Once Upon a Rose

by Judith O'Brien

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.

  The gardener arrived next, his face twitching in

  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

  on the edge of some sort of hysterical fit.

  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

  in black and white. He's still wearing his flight

  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