"Before I give you my opinion on these sherds," he said, "I simply have to ask: What the devil are you doing up there? We had to look Eyemouth up on the map, for heaven's sake. Pondered it all through tea break yesterday, but no one could recall an excavation going on in your area."
I smiled against the receiver, feeling in my pocket for a pen while balancing my notepad on the narrow front-hall table. "Well," I told him, "as I'm constantly being reminded by people here, you don't know everything down there in London."
"So it is an excavation? Led by whom?"
I told him, and waited while he paused for thought, Howard's memory was slow, but encyclopedic. It took him less than a minute to place the name. "Good God, not the Peter Quinnell? Don't tell me he's still on the trail of the Ninth Legion?"
"Well..."
Howard groaned, with feeling. "My dear girl, no one's taken Quinnell seriously since I was in short pants. And he must be ancient, surely?"
"Oh, don't be such a snob," I replied, picking a barb that I knew would hit home. "He's only in his seventies, that's hardly doddering these days. And I find him rather fascinating."
"Well, so long as he pays you heaps of money ..."
"The sherds?" I prompted, patiently.
"Ah. Yes, well, your initial hunch was quite correct."
"They're Agricolan." I felt a twinge of disappointment even as I spoke the words.
"Yes."
"All of them?"
"All pieces of the same bowl, I should think."
"Oh." So much, I thought, for my suspicions that the rim sherd didn't match. Howard's knowledge of Samian ware was indisputable.
"Quite a lovely small bowl," he went on. "A perfect match to one dug up in Germany by—"
I cut him off. "So what date are we looking at, exactly?"
"Oh, somewhere between AD 80 and 82, I should think. Not much help to you in finding the Ninth Legion, I'm afraid."
"You never know. At least it's an earlier date, and not a later one. For all we know the pot might have been forty years old when it was broken," I reasoned stubbornly. "And anyway, we've only just begun to map the boundaries of the site. I'm sure we'll find more pottery when we start the proper digging."
"What you want to find," he coached me, "is a sherd that's been hammered down a post hole, or something, so you know for certain that it dates from the time of the ... what is it, exactly, that you're excavating?"
"A marching camp."
"Ah," he said again, without enthusiasm. "Not much chance of finding post holes there, unfortunately. Not ones of any real size." He was, as always, right. Marching camps, constructed for the one night only, had no permanent structures, and even the stakes used on top of the ramparts were smaller than those used in forts. They often left no trace at all.
"And anyway," Howard reminded me, "it's long odds that you'll even find a marching camp. Not if you're working for Peter Quinnell."
"I'll bet you a fiver."
"I'm sorry?"
"That this is a marching camp."
"Make it a bottle of Bell's and you're on."
"A fiver," I repeated firmly.
"Fair enough. Oh, by the way," he said, remembering, "you do know Lazenby is looking for you?"
"Dr. Lazenby? Whatever for?"
"He's taking a team out to Alexandria in September. Quite a high-profile venture, from what I've been hearing. The Beeb's sending a film crew along, and everything."
"And?"
"And he wants you as part of his team," Howard explained, speaking as if to a child.
"You're joking."
"Darling," he chastised me. "I never joke."
"Alexandria..."
"Mmm. Shall I give him your number?"
I thought of Quinnell, and shook my head. "No, not just yet. I'll... I'll give him a ring in a few days, all right? And Howard?"
"Yes?"
"Thanks. For the expert opinion, I mean."
"Any time." The smile in his voice almost made me miss my days at the museum, and I rang off with a small sigh.
The little gray cat, Charlie, neatly leapt onto the hall table to investigate my notebook, and I stroked her dainty chin, forcing the nostalgic mist from my eyes. I had made the right decision, after all, in leaving the museum, leaving Lazenby.
Charlie made a small sound like the squeak of a closing door, as though approving my desire for independence. A cat, I thought, was the very model of an independent animal, so long as someone remembered to scratch around its chin, just there ...
Charlie's eyes snapped open and she raised her head, alarmed. Ears flattening, she arched her back and gave a sharp, high-pitched meow.
"For heaven's sake!" I burst out, when my lunging heartbeat paused for breath, "Will you stop that? I'll be a mass of nerves if you cats keep—" And then I too broke off and cocked my head, listening.
Someone was climbing the cellar stairs.
The footsteps were heavy—a man's footsteps—only all the men were down at the far end of the field. I knew that because I'd left them there, a quarter of an hour ago. Not just the men, but Fabia as well... and even Jeannie, who'd come down to fetch me for my telephone call, had stayed behind to watch the crew in progress. I ought to have been alone in the house.