3: Mint Tea & Sympathy

Several days later, the writer and the director were drinking mint tea from gilded glasses outside a tea-house near the hotel. It was late afternoon, when the day's heat began to give way to the desert evening's coolness. Still they were puzzling over the mysterious script-insertions.

"You know," said the director, "most computer hackers are spotty adolescent boys who don't get out of their rooms often enough."

"But it can't be an external hack," the writer answered. "And who out there really cares about all this? It's the 12C, for God's sake!"

"In the present international climate, quite a few people, I fear. It could be political."

"But why those two characters? - Well, with Guy - yes, he's a king, so perhaps… But Humphrey?"

"But what did you say the chroniclers said of him? Better suited to be a girl?"

"That's taking gay-bashing to new lows!"

"Is there anything else that someone might have taken exception to?"

The writer sighed deeply. "I don't know… I feel guilty, though - at some of the things I have done. The child, Baldwin V…"

"Dramatically, it's far more effective than him just getting measles or something, isn't it?"

"Yes, but leprosy's not very contagious! It gives a wrong impression - Hey, you don't think there are some militant lepers out there somewhere, who heard about this, and decided -?"

The director scratched his head. "I wonder if we should tackle this as if it were a real murder case.."

"In what respect?"

"If we can crack the motive. Who has something to gain by it - even in screentime? Or who dislikes the characters or actors involved. Though it could still be random - someone doing it just to show he can."

The writer sighed. "It's got so that I'm scared every time I switch on my laptop, in case someone else has been killed off! Suppose it's Balian next - or Sibylla? We'd have no movie!"

"Whoever is behind this is playing a game. If we think it through, crack the strategy behind it, we might even get ahead. Remember what you wrote for the King, about life as a chess game? Or look at them, over there!" The director gestured over to another table, where a couple - the woman in modern casual clothes, the man attired as a courtier - sat engrossed in a game of chess at their café table.

"Isn't that Rosa Figueiras from wardrobe?"

"Yes - I think she's taken a shine to one of the 'lords of Outremer'!"

"I guess that kind of thing happens on most movies."

The director nodded sagely. "At least those two look old enough to know what they're doing." Then the man turned his head, and the director saw his profile clearly. "Oh God… It's him!"

"Who?"

"Stroppy bloody re-enactor… Signor Alerami. He turned up with the set people from Cinecittà. Italian. When we were filming the siege, he tried to direct the whole damn scene himself!"

"And you didn't sack him?"

"No. He's too good - brilliant with a sword, looks the part. You'd think he'd worn mail from boyhood."

"I don't recall seeing him in the rushes."

"That's funny," said the director, "neither do I. But we tried to get him in shot in several scenes, I could have sworn it."

He saw Rosa lean forward, as if to place her hand over the man's upon the table, but he drew back from her. He strained to hear what they were saying, but they were speaking quietly in Catalan, or something that sounded like it...

To be continued: Rosa learns a little more about her knight…