Charlotte ran her hands through the sea grass. She was afraid. She had never imagined herself in a real battle. She had never imagined herself a soldier. And she wasn’t really, she supposed. But Branwell and Anne needed her. Someone always needed her. She looked back toward the ships as the last of the cargo was being carried off Bestminster. Muskets and limeskin men and their dear wooden soldiers and battlefield rations and Josephine’s huge cage. Why? She thought again. Why is she here?
And then she knew. Her mind leapt over itself and landed on the truth. Her stomach turned. She squeezed Em’s hand and ran up the beach, searching for Crashey’s bandaged head in the crowd. He was sitting on a crate of boots.
“You lied,” Charlotte said, out of breath.
“I didn’t!” Crashey protested. “Wait, what are we talkscussing about, exactly?”
“It’s her.”
“Captain Charlie, you need to retreat, regroup, and come at my position again.”
“Grog. It’s Josephine.”
“Oh,” Crashey sighed. “That.”
“Yes, that. That’s why you had to bring her with us on a secret mission even though it’s idiotic to bring a prize hostage to a sneak attack. That’s why you’re unloading her onto the field of battle. You must have been low on supplies. You lied. You said it was berries and flowers and fluids from Gondal.”
“Well, strictxactly speaking, it is flowers from Gondal. And there are berries and fluids and suchat in there! Mostly for color and smell, though . . . but you’re rightorrect, it’s mainly her. Her hair. We don’t hurt her for it or nothing! We send raiding parties into Gondal so they’ll think there’s all these recipegridents, like porridge. So they won’t guess. They’d throw everything they have at us if they knew it was just a lock of Josephine’s curls. When we captured her, a lot of boys got themselves shot on and Leftenant Gravey departed his mortal woes for the first time sort of . . . on topflop of her. He fell off a rampart onto her head. Not a very graceful way to go. But he got right back up again. Her hair got all in his wounds when she was trying to shove him off. Our Josey’s all roses, you see. Leftenant Gravey, he . . . rose.” Crashey cleared his throat. Charlotte’s silence sat sorely on him. “We had to send all the stock we had with the main army to Calabar. Else it wouldn’t look real. So we had to bring the source.”
“You have to give her back! Or at least stop cutting her hair off.”
“That’s above my pay-grade, my love. I’d say talk to Wellington, but he won’t listen. She’s our last defense against Gondal.”
“She’s a person. She’s not a hen to lay eggs for us. She’s not a bird! She doesn’t deserve to live in a cage.”
Crashey stood up. He kissed Charlotte’s forehead. “Who does? But not for all the girls in Gondal would I risk you falling off a rampart with no roses to catch you.” The Sergeant sniffed deeply and straightened his back. “If there are other worlds like we were saying in the night, I hope we’re friends in all of them.”
They rode to the gates of Verdopolis as dawn came full and golden into the world. It was quiet. All the houses lay dark. The river coursed silently by beneath the Great Wall of China. The Colosseum cast deep shadows over the empty streets.
Charlotte rode behind Wellington on Copenhagen, Emily with Lord Byron on a horse all of war shields, small and great. They both wore new armor, gorgeous and elaborate as any medieval knight.
“We will be your armor, now that we’re done being a ship,” Bestminster had said. “A good suitcase guards its traveler against any misfortune. Please do not get shot too much.”
The army flowed around them, a soundless sea of green.
The portcullis of the Bastille was raised when they arrived. The courtyard within stood empty, unguarded, unmanned.
“It worked,” breathed Wellington. “They’re on their way to Bravey’s Inn. The city is ours. We can take back our home without a drop of blood spilt!”
“But it’s not your home,” Charlotte whispered.
“It’s our home!” Emily gasped. “That’s our house! That’s the Parsonage! Well, if the Parsonage had grown up terribly fancy and tall. It’s not a Bastille in the least! It’s just . . . it’s just home.”
Wellington ignored her. “Who knows, perhaps we’ll have a bit of luck and Old Boney’s snoozing away himself in there while his men go off to fight nothing.”
They occupied the courtyard quickly. The infantrymen relaxed at last, joking and breaking open treats from home on the flagstones. Even Josephine ate a bit of hardtack. They never noticed the oiled portcullis sliding closed behind them.
