companionship and a cool draught of ale.
Something was scratching her face.
Deanie tried to open her eyes, but twigs and
sharp leaves made her close them again. She
tried to move her legs and arms. They were pinned in
a spiraling grip, one hand raised over her
head, the other straight back. Her feet did not
even touch the ground.
"Kit," she moaned, feeling herself slip. The
red velvet gown began to tear, slowly,
steadily, as she sank down.
Then she realized what was happening. She was
inside one of the bushes, the thick, impassable
walls of the Hampton Court maze surrounding
her. This was no young shrub but a plant decades
old. Centuries old.
"Deanie, where are you?" A man was calling
her. Kit?
"I'm over here! Thank God!" Squirming,
she managed to free a hand and waved it
frantically. Now she could see a little, and the shadow
of a man holding a sword approached.
With a thrust, he plunged it into the shrubbery.
"Kit! Help! Surrey's here and he's
trying to kill me!"
Someone laughed. A male voice.
Familiar.
It was not Kit.
It was Nathan Burns, her video
director. She had not seen the shadow of a
sword; it was his stupid riding crop.
The laughing stopped. "You are in the bushes.
How the hell did you get up there?"
His words sounded strange, hard edged and
unpleasant. Had he always spoken like that?"
"Please help me," she pleaded. "I am
looking for someone. Kit, the duke of
Hamilton."
"Very funny, Deanie. Your British accent
is as phony as a rubber crutch." Then he
became angry; he had meant to say funny as
a rubber crutch.
His face reddened. "First you blow the shoot, now
you're hanging in the center of a very valuable landmark.
Did you think we would cut you down? Damn it.
And you have a concert in two hours. Wembley is
sold out."
"Kit," she whispered. "Oh dear God."
"What the hell is that thing you're wearing? It's
all wrong! Completely inaccurate.
Goddamn, Deanie. Are you trying to screw up
my life?"
Much to Nathan Burns's surprise,
Deanie began to cry. He had never seen her so
much as whimper, never seen her behave the way those
other female singers did. Now she was sobbing,
crying her heart out.
"Do you have a broken bone?" He didn't know
what else to ask. Some Tudor Babes, the
extras from the video, had arrived,
along with the costume mistress and a cameraman,
all staring up at a splotch of red hanging a
dozen feet over their heads.
"Kit," she murmured. "He's gone. Dear
God, he didn't make it." They heard a
sharp intake of breath, and her cries became
hysterical.
"I think she wants her cat," hissed
Monica.
Nathan snapped his fingers, and a production
assistant, a clipboard tucked under his arm,
stepped to his side. Without looking at his underling,
his eyes still focused overhead, Nathan ticked
off his orders.
"I want a ladder and a gardener. A first aid
kit and a medic. Go into my case and get the
prescription of Valium. Call Wembley and
stall them."
Monica the video extra whispered something, and
Nathan nodded.
"Oh, and find a cat."
"A cat?"
The production assistant ran off, hoping he
could find his way through the maze.
The costume director, her eyes peering through
thick glasses, shook her head. "That is not the
gown she was wearing a few minutes ago," she
complained. "What's wrong? My work isn't good
enough for this video?"
"Thelma, the costume is the least of our
problems," Nathan ground out. "The costar of this
video is at this moment perched in a bush crying for
her kitty-cat. She seems to think this is the
road show of the Frances Farmer story. Bucky
Lee Denton has just been taken to the hospital
with an infection of his latest hair-transplant
operation. We have lost the light, and the weather
reports predict rain for the next ten days. This
whole video is about to self-destruct.
Frankly, Thelma, if I were you I would be rather
pleased that she is not wearing one of your creations."
The costume director thought about it for a few
moments, then shrugged.
A red-faced worker with a gray cap that made him
resemble an old train engineer entered the maze,
an aluminum expandable ladder over his shoulder.
anger. They should never have allowed these
hillbillies on the palace grounds! The
woman would have to be cut down. The maze
had survived two world wars, a civil war, and
countless bungling gardeners. But never--never--could it
survive a video shoot.
After almost an hour of strategic sawing, with
heated debates over which branch would cause the
least amount of damage to the plant, Deanie was
lowered to the ground. Her face and arms were
scratched, her gown shredded and caked with sap and
twigs and muddy leaves.
The worker had a unique expression on his
face.
"What's wrong, mate?" asked the other
gardener.
"That woman, she smells to high heaven. I
work with fertilizer and every organic slime known
to man." He shuddered. "She smells worse
than a three-month-old compost pile."
The costume director approached the dazed and
still sobbing country star. Her curiosity about the
clothing overcame the nausea from the stench.
"This gown," she said, breathing through her mouth.
"It's exquisite. That's real gold thread!
And it's hand-sewn! I've only seen the likes
in a museum!"
"Her hair is filthy, as if it hadn't been
washed in weeks," growled the makeup woman,
who had personally combed out Deanie's hair just that
morning. "And it's grown. It was just at her
shoulders this morning; now it's longer by several
inches."
