The Glass Town Game

  Papa felt instinctively that he was losing control over his parlor. “I’ll have none of this back-talking,” he grumbled from behind a formidable mask of gray beard, spectacles, and soft evening cap. “You are my daughters and you will do as you are told. The books can’t bear all four of you eating your way through Yorkshire and half of Scotland. And a country parson’s daughters will tempt few husbands of real substance. If only we’d had more boys!” His craggy, half-handsome face softened. “I have prayed for a better fate than this, poppets. And I shall keep praying, every night and day. God gives us only a few choices in this life, but He always looks after us, in His way. Now, no more long faces! Mind your Bees and it’ll all come out right enough. Do you remember your Bees?”

  The children looked round at one another. Papa never did the Bees. It was Mama’s little saying she’d made up all by herself for her babies. She would tell them sternly to repeat after her and then make marvelous buzzing noises against their cheeks like a whole hive of bumblebees until they couldn’t breathe for laughing. They kept saying it long after she was gone, when they couldn’t sleep for worry or sorrow or cold. But there were fewer bees now. They’d retired Maria and Lizzie’s parts. It seemed only right, after everything.

  “Buck up,” whispered Charlotte, weeping softly into her book.

  “Be brave,” whispered Emily, clutching her sister’s hand.

  This was where Maria would say: button your coat! And Lizzie would chime in: buckle your soul! But they didn’t, because they couldn’t.

  “Busy hands,” mumbled Branwell, pressing the sharp end of his pencil miserably into his thumb.

  “Make bright hearts,” finished Anne, as somber as the rest, even though she didn’t remember Mama at all, except for a fuzzy, buzzy idea of something soft and warm and sweet and safe, with big dark eyes and hair as long as forever.

  January came with an awful suddenness. All the holiday things had been put neatly away and the serious business of the year pressed hard against the house at the top of the hill. All the long week before, it had rained mercilessly, until the whole world seemed made of nothing but mud puddles and the only folk still living in it a few half-drowned field mice and badgers with stuffed-up noses. All week long, Charlotte and Emily had stared mournfully out the window of the room at the top of the stairs, hoping the whole world would just drown itself and leave them alone at the helm of their house, which they would steer and sail like Noah’s old yacht. They had gotten quite a ways into a very sober listing of Which Animals They Should Like to Save and Which to Leave Owing to Being Crawly or Otherwise Horrid. All week long, Branwell and Anne had talked of nothing but What We Shall Do When the Rain Stops. For surely the rain couldn’t last all the way up to the Beastliest Day. It just couldn’t. The world wouldn’t do that to them.

  But when, at last, the rain ran away down to London to bother the bankers and the barons instead, their time had run out.

  The Beastliest Day was upon them.

  TWO

  The Beastliest Day

  There was every possibility of taking a walk that day. But not the walk they wished to take. However fine the air outside, however brilliant the sun, however inviting the winding paths through the moors, the air and the sun and the paths weren’t theirs to explore. The only path they’d be allowed out of the garden and through the village would end in a lonely, dark town called Keighley and an even lonelier, darker carriage drawn by a lonely, dark horse. The carriage meant take Emily and Charlotte far away, to the Clergy Daughters’ School in Cowan Bridge, the loneliest, darkest place of all.

  The Beastliest Day had come.

  When Emily heard anyone say the word School, she always flinched, as though it were the name of a horrible beast with black fur and vicious sickly eyes that she and her sister had just barely escaped. As far as Emily was concerned, that’s just what it was. School always had a capital letter, just like all the most frightening things: God and the Devil and the King and the Empire. It was cold in the belly of the School-Beast. Cold and damp and there was never enough food. Children’s coughs and the sounds of whippings hung in the air like lanterns. The only lesson was: Shut your mouth, girl. And School didn’t like to let you leave its belly once it had you. Charlotte hadn’t always been the oldest. She’d been stuck in the middle with Emily until only last year. Then, Maria, who was so tall, and Lizzie, who was so clever, got so cold and so damp and so hungry that their insides burned up trying to keep them warm. Every time Emily looked out the window of the room at the top of the stairs, these were the things she saw. The raven, the sparrow hawk, and the owl in the great yew tree. Mama, Maria, and Elizabeth in the ground. But though School had already devoured two of them, Papa was determined that his daughters should be educated. So that they could go into service, he said, so that they could become governesses, and produce an income of their own. Besides, he assured them, the place was much reformed since they left it.

