Darling Sweetheart (18 page)

‘You want me to do that?’

‘Yeah, but just a few, we don’t wanna mob. Tell them to stay outta sight and use long lenses, that way we guarantee pictures they can sell for a bomb. Now, which is closer to here, Paris or Monaco?’

‘Uhh… Paris, I guess.’

‘Whaddya know about jewellers in Paris?’

‘I guess there’s a lotta jewellers in Paris.’

‘Okay, find me a real good one sometime in the next ten minutes and have them call me asap.’

She blanched. ‘On your private cellphone?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I better get on to all that.’ She turned to leave.

‘Judy? Just one more thing: don’t ever question my future wife’s sanity again. Not if you wanna keep your position with me.’

Frost opened her mouth to reply but the glint in those eyes made her close it again. So she just nodded and walked back to the car. After a brief hiatus, it reversed out of the keep. Tress and his assistants emerged from the wardrobe marquee, poring over clipboards. The director spotted Emerson.

‘Harry, good morning, how great to see you!’

‘Peter. Hi.’

‘Have you seen Annalise?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good! Where is she?’

‘Out there somewhere,’ he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, ‘on a fuckin’ horse.’

Annalise rode through the silent village, her animal’s hooves tic-tacking on the tarmac. As she passed the last shuttered house, she saw a lane leading off to the east and took it. Within seconds, it was as if she’d been transported back in time; the world all around was reduced to just her, the horse and a forest of mournful oaks. There was no noise of traffic, no distant whine of aeroplanes, only the scrunch of horseshoe off damp gravel. Moisture glazed the leaves and turned the air chilly – she made a mental note to ask wardrobe for a cloak.

The track climbed the side of the valley until it reached a rocky col. After that, it levelled out and the oak thinned to be replaced by whin, wild grass and the occasional pungent, resin-heavy pine. Pale-red poppies woke to the sun and a giant yellow-and-black butterfly reeled drunkenly across her path. She crossed a pasture before descending into the next valley, swallowed once again by the oaks, although spears of sunlight now pierced the canopy, speckling the forest floor with gold.

She met a stream and followed it to a small clearing, where she stopped to let her horse drink. Poppies spread around her like spattered blood. She looked up to see an uninterrupted, picture-perfect view of Beynac Castle, noble on the horizon. There were no other buildings, no visual detritus – not a pylon, pole or wire in sight; just the castle and the forest. The prospect, she fancied, could not have changed much in over six hundred years.

Robin McKendry, Raymond, le Comte de Trenceval, gathered his robe and pondered Bernard de Vaux where he knelt.

‘You must release him,’ Roselaine begged her father, ‘he is our friend, I promise you.’

‘Release him?’ the comte wheezed. ‘He is a Frankish knight, and his countrymen would burn us all!’

‘Not this one, Father. He saved my life and has behaved with nothing but honour towards me.’

‘And you have behaved with nothing but honour towards him?’

‘I… of course!’

‘You promised your mother on her deathbed that you would remain pure.’

‘But I have, Father! And I will!’

‘An old man’s eyes see many things, my daughter.’

‘Then they must see the truth!’ Bernard spoke and made to stand, but the guard holding his chain tugged it. He yanked it in return and the guard tumbled over his back into the second guard who also fell, dropping his sword. Bernard grabbed the weapon and bounded upright. The comte raised a hand.

‘Enough! So you can fight – a useful skill in these troubled times. But I was fighting wars when you were but a suckling babe. What is this truth that I must see?’

‘That the men camped outside your gate will not go away until your walls are breached and your head stands on a pike!’

‘Leave us,’ the comte ordered the guards. Sullenly, they obeyed. The comte stroked his beard. ‘What would you have me do, crusader? Wish your countrymen away on a prayer?’

‘That’s not going to happen. Your castle is finished. I know Simon de Montfort – he will not relent. But if you listen to me, you can still escape with your lives.’

