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“Ugh,” whispered Bran to Emily as he held his blade a little higher, trying to convince himself he’d gotten the best of the lot. He rolled his eyes. “They’re only Brown Bess muskets, anyway! What a lot of rubbish. I rather thought they’d have something better here than our army back home. We used those stuffy old things against the Americans!”
Emily stared at her brother. She tightened her grip on her leather mace. “I don’t care what kind of guns they are!” she hissed.
“Prime and load!” commanded Bravey as another volley of flame erupted against a stately tall bank and shivered it down to glass dust. The squad turned to face the narrow street leading into the plaza, ready to fire upon anyone who came through.
“Handle cartridge!” Bravey called. The men drew tight bronze-colored musket balls from their shoulder sashes, jammed them down the long barrels of their rifles, and poured their powder after. Charlotte and Anne scrambled to copy the soldiers. “About!”
Bran pouted. “Well, you ought to. Because I daresay they won’t do as well against this Boney as they did against ours. Not when he’s got a giant fire-breathing chicken! Oh, but I can’t wait to see! Do you want to bet on it, Em? I bet you Aunt Elizabeth’s shilling they don’t even dent his hat. Just let him come in reach of my blade, though!”
“Draw ramrods! Ram down cartridge!” Bravey bellowed.
In went a long, thin mallet, crushing the powder against the ball. Charlotte could not quite believe how long it was all taking to fire a single shot. Somehow, she had always imagined soldiers firing quickly and surely, like archers, one volley after the other. Napoleon seemed to reload his arms in no time at all, which seemed a horribly unfair advantage. Just then, Old Boney wheeled into the red plaza. The rooster’s claws scrabbled and careened on the glass. The Emperor of France pulled back his shoulder and fired his left gun-arm again. Gravey took it directly in the heart. He clutched his piney breast and keeled over like a King in a chess match, landing with a clatter on the glass cobblestones. Anne cried out and lurched toward the fallen soldier, but Charlotte held her back.
“Let me go! You said we couldn’t be hurt!” The china rooster screeched and vomited green flame before him. The heat of it turned their cheeks pink.
Charlotte trembled. She was right. She was sure she was right. But the warmth blowing against her face felt awfully real. “J . . . just . . . just to be safe, Annie. We can’t be fixed with glue if I’m wrong, after all.”
“They’ll all be killed before they get off one shot!” wept Emily, behind the pastry cart.
“Perhaps, if we wanted them to have better weapons, we should have imagined better weapons for them!” Bran snapped. Then, he felt a cold flush of guilt, for not dreaming up something spectacular for the lads. “Oh! If only we’d known they could come real, I’d have given them all cannons for eyeballs and swords for fingers!”
Bravey shouted his final commands. “Make ready! Present!” Anne and Charlotte hoped they’d done it all right and were not about to blow themselves up. They pulled up their barrels with the rest of the squad.
Branwell forgot his guilt in a moment. He was about to see so many guns go off all together, right in front of him! His eyes shone with a fierce delight. “Come on, Em, bet me! I bet they don’t even hit him! Brown Besses fire wild all the time, you know.”
“No! God, Bran, shut up!” Emily stomped her broth
er’s toes, but the black-eyed boy only laughed as Old Boney reared up on his monstrous rooster, both of them crowing to the heavens, firing his great arm-guns at the cafés until they burst into rainbow showers of glass.
“Bonjour, mes amis!” howled Napoleon Bonaparte. “This can all stop, you know, my darlings, mon chéries! All you have to do is bow down and say I LOVE NAPOLEON three times fast! And kiss my rooster on both cheeks; he likes that.”
“FIRE!” bellowed Captain Bravey, and almost before the words left his birch-bark lips, a deafening rattling boom of muskets firing shook the cobblestones below their feet.
Emily turned her eyes away. Branwell stared, goggle-eyed. Charlotte’s jaw dropped open as she pulled back the trigger. Anne started hiccuping, her nerves were jangled so!
“Is this really happening?” Anne cried as she wrapped both pointed fingers round the trigger to pull it hard enough to make any headway. “It can’t be! Is it?”
Emily dared a look. A storm of musket balls exploded out of the phalanx of wooden rifles, soaring toward the giant bone-man on his horrible mount. Then, in midair, the bullets sprouted wings. And feet. And fat rosy cheeks.
They had never been bullets at all. Anne giggled helplessly as her shot flew from her rifle, somersaulted out of a tight brown ball, and became a sturdy, furious, tiny woman with broad brown wings, a brown dress and apron, brown hair flying wild, brandishing brown rolling pins with menacing glee. The head bullet in the volley of Brown Besses threw her head back and gave a piercing war cry, which all the other bullets took up at once. It sounded like a hundred piccolos broken over a hundred knees. As they hurtled through the air, the Brown Besses grabbed at snatches of wind and cloud and threw them under their rolling pins. Push, squish, crush! The ladies rolled out fearsome icy storm clouds like piecrust, and when the dough rose, it rose into a violent snowstorm about three feet wide, aimed at the heart of Napoleon and his war rooster. The porcelain bird took a breath to roast them all, sparks flaring between the broken plates of his body. The storm hit just as the flame poured out of his teapot-spout beak. The blizzard froze the stream of fire into a long green icicle, which promptly fell to the ground and shattered. Old Boney’s rifle-arms seized up in the sudden cold, their flintlocks jamming, their powder turning to so much snow.
The wooden soldiers cheered and wept and embraced one another and clapped Charlotte and Anne’s shoulders.
“Cracking shots, really!” Sergeant Crashey gushed. “I won’t believe it’s your first time, chaps, not for a minute!”
“Couldn’t shoot straighter my own self,” Sergeant Major Rogue marveled.
“I daresay a field commission is in order!” Captain Bravey allowed with a little bow at the waist.
Charlotte blushed and smiled and stood a full inch higher. No grown man had ever approved of her so heartily before, and without once calling her sweetheart or dearest or girl. And now eleven of them were doing it all together. She felt dizzy. It was too much all at once; she’d spoil her dinner with all this praise. Anne was saluting everyone madly, over and over, laughing and clapping her hands together between salutes. But when she went to salute Leftenant Gravey, her laughter withered up in her throat like old grass.
There was no time for grief. The Brown Besses gave their own salute with their rolling pins, brushed off their skirts, and flew off into the sunshine, their work done. The lads began all over again, priming and loaded and drawing ramrods for another go.
Branwell watched and scowled. “They oughtn’t make such a fuss just because a couple of girls managed not to faint for five minutes at a go,” he grumbled. “When I am right here and ready for real, proper combat! A real man fights with a sword, you know. Any old girl can fire a rifle.”
“You’re so utterly full of rubbish you ought to be fed to the hogs, Bran,” Emily sniffed. “Joan of Arc fought with a sword, you know!”
“Doesn’t count, she’s French,” Branwell scoffed. His shoulders relaxed a little. The plaza had gone a bit quiet. Perhaps it was done. He peered up over the top of the pastry cart.
