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Charlotte wiped her eyes, careful not to disturb her golden paint. Emily shook his hand vigorously, hardly able to stop herself, so the handshake went on, really, far too long. “What are you doing here, Crashey? I thought Wildfell was only for the richies! Is Cap’n Bravey with you? And Gravey? And Cheeky and Rogue?”
The wooden soldier looked terrifically offended. He clutched his heart. “How do you know I’m not a richie? I could be. Could be sitting my arse-end on a fortune the size of Mount Pavonine! You’ve never asked me my busindustry. I could be the Crown Prince for all the knowledge you’ve got in your block about the House o’ Crashey. And even if I was broke as a bloody wheel, Her Majesty’s armed forces are welcome at any society to-doering. ’S only fair, as we put our skins on the line so this lot can have their canapés. Gravey and Rogue will be around here someeverwhere. As for the Cap’n, he’s off indulging himself. Can’t soldier all the time! And didn’t we all have dreams before we heard the drum? He’s got an inn out in the wirralywilds of Calabar Wood. Dunno why he likes it up there in the freeze. Too close to the border for the tastes of me. Practically dumps his rubbish out the back window into Gondal! Mostly he puts up grizzlelimp old army boys, the shot up and the sawn off and the slumped over. Bravey’s an unforgivlievable softie. I expect sooner or later, we all end up at Bravey’s Inn.” The oaken Sergeant stopped and looked about. He lifted up one of Emily’s arms, then one of Charlotte’s. “Hold on. I could’ve sworn there used to be more of you! Where’s the little monster and the wee moppet?”
“We did try to get Brunty safely to the P-House,” Emily moaned. A silver curl of hair slid out of her bun and lay gracefully against her collarbone. “But he sprang himself and kidnapped Bran and Anne and they’ve run away to Gondal and we’ve got to get them back, we’ve just got to, even though we’re far past catching the evening express train home now. He’s our brother and she’s our sister and he’s a beastly little beetle sometimes but he’s our beastly little beetle. We’ve come to rouse up a gang to go after them. You’ll help us, won’t you, Crashey? You’ll come. You must. It’s a real military operation! Under cover of darkness! Search and rescue! Espionage in the black of night!”
“I don’t reckonoitter many of the peacocks round here will be too keen on buckling up to a couple of breathers and crossing borders with ill intent, I’m sorry to say it.”
“That’s why we’re in disguise, sir.” Charlotte curtsied a little. “Incognito. We’re Lady Currer and Lady Ellis Bell, in from Thrushcross to enrich ourselves culturally. Lord Bell is such a country boor, you know.” She winked and batted her eyelashes as she imagined an upper-class girl might. She pulled it off rather well. Emily touched her silver fringe with a nervous hand. She didn’t think she looked that winning when she fluttered her eyelashes. She mostly looked like she had something stuck in them. “Now, if you don’t want to lead our rescue party, that’s perfectly understandable, but you mustn’t give us up.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, my lamb kabobs!” Sergeant Crashey nicked a flute of champagne off a passing butler’s platter and blew a little golden note on it, smacking his lips. “Now, if you mean to rattle hearts and rustle minds, you’ll need more than a new paint jobbie. If you want to raise an army, however small, you’ve got to have intelliconaissance
. The slope of the high ground! The lay of the land! Look around, my girls! Who do you recognize?”
“That’s the Duke of Wellington,” Charlotte said at once, pointing her gloved finger at the Iron Duke, his many-metaled handsome face laughing over a mug of something hot and heady. Emily rolled her eyes. She couldn’t think of anything more boring than the Duke of Wellington. I’d wager he sleeps with a stick jammed in his teeth so he doesn’t lose that stiff upper lip to a stray dream, she thought. His lion is ever so much better! If I had my way I’d roll out a ball of yarn for him right this second.
“That’s Copenhagen under the Lady in the cage, though I’ve no idea who she is,” Emily ventured. “And you’re Sergeant Crashey. That’s all, really.”
The wooden soldier clapped his birch hands. “Oh, brilliorgeous! I do so love to say a story! Gather round me pant-legs, Misses Bell, I present to you: THE COMICAL FARCE OF EVERYBODY WHO’S ANYBODY AND HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY, BY SERGEANT CRASH C. CRASHEY ESQUIRE, WHO MIGHT BE RICH, YOU DON’T KNOW DO YOU, THAT’S RIGHT YOU DON’T. Let’s start with the Lady in the cage, shall we? Hullo, Copey. She’s not a mousie, leave her be, there’s a pussycat.”
