Bride of the Rat God (19 page)

But no sound came from her throat. It was only a film, of course. Silent. Wind dragged her long hair loose and tore with icy fingers at her face.

ALEC! Behind her she could still hear the glakking yowl of the music, the panicky heart trip of the drum. Smoke swirled on the night, masking another smell, she didn’t know what. From the corner of her eye she thought she glimpsed something scuttling along the wall behind her, but when she turned, there was nothing. It was very deep night, halfway between midnight and morning, winter and killingly cold. No one here knows what is being done, she thought, not knowing why she thought it or what she thought was going on in the hall behind her. Only these few. The rest would rather not know.

She turned back toward the doors, seeing only a slit of candlelight that framed the shining ruby figure of the girl with her necklace of evil gems, eclipsed and reeclipsed every time the whirling priest passed between them.

Then someone within closed the door, shutting Norah out into the howling dust of the night. The clouds parted briefly to reveal the full moon’s cold eye, then closed again. Wind seared over the pavilion’s double roof, its voice rising to a shriek. Distantly, among the maze of walls, came the frenzied barking of hundreds of tiny dogs. As she drifted toward wakefulness, Norah could not tell whether it was the wind that she heard just at the end, or whether, within the dark hall, the girl had begun to scream.

No advance.

Good fortune when a maiden marries

with her younger sister as consort...

The date of a marriage postponed—

patience is advised...

D
ESPITE HIS FLASH
of temper the night before, Blake Fallon was all smiling affability in the morning, turning up at the pre-dawn breakfast with offers to assist the crew in loading the caravan of cars that would carry Queen Vashti’s pavilion back to its location. Norah, enjoying a leisurely breakfast with Alec for once, tried to think better of the actor—it was certainly a change from his blithe refusal to even notice that help was needed back in Edendale—but found within herself a deeply lodged distaste at the mere sight of him. She wondered if the unrecalled ugly dreams that had troubled her had something to do with him.

“If we begin to film at noon, we can perhaps finish all pavilion scenes today,” Hraldy said, picking up and putting down script pages and moving his tiny cup of Turkish coffee here and there around them on the battered pine table. “You and I, Alec, we must inspect battlefield while pavilion is raise.” Outside, the wind had fallen to an occasional whisper in the sagebrush. “He goes more quickly than I thought him to yesterday.”

The director glanced across to where Fallon lounged gracefully by the kitchen door, talking to the two Neds while Lucky loaded their plates with bacon and eggs.

“Well,” Alec commented softly, “for one thing, you didn’t have to walk old Laban through by the hand.”

“
Exactement
!” Hraldy made a gesture that nearly overset his coffee. “Is splendid how his acting is change. It is different man! I am only sorry now more cannot be done with him in this film.”

“Why can’t it?” Norah sipped her tea, which was as usual execrable. Coffee, to Lucky, was more than a drink—it was a rite of manhood, and the Turkish variety Hraldy favored and everyone else choked on was the manliest of all. Tea was for old ladies and Englishmen, slapped together at random for those who insisted on making trouble for the cook.

“I mean, Laban isn’t anywhere in the Book of Esther, anyway,” she pointed out. “Is it necessary that he die? Can’t you have him come thundering into battle at the head of a host of his tribesmen or something to save the day?”

“Is God of Israel, Lord of Battles, who save day!” the director said indignantly. “This is point of battle, reason we bring this pyro-whomever, this expert in blowing up of things, in with extras Friday, that he may create fiery wrath of Lord as He smite Vashti and all her host. Still...” His dark eyes grew thoughtful with the look of an artist who saw on blank canvas light, color, and passion, and he stirred his tiny cup of inky mud reflectively. “Still, he is spectacle, eh? For a moment, silhouette against stark of desert sky, Laban, whom we had thought dead standing upright in his chariot, brandish his mighty spear. Then behind him host arise, as it seem, from sterile sand.”

“Won’t that get a little embarrassing for Esther?” Alec pushed up his glasses to rub his eyes. He looked exhausted, and Norah felt a renewed pang of guilt for having left him to his own devices the previous night instead of giving him her usual help. Nonetheless, when he had made his appearance that morning, he had come straight over to sit beside her with his customary smile of greeting, so he appeared to have taken in stride her decision to spend the evening playing cards with Christine by lantern light.

