Bride of the Rat God

by Barbara Hambly

  “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, g
oing 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.

  “Whatever Freud would see in your subconscious, I know what’s floating around in mine. I don’t have Blake’s kind of experience—or his kind of looks, more’s the pity—but trying to get me to run interference doesn’t sound like a man flirting because he’s bored. See you in Babylon.”

  He gave her a cockeyed salute and turned from the porch, and as he did so, without quite knowing why, Norah stood up and reached impulsively to touch his shoulder. For a moment Alec stood looking up at her—he was a good four inches shorter—then he stepped close, put his hands very gently on her arms above the elbows, and brushed her lips with his.

  Then quickly, with a slightly embarrassed air, he shifted his satchel on his shoulder and hurried away between the buildings, whose shadows swallowed him up.

  During the morning Fallon made three or four attempts to catch Christine alone. Twice the dogs barked frenziedly, and when Norah rose from her seat at the vanity—where she was making the Book of Esther throb amid a clearing in the powder canisters and hairpins—she glimpsed those powerful shoulders in their pale blue sweater disappearing around the corner of Emily’s cabin. On the second occasion Christine rolled over, sighed, and murmured, “What on earth are those dogs hunting?” Ten minutes later she sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  It was by that time ten o’clock. Having clocked Christine making up and dressing before this, Norah felt serenely confident that Fallon would have no time for anything major in the way of seduction before they all had to be on the set at twelve. According to the lesser Ned, on his way through Red Bluff to the train station in San Bernardino to meet Roberto Calderone, both the pavilion and the army encampment sets were well under way.

  “Good thing, too,” he added, brushing back his duck forelock of sand-colored hair. “The extras are arriving tomorrow afternoon, and Mikos is going to have to take ’em through their paces at least once when they get out here. That leaves just the morning for filming all King What’s-his-name’s scenes with Roberto and Emily, plus whatever setup the explosives man is going to need.”

  While Christine put on powder and rouge, lipstick and eyepaint—not film makeup, but there was no question of crossing to the mess hall less than fully decorated and she had learned not to suggest it—Norah brushed the dogs and entertained her sister-in-law with an account of Fallon’s attempts to get time alone with Christine to such effect that when he encountered them on their way back after breakfast, Christine was in her most minxish mood.

  “Of course, Blake darling, I’d adore to ride out to the set with you.” She smiled, gazing up at him from beneath the shade of her broad-brimmed hat. “So kind of you. Emily,” she called out to the heavily veiled blonde just emerging from her cabin with mother in tow. “Emily, Blake’s offered us all a ride out to the set this afternoon. Wasn’t that sweet of him? Do you think there’ll be room for Zena as well? I mean, with Norah and the dogs, but you won’t mind holding my little celestial Changums on your lap, will you? Norah’s got a pot of coffee, Emily darling. Would you care to come over and have a cup with me while I put on my makeup?”

  She smiled her leave of the actor, batting her long black lashes through a scrim of cigarette smoke, and Norah had to turn quickly away so as not to be seen laughing.

  At quarter to one, which was good timing for Christine, the five ladies loaded themselves into Fallon’s car, Norah and Christine sharing the backseat with Zena and the dogs—“Hush now! Uncle Blake’s being very good about giving us all a ride out to the set, you naughty boy!”—leaving Mrs. Violet to sit like a whalebone sword blade between the admiring Emily and the seething star. There was further delay when they reached the dry wash, which had inexplicably ceased to be dry and was a good two feet deep in rushing brown water, necessitating some very careful driving.

  “A flash flood?” Christine regarded Doc LaRousse with surprise-widened eyes upon her arrival at the pavilion among the rocks. “How could it flood? It didn’t even rain last night!”

  “It rained in the hills,” the electrician explained. “We heard the water come roaring down round about ten after twelve, a huge wall of it, boulders, rocks, jackrabbits that couldn’t get out of the wash... We were damn worried about you, Chris.”

  “I’m so sorry!” She drew about her shoulders the light wrapper of yellow silk she wore to keep any possibility of sun from her copiously exposed skin and looked up at him while Zena and Mary DeNoux fussed around behind her, repinning curls that the drive and her protective veiled hat had disarrayed. “You see, Norah? If we’d hurried up like you kept telling me to, we might have gotten caught in that flood, though I still don’t see how you could possibly have a flood if it didn’t rain!”

  With barely two hours of daylight left, the filming proceeded apace. At Norah’s suggestion, three key shots were shifted from day to night and a long sequence predicated on Laban’s previous involvement with—and desertion of—Esther was dropped as no longer necessary. “It is possible that Laban’s coming to tent could have been at night rather than at day,” Hraldy agreed doubtfully, studying the yellow notebook pages covered with Norah’s French-governess hand. “But these surely could be film Monday, after we have finish with battle.”

  “If you want to bank on the weather holding,” remarked Alec, switching the turret over to a shorter lens. “Personally, at this season of the year, I wouldn’t.”

  So they sent Deacon Barnes and Mary DeNoux back to Red Bluff to bring out the portable generator, a myriad of lights, Lucky Kallipolis, and an enormous picnic dinner, while Norah and Hraldy discussed which scenes needed to be reshot to include a brother for Esther and Christine maddened her frustrated suitor by refusing to leave the wardrobe t
ent where she sat in her dragon-embroidered yellow kimono, playing mah-jongg with the musicians and smoking. The Pekes, which in Fallon’s absence had spent their time hunting lizards and marking every bush, rock, and tripod as their personal property, remained stubbornly on guard around their mistress’s feet, though they refrained from barking in his presence.

  Stay close to her... watch her, Shang Ko had said as the steam of the departing train blew around him in a cloud. Do not let her be alone.

  The thin, gawky figure walking around the house in the darkness, leaning on his staff, stooping now and then to draw signs on the gnawed foundations, signs of which, in the morning, Norah could find no trace. Do not let her be alone.

  “Norah, darling, I’m thinking about seducing that darling cello player. What do you think?” Christine stepped out to the pavilion’s entry, following the three musicians with her eyes as they took their places for the next scene. “His name is Stephen, and he has absolutely the most gorgeous nose, and it would drive Blake crazy, and besides, Jazzums likes him, don’t you, my little celestial cupcake?” And the little black dog in her arms strained to lick her chin.

  “Norah,” Alec called over his shoulder as he was checking the camera loops, “we’re going to take this at f/8...”

  Her thoughts slipped away like a handful of sand in the running water of a flood.

  In addition to Roberto Calderone, the afternoon train brought several stuntmen and Felix Worthington-Pontehart, a nimble and lanky Englishman who’d spent most of the war blowing up German entrenchments. The first of the horses arrived that evening from the ranches around San Bernardino. Red Bluff became a seething encampment of tents and corrals and property sheds where weapons and chariots were checked and touched up by the two Neds under Doc’s ubiquitous strands of lights. That, too, comforted Norah when they returned very late from the night shoot. That morning the silence and emptiness of the ghost town had troubled her more than she had allowed herself to admit. Even without Mr. Shang’s enigmatic warning, she had been obscurely glad for the presence of the dogs.