Authors: Susanna Kearsley
"Yes. Though I'm afraid I didn't spend much time at the dig, myself. I'd just started working for Dr. Lazenby, then, at the British Museum, and I was rather green when it came to fieldwork."
"Suffolk," he said again, thinking harder. "That was the Roman fort?"
"It was. They built a bypass over it."
"Ah." The great black tomcat stretched and shifted, looked about, and arched to its feet, yawning. With a placid look in my direction it stepped neatly to the carpet and marched a little stiffly toward Peter Quinnell's corner. Quinnell moved his hand aside so the cat could jump onto his lap, but he didn't take his quiet gaze from ray face.
"How much have you been told," he asked, "about the job?"
I answered honestly. "Not much."
"And about myself?"
"A little less."
The shrewd eyes smiled. “You needn't spare my feelings, my dear. Surely someone will have mentioned that I'm mad?"
What did one say to that, I wondered? Luckily, he didn't appear to expect an answer, for he went on stroking the black cat and speaking pleasantly.
"It was your work with Lazenby, you see, that caught my attention in the first place. He only trains the best. Adrian says you did most of the cataloguing yourself, for the Suffolk dig—and the drawings. Is that right? Impressive," he said, when I nodded. "Very impressive. I'd be thrilled if you could do the same for us, here at Rosehill. Of course, we won't have quite the range of artifacts that Lazenby turned up—the Romans weren't here that long—but we're bound to find a few good pieces in among the everyday, and a battlefield does have an interest all its own, don't you e?"
I didn't answer straight away. I was too busy trying to sort out my whirling thoughts. A battlefield? A ... good God, not
a
Roman
battlefield? Right here in Eyemouth? It seemed incredible, and yet... my stomach flipped excitedly. I took a breath. "I hope you don't mind my asking," I began, "but what exactly is your team excavating?''
The hand upon the black cat stilled, surprised. "I am so sorry," Peter Quinnell said. "I thought you knew. It's a marching camp, my dear. A Roman marching camp. Early second-century. Though in actual fact I suppose it's more of a burial ground, really." His eyes captured mine, intense, and for the first time I believed, truly believed, that he might indeed be mad. "We've found the final resting place
of Legio IX Hispana."
III
If he'd told me they had found the Holy Grail, I couldn't have been more astonished. The Ninth Legion—the
Hispana
—here! It hardly seemed credible. Not when so many people had searched for so long, and in vain. I myself had come to believe that the fate of the lost legion would remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time.
Historians the world over had hotly debated dozens of theories, but the facts themselves were few. All anyone could say for certain was that, some time in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian,
Legio IX Hispana
had been ordered north from its fortress at York.
The soldiers of the Ninth, already veterans of the long campaigns in Wales and the brutal war with Boudicca, were crack troops, rarely called upon to deal with minor skirmishes—the task of day to day front-line defense was left to the auxiliaries. It took a true emergency to set a legion on the march.
And when several thousand men marched out to do battle, the spectacle would have been stunning. At dawn would come the auxiliary units of archers and cavalry, forming an all-seeing shield for the legion behind. Then the standard-bearer, holding high the sacred golden Eagle of the Empire, symbol of honor and victory. If an enemy touched the eagle he disgraced the legion; if a legion lost the eagle it disgraced Rome. Close around the eagle marched the other standard-bearers, followed by the trumpeters, and then, in ordered ranks, six men abreast, came the legionaries, ripe for war.
They'd been trained to march twenty-four Roman miles in five hours, fully armored, weighted with weapons and tools and heavy packs, and then at the end of the day's march to build the night's camp—no small task, since a camp needed trenches and ramparts and palisades to protect the leather tents inside.
These were hard men, hard fighting men, and a legion on the march with all its baggage train and brilliant armor would have been a sight that one remembered.
Which made the disappearance of the Ninth Legion all the more puzzling, I thought. Because nobody
had
remembered. At least, no one had bothered to keep a record of what became of the Ninth in its northern battle, and the legion itself had been struck from the military lists. Modern historians offered several explanations—the men of the
Hispana
might have mutinied, or disgraced themselves by losing the eagle in battle... or else, in that barbaric wilderness, they'd met an end so terrible that the survivors could not bear to speak of it.
Those few survivors—a pitiable scattering of them, identified by stray tombstones crumbling at the farthest corners of the fallen Empire—had kept their secret well. So well, in fact, that nearly two thousand years later, the full fate of
Legio IX Hispana
—all those thousands of men—continued to elude historians like a ghost in the mist of a barren moor.
I looked at Peter Quinnell, cleared my throat. "The
Hispana')
Are you sure?"