He drew his coffee cup to him and looked around, and Norah wordlessly handed him the sugar he sought. “After all,” he went on, ladling it into his cup, “Esther’s already gone on to marry Ahasuerus, hasn’t she? What’s she going to do with Laban after that big dramatic scene where she puts off her mourning for him to enter the beauty contest? He can’t be the lover to two queens of Babylon running. I don’t think they’d take that even in the Old Testament.”

“Make him her brother,” Norah said promptly. “You can reshoot those scenes between him and Emily—it was only a day’s worth of shooting—and Bob’s your uncle. And there you have it,” she amended hastily as the director paused in the middle of an enthusiastic cry of triumph, puzzled by the unknown phrase.

“
Exactement
! It is precise!”

“Esther didn’t have a brother,” pointed out Alec.

“She didn’t have a former lover, anyway not one that made it into the Megillah,” Norah retorted mildly.

“He is what is need!” Hraldy cried, springing to his feet. “
Héylas
! You are genius, Madame Blackstone! Genius!”

Fallon, both Neds, Deacon Barnes, and Doc LaRousse turned in some surprise, since this last remark was shouted at the top of the director’s lungs. “Here!” He thrust half a dozen pages at her. “Write him, outline such scenes for me, make them live, make them throb! Alexi! You and I, we must arrange for new charge, new onslaught! We will look for him today, now, immediately, as soon as cars can be brought! Ned... Ned...” He fluttered away in quest of the carpenter. “Ned, you must sent to studio for two hundred additional extras, clothe in armor of Israelites! Yes, and send your assistant now to town, by train; these things must arrive on Saturday.”

“You coming out to have a look at the battlefield with us?”

Behind her, Norah was aware of slight movement. From the tail of her eye she caught Fallon turning ostentatiously away but still remaining within earshot. “I’m afraid not,” she replied, at the same time touching Alec’s wrist and signaling toward the door with her eyes:
Talk to me outside about this.

She realized later there was no reason he should have understood, but his glance, too, idled over to the star, and he nodded imperceptibly.

In a lighter tone she went on, “I think I’ll take advantage of the morning off to make the Book of Esther live and throb, per instructions. I’ll come out with Christine this afternoon for the shooting, though. Besides, it’s high time I gave those little ragamuffins a good brushing. Chang Ming seems to think his winter coat makes him Genghis Khan.” She had left the three dogs sleeping like discarded slippers around Christine’s bed, feeling curiously safe with their guardianship. Waking from some troubling dream she no longer remembered, she had seen the dark gleam of their eyes by the single candle she always left burning these nights, and that, too, had been comforting. By the time she had let them out and brought them back in again, even the sticky cobwebs of the dream had blown away except for a dim impression of wailing music and a smell of dust on the wind.

LaRousse came up behind Alec with some question. Norah rose, brushed the crumbs from her skirt, and made her way to the door. She couldn’t define, even to herself, her urge to remain at Christine’s side, her bone-deep disinclination to allow Fallon the chance he was so obviously angling for. Perhaps it was only the scene she had witnessed at the Montmartre; perhaps it was her dislike of the way the man walked these days, lithe and arrogant, like a stalking animal. Whatever the source of her distaste, it was cemented moments later by the sudden materialization of a powerful arm around her waist, steering her into a corner near the door.

She hadn’t thought the man was so strong.

“You know, honey,” Fallon said, smiling and displaying a lot of extremely white teeth, “they do say two’s company and three’s a crowd. What do you say? Don’t be such a wet blanket.”

Norah straightened her back and regarded him frostily. He was less than an inch taller than she, and it clearly discomfited him to be dealing with a woman who could not readily be tucked under his arm. “I
beg
your pardon.”

He stepped back uneasily. An odd smell seemed to cling to his expensive sweater, one she could not place.

“You know what I mean, toots.” Truculence was barely concealed under the brisk tone of his voice. “Chris brought you along as a maid, not a chaperone. So what’s wrong with unsticking yourself from her for a few hours? You jealous or something?”

