he poured himself another measure. "Symbols," he said, "do intrigue me." Lowering himself into his customary chair, he casually crossed his legs and sent me a rather naughty look. "For instance, I can't help noticing you've traded in your English gin for good stout Scottish whiskey."

I closed my eyes and opted not to respond to that, blaming the good stout Scottish whiskey for the growing flame of heat along my cheekbones.

"Rather suggestive, that," he went on, and from the tone of his voice I knew that he was now speaking to the cats, as if I were invisible. "Don't you think so, Murphy my boy? I wonder what—"

His words were interrupted by the rhythmic crunch of footsteps coming up the gravel drive. Not Adrian, I thought. I'd left him up at the Principia, and these footsteps were coming from the opposite direction. At any rate, they were too quick to be Adrian's, just as they were too heavy to be Robbie's and too even to belong to Wally, who walked with a distinctive scuffing sound.

The front door banged and I opened my eyes, careful not to look at Peter as David materialized in the doorway of the sitting room.

"Heyah," the deep voice greeted us briskly. "Getting drunk again, are you?"

Peter smiled archly. "Would you like one?"

"Wouldn't mind." Crossing the worn carpet, David helped himself at the drinks cabinet and came to sit beside me, sagging into the sofa and stretching out his legs. The little cat, Charlie, attacked his bootlaces. David tasted his whiskey with a satisfied air, and turned his attention to Peter. "Well, the tents are up, if you'd like to have a look."

"Splendid. Six tents, were there?"

The dark head nodded. "Six, plus mine, plus the big dining tent. We've some fair puzzled cows in the pasture next door."

"Good, good. When you've finished your whiskey, then..."

"Christ," David said, with a roll of his eyes, "I've been up to my ears these past two weeks with exams, ken. Three invigilations and heaps of papers to mark. And today, between the marking, I've been pounding bloody tent pegs. I'm fair jiggered," he concluded. "Can you not get Wally to show you? He's down there the now."

Peter looked from David's weary face to mine and back again, then smiled secretively, lifting his own glass to drain it. "Of course, my dear boy. You stay here and relax. I'll go and have a good look around myself."

The room seemed smaller, somehow, with only David and myself and the two cats in it. Or perhaps it was only the sofa that seemed smaller, or David who seemed larger, or ...

"Just my luck," he said, in a mild voice. "I finally get you alone in this house and I'm too bloody tired to do anything about it."

A sharply pleasant thrill coursed down my spine and lodged in the pit of my stomach. There was no reason for it, really—only that I hadn't known he wanted to get me alone in the house, in the first place. Since the day of the fish auction we'd both been so busy I'd barely seen him, and though he hadn't exactly retreated behind his polite wall, neither had he given me much cause to hope he shared my own attraction. Until now.

Sinking lower in the sofa, he rolled his head sideways against the leather, to look at me. "You've been drinking as well, haven't you? Damn."

This time the thrill of pleasure was so strong I couldn't keep from smiling. "I'm not any easier when I've been drinking," I assured him. "Just more likely to fall asleep."