‘Who’s getting married?’ asked Baby.

‘My stepdaughter, Tabitha.’

‘She doesn’t seem very keen on the idea,’ said Tristan, wincing at his father’s painting over the piano, of a leering man undressing a very young girl.

‘Just last-minute nerves.’ Rannaldini seemed to be killing himself over some private joke.

‘Who’s the lucky guy?’ asked Baby.

‘My dear boy, I thought you’d have known. It’s your jockey, Isa Lovell.’

The colour drained from Baby’s suntanned face. He seemed to shrink, like a larky March hare suddenly looking down a gun barrel.

‘Christ, he can’t be,’ he stammered. ‘What about Martie? He was talking of marrying her after Crimbo.’

Rannaldini always got a charge out of inflicting pain.

‘He’ll be in in a minute to tell you himself. He was irritated not to be riding at Cheltenham today.’

Tristan felt desperately sorry for Baby and put a hand on his rigid shoulders.

‘This happen very quick. You told me she only came home the day of the Gramophone Awards.’

‘Ah,’ sighed Rannaldini. ‘When one is young, love work like lightning. Like Carlos and Elisabetta.’

‘Carlos and Elisabetta happen so quick because they were giddy with relief an arranged marriage had turned out so well,’ protested Tristan.

‘I believe in arranged marriages,’ said Rannaldini warmly. After all, he had arranged this one.

‘I hope you’ll stay for the wedding,’ he begged. ‘You might even sing something during the signing of the register.’ He smiled at Baby who, having drained his glass of champagne, had got a grip on himself. ‘Dame Hermione is singing “Panis Angelicus”,’ went on Rannaldini. ‘Ah, here comes the bridegroom.’

And in strolled Isa, still in old cords and a tweed jacket.

‘Hi.’ He smiled almost mockingly at Baby, who found it impossible to act normally as he blushed and couldn’t speak. Isa always had this effect on him.

‘Hadn’t you better get changed?’ snapped Tristan.

‘Plenty of time,’ said Isa coolly. ‘I thought Baby might like to see round your yard, Rannaldini.’

It wasn’t long before Baby found his tongue again.

‘Why the hell didn’t you marry Tabitha’s brother Marcus?’ he hissed. ‘At least he’s the right sex. I suppose you knocked her up.’

‘This is a very nice mare.’ Isa opened a half-door.

‘She’ll lose it if she goes on hitting the vodka. I suppose it’s also for the money.’

‘Rupert won’t give her a penny,’ sighed Isa. ‘And Rannaldini will only help out if it suits him.’

‘Well, you’re not getting another cent out of me.’

In the safety of the loose-box, Isa ran a finger down Baby’s gritted jaw. ‘It doesn’t change anything,’ he said softly. ‘If you’re a good boy, I’ll tell you more about this amazing horse I’ve found. Did you know,’ he added idly, ‘gypsies consider it unlucky if a marriage takes place after sunset?’

Meanwhile Tristan was exploring Valhalla. Grey and spooky in the December twilight, it would be the perfect setting for Don Carlos. He could imagine the hunt streaming down those rides, or Eboli chasing Carlos through the maze. There were dungeons for Posa’s death, and a splendid mausoleum for Charles V’s tomb. Even the auto da fe, in which the heretics were burnt, could be staged in the courtyard outside the chapel.

As he wandered through rooms formed by yew hedges, statues of naked nymphs lurked in every corner. Tristan wished he could offer them all his jacket. To his right, the wood kept readjusting the mist like a shawl around its shoulders and, as he reached the big lawn, to the north four vast Lawson cypresses reared up, like monks in black habits with their pointed hoods over their faces. Gazing up from beneath them, Tristan suddenly felt the terror of the sixteenth-century man-in-the-street, overwhelmed by the dark, towering forces of the Inquisition.

Quickening his step as night fell, he nearly ran into a pack of paparazzi. As they levelled their long lenses like a firing squad at a new arrival, he decided they were part of some present-day auto da fe, destroying reputations for public delectation.

In a blinding flash, he realized that Don Carlos must be made in modern dress. The present English Royal Family were so similar to Verdi’s French and Spanish royalty. Elisabetta was so like both the sad Princess Diana and the wistful Queen Elizabeth, married to the short-fused, roving-eyed Prince Philip, who was not unlike Philip II of Spain. And they, too, had a son called Charles, who was romantic, idealistic, longed for a proper job, had a loving nature and was terrified of his stern, critical father, as Carlos had been. Whilst in Eboli, the feisty mistress in love with Carlos, could be seen an echo of Camilla Parker Bowles, and in the noble Marquis of Posa a touch of Andrew, her diplomatic soldier husband. They could start the film with these characters in the royal box, then cut to the two armies on the skyline.

