by Wendy Holden
The question pulled her up short; Polly could not think what to say. She fought the sudden, insane urge to shout, ‘You! You are!’
‘I suppose,’ she said slowly, trying to gather her scattered wits, ‘it was something we found in a dig in Dorset. A skeleton that had been buried with a dog.’
‘Dog?’ Max’s eyes lit up.
‘Yes, we thought it was a grave offering, or even a sacrifice. But then we found both of the skeleton’s arms arranged so that they were cradling it.’
‘So it was a pet?’ Max leant forward, intent.
‘Yes. It was moving, seeing the demonstration of a relationship like that.’ Polly smiled fondly at the memory. ‘The love a person had for their pet, thousands of years ago.’
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
‘Like you say,’ Max remarked, breaking the silence, ‘people aren’t all that different. I’d probably want to be buried with my dog, frankly.’
‘What sort of dog is it?’ A much-loved one, obviously; his eyes were shining with affection.
‘He’s a spaniel called Beano.’ Max’s voice was soft. ‘Been my pet since I was a little boy. Only got one eye, though, poor old devil.’
‘One eye?’ Polly was immediately interested.
‘Blind in the other. Squints a bit too. He’s always been funny-looking.’ Max flashed her a grin. ‘But I love his squint. He’s more interesting because he’s not perfect.’
Polly stared at him. She felt a rush of something like adoration. She had suffered so much of her childhood because of her squint. And here was Max, who loved his dog all the more because of his.
‘I’d love to meet Beano,’ Polly said sincerely. ‘He sounds like my kind of dog. You see,’ she added shyly, ‘I had a squint as a child. We’d have a lot in common.’
Max looked at her eyes for a long time; perhaps longer than was strictly necessary. ‘A squint?’ he said softly. ‘You can’t tell at all now. Which eye was it in?’
Polly’s face was warm with self-consciousness. ‘This one.’ She lowered her right eyelid in a wink. ‘They used to call me Boz Eyes at school,’ she added, embarrassed.
He frowned. ‘Boz Eyes?’ he repeated in his slight accent. ‘What is that? It doesn’t sound very polite.’
‘It’s not.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘But who cares now? It was ages ago. Anyway, I’d love to meet Beano. Is he with you?’
Max shook his dark head. ‘No, at home.’
She was about to ask where home was when she saw that something had distracted him. He was staring over her shoulder, towards the village green.
‘Excuse me,’ he said softly, standing up.
Polly twisted round. There was a dog on the green, a Jack Russell. She had vaguely noticed it before; it had been galumphing about in the centre, bolting backwards and forwards, crouching, then leaping, as dogs did at play. But now it had stopped, she saw, and was standing in the middle of the green, one paw raised in the air, whining sadly.
Max was already crossing the grass towards it. She got up and followed him. When she reached him, he had dropped to the ground and was examining the animal’s hurt paw. The dog had sunk its head on its uninjured one and was emanating a sad keening noise like an alarm.
The paw Max held had a cut in it. Blood was smeared across the white fur.
‘Poor thing!’ winced Polly, who was helplessly squeamish and hated the sight of blood.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks. Broken glass, I suppose.’ Max’s eyes narrowed as he looked around the green. ‘People just chuck things; they don’t realise how dangerous it can be for animals. Here, just hold this, would you?’
While he rummaged in his pockets, Polly found the Jack Russell’s bloody paw plonked matter-of-factly in her own. She held on to the twitching limb and realised, to her surprise, that her feelings of nausea had faded. Max clearly expected her to cope and be calm, so cope and be calm she would.
‘Thanks, Nurse.’ He flashed her a grin. Taking back the paw, his hand accidentally touched hers, and she felt suddenly breathless.
Max, meanwhile, had calmly produced a small can of antiseptic spray from the pocket of his jeans. It was like the Tardis in there, Polly thought, as he dragged out some cotton wool balls and bandages. Talking softly to the dog all the time, he swiftly cleaned and dried its wound. His head was very close to Polly’s; she could see faint threads of glittering brown in the glossy black.
