The Shadowy Horses

And every evening, while the students were having their meal in the long tent, I trundled the day's finds down to Rose Cottage, for Robbie to read.

Tonight, I'd chosen to vary our game a little, without his knowledge. Taking my seat at the now familiar kitchen table, with the smell of baking biscuits drifting comfortingly around me and the collie sleeping underneath my chair, I watched with special interest while Robbie felt through the things I'd brought. It wasn't really fair to test him, I knew, but his abilities intrigued me. It was already clear to me that certain pieces "spoke" to him, transmitting some impression of their former shape and usefulness, and of the people they'd belonged to. But did they also speak to him of time?

Robbie was, after all, only a very small boy. He had a small boy's sense of time. He knew the Sentinel was Roman, and that the Romans came from a long time ago, but then so did Napoleon. So, to a child, did Churchill. At Robbie's age, I had been confused about chronology too—it had taken ray father several days to explain why Cleopatra and the first Elizabeth could not have taken tea together.

And yet, on this dig, time was so important. The fortress we were excavating dated from the late first century, but what we really hoped to find, evidence of the site's occupation by the Ninth Legion, would date from the early second century. A potsherd left behind by the Ninth would be some forty years younger than the ones we'd found so far. Would Robbie, I wondered, be able to tell the difference?

Curious to know the answer, I'd set up a little experiment. Mixed in with the Roman-era sherds was a piece of a Victorian flowerpot that Wally had found broken in the garden. The glaze was red, almost the same color as Samian ware, and to the untrained eye the pieces looked very much the same, but Robbie picked the impostor out with ease, his fingers closing around it and then opening again abruptly.

"Hey, Grandad, feel this one—it's hot!"

Wally, at the far end of the table, looked up from his paper and took the sherd obligingly, weighing it in his hand for a moment before passing it back to the boy. "Aye," he agreed, "so it is."

Jeannie, making use of her Thursday night off to catch up on her baking, turned from the counter, a smudge of flour clinging to her dimpled cheek. "You lying old devil," she accused her father. "You don't feel anything."

"Do I not?" Wally raised his chin belligerently. "For a' ye ken, the lad might hae got his gift fae me." With a quick sideways wink in my direction, he shook his paper out and, lighting yet another cigarette, resumed his reading.

"You feel it, don't you, Miss Grey?" Robbie turned his trusting eyes on me, but after dutifully holding the sherd in my hand for a moment, I had to admit that I didn't.

"Is it very hot?" I asked him.

The small dark head tipped to one side as he considered the question. "Like a teacup," he decided. He leaned forward and chose another sherd, to illustrate. "See, this one's cold. That means it's right, like. It belongs to the Roman part."

"The fortress."

"Aye. But the hot one belongs to the house."

I puzzled over this statement for a minute, then realized that Robbie was making a judgment of time. When the Romans had come here, the hill and the field had been empty, but by the Victorian age the hill had been crowned with a house. A sherd that belonged to the house must be younger than one that belonged to the fortress. At least, I assumed that's what he meant. I shifted in my chair, wanting to be sure. "Do you mean it comes from a later time? After the Romans were gone?''

He looked at me in silence, his face perplexed. "Gone?"

"Yes, after the Roman soldiers left Rosehill..."

"But they didn't leave."

I'd learned, with Robbie, not to alter my expression when he dropped a bombshell in my lap. If I looked at all excited it just made him want to please me more, and the strain of trying seemed to block up all his faculties. I kept my gaze trained now on the grain of the table, and asked him very lightly what he meant.

"They didn't leave," he said again. "They're still here."

God, I thought, if he could point us toward the bodies ... "Where exactly are they, Robbie? Do you know?"

His shrug implied that the answer was obvious. "Everywhere."

Wally's paper crackled as he set it aside to peer across at his grandson. "Whit d'ye mean, they're everywhere? Are ye sayin yon field's stappit fu wi' deid bodies?"

Jeannie turned and met my eyes knowingly. "Stappit fu," she said, as I reached automatically for my pocket dictionary. "That's s-t-a-p-p..."

Filled with as many of something as possible, was the dictionary's definition, and satisfied, I snapped the pages shut and gave my attention back to the conversation.

Robbie was shaking his head. "Not with bodies."

"Ye ken whit I mean," said Wally, who knew as well as I did that Robbie sometimes took things rather literally. "They'll no' be bodies like ours efter sae lang i' the ground—they'll be banes. Dry banes."

Robbie tipped his head, rethinking his position. "No," he said at last, "I don't think there are any bones. Not people bones."

I cut in, to clarify. "So the soldiers, the Roman soldiers, they're still here, but their bodies aren't."

The dark head nodded. "Aye."

"What happened to the bodies, Robbie?"