“Nothing?” came a familiar voice. It echoed round the courtyards, a boney voice with no meat on it. “My men will fight nothing, and they will crush it! You are nothing, my dear Wellington, and so are the rest of you! Toy soldiers for babies to gnaw on! Allez! Allez!”
Out of every crevice in the Parsonage, every cranny in their lovely old home, the Gondaliers came. They leapt down from the walls and poured out of the windows. They swarmed from the roofs and the cellar grates. Bonaparte himself, all bones and rifles and chicken, soared down from a turret and landed squarely in front of Wellington on Marengo’s back. The rooster crowed green fire. Copenhagen roared blue foam. Charlotte and Emily screamed. Crashey and Gravey screamed. Everyone screamed. The battle had begun.
Charlotte leapt off Copenhagen and ran for the gate that lead into the depths of the castle. Emily darted after her. They kept their heads low, took cover behind barrels and racks and infantry lines. Branwell and Anne. Branwell and Anne. That was all that mattered. Get to them. Get to them fast. Chaos exploded around them, a smear of color and noise. Frogs bellowing, limeys shouting, flashes of musket fire and splintering barricades and bayonets charging. Their boys tried to get into formation in the hurricane of it all.
Then, lightning forked across the clear, cloudless morning. Blue lightning, tinged in green foam. Twelve knights of Gondal knocked down the gates of the Parsonage in one blow. Charlotte and Emily stumbled out of the way. The knights sprinted toward the fight, laughing, cheering each other on, firing electricity from their fingers, spitting acid from their mouths like tobacco juice. One of them had an eyepatch. One had a waistcoat made of newspaper. One had skin of ash, with fire beneath, and a sword that flashed in the sun.
“Oh, Rogue,” whispered Emily unhappily. “Oh, Douro. And the Magazine Man.”
Had they volunteered? Had they been forced? Emily didn’t suppose she’d ever know. She wasn’t even sure whether or not it mattered. They were coming for her, and if they remembered that she’d once been kind to each of them, they didn’t show it.
Glass Town men were falling all around them. Medics bolted from body to body, pouring out grog and moving on to the next. But the lightning-knights kept coming. Sickly green lightning struck over and over again. Charlotte stared over the horrible scene. Frogs and limeskin troops and men made of lace and fireplace pokers and felt hats and soap cakes lay moaning. Her mind wanted to run away, but her heart would not. A calm, amused, ridiculous voice rose up inside her. They’re all made of our things. Two nations made of everything we’ve got in our house. Bookends and powder and book bindings and books and bones and pottery and armor out of our magazines and limes out of the market. And they’re all our age because we played their parts in every game. Wait till I tell Dr. Home.
They were pinned down behind a stone pillar. An armored frog keeled over and clattered down beside them. Their way to the gates was blocked.
“All right,” Emily shouted over the din. “I’m ready to go home now. School isn’t so terrible.” She clung to her sister. She could feel something in her pocket as she leaned against Charlotte. Something heavy and round. “Charlotte! You go after Bran and Anne! I’ve had a thought! Oh, where is George? I want his horse!” She laughed madly, remembering Richard’s ghost posting her letter so mournfully. “ ‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ ”
As though he’d heard them, Lord Byron’s ho
rse galloped across the battlefield. His furry hair flew in the wind and he looked for all the world like an illustration of a hero in a fairy book. Emily smiled, despite everything. Byron skidded to a halt beside their pillar.
“Get off!” she yelled over the clash and clang of it all.
“Excuse you,” Lord Byron huffed. “She’s my horse, you know.”
“I’ll bring her right back, I promise.”
“Mount up behind me; I’ll protect you,” Byron said, wheeling the mare around.
“It’s my plan! I’m not your passenger!”
“Ellis . . . Emily . . . if something were to happen . . .”
Emily rolled her eyes. “If something happens and Gravey’s guzzled all the grog, I’ll haunt you, I promise. Now let me up!”
Lord Byron dismounted and laced his fingers together to give Emily a boost. He meant to hop up after her before she could protest, but she was gone before he got one leg up. He watched the pair of them go with tears in his eyes.
