“I don’t think so, love,” Sergeant Crashey sighed.
“It’s my fault. I made him come. I danced with him and I bantered with him and I fluttered my stupid eyelashes and I talked him into all of this terrible mess. I shall never, ever forgive myself. I shall never flutter anything again. I killed the Duke of Wellington!”
Branwell’s guts twisted. She never was going to get up, was she? Charlotte didn’t really know how to let things go. She always blamed herself. It dawned on him that perhaps this was part of the Eldest Child’s Chores. Taking the blame. Being the one responsible. Being the one at fault. He was terrifically glad he wasn’t the eldest, for once. But his guts weren’t glad. His guts knew the truth.
“Don’t say that,” Emily said softly. “You didn’t.”
“It’s not your bullet in his chest, is it?” Anne suggested.
“I did,” Charlotte insisted. “As sure as Napoleon, I did. If I hadn’t convinced him to come to Verdopolis, he’d never have thought he could catch the Gondaliers off-guard. He’d never have tried the feint at Calabar Wood. It’s all my fault. If I . . . if I’d just . . . gone to School like a good girl . . .” Charlotte was sobbing in big, choking breaths now, and nobody thought it was only because of Wellington for a moment. “If I’d only protected them . . . if I’d only been . . . been good . . . good enough, nobody would ever have died.” She buried her face in her hands. “I should have died instead. If I’d gotten the fever first, they’d have gone home and we’d never have invented Glass Town or come here at all and none of it would have happened . . . ”
“Who’s they?” asked Leftenant Gravey. Crashey shook his head.
“I got lost a ways back, mate.” The Sergeant shrugged.
Emily and Anne fell to the ground beside Charlotte and hugged her tight.
“No, Charlotte, no,” they whispered over and over.
“Yes,” Charlotte wept. “Yes.”
Branwell’s guts couldn’t stand it any longer. He was supposed to protect them. Papa had said. He couldn’t let her go on like that, with all that pain. It was worse than a cannonball, and he hadn’t hesitated to throw himself in front of that, had he? His head didn’t want to do it. No one would ever know. He was safe. It was all done. But his guts were always much stronger than his head.
“No,” he said firmly. No one had been paying any attention to him, just like always. They all turned to look. They heard him now. They were paying attention now. “It’s my fault.”
Anne slapped her knee with one hand. “I knew it,” she whispered.
“I . . .” Oh god, thought Bran. They’ll hate me forever. But he didn’t stop. A middle child has chores too, and one of them was Fessing Up. “I told Old Boney you were coming. When and where.”
Emily’s eyes went wide. “Bran, why? We were coming to rescue you! We could have been killed!”
“I didn’t need you to rescue me! I was doing it myself! And I paid him, didn’t I? He promised to keep you safe. That we’d all come out alive. I paid him Aunt Elizabeth’s shilling and sixpence, only I told him it was a fortune, and he swore no one would have to die. And look! We are all alive and well! I rescued you, don’t you see? I didn’t do anything wrong! It’s not as though it was tremendously clear that Gondal was wicked and Glass Town was good, if you recall.” Crashey flushed an ugly color. “They deserved a fighting chance! It’s not sporting to let a million frogs lose a war in their beds. I didn’t know Wellington would snuff it. Of course I didn’t! I thought . . . I rather thought he couldn’t, because he didn’t. Just like you said, Charlotte. Wellington doesn’t die at Waterloo. Why should I have thought he’d die at Verdopolis? We never killed him at Verdopolis. And the Glass Towners had grog, after all. I never thought they’d run out. And I never thought they’d run out because you never told me it was all some lady’s weird hair juice, Detective Inspector Anne,” he snarled at her, and then wished he could take it back. He meant to shoulder the burden with nobility, but it was all coming out wrong. The way they were looking at him! Like he was a less than a worm in the dirt. He started to cry, and hated himself for it. “Oh, you always think I’m bad anyway. What’s the point of ever trying to be anything else? I’m just another soldier in your box, aren’t I? Look at Captain Branwell, always mucking it up! Doesn’t he look funny, marching about, thinking he matters?”
