Shadow Marriage. PENNY JORDAN

cast would take their meals, although it was possible to be entirely self-sufficient by using the freezer and fridge built into the trailer kitchens. A dozen or so people were seated outside the bar, the men drinking beer and the girls a mixture of the former and lemonade, reminding Sarah that the Spanish climate was a hot one and that she would be wise to protect her complexion from it. She did not need to be told how important it was not to let her skin burn—apart from the undoubted pain of doing so it could have a disastrous effect on any film shot out of sequence—she could hardly appear pale-skinned at the beginning of a scene, and then bright pink halfway through it.

      She ought to have bought herself a sunhat before leaving England, but there had been so much to do she had forgotten it. She did have plenty of sunscreen, thanks to Carew, but she would need a hat if she was not to suffer from sunstroke. It wasn’t even midday yet and the heat was almost suffocating. She glanced longingly at the pool, and then reminded herself that she was here to work, not play. She would go and watch the shooting, she decided on impulse. She had never seen Ben direct and it would be as well to discover what type of method he adopted—whether it was of the ‘stick’ or ‘carrot’ variety. It was a well known maxim in Hollywood circles that the better the director the more his cast loathed him. Suppressing a shiver, Sarah wound her way through the seemingly haphazard arrangement of trailers back to the administration centre.

      ‘You want to know where they’re filming? Sure,’ Lois agreed laconically. ‘Why not come with me? I’ve got to take some stuff out for the boss. We’ll take one of the buggies.’ She glanced at Sarah’s uncovered head. ‘Go ahead and tell me if I’m stepping out of line, but shouldn’t you be wearing a hat, your being a redhead an’ all?’

      ‘I would if I’d had the sense to buy one in London,’ Sarah agreed ruefully. ‘First thing tomorrow I must find someone to take me to the nearest town so that I can buy one. Will anyone be going in?’

      Lois shook her head regretfully. ‘I doubt it. There’s nothing in the can for sending off. We’ve been having problems with one of the cameras, but it’s okay now and the boss said only yesterday that he didn’t want anyone sneaking off to town—we’ve got too much lost time to catch up on. I expect he’ll make allowances for you, though,’ she told Sarah with a sideways grin. ‘He won’t want one of his leading ladies to go down with sunstroke—nor his wife to suffer from a headache!’ She laughed when she saw Sarah’s expression. ‘Honey, you’re going to have to toughen up some if you’re going to survive on location. You haven’t done much film work, I guess?’ she hazarded sympathetically. ‘Some of the guys don’t mince their words. You should have heard them this morning when they found out about you! Word is that you must be some lady to have been able to tie the boss down. I guess it’s not exactly news to you that the fact that he’s one very virile man hasn’t gone unnoticed in Tinsel Town.’

      Sarah smiled and said nothing. Of course she hadn’t expected Ben to live the life of a monk when they separated, so why this curious pang of something that could almost be called pain, slicing through her body, cutting through her defences and leaving her aching and vulnerable to the white-hot pangs of jealousy ripping through her?

      Lois led the way to a beach buggy parked not far away. ‘The film crew have commandeered most of the jeeps,’ she explained briefly, ‘but these little guys are far better than any car in the rough.’

      ‘What are they filming today?’ Sarah asked, trying to remember what she had seen on the schedule. Hadn’t it been some part of the Crusade; just before Richard ordered the execution of his Muslim hostages?

      When she questioned Lois, the other girl agreed. ‘Originally the boss hoped to have it in the can by last week, but with the camera out of action… There’s an old castle out here that we’re using as part of the set. At the moment it’s standing in for the walls of Acre.’

      Sarah knew from the script that in reprisal for refusing to release his Christian prisoners and to pay the ransom demanded of him, Richard had punished the Muslim leader Salah-ed-Din by putting to the sword the Muslim prisoners the Christian forces had taken when they captured Acre. For a Christian knight it was a barbaric act, especially when he had made his wife and sister witness it, but then Richard had been reputed to have a temper to match his red-gold hair, and Salah-ed-Din’s refusal to accede to his demands must have infuriated him, but Sarah knew that the script, while faithfully following actual events, had allowed a little fiction to creep in along with the death of one of the fictional characters, Richard’s lover, the knight Philip, who had left Richard on Cyprus to join the Knights Templar, a celibate fighting order, in order to do penance for their sin. This knight had been captured by a band of ferocious warriors known as ‘Assassins’, a title derived from the fact that they ate the hashish drug. From her own careful research, Sarah knew that it was quite true that the stronghold of the Knights Templar had been attacked by the Assassins and that many had been killed in the hills surrounding the citadel.

      She also knew that this scene now to be shot was the culmination of Richard’s relationship with his lover. Salah-ed-Din, unwilling to pay the ransom Richard demanded for the return of his prisoners, had instead offered to Richard the life of his lover. Richard had refused, and at the appointed time when Salah-ed-Din should have sent his ransom to the Christian camp, instead he had sent a dying man, his body tied to one of the creamy pale Arabian horses so greatly valued by the Moors, blood pouring from the wound in his side.

      Declining to accompany Lois when she went across to Ben, Sarah attached herself to a group of extras just off set. The ancient castle was decrepit enough to have an air of authenticity, its walls half crumbling into the dusty sand, the sun glittering hotly on the pale stone.

      A line of brightly striped pavilions had been erected at the base of the walls; the tents of the Christian army. Some distance away were another group of tents, this time representing those of the Muslim forces, and it was in a mock-up of one of these that the filming was taking place.