Emily’s heart hammered wildly. Branwell and Anne, she thought. Branwell and Anne. Hardy and half-savage and free. That’s me. She slapped the shield-covered flank of the horse and bolted into the courtyard, galloping at full speed toward the portcullis their side had managed to get open at last.
“Come on, you big dumb green bludgers!” she screamed as loud as she could. “Come on, Rogue, you traitor! Come on, Brunty, you miserable waste of pages! Come after me! I’m easy pickings!”
Emily and Lord Byron’s horse burst out into Verdopolis. The bat-tree men thundered after her. Brunty’s eyes foamed green with contempt. Rogue’s good eye wept. The Marquis of Douro’s handsome dark hair sizzled with acid and fire.
And Emily pulled her postal bell out of her breastplate.
She rang it madly as she rode, rang it and rang it and rang it until it shattered in her hand. She galloped down the narrow Verdopolis roads, past the Tower of All Nations, past the Hall of the Fountain, past the Alhambra and the Colosseum and the Grand Inn of the Genii. I did get to see them! I did get to look at it all! The bat-tree men fired lightning at her back, and it was only luck, luck and the twists and turns of the streets they’d lovingly drawn, that kept her whole. “Where are you?” She looked up into the sky. “Cathy, Richard, everyone, where are you?”
The ghosts came flooding down the alley behind her in a blue and silver sigh. They flowed over the acid-knights like wave after wave of a sparkling sea. Over Brunty and Rogue and the other frogs and men with their Voltaic chests. Frost trailed behind their bare, mournful feet. They reached out their pale arms to catch any letters the Gondaliers might have to send, and where their fingers touched, ice blossomed. The twelve electric soldiers froze in place on the cobblestone road, mid-war-cry, mid-confusion, mid-bolt-and-glob.
Emily laughed and laughed. Not because it was funny, for it wasn’t, not at all. But because it had worked. It had worked and she was alive. She reached into her breeches and pulled out the ruby medal she’d swiped from the Glass Town Train. FOR LAUGHTER IN THE FACE OF CERTAIN DEATH. Emily stuck it onto her chest, where it glowed redly. She’d earned it now. She jogged up to the frozen knights and stood before them, out of breath. The bat-trees jutted out of them, those strange, horrid discs and wires. She pulled her toffee hammer out of the pocket of her officer’s trousers, the one that said EMILY on the handle.
One by one, she struck the Voltaic Pyles, and one by one, they shattered into a million shards like snowflakes.
Far above the battle, Victoria huddled against the tapestries as muskets and cannon and lightning thundered outside. She dared not look out—windows could break so easily. The walls of the Bastille, which was the Parsonage, shook and coughed dust.
“It’s easy enough to sneak out of your own house,” came a boy’s voice bouncing up the hallway. “Now we know where we are, we’ll do what we always do and creep out the back through the cellar pantry.”
The pair of them burst into Victoria’s room. The little Princess screamed. People dashing in uninvited sounded much the same as cannon fire to her ears, and she was equally afraid of both. She hid her head with her arms until Anne pried them open and kissed her cheeks and told her it was decided, they meant to escape, it was all planned. Victoria had no idea what she meant, but in the end, she was glad her friend had come back for her. Other people weren’t so frightening, as long as they were Anne.
Branwell took cover behind the overturned table. It had toppled during a barrage and spilled her dolls out all over the floor. He peeked over the top of it, trying to see down into the battle below. He beckoned to them, and the girls scurried over between musket volleys and flashes of horrid purple-green lightning.
“You really are, you know,” Anne said, once they had the table between them and the worst of it. She squeezed Victoria’s hand.
“Am what? Oh, I am sorry, Anne, I wasn’t listening, what a nasty way to behave toward you, I am just the worst girl, the very worst, the worstest among the worst, I shan’t forgive myself, I shan’t!”
Anne stroked her hair fondly. “I said you’re the Crown Princess. You’re going to be Queen, just like you wanted. Queen of Glass Town. If we survive. If Charlotte and Em pull it off.”
Victoria blushed. “That’s just silly. I’m a scrubby old starling with a head full of dolls.”
Anne shook her head. “I’d bet your father’s out there fighting right now. He’ll come and collect you and you’ll jump into his arms and you’ll always have enough to eat forever after.”
