Score!

‘And no ducking out of school tomorrow.’

‘Good night, little one,’ called Rannaldini, then, to irritate Étienne, ‘I’ll be up in a few minutes.’

In fact it was an hour, and Tristan again woke screaming from lobster-induced nightmare as another broad-shouldered black figure loomed over him.

‘It all ’appen four hundred years ago,’ said Rannaldini as he tucked the boy in. ‘You mustn’t ’ave bad dreams.’

Looking round the bleak attic room, seeing the video camera, the red leatherbound copy of Schiller’s Don Carlos and Hermione’s carnation in a tooth-mug on the bedside table, he picked up the silver frame, containing the only photograph of Tristan’s mother, Delphine, in the house.

‘So beautiful, a little like Madame Lauzerte, don’t you think?’

‘Will she sit for Papa?’ asked Tristan hopefully.

‘I doubt it. She is very pure lady — her nickname is Madame Vierge.’

‘Did they really burn people alive in those days?’

‘They do today with electric chairs and bombs. That’s how your brother, Laurent, died,’ said Rannaldini.

But the terror in Tristan’s eyes was in case his father walked in and heard the forbidden name. Such had been Étienne’s heartbreak, no allusion to Laurent was allowed in the house.

‘Why didn’t King Philip like Carlos?’ Tristan asked wistfully.

‘Fathers and sons.’ Rannaldini brushed back the boy’s hair. ‘Philip was jealous, Carlos had whole life ahead of him — to pull the girls.’

‘Can I work for you when I grow up?’ murmured Tristan.

‘One day we will make great film of Don Carlos together,’ promised Rannaldini.

1

Eighteen spectacularly successful years later, on a wet, windy, late-October morning, Sir Roberto Rannaldini gazed down on the valley of Paradise, often described as the jewel of the Cotswolds.

Rannaldini owned many splendid houses, but the brooding, secretive Paradise Abbey, which he had somewhat hubristically renamed Valhalla after the home of the gods in Teutonic mythology, was the one he loved most.

From his study on the first floor he could admire, albeit through mist and rain, his tennis courts, swimming-pool, hangar for jet and helicopter, lovingly-tended gardens and racehorses, grazing in fields sweeping down to his lake and the river Fleet, which ran along the bottom of the valley.

To his left, coiled up like a sleeping snake, was the famous Valhalla Maze. To the right, deep in the woods, lurked the watchtower, where he edited, composed and seduced. Beyond, disappearing into the mist, was the ravishing mill house, belonging to Hermione Harefield, his mistress for the last eighteen years.

But even as Rannaldini gloated over his valley, the dying fires of autumn seemed to symbolize his own decline. For the first time ever, his massive royalty cheque was down. Last Sunday, when he was conducting at the Appleton piano competition, his favoured candidate and latest conquest, the ravishing Natalia Philipovna, had been beaten into second place, despite intense lobbying, by Rannaldini’s detested stepson, Marcus Campbell-Black.

The same evening, Rannaldini learnt he had failed in his bid to take over the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, who had accompanied the finalists. As an ultimate humiliation at the party afterwards, the first horn had hit Rannaldini across the room — his fall had been broken only by the pudding trolley and the flaccid curves of a grisly crone from the Arts Council. The newspapers had had a field day. Rannaldini shuddered.

Like Philip II of Spain, who had exhausted himself and his nation’s coffers trying to hold his Habsburg Empire together, Rannaldini was also learning by bitter experience that his vast kingdom could be maintained only by the crippling expense of waging war on all fronts. He was currently engaged in law-suits with orchestras, unions, sacked musicians, mistresses and ex-wives.

Nineteen months ago, merely to spite his great enemy, the very rich and arrogant Rupert Campbell-Black, whom he believed had orchestrated the break-up of his third marriage, Rannaldini had made a catastrophic fourth marriage to Rupert’s neurotic ex-wife, Helen. In return for his habitual infidelity, Helen was now busy squandering his millions and, because Rannaldini was only five foot six, deliberately dwarfing him in public by wearing very high heels.

Rannaldini was sad that his two eldest children from earlier marriages, Wolfgang and Natasha, had left home after frightful family rows. But, saddest of all, he knew his music was suffering. Accusing Rannaldini of blandness in the Daily Telegraph last Monday, Norman Lebrecht had suggested he stopped settling scores and started studying them again. Rannaldini might outwardly be the greatest conductor in the world, with orchestras in New York, Berlin and Tokyo, but he was poor in spirit and horribly alone.