‘This is my home and I do not intend to leave it.’

Roselaine took his arm. ‘Father, if you love me as a daughter you will listen to him! Escape is our only option!’

The comte touched her face. ‘You speak of love, my child – but there are many different kinds of love.’

‘I am a child no longer.’ She held her head high, but her face threatened tears. Her father smiled.

‘You are still my child, Roselaine. You will always be that. But in this crusader’s eyes, you are a woman.’

‘What do you want of me, Father? Tell me, and I will obey you without question.’

‘Roselaine…’ Bernard started forward, but again, the comte raised his hand.

‘Young man – you saved my most treasured possession, and for that I am deeply grateful.’

‘ Yes, Sir.’

‘But a man is not much of a man if he would abandon his faith so lightly, let alone his fellow-warriors.’

Bernard shook his head. ‘This crusade… it is done in the name of God, but I cannot believe that God wants so much blood. The things I have seen… things I never imagined that men could do to men, let alone to women, to the elderly… to infant children. I could not stand by while these things were done to your daughter.’

‘But why save her and not someone else? Why not an infant, a deserving mother, a holy man?’

‘Because…’ he faltered and looked to Roselaine.

‘Could it be,’ the comte continued slyly, ‘that you treasure her as much as I?’

‘Father–’ Roselaine tried to interrupt, but Bernard dropped to one knee and held his sword by its blade, offering the hilt to the comte.

‘As God is my witness, I promise that I will always protect your daughter, with all my strength, for the rest of my days.’

The comte smiled. ‘That is all a father ever wants to hear. Now, you say you can rescue me from my castle – how many can escape, do you think?’

‘Eight, maybe ten. Any more and we risk discovery, then all would perish. A small group, travelling fast – that is our only hope.’

‘Very well then, this is my decision: taking sanctuary amongst us is William Belibaste, the greatest and holiest of all our Perfect. You will bring William, Roselaine and a handful of others whom
I will select to the fortress of Montaillou, high in the mountains.’

‘But Father! What about you?’

‘I will stay with my people, child, and defend them to my last drop of blood.’

Her eyes filled. ‘Then I will stay with you!’

‘No, Roselaine – that is not what I want of you. You said you would obey me without question; in this matter, you must.’

She took his hands, raised them to her face and cried on them. ‘But I cannot leave you, Papa – my heart will be broken!’

‘Your heart is young and it will heal. My heart is old, and it will embrace death gladly, if my daughter and my faith may yet survive this darkness. How strange it is that one of our enemy should also bring our only hope of survival.’

‘But Papa, I don’t want you to die… I don’t want you to die!’

Still holding his hands, she collapsed, her grief painful to behold. Bernard stayed half-kneeling beside her, face set with grim determination. Roselaine’s back racked with piteous sobs. The comte looked down at her for quite some time.

‘And… cut!’ Peter Tress dashed into the light cocooning the actors, hands clasped together, his expression ecstatic. ‘That was marvellous! Marvellous! Now we are really making a movie, eh Harry?’

‘Hell, she almost has me cryin’ – great actin’, kiddo.’ He squeezed Annalise’s shoulder as he stood, but her body still shook and she kept her face buried in McKendry’s hands.

‘I don’t think she
is
just acting.’ Creakily, McKendry lowered himself to Annalise’s level. ‘There there, dearie, there there…’ Emerson and Tress looked awkwardly around at the assembled crew. ‘Not the most private places, film sets,’ McKendry soothed. Then he hissed at Tress, ‘For Chrissakes, make yourself useful and help us up!’ Emerson and Tress jumped forward together and lifted the pair to their feet. With an arm around her shoulder, the old man guided Annalise away from the set and into the annexe.

‘I’m sorry,’ she squeaked, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…’

‘My dear, you really must shake this dreadful habit of apologising after every scene, especially when you’ve stolen it.’ He steered her to a wooden bench and they sat together. Her face was red, eyes bleary, nose runny. ‘Dug deep for a memory, did we?’