He glanced at her and saw her looking; hurriedly, Polly transferred her attention to the dog. ‘His name’s Archie,’ she observed, flipping up the disc on the dog’s tartan collar. ‘There’s a phone number. I’ll ring it, shall I?’
Max, busy, grunted assent. She scrambled to her feet, rummaged in her bag for her phone and paced round the green as she dialled. No one answered at Archie’s home; Polly left a brief message on the answerphone.
She returned to find that Archie was calm now, and Max was wrapping his paw.
‘You’ve done a great job,’ Polly said admiringly.
‘Did you talk to his owners?’ was all Max wanted to know.
‘Answerphone.’
He muttered something under his breath.
‘Perhaps they’re out looking for him,’ Polly suggested.
He looked up, his face lit with a soft smile. ‘You always think the best of people, don’t you?’
She shrugged, and dropped down to tickle the dog’s rough fur. ‘He’s sweet.’
‘Can I see you again?’ Max asked her, so quietly that at first she thought he was addressing the dog. She nodded, her heart hammering so hard she felt she might be knocked off balance.
His fingers brushed hers; fire juddered up her arm. ‘I really like you, Polly,’ he said quietly. His dark head moved towards her; she gasped softly.
‘Archie!’
They both looked up.
An enormous woman in muddy jodhpurs was striding over the green. Prominent blue eyes bulged from a wide red weatherbeaten face framed by a short grey bob.
Archie struggled to his feet. He managed a weak bark of welcome.
The woman gave a fruity roar, ‘Archie!’ She broke into a heavy run. ‘Archie! I’ve looked everywhere for you! I’ve been all over the village! Where did you go to, you silly, silly dog? And what have you done to yourself?’
‘You were right,’ Max muttered to Polly. He leapt to his feet and passed Archie to his tearful owner, who hugged him to her great fawn bosom, exclaiming with love and relief and crooning into the top of his head. ‘Silly baby!’ she was murmuring.
Polly looked at Max. They grinned at each other.
The woman looked up from fondling Archie’s ears. Her veiny face was purple with emotion. ‘I can’t thank you enough. I’m Lavinia Butts-Upward, by the way.’
‘It’s just a cut, Mrs Butts-Upward,’ Max told her politely. ‘It won’t take long to heal. It was fairly clean.’
After more thanks, Mrs Butts-Upward hurried off with her prize. Left alone with Max, Polly braced herself. Would he remember what he had been about to say? Or had the moment passed?
It seemed as if it had. They walked back across the green. Their shadows slid ahead over the bright grass; his tall and broad-shouldered, striding confidently; hers smaller, more awkward, trailing slightly behind. Had she merely imagined he was about to kiss her?
She felt dreary with disappointment. If only Mrs Butts-Upward hadn’t barged in . . . but no. The poor woman had been ecstatic to be reunited with her dog.
Max, as he walked, seemed to be lost in thought and stared into the distance. She guessed he had forgotten all about her.
‘Well,’ Polly said resignedly. ‘Thanks for the drink. I guess I’d better be going.’
He was all attention in an instant. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t go.’ He stopped and turned to her. She had the head-spinning feeling that something was about to happen.
Silently, gently, he drew her into his arms. She looked up at him, wide-eyed; his mouth approached hers and gra
zed her lips lightly. Then it grazed them again, more firmly this time, and suddenly he was kissing her. She rose into him, kissing him back, ablaze with a sudden overwhelming want.
‘This is ridiculous,’ she murmured, dizzy with desire. ‘We’ve only just met, after all.’
‘No we haven’t.’ His eyes, deep midnight blue, were searching hers. She felt she was looking into infinity. ‘I feel I’ve always known you,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t you feel that?’
‘Yes,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Yes. I do.’
Chapter 10
The chateau of Sedona looked down to the blue Mediterranean from its position high in the hills. Originally a small defensive fort, it had been, over the centuries, enlarged and embellished by the de Sedonas, successive rulers of this tiny mountain kingdom that had broken away from its Italian city-state rulers in the fourteenth century. Fortunately it was so small and insignificant that no one seemed to notice, medieval Italian city-states being, in those days, far too busy fighting each other to worry about piffling little villages declaring UDI.