  Emily would rather have burned the whole village down than go back to that wicked, damp, cold, hungry School for one single instant. Of course, Papa would not dream of such a place for his only son. The parson instructed Branwell himself, in languages and history and figures, and they both got cake at teatime. Bran got all the good of the world as far as Emily could see it. Aunt Elizabeth insisted Little Anne was too young just yet, but in another year or two her time would come. Emily tried not to hate anything, but sometimes it crept up on her and pounced when she wasn’t looking. Sometimes she found herself watching Anne comb her long hair and hating her, because Anne was allowed to be eight and still at home learning from the books in their lovely familiar parlor and eating Tabitha’s puddings. Annie was eight already, but Emily had gone to Cowan Bridge when she was six. She’d braved the journey all alone, sitting in a gray carriage that bruised her as it clattered down a road that was barely a road. She’d disappeared into a gray classroom surrounded by gray girls, so frightened of the Headmaster and his punishments that she could feel the beating of her heart in her eyeballs. Maria and Lizzie had gone together, then Charlotte. They’d all had each other to cling to, like hens in a yard. Of course Charlotte hated School and wanted revenge upon it, but Emily felt certain her sister hadn’t quite the blackened terror of the place crunching on her heart the way she did. It wasn’t the same. Charlotte could survive anything. She’d outlast the moors out of sheer stubbornness.

  Emily had no idea that Charlotte dreamt every night of that dank, pale place, with only the rain coming through the roof for company, and little girls coughing like their lungs meant to get free once and for all to sing her to sleep.

  The Beastliest Day laughed in the face of January and dawned as brilliant and bright as June. The blue Yorkshire morning shone so crisp it seemed ready to snap in half at the slightest touch. Great scoops of vanilla sunshine melted on the moors. The shadows of great, mischievous clouds cut the shaggy hills into a checkerboard of yellow and purple grasses. Little flocks of straggler sparrows pecked hopefully for worms in kitchen gardens, sleepy rabbits washed their whiskers in dry, cozy barns, and Charlotte and Emily sat alone in the room at the top of the stairs and cried.

  Tabitha, to her credit, got a whole boiled egg, a wedge of bread, and a dab of her good plum jam into each of the four children, though no one felt much like eating. She and Aunt Elizabeth led them in one last whirlwind of household duties. On any other day, this would have been a pitched battle. Howls of injustice and declarations of the rights of children on one side, and on the other, promises, threats, bargains, appeals to heaven and all the angels. A double story tonight after supper if Charlotte would clear up the remains of breakfast. No sweets at all this week if Branwell didn’t take the scraps out to the chickens and bring in the eggs. If only Anne would sort the mending into baskets, she might leave off her embroidery tonight and have the whole evening to read as she liked. And certainly Emily’s soul would be saved forever by simply doing as she was told for once!

  But none of that happened. Not on t
he Beastliest Day. Charlotte set one last kettle to boil as though she loved nothing so well in all the world. Emily lovingly put aside the evening bread to rise. Anne sweetly stirred the batter for a luncheon cake her sisters wouldn’t even get to nibble. Branwell got the laundry water boiling without complaint. He even offered to cut potatoes for the mutton stew so Tabitha could rest her feet. But the old maidservant did not have it in her to rest so much as a toe. While everything bubbled (Aunt Elizabeth often said that bubbling was the main activity of a proper household between mealtimes: the bubbling of water, yeast, and one’s own good mind) Tabitha set out their bonnets and caps and gloves and extra-thick woolen stockings.

  All that remained was the room at the top of the stairs.

