The Shadowy Horses

She nodded. "Aye, they might have taken ill, or starved."

"Or even mutinied. The Ninth," I said, "did have a history of mutiny, as I recall. At any rate, they probably weren't in any shape to ward off their attackers, when the final battle happened."

She admitted that, as theories went, it wasn't bad. "So what became of the survivors?''

"That's a mystery, still. But we do know the Sentinel stayed." The sea cast up an arc of spray that spattered cold against my face. Like tears it clung, and tasted salt.

"Love and honor," Nancy Fortune told me, "are a complicated mixture. If he really did promise his sister that he'd keep her man from harm, then he might well have felt he could never go home, that she'd never forgive him for failing."

"Or he might have been mortally wounded, himself," I suggested. "Who knows?"

"He does, I'll wager."

We thought about that for a moment, both of us, in silence, and then she said: "It is a shame you can't use Robbie."

"Yes, I know, but after what happened ..." I shook my head, slowly. "No, it's too risky, really. And I'm not sure even he could pin down evidence of mass cremation—bits of charred bone and ashes all over the field, they'd be murder to find. Still, if we're patient, and stick to our digging, I'm sure we'll come up with proof."

The restless wind tore at my hair, and I felt the warm touch of her eyes on my face. "You believe Peter's theories, then."

"Yes, I do. But then it's rather hard not to believe Peter, isn't it? I mean, he only has to look at you and give an explanation, and you can't imagine any other way it could have happened. You know?"

The faint smile gentled her expression. "Aye, that's what Davy says, too."

I stayed silent a moment longer, thinking, then bit my lip and said, rather tentatively: "They're very much alike, aren't they, Peter and David?"

"Very much," she agreed.

Our eyes met for the briefest instant, then I turned my face away again. It was nothing to do with me, I reminded myself. Whatever suspicions I might have, whatever questions I might want to ask, the answers were none of my business.

Instead I fixed my eyes on the incoming waves, watching the long curling crests of white foam that formed along their tops before they crashed themselves to death upon the sand. They did remind one of the manes of wild horses, I thought, just like Peter had said. The Irish horses of the sea, coming to gather their dead.

David's mother watched me in her turn, and after a long pause she said, very simply: "He doesn't ken."

My head turned. "I'm sorry?"

"Davy. He doesn't ken who his father is. That's what you're wondering, isn't it?" In the face of my guilty silence she smiled and went on. "It's no shame for me to tell you, lass. You've more right to the truth than anyone, and if you don't ken why,'' she said, cutting me off as I opened my mouth to protest, "then you're not near as clever as I had you pegged." Her gaze raked me rather fondly. "You're very much as I was, Verity Grey. And if you'd gone to work for Peter Quinnell, years ago..."

"If I had worked for Peter then," I told her, honestly, "I should have been in love with him."

"Aye. So you would. And so I was. Only of course, he was married at the time."

"Not happily."

"No, not happily. But there it was." She raised a shoulder dismissively and turned her face seaward.

"Could he not..." I paused to clear my throat. "Surely mental illness, even then, was just cause for divorce."

"Oh, aye," she said. "But there was Philip, too, you see."

"Well yes, but—"

"Philip saw us," she said, slowly. "One day, quite by accident. He had something of his mother's illness, Philip did, and seeing me with Peter made him crazy. It was an awful thing, for Peter—Philip never did forgive him. All his life, if anything went wrong, it was his father's fault. His mother's death, his own bad marriage, all his money problems, everything." She shook her head. "He had a talent, Philip did, for hating."

"All the more reason for Peter to leave," was my comment.

"Perhaps. But Peter loved the lad, I saw the pain it caused him. And I didn't want him torn in two. I kent, see, that he would divorce Elizabeth, if he'd kent I was carrying Davy."

I blinked at her. "If he'd...?”

“He'd have wanted to marry me," she said. "To take care of me. It's his nature. And I'd have hated that."

"But you loved him."

Her eyes shifted, and I could see her trying to find the right words to explain. "Love and marriage, they were two different things to me, then. Marriage meant settling down, giving yourself over to a man ... losing your independence, like. Much as I loved Peter—and I did love him terribly—I loved my own self more," she said. Again the flicker of a smile. "I was young."

A gull swooped in front of me, hanging in the wind, and I frowned at it. "And yet, you did get married."

"Aye, on paper. Billy Fortune was an old friend, and a good man. It was his idea, like—to save my reputation, and to give the bairn a name. We only meant to keep it up two years, and then divorce, but Billy died afore that." Her voice, I thought, was so amazingly calm. She might have been telling me someone else's story, and not her own. "Poor Billy," she said. "Peter never did care for him, much. Couldn't fathom why I'd married onto a fisherman."