Copenhagen purred loudly and nuzzled Crashey’s head. His seawater mane sloshed over the soldier’s uniform, soaking him through. The woman in the cage stared down at them with two purple primrose eyes blooming in a white tea-rose face. Her hair was a river of plump red roses so brilliant and dark and thick they seemed to suck the light and life from everything around them so that they could glow all the brighter. Her limbs were thin, green, and sharp. Thorny vines twisted together into fingers and arms. She wore a black gown whose skirt was one single, stupendous black tulip. The bodice was a charcoal fleur-de-lis wrapped round her petaled chest. That’s the flower on all the French flags, Charlotte thought. I wonder if it’s Gondal’s flower, too?
Crashey let the oceanic lion gnaw on one wooden hand a bit. He knocked on the bottom of the cage with the other. “That there is what you call spoils of war. Our most precious prize-oner—Old Boney’s own wife, Josephine! We nicked her right out of Reversailles while she was sleeping! Capital operatiomission. Had her locked up ten years now, and don’t plan to spring her any time soonlike.”
“Drop dead, mes chers diables!” Josephine said cheerfully, and waggled her pink fingers at them.
“Now, Josey, you’ll prickle my feelings if you’re not careful,” Crashey said solemnly.
“Don’t be silly,” Emily said. “She couldn’t be a day over sixteen. You couldn’t possibly have kept her in there since she was six!”
The wooden soldier scratched his head. He counted on his fingers. Then, he got lost, shook out his hands, and counted again. “Dunno, kittens. Maybossibly when you say a year and I say a year we don’t meandicate the same thing. Sometimes a day in my own room thinking my own thoughts feels just like a year. Sometimes, when I tell a long, complicatory story, years go by in a word or two. If I had the right fork I could probably spear one to the plate, but they’re slippery as oysternails, the little snots. I don’t like numbers. Not good for me waistline. Don’t feel too badly for her, mind you. We only went Josey-fishing after Boney’s spies snatched our Victoria and locked her up in the Bastille when she weren’t nothing but a baby! ’Course it wasn’t the Bastille then. Those’re her parents, there, the Duke and Duchess of Can’t.” He pointed to a tall, slim couple standing in a corner. He was made of soft ermine; she, mother-of-pearl. “Come on, then, I’ll intropresent you! Strap your best curtsy on and scrub up your vowels. We’re going in headfirst!”
The Duchess of Can’t wept softly when she saw Charlotte and Emily.
“Forgive me,” she said in a weak, high, breathy voice. “I can’t help but see my own lost daughter in every grown-up girl. Perhaps she would have looked like you. Perhaps she would have danced . . . ” Shimmering tears poured down her delicate, pearly face. Her husband patted her shoulder absentmindedly, staring off into the distance at nothing.
“May I presentroduce to you Misses Currer and Ellis Bell of Thrushcross Grange?” Crashey said, and very prettily.
The Duke of Can’t bowed stiffly, his ermine face yellowed and spotted with grief. His wife held a lace handkerchief to her silvery mouth.
Sergeant Crashey bowed grandly and kissed the Duke’s hand. “Perhaps you two could show the young folk how real dancing’s done? I’m told they’ve been very well brought-upducated, despite living in the dullery of the countruralside, but there’s no substitute for watching the masters at work!”
“Terribly sorry,” whispered the Duke, too deep in his sorrow to speak up. “We can’t.”
Crashey bowed low. “Then, mayhappenation the Duchess is picking over the market stalls for a new Lady in waiting or two?”
“Oh, darlings,” sighed the Duchess, feeling horribly faint, “I would like to take you on, ever so much. You seem perfectly exquisite. Truly, as lovely as my Victoria would be if she were here before me as you are. But I simply can’t.”
Charlotte tried to remember something about Anne’s Victoria. She’d never much cared about her youngest sister’s tiny little story of a Princess no one had ever heard of. Let Annie have something of her own. Something that didn’t get blown up in glorious sieges of the pantry every other afternoon. Every girl needed a story of her own.
“Doesn’t your daughter have a second name?” Charlotte asked innocently.
“Why, yes!” sniffed the Duchess of Can’t. “But I can’t bear to say it. It burns my tongue like ice.”
Emily combed back through every night she’d heard Annie whispering to her doll under the blankets. “Alexandrina?” The Duchess nodded in mute misery. “And she had a spaniel or something, didn’t she? Dash?”
The Duke clamped down on Emily’s silver arm like a sword-blow. “Do you mean to say you’ve seen her? I can’t believe it. Darling, I can’t feel my cheeks. Who are you, child?”
“No, no, not at all, sir, you’re hurting me!” What could Emily say? My sister named one of her dolls Alexandrina Victoria and after we’ve all gone to bed she makes her dance with all the wooden soldiers, one after the other? They’d put her away and all would be lost.