Yet Sedona’s rulers had been successful over the centuries, and now the chateau spread over a wide area. Four great round towers with conical tops marked the outer limits of a romantic riot of turrets and castellations, mostly decorative and entirely delightful when, as now, each tower fluttered with a colourful flag. Were a child to draw its ideal palace, the ancient castle of the kings of Sedona was exactly what it would come up with.
The sunshine was pouring down cheerfully over Sedona this morning. The Old Town flowed out behind the palace; a rough cloak of red roofs over a picturesque knot of narrow medieval lanes whose shape and length had been dictated by the rise and fall of the rocky terrain. The lanes were ten feet across at the widest, and the walls were so close at their narrowest that you could shake hands over the street.
The walls of the lanes were painted in ice-cream colours: vanilla, lemon yellow and apricot orange enlivened by the occasional pink. The lanes themselves were a mixture of houses, shops and cafés, linked by shady passages and arcades that led to fountained courtyards and neat, tree-planted squares before well-kept official buildings over which fluttered the royal standard: three golden keys against an azure background.
The pumping, parping sound of a brass band came from the cobbled square in front of the chateau gates. Here, every morning when the King of Sedona was in residence – as almost invariably he was – the Royal Sedona Regimental Band went through its paces.
The sun caught the whirling white pompoms beating the big bass drum and the gold braid glittering on the front of the musicians’ red coats. From nine a.m. until noon, the band bashed and blew, making up in spectacle and gusto what it lacked in musical finesse. Its repertoire harked back to the visit of Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India, in the 1880s. Sedona liked to remind itself of its most famous royal visitor, and so ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, ‘Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’, ‘Cwm Rhonnda’, ‘The Skye Boat Song’, and other British favourites could be enjoyed daily by resident and visitor alike.
Behind the scrolled wrought-iron gates, before the sea-facing façade of the great building, a sequence of terraced gardens followed, like wide grassy steps, the contours of the hillside on which the chateau was built. While Sedona was generally a warm and sunny place, its high, exposed position and the occasional appearance of those dry Mediterranean winds, the dreaded mistral, meant that flowers could be difficult to grow.
Despite these limitations, the Queen of Sedona had man-aged, with her customary patience and diligence, to produce a surprising number of roses. Two varieties, which she had named after her sons Maxim and Giacomo, were even registered with Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society. These roses, along with others, now formed the colourful middles of borders placed symmetrically about the palace lawns.
At the other end of the town from the pinnacles and towers of the palace reared the answering spiry bulk of Sedona’s twelfth-century cathedral, built at the very edge of the mountain plateau and commanding the principality’s most magnificent view. Anyone standing atop the sweep of the cathedral steps enjoyed a stunning prospect as mountains and valleys tipped away to a distant sea where yachts sat about like tiny white toys on a giant blue silk rug. The views extended up and down the coast from Monte Carlo to the north and Bordighera in Italy to the south.
It was at the great Gothic cathedral, vaulting soaring within, gargoyles and statues bristling without, that all the main ceremonies of Sedona royal life were conducted. Every king since Engelbert the Fat had been baptised in the black marble font, while lined up like a spread deck of cards by the high altar were gold-lettered marble tombstones going back to Engelbert the Ugly. The impressive nave, meanwhile, had resounded to the footsteps of every marrying royal couple since the thirteenth century, the latest being those of current monarchs Engelbert XVIII and his consort Astrid.
The Old Town this morning was peaceful, the red herringbone brick-paved lanes still drying in the sun after the daily clean and cheerful with the sounds of people calling greetings or goodbyes as they opened or shut the glass doors of the various bakeries and cafés. The air was filled with the scents of fresh coffee and freshly baked coeurs de Sedona: the small, icing-dusted, custard-filled pastries that were a speciality of the town.
The owners of the souvenir shops were opening up too, arranging their piles of glossy paperback guides and laying out pennants, pencils, flags and keyrings displaying the royal coat of arms. The same three golden keys against a blue background were available on sweatshirts, bags, T-shirts and baseball caps; one particularly go-ahead retailer had recently introduced a screenprinted Warholesque version.