  It needed constant minding, that perfect little whitewashed country. And Charlotte made certain it always got it. Even if Emily, Anne, and Branwell had been born slovenly creatures with a stocking behind each ear, which they had not, really, Charlotte’s heart was a clean, snug, and well-ordered place. With the iron jaw of a great Admiral before a grim battle at sea, she strove to match the world to her heart. Besides, she was the oldest. It was down to her to make the rules—at least this one last time. Under Charlotte’s careful gaze, they put order to their upstairs universe. They straightened and swept and tidied and scrubbed off the ink stains on the floor. They stacked the newer editions of their beloved stolen magazines in alphabetical order. They said good-bye to the raven, the sparrow hawk, and the owl, and the birds seemed to nod soberly, as if they quite understood. Emily propped the threadbare dolls up where the two of them could see out into the churchyard and keep Mama, Maria, and Lizzie company. At last, they laid the wooden soldiers away neatly in their fine latched box.

  “Take . . . take Crashey with you,” urged Branwell, slipping his favorite of the brave lads into Charlotte’s suitcase. Charlotte felt her brother’s forehead to see if he had caught some strange fever that made him want to share. He waved her off. “I don’t expect I shall like playing Wellington and Bonaparte with only Anne to man the English side, anyway.”

  “I can man the English side!” cried Anne from the hallway, her pride quite, quite wounded. “I’ll shoot the French right out of your mouth, you’ll see!”

  They all fell quiet. They knew very well that without Charlotte to dream up new adventures for her Duke and Emily to insist upon playing Polar Exploration instead, Branwell and Anne would settle on some other game of their own. By the time they all saw one another again, they would hardly remember where they’d left the Duke of Wellington and the Emperor of France, or why they’d ever fought so fiercely. In the end, Charlotte knew better than to refuse a gift from her brother, as she might never get one again. She folded a thick brown skirt round Crashey to keep him safe in her suitcase. Emily took Bravey, and thus ended the Napoleonic Wars. Finally, they could not think of any more ways to put off the beastliest part of the Beastliest Day.

  “Perhaps it is all different now,” Emily whispered, though she didn’t believe it for a second. “What if someone came along while we weren’t looking and cast a spell over Cowan Bridge and now it’s always summer there, and there’s apples running down the rain spouts and fresh bread hanging on blue ribbons from every streetlamp and hot tea in the village well and a tiny dragon to keep every hearth lit all night long. And, and . . .” She faltered.

  “And pixies in the pub,” Charlotte jumped in, stroking her sister’s hair, just as Lizzie had done to her whenever she was upset. This was part of the Eldest Child’s Chores, as much as laundry or mending. Stroking Hair, Drying Tears, Never Showing How Afraid You Are, Disciplining the Naughty. Setting an Example. Charlotte wasn’t at all sure she was doing them right. She never thought she’d have to do them at all. “And wheels of cheese in the fields instead of hay, and cider in the river, and books swimming around in it like fish, and you and me with miniature maypoles to fish with, and, and . . .”

  Anne crept down the hall, listening to the older girls play the Game of And. Anne loved the Game of And almost as much as she loved toffee and Tabitha’s stories, and not only because she’d thought, for the longest time, that it was the Game of Anne. They all played it whenever they had to do something boring or unpleasant, like mixing lye soap for laundry. What if someone came along while we weren’t looking and swapped the lye for powerful goblin powders and the washing water for the Water of Life and . . . Then, one of them would catch on and pick it up and keep it going. . . . AND made all our dresses and Branwell’s Sunday suit come to life and take us away to the Kingdom of Clothes where they use thimbles for shillings and buttons for pounds . . . Then, usually, Branwell would barrel in and spoil it by running off with the game and steering it straight into a cliff. . . . and THEN all your dresses and my Sunday suit form up into an ace fighting battalion and convince the Millinery Ministers of the Kingdom of Clothes to declare WAR on the Kingdom of Soap and both kingdoms run RED with dye and blood!

  Anne crouched down like a cat on the stair just below the little white room where her sisters sat. She piped up:

  “. . . and you’ll have red and golden evening gowns for uniforms and phoenix feathers for pens and the Duke of Wellington will invade the Headmaster’s Office and beat the old man silly with a unicorn horn . . . ” She put that last one in specially. Anne thought Wellington was rather rubbish, but she liked imagining him walloping the Headmaster of that rotten school until he cried.