"Oh" yes. Quite sure. Adrian can show you the results of his initial survey, can't you, my boy?"
"What?" Adrian, just coming through the door with our drinks, glanced around in mild enquiry.
"Your radar survey," Quinnell elaborated, "down in the southwest corner."
"Ah." His eyes came to rest on my face, trying to gauge my reaction. "You've told her, then."
"Well, naturally. Quite unforgivable, your keeping her in the dark like that. I was just telling her that you could show her what you'd found."
"Certainly," said Adrian. "It's all on computer. I'll show you tomorrow," he promised, pressing a glass into my waiting hand.
He must have known I'd hear about the
Hispana
while he was out of the room—he'd made my drink a double. Relaxing back into the sofa, I took a long sip of cool gin and vermouth and looked across at Peter Quinnell. "You have a lab set up, then, here on site?"
"Oh, yes. I've converted the old stables, behind the house. Plenty of room up there."
"You'll die, you know," Adrian warned me. "Not one but two microscopes,
and
computers—I've never seen anything like it, on a field excavation."
Quinnell's eyes slid sideways to Adrian, and again I caught the canny glint behind the old man's indulgent gaze. He knew, I thought, exactly what made Adrian tick—the clink of coins, the smell of money, the promise of a comfortable position. "Yes, well," he said, in a mild voice, "I do like my little gadgets, you know. Sit down, my boy, for heaven's sake—you're making my neck stiff. And mind the cat," he added, as Adrian narrowly missed sitting on the still-sleeping tabby. I shifted over, making space on the sofa.
"You realize, of course," Adrian informed me, "that we'll have to shoot you, now, if you don't join our little digging team. Can't risk having our secret leak out."
They had kept the secret remarkably well, I thought, and told them so. "I haven't heard so much as a whisper of it, in London, and I don't remember reading anything in any of the journals.''
"The journals, my dear, are singularly uninterested in where I choose to dig." Peter Quinnell stroked the black cat's ears, smiling. "Forty years ago they thought my theories fascinating, but now most of my colleagues couldn't care less. The ones who shared my faith are dead, and the younger
set are slaves of modern science, I'm afraid. No place for instinct, in their books. No place for hunches.'' His lazy eyes forgave my youthful ignorance as he lifted his glass of vodka. "These days, I'm considered a rather less successful Schliemann, chasing after fairy tales. Except where Schliemann had his Homer, I have nothing." He paused and drank, letting his chin droop thoughtfully down to his chest. "No, that's not exactly true," he said, at length, "I do have Robbie."
Adrian shot me a watchful glance, and leaned back against the cushions of the sofa, nearly crushing the sleeping cat. Indignantly, the little gray tabby stood and stretched and marched straight over Adrian onto my knees, where she settled herself with an irritable thump.
Adrian glanced pointedly from my face to the cat, and back again. "I don't know which of the two of you looks the more exhausted," he commented. I had the oddest impression that he was making a calculated maneuver, and a moment later, when Quinnell looked over and said, "Oh, quite," in tones of vague concern, I knew my suspicions were right. Adrian, in his smooth and wholly manipulative way, was trying to bring the evening to a close.
No doubt he'd had something more exciting planned for his own Thursday night, and since Quinnell seemed fully capable of chatting on for hours yet, Adrian had boldly decided to move things along.
I sent him a guileless smile. "I'm not the least bit tired."
Undaunted, he tried another tack. "You want to be sharp for your interview tomorrow, don't you?"
Quinnell appeared shocked by the idea. "My dear boy," he cut in, eyebrows raised, "there isn't going to be an interview. Good heavens, no. No," he said again, with emphasis, as I raised my startled gaze to his, "the job is yours, if you'll have it. But I expect you'd like to take a day or so to look around, to think it over. You can give me your answer this weekend, all right?"
The job was mine, I thought. A legendary battlefield and steady pay besides. I already knew what my answer would
be, but I tried to keep my reaction professional. "All right," I said, and nodded.
"Good. And now, though you've been terribly polite to sit here listening to me, I'm sure you really are quite tired from your travels. I'll show you to your room."
"I'll take her up," Adrian offered.
"You most certainly will not." Quinnell's voice was firm. "I'd be a thoughtless cad to deliver any woman into your clutches, even one familiar with your Casanova ways. No, you may say goodnight to her, and / will take her upstairs, when she's ready."
Adrian was still smiling several minutes later, as he shrugged his coat on in the vestibule and bent to brush my cheek with a chaste kiss. "So," he murmured, with a quick glance over my shoulder to where Quinnell stood waiting in the entrance hall, "what do you think?"