But who was the modern equivalent of the Grand Inquisitor? wondered Tristan, as he retraced his steps to the omnia vincit amor gates. Who terrorized people to madness? Why not Gordon Dillon, the ruthless editor of the Scorpion, who would shop his own children to boost circulation and who went around in tinted glasses and soft-soled shoes, scaring his staff as shitless as the public? The Inquisition bully-boys, who cast such terrifying shadows over Don Carlos, could be represented as lurking paparazzi or as the chinless, ruthless courtiers who spent their time spying and manipulating at Buckingham Palace.

Tristan couldn’t wait to tell Rannaldini.

‘Monsieur de Montigny.’ A soft lisping voice made him jump out of his skin.

In his path lurked what appeared to be yet another leatherclad member of the paparazzi, with hair as pale as his bloodless face and the leer of a chemist when asked for something embarrassing. Before Tristan could tell him to piss off, the sinister creature introduced himself as Clive, Rannaldini’s henchman.

‘Sir Roberto was worried you were outside without an overcoat. He thought you might like a cup of tea, or something stronger, before the service starts in half an hour.’

Fifty miles away at Penscombe, Taggie Campbell-Black was still tearing out her dark hair. Rupert’s reprobate old father, Eddie, had invited himself for the weekend. Having ensconced him happily in the study with a bottle of Bell’s and racing on television, Taggie took the opportunity, as she hastily made up her face for Tab’s wedding in the kitchen mirror, to discuss the crisis with Rupert’s assistant, Lysander Hawkley. Lysander, who was married to Rannaldini’s young third wife, Kitty, and who had also ridden his horse Arthur in the Rutminster Cup the same year Isa had ridden Rannaldini’s delinquent Prince of Darkness, was absolutely horrified.

‘Tab can’t marry Isa, Taggie, he’s an evil bugger. He spat at me before the race and made some seriously insulting remarks about Arthur — who, being a horse, couldn’t answer back — and he gets up to wicked tricks on the course. Nearly rode me into the rails and called me “Campbell-Black’s bumboy”,’ Lysander flushed. ‘Bloody insult. Not that,’ he added quickly, ‘if I was that way inclined, I could think of anyone nicer than Rupert.’

‘You probably could in his present mood,’ sighed Taggie, as she fluffed blusher on her blanched cheeks. ‘Oh, Lysander, what am I going to do? Tab couldn’t have done a worse thing.’

‘Poor darling,’ said Lysander, who, having been worshipped unconditionally by Tab for four years, had a rosier view of her than most people. ‘She’s so impulsive.’

‘She’ll be so isolated in that camp,’ said Taggie. ‘Jake and Tory won’t like it any more than Rupert, who’ll kill me when he discovers I’ve gone to the wedding. But I can’t not — Tab sounded so pitiful.’

‘I’d come with you,’ said Lysander, ‘but I’d murder Rannaldini. Take Eddie — he’d liven up any party.’

Rannaldini’s woods soared up like black cliffs. Trees, sheathed in ivy, danced like witches at some wild Sabbath.

‘What a creepy house,’ shuddered Taggie, as Rupert’s helicopter landed, and she helped her father-in-law climb out.

‘Why’s the fella flying both the German and Italian flags?’ snorted Eddie, glaring up at the roof.

‘He’s half German, half Italian.’

‘’Strordinary to be on both losing sides in the last war.’

As they hurried towards the omnia vincit amor gates, a lot of people were getting out of a minibus.

‘Must be the tenants,’ said Eddie.

‘No, I think they’re Isa’s relations,’ said Taggie.


9


It was nearly six o’clock. The little chapel, attached to the north wing at Valhalla, was packed to overflowing. Having drifted in to a rumble of approval twenty minutes ago, Helen, on her own in the left-hand front pew, grew increasingly furious. In order to upstage Tory Lovell and Hermione, she had spent a fortune at Lindka Cierach’s on a ravishing smoky-blue suit, nipped in to show off her tiny waist. She had spent almost more on a fox-fur hat, about which Tab had been vilely rude. One should not call one’s mother ‘no better than a bloody murderer’ on one’s wedding day. And because Tabitha had never written thank-you letters or looked up Helen’s family when she was in America, none of them had bothered to fly over for the wedding, claiming it was too near to Christmas. Even Marcus had deserted her because Nemerovsky had a first night in St Petersburg.

As a horrible result, Rannaldini had spitefully filled the relationless row behind her with Valhalla staff: Sally and Betty, the pretty maids, who’d gone to London to look after Serena Westwood’s Jessie, Mr Brimscombe, the gardener, who was hopping mad because Helen had stripped his conservatories of flowers, Mrs Brimscombe, the housekeeper, who’d been allowed out of the kitchens for half an hour, and to top it the fearful Bussage in a trilby and a severe grey dress. No doubt they’d be joined soon by Clive, Rannaldini’s henchman, and Tabloid the Rottweiler.