A cool voice interrupted, cutting through Bran’s words like a soft blue knife. “Captain? We do think rather highly of ourselves, don’t we? I don’t remember giving you a field commission, boy.”
For a moment, no one breathed.
The Duke of Wellington stood behind them, wrapped up in frosty blue and white and silver light. His officer’s uniform had a sad little tear in it, and his proud bicorne hat was gone. His thin brown hair moved softly in the twilight breeze. He carried a postman’s bag, slung over one shoulder. The Duke looked curiously at his iron body.
“Does my nose really crook like that?” he asked, and his voice sounded like the wind wuthering the moors.
Charlotte wiped her eyes and stuttered out: “But . . . but you didn’t die along a highway! I thought of that, I thought of ringing Em’s bell, but you didn’t die by a road and Mr. Bud and Mr. Tree said that was the rule.”
“All roads lead to Verdopolis,” the Duke said with a soft smile. “Didn’t you know? They’re your roads, after all.”
“Sir,” Branwell said quietly. He was saluting, and no one noticed, but he persevered.
“But no one called for the Ghost Office,” Emily said. “My bell shattered into a hundred pieces, so I know I didn’t ring for the post.”
“Did it hurt very badly?” Anne asked gently.
“Sir,” Branwell said again.
“I am here for myself alone, young lady,” Wellington answered, and bent forward in a small bow, for the dead can never outrank the living. “I wished to deliver a letter, and so I shall.”
The Duke of Wellington reached one glowing pale hand into his post-bag and drew out a note sealed in black wax with his own crest stamped on it. It was very like Wellington’s crest at home in England, save that all the lions were Copenhagen. He placed the note in Charlotte’s hand and closed her fingers over it.
“It’s not so bad,” he said kindly. “It is only a strange holiday that lasts forever.”
“Sir,” Branwell said again, his back straight and unmoving, every inch the soldier at attention.
Wellington turned toward Bran. He looked the boy up and down. Shame rattled around Branwell like old seeds.
“I am sorry, sir.”
“For what, pray tell?”
“For . . . er . . . acts of espionage. Please don’t make me go through it all again. Treason. And making myself a Captain even though it was only a bit of a joke. I should have said Sergeant.”
Crashey coughed.
The Duke said nothing for a long time. The sun set behind the green towers of the grand city, and its last beams shone through the ghost’s thin body. It is quite something to be stared at by a creature from beyond the grave, even if he is also a postman. Branwell would never forget it. He felt the weight of time and fate pressing on his bones from all sides.
“Leftenant Gravey, may I?” The Duke reached for the wooden man.
Gravey glanced around nervously. “Erm, certainly, sir. I owe you my life, after all. If you mean to have it back, that’s only fair.”
But Wellington was not after Gravey’s life. He was after his medals. The Duke lifted a handful of them off the Leftenant’s chest, which only left several hundred to spare. He turned to Anne and pinned a gold and blue ribboned one to her dress.
“For kindness in the face of cruelty, and high acts of trickery,” Wellington said gravely.
“For fearlessness in the face of the fearful, and thievery in the first degree,” he said, and pinned a silver and violet medal on Emily, next to the one she’d swiped from the Officer’s Mess so long ago. The Duke turned to Charlotte. He touched her cheek fondly with the bac
ks of his fingers. Her medal was crystal and green ribbon. Green for Verdopolis and glass for Glass Town.
“For valor in the face of all hope lost, and the most beautiful lies I have ever heard, Lady Bell,” he said with a sad smile.
“You’re very welcome,” Charlotte said shyly. She couldn’t help it. A last bit of banter slipped out. “For avenging you and winning your war.”
“And finally,” the Duke said sternly, turning to Branwell.
“My punishment,” the boy whispered.
But the Duke of Wellington fixed an iron medal with a black ribbon to his chest.
“For honesty when you needn’t have shown any, and for the capital crime of trying to save your family, even though it was a very poor plan, boy, good grief.”
Branwell could not speak. His throat was so thick and tight nothing could squeeze out.