"I think he's rather marvelous."
"I'm glad. Verity ..."
"Yes?"
“Nothing.'' He tossed his dark head back and fastened the final snap of his coat. "Never mind. I'll see you in the morning, then."
I watched him go, then turned and followed Peter Quinnell through the hall and up a winding stone stairway to the first floor. My footsteps dragged a little on the hard steps, and I realized that I actually
was
tired. By the time Quinnell had shown me where the bathroom was and introduced me to the plumbing, I was stifling yawns. And although his granddaughter had no doubt taken great pains to match my curtains to my coverlet, I'm afraid that when the door to my spacious back bedroom swung open, I only saw the plump twin beds.
Quinnell fussed around for a few minutes longer, demonstrating drawers and cupboard doors and making certain I had everything I needed for the night, and then with a final weary smile he gallantly withdrew and left me on my own.
Well, not entirely on my own.
One of the cats had come upstairs with us, and when I'd finished in the bathroom I returned to find it perched upon my window ledge, long tail twitching as it stared transfixed
at the ink-black pane of glass. It was the tomcat, the big black one, and not the dainty gray tabby that had slept on my lap earlier. The gray one was Charlie, I remembered, and ... oh,
what
was the black one called? The name was vaguely Irish, I thought. Mickey? Mooney? "Murphy," I pronounced, with satisfaction, and the cat flicked an ear in response.
"You like that window, do you, Murphy? What is it you see?"
I myself could only see my own reflection, and the cat's, until I switched the lamp off. Even then, the view looked ordinary enough. Close by, a large tree shuddered with the wind, above a sea of ghostly daffodils that dipped and danced in waves. And beyond that, the fickle moonlight caught a sweep of field that slanted gently up to meet a darkly cresting ridge. "You see?" I said. "There's nothing ..."
The cat's hair bristled suddenly as it arched itself upon the window ledge, eyes flaming as its lips curled sharply back, fangs baring in a vicious hiss.
I know I jumped. And though the hiss had not been aimed at me, I felt my gooseflesh rising in response and fought to calm the jerky rhythm of my heart. “Murphy,'' I said sternly, "stop that."
He swiveled his head to stare at me, eyes glowing, then turned away again to watch the night. The second hiss came fiercer than the first, and rattled me so badly that I snapped the window blind down and nudged the black cat from the ledge with a less than steady hand.
Murphy settled benignly at the foot of my bed and blinked without expression. Stupid animal, I thought. There had been nothing out there, nothing at all. Only the tree and the daffodils, and the dark, deserted field.
Nevertheless, I was glad of the tomcat's company when I crawled beneath my blankets, having chosen the twin bed further from the window. And for the first time since my nursery days, I didn't reach to turn off the bedside lamp.
"Do you always sleep with your light on?" Fabia Quinnell asked me next morning, at breakfast. Waiting for me to finish
my toast and coffee, she leaned an elbow on the kitchen counter and nibbled a dried apricot.
I hadn't yet made up my mind about Fabia. She was of an age with my sister Alison, not quite twenty, but where Alison was sensible and unaffected, Fabia Quinnell wore the deliberately bored look of an adolescent, and called her grandfather "Peter."
She was, as Adrian had said, a fetching young woman— quite stunning, in fact. And decidedly blond. Her pale hair, baby-fine, swung against her soft jaw at an artful angle, leaving the nape of her fragile neck bare. Small-boned and doe-eyed, she looked nothing like her grandfather. Nor did she appear to share his hospitable nature. The greeting she had given me was anything but warm.
I rather doubted she'd done anything to decorate my bedroom, despite what Quinnell had told me last night. More likely the old man himself had selected the curtains and coverlet, made things look comfortable. Fabia, I suspected, wasn't the sort of young woman to concern herself with someone else's comfort.
It surprised me that she'd even noticed my bedroom light, last night.
In answer to her question I replied, through a mouthful of cold toast, that I normally slept in the dark, like everyone else. "I just have a foolish imagination, sometimes—things that go bump in the night. Especially in strange houses. So I find it helps to leave the light on."
"Well, you gave me quite a turn, last night," she said. "I thought it might be Peter, waiting up for me. He drinks, you know, and then he wants to talk." She rolled her eyes with feeling. "A typical Irishman."
I wouldn't have guessed Peter Quinnell was Irish. He had, after all, that beautifully elegant voice, with no trace of a brogue whatsoever—but now that I'd had the fact pointed out to me I could recognize that indefinable quality, the faint hint of horses and hounds, that marked a certain segment of the Anglo-Irish gentry.