Nathan crinkled his nose in distaste. "Get
her back to the Dorchester. She needs a good
scrub and a change of clothing."
Numbly, Deanie Bailey was led back
to her bus, her eyes unseeing, her hands
trembling.
The same vehicle she had traveled in a
lifetime ago.
Stanley cursed the entire American crew
of the video.
His car, several years old and several payments
late, was parked in the Hampton Court lot.
He watched the commotion with a sense of joy. He
had his paycheck in hand. The rest of the project
could go to hell i
n a handcart for all he cared.
Opening the door, he thought about the star of the
video. She was a bit of all right, that's for
sure. The only pleasant aspect of the work had
been meeting her, exchanging a few words
with a genuine American recording artist.
The keys dangled in the ignition. He reached
for them, when someone began to stagger across the parking
lot.
The lights illuminated the limping man. He
seemed to be another extra just like himself, but his
costume was all wrong. It was early Tudor, not
Elizabethan. No wonder he had been
sacked, poor sod.
Then Stanley noticed that the man's arm was
bleeding, and he seemed to be in some sort of
shock.
"Damn," Stanley spat. Then he stepped
out of his car. "Hey, man. Need a ride?"
The man spun about and faced him, and
Stanley's breath caught in his throat. Not
only was the guy massively built, but he had
a wild look in his eyes.
"Aye," the man said, still clutching his bleeding
shoulder.
Stanley swallowed, wondering if he had
made a mistake. But the man wore a
costume, filthy though it was. He was an
actor just like himself. As the man approached,
Stanley eyed his movements: graceful,
athletic. This was a physical actor, not one of
those introspective soliloquy types. Then
he realized who the man probably was.
Poor chap, he said to himself. He must be
from that troop out of Durham. They had folded and
left the actors without money, stranded them without
notice.
The guy got closer, and Stanley
unconsciously stood straighter. There was a
nobility about the stranger that made Stanley
want to behave.
He held the door open, and the man slid in,
as if used to having doors held for him, wincing in
pain. "We'll get that stitched up in a jiffy,"
Stanley said. To his own surprise, he heard
himself add, "Then you're welcome to stay in my
flat."
The stranger looked at Stanley. There was an
expression of overwhelming anguish in his eyes, more
than just the result of a physical injury. The
man did not speak but nodded once.
Together, they drove out of the parking lot, tires
crunching on the gravel.
Moments after they had left, Wilma Dean
Bailey boarded the large bus. She
seemed incapable of speaking, and in spite of being
forced to swallow two Valium, she was clearly
The bus headed for the Dorchester Hotel.
Aboard the bus, Nathan Burns made a
series of calls, the first of which cancelled that
evening's show at Wembley Arena. The second
cancelled his contract with the record company.
This would be the last music video of his career,
and he intended to get very, very drunk that night.
Chapter 20
Lorna Dune Bailey paced her
daughter's living room, her thin arms folded
over her chest as if warding off a chill. She
automatically reached for another cigarette,
fumbling through her large canvas purse, the green
plastic lighter clicking against the clasp. She
paused, glancing down at an ashtray already
filled with the crisscrossed remains of
cigarettes. Each had puckered lipstick marks
on the tips, wrinkled and red and in Lorna's
unique coral shade.
She shoved the nearly empty pack and plastic
lighter back into her purse, disgusted with herself. It
was a filthy habit, one she had never even
contemplated until Deanie returned from
England.
That's when all the trouble began.
Lorna began pacing again, her movements jerky
and distracted. Upstairs, her daughter was speaking
with the psychiatrist. Lorna had protested when
everyone said her daughter needed a shrink.
"All she needs is a rest," Lorna had
insisted when her daughter returned from England. But
Deanie had refused to rest. Instead she did
nothing but write and record her songs, all
by herself in her basement studio. Before England, she
used to love working with other musicians. Now all
she wanted was to be alone with herself and an old
guitar she'd paid way too much for at an
auction.
Finally her record label, worried about her
increasingly reclusive behavior, had insisted
she get professional help, as had her manager
and even a few newspaper columnists. In the
end Lorna agreed. Deanie had been hanging
about the house ever since, not really caring about anything
except her songs. Even the expensive
house calls from that lady psychiatrist didn't
seem to matter.
A door upstairs creaked open, and soon the
elegant Dr. Mathilda Howler descended the
carpeted staircase. Deanie had laughed when she
heard her psychiatrist's name. She had laughed
a lot in the past months, but it was never with
humor.
"How is she?" Lorna tried to keep her
voice low, yet a high pitch had crept in,
unwelcome and naked.
The psychiatrist shook her head, her
well-lacquered hair remaining firmly in
place. "Mrs. Bailey, your daughter is a
most unusual case. I see many music
industry professionals in my practice. There
are usually warning signs, or some form of substance
abuse before this sort of thing happens."
"Did you find out what set her off this time?"
Lorna's hands were twitching for a cigarette.
The doctor shrugged in confusion. "She says it
was a book, a history book."