“I forgive you, Captain Branwell. You did a wicked thing, and I daresay it won’t be the last, but you did try, and that’s something. I think I shall be relieved not to have to try anymore. It’s so very difficult, and life is so very full of it.”
The Duke of Wellington faded with the very last of the day’s light, and when he was gone, they could see a million stars hanging in the sky like the handwriting of the gods.
“It’s time, I should think,” said Emily. “George has gone ahead to make sure the tower is all clear of fighting and collapsed stairs and whatnot. Let’s go home.”
They found someone in the long, dark hallway outside the tapestry room. She was made all of white lace and orange blossoms, sitting on the ground with her face buried in her knees. Branwell could see a few good, unstained pages clutched in one fist and a blue-eyed doll he knew was called Albert in the other. She held on so tight they might have been made of gold. He flushed with guilt all over again.
“Victoria!” Anne cried. “What’s the matter?”
“He turned me out,” she said in a muffled voice. “Told me to clear off and he was so rude about it, so rude and so scrubby, and I did try to tell him I hadn’t anywhere to go, but he wouldn’t listen, he wasn’t nice at all like Anne or Miss Agnes or anyone, and he told me to go and find my father, but I don’t know what my father looks like, you see, so it’s impossible, it’s all impossible, and now I can’t go in my room and I can’t go out there, so I shall just stay here until the world ends, I expect.”
“I shall take you, Miss Vickie,” Crashey said cheerfully. “I know just what the old man has for a face. Why, he’s just in the mess tent stuffeeding himself with hardtack right now. I saw him myself. You stick by your Sergeant and it’ll all come out all rightfully.”
Victoria Alexandrina, Crown Princess of Glass Town and Gondal, peeked up from between her arms.
“Promise you won’t shout at me,” she begged, and Crashey did. The wooden soldier took the lace girl in his arms, and only Branwell heard her whisper into his oak shoulder: England. My England.
“What man?” Charlotte said. “Who told you to clear off?”
“The puppy man,” Victoria said, wiping her eyes. “He’s still in there.”
The crowd of them stuck their heads round the doorjamb to Victoria’s lovely little room. It was just as Branwell and Anne had left it—the roof torn off, table overturned, dolls strewn everywhere, tapestries torn and tattered by musket-fire on the walls.
And George Gordon, Lord Byron, crouching in the corner with a trowel and a pile of stones picked out of the rubble. His long hair was a nest of tangles; his sleek fur was all rumpled and smelled of fear. He slapped down his trowel onto a new slab and smoothed out a thick icing of mortar.
“What in the world are you doing, George?” Emily said coldly, even though it was plain to see. She wanted to hear him say it.
Byron startled at the sound of her voice and leapt up guiltily, knowing he couldn’t hide but trying valiantly anyway to disappear into the tapestry like a chameleon. He tossed the trowel ridiculously out what remained of a window.
“Nothing! Just . . . preparing everything for you, my love! It’s all . . . here . . . you see. Your door in the wall. Just like your charming brother and sister said. All splendid! All just perfectly splendid!”
Charlotte frowned at the little door behind the tapestry. Byron had nearly finished bricking it up. He’d done a dashingly good job, too. Who would have thought a Lord could lay stone like that? It blended into the wall perfectly. Another few minutes and they might never have found it.
“You little devil,” Leftenant Gravey marveled.
Emily’s face was hard and unyielding. But her insides felt like they were tumbling into empty space. “You were trying to keep me here,” she said. “You were trying to keep us from leaving.”
“I wasn’t! Well, only for a little while longer. And only because I love you! I shall wilt and perish without you!”
“You won’t.” Anne snorted.
“We’ve only just found each other! You cannot condemn me to live without you! Would you really go so soon, and leave me? Never to return, or if you did, only after an agony of waiting you should wish on no man! And how should I greet thee, after long years? With silence, and tears! My heart will break, yet brokenly live on!”
“Stop quoting yourself!” Emily snapped. “You were! You were going to trap me here in Glass Town all for yourself! You’d steal my father and my aunt and my home away! You would make this whole beautiful world into a cage to hold me fast.”
“No, Ellis—Emily! I would love you! I would be your husband!”