‘Yes.’

‘Look, I think it’s my turn to apologise. What I said about your father the day before yesterday, it was a bit… insensitive.’

Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘I don’t know why I’m suddenly thinking about him so much. It’s been eight whole years!’

‘My brother was killed in the Second World War; that was so long ago, but not a day goes by that I don’t think about him. The dead are always with us, Annalise. The dead are always with us.’

‘Hey kiddo!’ Emerson burst into the annexe. ‘You okay?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

‘That was some performance! I guess comin’ to work on a pony did the trick, huh? You wanna grab a coffee?’

‘Actually, I think I’ll just rest in my trailer, if that’s all right with you. Thanks, Robin.’ She hugged the elderly actor, then stood. ‘You’re so kind to me.’

‘If I was forty years younger and straight, I’d be sweeping you off your feet!’

Emerson gave an embarrassed cough as, still sniffling, Annalise stepped past him.

She felt sorrowful and foolish in equal measure as she crossed the castle keep, but lodged in her chest was a bright splinter of pride that, at last, she was doing well in front of the cameras. McKendry had been right: she had not just been acting – but did that matter? She placed her hand on her trailer door then stopped. What would she do if it were filled with white roses? She took a deep breath and pushed it open. No flowers – she
released her breath – only the syrupy smell of formica in the afternoon heat. The trailer had air-conditioning, but she refused to use it on environmental grounds. She opened a window to admit some air then noticed a courier’s package on the coffee table. It had a London postmark and its label said ‘PRIORITY SERVICE: SAME DAY DELIVERY’. She recognised the bubble-like handwriting of her agent’s secretary.

‘Conrad,’ she murmured, ‘what is it now?’

The package contained several folded sheets of newspaper and two envelopes, of which she opened the larger first. The letter was typed, as opposed to word-processed. Making his secretary use a manual typewriter instead of a computer was another of Loach’s fogeyish pretensions. It was dated that same day and read:

Reluctantly, she opened the second envelope. It contained a single piece of paper, torn from a notebook. In red biro was Jimmy’s affected popstar scrawl – she knew his natural handwriting was actually quite neat. All it said was: ‘Told you I was a wanker. Watch this space, xxJ.’

She felt sad holding something of Jimmy’s, even this pathetic scribble that didn’t say sorry, much less acknowledge the awfulness of what he’d done. She didn’t cry, because she was too disgusted, but her sadness was for the Jimmy she thought she’d known until she’d walked into that hotel room. And she felt guilty, terribly guilty, for not telling anyone what she’d seen. But the only consequence she could foresee was even more pressure from the press, so she squeezed the note up and flung it in a wastepaper basket like the dirty thing it was.

Feeling sick, she turned to the newspaper cuttings. She couldn’t focus on the details – all that leapt out were the pictures of her and Emerson on the black stallion and words like ‘love’, ‘girlfriend’ and ‘wedding bells’. One page, a download from a French newspaper, demanded to know: ‘ANNALISE PALATINE – QUI EST ELLE?’.

Who, indeed?

BANG!

A crash snapped her out of her reverie. Darling Sweetheart,
shooting crows.

BANG! BANG!

No – her trailer door. Someone was hammering on her trailer door. Still holding the clippings, she opened it.

‘Yo, bitch! WhadtheFUCK do ya call THIS?’

It was Holly Spader, holding up a newspaper with that ubiquitous picture.
‘Emerson est amoureux d’actrice Anglaise’.

‘Holly. Um, hello.’

Spader’s voice was a bitter parody, ‘“Oooh, there’s not much to tell! Me and Harry-boy jus’ had a liddle spot of dinner! Nothin’ happened!” Yeah, nothin’ happened ’cept you guys are in LOVE!’

Annalise could barely manage a whisper. ‘We are
not
in love.’