"On old England?" Lorna closed her
eyes in resigned exhaustion. "She's become
obsessed with this duke from the court of Henry
VIII. She was real quiet-like, staring at all
these old paintings in a book, until she saw
something about this fellow named Hamilton. It had
two dates. One was 1516 with a question mark, as if
they weren't real sure that's when he was born; and the
other date was 1540. She tore through books,
spent a fortune buying out a store, looking for
different dates. But they all said either 1516 or
1517, and the last date is always 1540. Always
1540."
"I know I've asked you this before, Mrs.
Bailey, but is there any way she could have become
something of an expert on the Tudor monarchs?
She is extremely knowledgeable."
Lorna's laugh was a dry bark. "Deanie!
Ha, that's a joke! No, Dr. Howler.
Deanie was no scholar--ever."
The psychriatrist frowned, marring her
excellent makeup foundation for a brief moment.
"Deanie seems to be quite upset over a
picture book on the RAF."
"The what?"
&nbs
p; "The Royal Air Force, over in England.
It was a book from the Time-Life series about the
Battle of Britain during World War
II, the young pilots who fought the Luftwaffe,
you know."
Lorna nodded, not quite sure what the doctor was
talking about. "Well, what about the book? Did
she say?"
"It's the photograph of a young man, quite handsome
in fact. Black and white, of course. He's
reading a book and holding a chipped mug of tea.
His eyes are tired--extraordinary eyes, even
jacket, and according to the caption he had just returned
from a mission. Oh, and he was lost the following
week, in September of 1940."
"So?"
"This is the confusing part, Mrs. Bailey.
Your daughter insists he is the duke from Tudor
England. She swears up and down that they are the
same person. She's cut out the photograph and
put it in a frame."
"So she's crazy then," Lorna muttered
to herself. "I knew I should have changed her name.
Did you know that? She was named after the Natalie
Wood character from Splendor in the Grass. I
didn't know then she ends up in a looney bin."
The doctor cringed, and Lorna waved a hand.
"Sorry. You know what I mean."
"Your daughter is not insane, Mrs.
Bailey. She is fully aware of her
surroundings, of her career, of you."
Lorna nodded. "Yes. But she also seems so
distant, so remote. We were always real close,
but now I can't understand her at all."
"I understand," agreed Dr. Howler. "In some
respects, she has a clear vision of her
life. In others, well, she's simply
delusional, and we do hope we can reverse the
problem."
"When will she be all right?"
The doctor took a deep breath. "There is
no way to tell. A great deal depends on her
own will. She is not suicidal, nor will she harm
others. I believe she is suffering from a great
sense of loss."
The doctor then paused, as if trying
to formulate a way to phrase her next words.
"She is grieving, Mrs. Bailey, mourning
the loss of a man who never existed, or if he
did, she could never have possibly met. I
believe the seed of this delusion was planted in
England. She met a gentleman there who
related a tale of grand passion and a dead
pilot. His parents, as I understand, were deeply in
love. Deanie's mind, already fragile, created
her own grand passion, a perfect love that could
never be destroyed, simply because it was never real."
"No offense, Doctor, but you're not making a
heck of a lot of sense to me right now."
The psychiatrist folded her hands before speaking.
"From her background--her childhood and her
unstable relationships with men--I believe she
created this fantasy to make up for the lack of a
loving male figure."
"I don't understand."
"There were no good men in her life, Mrs.
Bailey." The doctor tried to be gentle.
"She never knew her father--through no fault of
yours, I hasten to add."
Still Lorna swallowed, remembering her
daughter as a beautiful, dark-haired child, sitting
at home the night of the daddy-daughter dinner dance
at school. She never complained, not then. The
doctor continued.
"As an adult, she has made a success of
her life in all areas except for one--namely,
romance. She is becoming well known, she is
physically beautiful and talented ... and very, very
lonely."
"What should we do?"
"I have discussed her case with some of my
colleagues--strictly in confidence, of course.
We believe she needs to go through the same
process as a widow."
Lorna was about to protest, but Dr. Howler
held up a firm hand to stop her. "Listen to me,
Mrs. Bailey. Your daughter needs to mourn.
She is a creative, intelligent woman who
has been able to invent a man who is completely
real to her. What she feels is a genuine
loss. There is an emptiness in her life that is
no less painful simply because the man who once
filled it never existed. Let her mourn and
experience her grief. Do not judge her, just
help her. Listen to what she says, be
sympathetic. Time will heal this."
"Good grief," Lorna spat. "My little
girl has lost a pretend boyfriend, and we're
supposed to feel sorry for her? I'll tell you
what: She's made too much money, that's what
her problem is. I was a single mother and I worked
sixteen hours a day at the truck stop
just to keep food on the table and ..." She
stopped, aware that she was shouting.
Dr. Howler gave Lorna an appraising,
professional look, narrowing her eyes as if
observing a specimen. Lorna grew quiet,
then said, "What about her career? She hasn't
expressed an interest in performing for over four
months. She's writing songs like crazy, the best
stuff she's ever done--at least that's what her
producer is saying. They're about to release her
album, and she needs to back it up with a major
tour. If she doesn't hurry, she'll never