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“Where’s Bran?” Anne asked.
“Oh, he’ll be along,” Emily said with confidence. She pretended to check an invisible pocket watch. “Right about . . . just precisely . . . now.”
“Make ready!” Napoleon and Wellington screamed at the same instant, and Charlotte did wonder if they got tired of screaming every little thing, because her ears were certainly tired of it.
The sisters looked back over the little scarlet alley where Emily had come to see Branwell frowning furiously and stomping toward them, just as they knew he would be. It was wonderfully comforting to know a person so well.
“Oh, hurry up, Mr. Snail!” Anne called to him. Bran glared back at her—but he picked up his pace, trying to jog while hanging on to the massive sword. He needed both hands to carry the beast. It wasn’t easy.
“FIRE!” howled Napoleon and Wellington together.
The air in Port Ruby detonated into a mist of red glass and lime skins and frog-tongues and gun smoke. The earth itself shook. Anne fell against Emily, clawing at her throbbing ears. Charlotte stepped instinctively in front of them, even though her rifle wasn’t half done with all that ridiculous loading and all she could have done was slap a frog with it. Emily stopped breathing. She shut her eyes. If she shut her eyes, she couldn’t see it, and if she couldn’t see it it, it wouldn’t have happened.
Branwell stood stock still between the pastry cart and the bakery it belonged to. He didn’t cry out. He didn’t drop his sword. He looked down at his chest and said, very quietly: “Buck up.” Blood tumbled out of his heart where the toadstone had struck him. The stain looked so beautiful, so perfect, like a rose growing out of him. Bran thought he would have to try drawing that someday. A lovely feeling spread over him. For once, he felt that he belonged just where he was, for his blood was as red as the glass cobblestones, as red as the claret river, as red as the roofs and gables and windows, as red as anything in Port Ruby could ever hope to be. But no one heard him, so no one could tell him to be brave.
Branwell collapsed into a heap of black woolen boy on the crimson ground, quite, quite dead.
SEVEN
Such a Little Thing
What’s the matter with you?” snarled Sergeant Major Rogue.
Emily, Anne, and Charlotte stood frozen. They stared at their brother’s body as though it was a puzzle they could work out, and once they had it worked out, he would get up and laugh and pinch them and everything would be all right again.
“You said!” Anne burst out sobbing. “You said we couldn’t be hurt! You said! You promised!”
Horror seeped up from Charlotte’s stomach. A black, wet horror that would never leave her. She could see Bran’s pale face lying against the glass road and it was Maria’s face. It was Lizzie’s face. It was her mother’s face. “I was wrong,” she whispered.
“No, no, you’re never ever wrong, you always say you’re never wrong and if you’re never wrong you couldn’t be wrong about being wrong and you can’t be wrong now!” Anne lurched toward Bran’s body. Crashey caught her roughly and pushed her back against the bakery wall as the volley went on and on and on. Frogs bellowed and lime-boys beat their drums.
“What d’ya think you’re doing, young sir?” snapped the Sergeant.
“Are you quite mad?” hissed Captain Bravey.
Tears ran down Emily’s face, one after the other, helplessly, uselessly. There’s three of us now, some awful grown-up, unfeeling voice said in her mind. Only three.
“I said he was rubbish,” she said softly. “That was the last thing he heard in this world. You really ought never to call a person rubbish, and I did it all the time. Oh, Bran, Bran, I’m so sorry. I’m rubbish, I am, not you at all.”
“You see this?” stormed Sergeant Major Rogue, pointing at the walls of the bakery. “This is shelter, you idiots! You’re supposed to stay put when you hear the call to make ready, not run out into the ruddy street like a lost ball!”
“Bloody breathers,” muttered the others, whose names they did not yet know, but could guess. “Haven’t got the sense the Genii gave squirrels.”
“Excuse me,” Emily cried suddenly, turning on the soldiers. “We followed you! This is your fault! We’re only a parson’s children! You’re soldiers; you’re meant to keep people safe! That’s your entire job!”
No, thought Charlotte. It was my job. My entire job. And I was wrong. And everything is over. She thought she would certainly be sick.
“We are not mad,” Emily kept on, shaking her finger directly in the Captain’s wooden face. “It’s very rude of you to say that to us when we’ve only just finished being shot at and our brother is dead! There is nothing the matter with any of the four of us, sir, and if we knew the rules, we’d have made a run for it at the proper time, but we didn’t, and he . . . he . . . couldn’t, so here we ‘bloody’ are, with cake stuck in our ears and frogs everywhere and Branwell is gone! If anything around here is mad, that is!”
“Em! Don’t let’s get into the habit of swearing just because we’re not at home,” scolded Charlotte automatically, and a scolding from Charlotte, however mild her words, would wilt the heart of a wild rhinoceros and cause him to devote the rest of his life to keeping his horns sharp and his back straight. But her voice failed on the word home. What right had she to scold when she’d failed poor Branwell so? She wasn’t ever the oldest to begin with. That was why it had all happened. Maria would have saved him. She was an imposter, and now everyone knew it. She had no ri
ght to tell anyone what to do anymore.
“What’s Papa going to say?” Anne whispered.
“I don’t know why you’re making such a grand fuss over it,” mumbled Sergeant Major Rogue sheepishly.
“Yes, you’re being very dramatic,” Crashey said. He rubbed his forehead under his helmet. “Very over-the-topsified.”