“Christine brought me along as a friend.” It was difficult to keep her voice cool under the surge of anger that swept over her not only at his words but at his assumption of his position and hers. “As a friend, I am quite willing to absent myself if she indicates that my absence is required. So far she has not.” She stepped around him and out through the door, hoping he had not been aware of her trembling. The conceited lout would probably construe it as maidenly modesty or fear.

As it was, it took all her self-control to keep from dropping the script pages as she threaded her way through the arc-lit confusion of men loading gilded tent poles, lacquered scarlet elephants, and dozens of yards of silk into cars preparatory to the long, lurching drive over the sands, through the wash, and around the rocks to the site of the pavilion.

After a glance through the door to make sure Christine was still asleep—she was, despite the tumbling furry tussle as all three dogs engaged in their morning rite of attempting to drag one another around the room by the tail—Norah wrapped shawl and sweater tightly around her arms and settled herself on the cabin’s small step, staring south across the barren rock and sand to the indigo mountains beyond. The first glimmering of tawny dawn stained the eastern sky. To the north, clouds heaped the mountains, but the day promised to be clear. When let out, the three Pekes dashed joyously away to indulge in an orgy of sniffing for whatever changes the wind had made. Black Jasmine trotted off in the direction of the cars to make sure the men loaded the pavilion properly. Buttercreme, after a few cautious whiffs, returned to the shelter of the cabin with the air of one whose worst suspicions about the outer world had once again been confirmed.

“There a reason you’ve decided to thwart the splendid one’s newest passion?” inquired Alec, appearing around the corner of the ruined grocery store ten minutes later, his satchel of spare lenses, notebooks, small screwdrivers, and black electrician’s tape over his shoulder, his peaked cap as usual perched backward on his head.

Norah grinned ruefully, grateful that he’d seen what she was doing and glad to see, by the tone of his voice and the way he leaned against the wall beside her, that he didn’t seem to have any objections.

“There is and there isn’t,” she said slowly, not certain how to explain what even to herself appeared perfectly irrational behavior. “It’s just that... something about him makes me uneasy. It isn’t only the dogs,” she added, watching Chang Ming inspect each sagebrush in turn, going from one to the other with his purposeful Pekingese trot. “And it isn’t that I don’t think Christine can look after herself, because I know full well that she can. It’s... I don’t know what it is, frankly.”

He nodded, folding his arms and shifting his shoulder against the old
Sentinel
’s battered clapboards. “Well, whatever it is, you bothered our boy so much, he came over to me just now and asked me, man to man, if I wouldn’t haul you off into the sagebrush for a little while so he could make some time with Christine. He seems to think you’re a soured old maid who wants to keep Christine from having any fun.”

Norah shot him a sidelong glance. “Do you really think he thinks that?”

“No.” Alec scratched a corner of his mustache. “I think he just said that to me—and, obviously, to you—as ammunition against you.” He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, looked down at his boot toes, then went on carefully. “What he said to me was,
She ain’t so bad-looking, and she’ll probably be grateful.
I had to remind myself that if I broke his nose, I’d have to reshoot five thousand feet of film. But it’s slated to take place right after the final take’s in the can.” Above the tops of his rimless spectacles his brown eyes were very bright with anger. “What does Chris think about all this?”

“That he’s tedious.” Norah shrugged. “She wasn’t scratching at the windows to be let out last night. She can’t think why he’s suddenly developed an interest in her with all the lady friends he has back in town.
He’s acting like such a FAN, darling.”
She imitated Christine’s wailing voice, and Alec grinned. “She thinks he’s probably just bored out here in the wilds.”

“But you don’t.” It wasn’t a question.

“No,” Norah said softly and felt again a drift of uneasiness related to her dream, as if some unseen object had bumped against her legs under water. “I don’t know why, but I’m...concerned. Freud would say it’s my subconscious objecting to something or other that probably has nothing to do with Mr. Fallon. Maybe I
am
just a soured old maid.”

“Want to be hauled off into the sagebrush? Sorry,” he added immediately, before she had time to react. “Joking. I’m sorry...” His back was to the makeshift lights of Frenchy’s Saloon, and the quick duck of his head made it hard for her to see his face, but when he looked up again, his expression was earnest.