On the postcard stands, the Sedona royal family beamed out at passers-by. Dark-haired Prince Maxim, eldest son of the King and Queen, had the serious expression appropriate for someone poised to inherit the responsibilities of a throne. The Crown Prince was currently at university in England.
His younger brother Prince Giacomo had not, to employ one of his mother’s favourite euphemisms, gone down the university route. To his parents’ dismay, he had gone down the hedonism and girls route. At only eighteen, the prince already enjoyed a fearsome reputation in what nightclubs Sedona possessed, and in most others up and down the coast.
Giacomo’s expression on the postcard was something between a smoulder and a smirk. His striking looks were of an entirely different variety to his brother’s. Smirk aside, Giacomo was the image of his mother; Sedona’s popular, gentle and kind Queen Astrid, who was fair-skinned, blue-eyed and blonde.
The postcards of the monarch showed King Engelbert looking short, grey-haired and stern. Both he and the Queen were magnificent in golden crowns and red velvet robes edged with ermine. These had the effect of making them look as if they ruled an entire empire, not a small and somewhat eccentric kingdom less than five miles across at its widest point and with fewer than five thousand subjects.
Most residents of Sedona were there by virtue of the favourable tax status the principality offered and maintained a luxurious lifestyle. Quietly so, however; Sedona had traditionally distinguished itself from its flashier neighbour Monaco by attracting people who, while possessed of equal wealth, were more discreet in displaying it. If Monaco shouted, Sedona whispered.
The problem was, fewer and fewer people were hearing it. And as a result, financial trouble loomed. Sedona’s few indigenous industries were in the service sector and required tourism to give them life blood. Tourism drove hotels, restaurants and retail. It drove, by association, the building trade. It had, for the last 150 years, been the principality’s main source of income, but now it was dwindling.
The fact that, for the first time in its history, Sedona was about to slide into deficit had plunged King Engelbert into panic. Like all rulers of ancient fiefdoms, he prided himself on his ability to hand over a flourishing inheritance to the next generation.
How could Sedona get its visitor rates back up agai
n? How could it promote a glittering and youthful image to compete with its glitzy neighbour? Monaco was seemingly invincible, its tourist-attracting advantages including a reputation as a celebrity playground, a Grand Prix and a recent royal wedding. In comparison, Sedona’s claim to have one doctor for every five head of population and the best wheelchair access on the Mediterranean lacked razzmatazz. There may well have been celebrities in Sedona, but no one alive could remember who they were.
To address the issue, Engelbert had just engaged at vast expense Sedona’s first ever public relations consultant, a man in red spectacles who spoke about audience mapping, mood boards, message development sessions and thought leadership platforms. Yet despite all this, and the time the King spent with him, the solution had yet to be arrived at.
The fact Sedona lacked the port and harbour that had enabled Monaco to develop so spectacularly was, the PR consultant had said, clicking his mouse and moving his arrows about, the main reason for its relative poverty. He had recommended that Sedona develop its own marina, down on the coast some ten miles from the mountain principality itself. The international luxury yachting scene, at its most international and luxurious in the immediate area of the Mediterranean, could bring much-needed wealth to the kingdom through vast annual fees levied to berth boats. The marina could also be an events venue. The problem was, or at least so Astrid had gathered, that a building project of that scale needed investors, and in a time of international downturn, they were not forthcoming. Something needed to be dreamt up to bring them in.
Engelbert was in conference with his PR adviser this morning, dreaming of just that something. Astrid, who wriggled out of all such meetings if she could, was in her garden, among her roses. She snipped busily at her Rosa Mundi, noting with satisfaction how pronounced the deep pink stripes were this year.
There was no one else in the garden apart from Beano, the spaniel who had been her elder son’s childhood pet. She was charged with looking after him while Max was away. Beano was old and had been blind in one eye since birth. He still had a squint in the other. This, however, did not stop him pacing suspiciously about the lawns as if on the lookout for intruders.