  “. . . and Maria and Lizzie will be there waiting, all well again and alive and only ever hiding all this while, like a pair of foxes in the fall,” finished Branwell softly from the bottom of the staircase. Anne smiled at him gratefully. Sometimes, sometimes Bran could manage not to ruin things. For a minute. Here and there.

  But then he wrecked it after all.

  “Papa says it’s time,” Branwell whispered.

  Papa and Aunt Elizabeth waited for them just beside the great, heavy, front door.

  “No tears, now,” their father said. He ran his hand over his mustache to keep his children from seeing the new worry lines he’d grown overnight. He looked his son over speculatively. “Eleven is old enough to taste a bit of manhood, eh? There’s a lad. No daughters of mine will wander the countryside unchaperoned. Branwell, my boy, I’m trusting you to get your sisters safely to Keighley and see them seated in the Cowan Bridge carriage before you go running about gawping at city things. Protect them as I would, my boy.”

  Branwell’s throat went tight. He straightened his shoulders under the responsibility, the authority, the power. He had better answer with something very grown-up. They were all looking at him expectantly.

  “I shall prove your trust in me well-placed, Father,” the boy said, and his voice didn’t crack, though it very much wanted to.

  “Take Annie along; you’ll want company on the return.” The youngest of them lit up as bright as butterflies. Bran rolled his eyes. Just when Papa had singled him out and given him a commission, he had to go and let everyone come along.

  Aunt Elizabeth drew two small coins out of the wrist of her glove.

  “You’ll have to buy supper for you and your sister once the girls have gone,” she said in her reedy, wobbly voice. “Here’s a shilling and sixpence; give it to the man at the Lion and Rooster and he’ll give you a pair of fish pies. You may have one hard toffee each at Mrs. Reed’s shop on the high road. Bring the change safely home, agreed?”

  Branwell took the money with a trembling hand. He felt unsteady on his feet, his head spinning, practically drunk. Finally, he had been given mastery over his sisters! He had the money; he had position! He was a man now, and the duty of a man was to care for soft, gentle girls and guide their soft, gentle minds. He would be their Lord, their general. But, Bran decided, a generous one. Mostly. His brain began working on wild plans at once. After the beastliest business was done, of course he would cry and feel terribly sorry, but he and Anne would still be in Keighley. And Keighley had a brand-new train station. And at a train station, you wi
ll almost always find trains. Lovely, filthy, smoking, booming, shrieking trains the size of dragons! The most incredible inventions ever devised! No one he knew had ever seen one. He would be the first. He and his sisters, of course. But mainly him. Bran’s heart started to beat hard and fast in his chest like an engine chugging down the tracks.

  Papa clapped his hand against his only son’s shoulder, much as his own father had done, when he was Branwell’s age. “Think you can do the day proudly, boy?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bran stoically.

  Aunt Elizabeth wept a great deal and kissed them all over. She hated this whole business. Even when they were safe at home, Elizabeth could hardly bear to leave the children alone, and rarely let them out of doors, lest they catch their death of damp. She watched them like little clocks, as though, if she turned her back even for a moment, one of them might wind down and stop just as her sister had, just as Maria and Lizzie and all the rest of the souls who were ever born into this vale of tears. But she must bear it now.

  Emily tugged at her father’s sleeve. Anne had already run out the door, holding up her arms to the sunshine they’d missed so. Charlotte called after her, dashing down the path.

  “Papa,” Emily whispered. But Papa was busy fussing with Branwell’s coat and blaming himself silently for everything that had ever gone wrong in their lives. Finally, the boy untangled himself from all that paternal attention and strode out into the day like a peacock.

  “Papa, listen,” she whispered harder, almost a hiss, almost a groan.

  “What is it, my dear?” the great, grown, gruff man said at last. He looked down into the lonely gray eyes of his daughter.

  “Don’t send Anne away to School,” Emily begged. “Please, Papa. You can teach her here like you teach Bran, can’t you?”