“I’m ten!”
“So?” shouted Lord Byron desperately. “I’m eleven! Emily, my darling, don’t be so dramatic. You would be a Baroness, and dance every night, and never want for a single thing! Is that so dreadful? You told me how much you feared that vile place called School, and that you didn’t want to be whatever a governess is, and how quickly fevers come in your world! Am I truly such a villain? Is it really a cage if it’s the size of the world?”
“Yes,” said Emily, Charlotte, and Anne together, rather more loudly than any of them expected.
Crashey, Gravey, Branwell, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte fell to Lord Byron’s brickwork, tearing it to pieces. The mortar was still soft, and it came away easily in their fingers. In a few moments, they were all panting and red-faced. The white silk curtain over the door was quite ruined, stained and torn. But the iron door beneath was still whole.
“You will come backturnagain, won’t you?” Sergeant Crashey said hopefully, eyeing the door and mopping his brow. “ ’Course you will. Over there’s boring. Here’s much better. Here there’s me.”
“If we can,” Charlotte said, and hugged him tight. “If Papa ever lets us out of his sight again. But Crash . . . will you be here if we do come? The age of grog is over. Josephine is gone and if you look a thousand years, you’ll never find her. It was . . . it was never right to begin with. You must know that.”
“You thought different when Wellington was laid out. Tip out the bottles and scrape out the bowls, you said.”
Charlotte looked away, for she knew he was right, and she knew that the trouble with grog was that everyone had such a very good reason to want it. You couldn’t blame a single soul for wanting it.
“Anything that requires a cage isn’t right,” she said in a low voice, with a pointed look at George from beneath her lashes.
“Death isn’t right,” Crashey said resentfully.
“No, but at least it belongs to everyone equally,” Emily answered him, and as there was no answer to that, everyone fell quiet. Charlotte glanced at her clever, clever Anne with her hand thrust in her pocket. They said nothing, which said everything.
Branwell stood up and brushed off his hands on his trousers. He knew it was time. They were stalling now. All of them saluted Leftenant Gravey. “Did I do well, sir? In the final tally. Mostly well?”
“Mostly well, lad,” said the wooden soldier. “Mostly well indeed.”
Victoria bared her small teeth at Bran.
“Er. Bit of a spot there with the Lady’s stationary, I gather?”
A small leather cat padded into the room. He crouched low on copper paws and looked miserably up at everyone, his tail dragging on the floor. Emily and Charlotte cried out in glee.
“Please do not be angry,” Bestminster said. “We only did what we thought you wanted! Please don’t leave me! I can’t face the Left Luggage Office! We’ve been with you always, and if you put your hairbrushes in someone else, I could die of shame.”
Emily held out her arms and the kitten leapt into them. Bestminster Tabby, the Noble Valise, never had, nor ever would, receive as many kisses from as many people as he did just then. In the flurry of affection, the suitcase could hardly tell who was who. He simply rolled about in it, wriggling from one embrace to the next.
“You weren’t to know!”
“It’s war, man!”
“I told you to; if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”
“I could never be angry at you, Bestminster.”
“Fine job. Just fine. There’s a medal in it for you. You can have mine!”
Bestminster Tabby took all his share of love and more. Then, he hopped down off Charlotte’s shoulder, gave a wriggle and a quiver and a tremble, split in half, swelled up, and became two ordinary (though not very ordinary) suitcases once more.
Emily looked at the door. She reached out her hand to lift the ruined curtain, but could not, quite. George had been right about one thing. School was on the other side of the door. School, and the rest of everything. She turned to Lord Byron. He stared into her eyes with a warm brown gaze.
“In silence we met, in silence I grieve,” he began.
Emily laughed. “I told you to stop that. I am sorry, George. I don’t want to be stuck. Even here. Even anywhere. A tangled-up honeysuckle. I want to be half-savage and hardy and free. For a little while, anyway. I shall consider forgiving you, even though that was a dreadful thing you did. Perhaps. Maybe you can’t help being a little dreadful. I know Branwell can’t. Thank you, anyway, for the horse.”