“But I don’t want to be a real Queen,” Victoria insisted. “If anyone’s to be Queen after the battle it ought to be Miss Agnes. She always knows the right sort of a thing for anyone. I only want to be Queen of England.”
“England’s not real,” Bran said distractedly. Anne raised her eyebrow at him. “Well . . . you know what I mean.”
“It’s real to me,” Victoria snapped back. “It’s so awfully real. More real than this place.”
Bran felt sorry for her, suddenly. She was just a scared little girl, after all. He knew all about scared girls. And scared boys, though it was important for a boy not to admit he was scared. But Bran felt sorrier for himself. It didn’t sound like it was going terribly well down there. What if Napoleon didn’t keep his promise? What if a stray cannon or bat-tree got Charlotte in the back and he had to live with that forever and ever? No, he told himself. No, you paid your money and you’ll get your goods. That’s how the world of grown-up men works. And in the world of grown-up men, you were supposed to look after scared girls.
“If you really don’t want to be Queen of Glass Town,” he said quietly, “you could come with us. Home. To Haworth. It’s not like Boney said, really. It’s very steep and nice.”
Anne sighed. “We don’t even know how to get back, Bran. Don’t make promises. We’ve got no lemons and no idea where that door is. Just sit still and wait.”
Some catapult or cannon struck the base of the tower. Dust shook down from the rafters.
“I don’t want to sit still, Anne. I don’t want to wait. I want to be down there; I want to be in the thick of it! This is intolerable! He ought to have made me a soldier. I daresay I earned it.”
Anne gave Branwell a strange look. He looked away quickly. She could never know what he’d done. There could be no consequences if no one ever knew. Unless it all came out splashingly; then he’d tell them himself so they could praise him.
Victoria’s eyes gleamed. She grinned at them. The tiny Queen of Englands real and unreal wiggled out from under the huddle and attacked the nearest mountain of dolls and toys. She threw them savagely aside, over her shoulder, sending them skidding across the floor.
Bran and Anne scrambled to stop her. “What are you doing? What’s wrong with you?”
“Rather a lot!” Victoria laughed. “You might have noticed!”
She pulled a last lot of dolls away—Albert was among them, staring up at her with adoring blue eyes. The tapestry lay bare. Victoria lifted it
up like a magician lifting the curtain on a trick.
There was a door in the wall. An iron door with a sheet of white silk over it. Just like Bonaparte had said.
A cannonball ripped through the roof of the tower. Sky poured in.
“Come with us!” Anne begged Victoria. “I don’t think you’re scrubby, I think you’re wonderful, just wonderful, and you can always be my friend and we’ll never ever be alone again! You can be my real sister forever, and we’ll play until we’re old and gray.”
Voices echoed on the staircase outside. Voices they didn’t know. Hurry, Charlotte! Anne prayed. Hurry, Em!
“All . . . all right,” Victoria said uncertainly. “Just . . . just let me get my things. I can’t go without Albert. And I must say good-bye to Miss Agnes.”
“There’s no time for that,” shouted Bran. Wind whipped down off the mountains into the shattered tower. His heart was beating so fast and hard! Never mind Charlotte and Emily, they could die, they could really die here. He could die, and the battle wasn’t half done yet. It was too much, suddenly. He didn’t want to be down there in the thick of it at all. He wanted to be home in his own bed with a cup of Tabitha’s beef broth in him and the covers pulled up over his head. “We should go now,” he yelled, panicked. “We’ll come back for Charlotte and Em. Of course we will! Once we know where the door opens, we’ll be able to come back any time we like! But right now we’re about to be blown apart and we haven’t got time for Albert!”
Victoria blinked slowly. “Yes, of course, you see how silly I am, really, I just can’t think with all the noise.” She gathered up the mound of papers from her desk and clutched them to her chest, still reaching for more sheets.
“Leave it!” Bran snapped. A volley of muskets banged through the air outside. One of the bullets lodged in the wall behind them.
“Are you mad?” Victoria repeated his question. “I shall never leave England! I could never!”
“It’s just a stupid story!” Branwell yelled. “It’s not even any good! No one dying and everyone loving each other—it’s dreck! Just leave it! You can make another one!”