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Charlotte coughed and rubbed her cheeks with her hands. She was still shaking. She yelled over the din. “Don’t be ridiculous, Bran. It’s my fault. And I’m not sorry! Why should I be sorry? Napoleon always dies at the end.”
A terrific BOOM shattered the air and Charlotte died.
At least, she thought she had. It felt like dying. One moment she was Charlotte and the next all she could see was blackness and all she could hear was nothing and she was lying flat on the ground with no feeling in any part of her. It was over. It hadn’t hurt too badly, she supposed. It could have been worse. At least she’d gone first, protecting them, as she should have. They would forget her in time.
“Charlotte!”
A loud, whiny voice was ruining her death. She wished it would stop and let her be.
“Charlotte!”
Charlotte opened her eyes. Black smoke trailed through the sky above her. Branwell was lying on top of her, crying and shaking and slapping her over and over. But he didn’t look like he was enjoying it as much as she’d thought he would. Anne was reaching for something in her dressing gown. She pulled out a flask wrapped in leather and spotted fur. A flask they’d seen on the belts of so many soldiers. Oh, clever, clever Anne!
“Hullo, Bran,” she wheezed.
Charlotte turned her head. A cannonball glowed red in the rubble. Bran had pushed her out of the way and onto the lonely pile of rock where Napoleon had ended.
“I saved you,” Branwell sobbed. “I saved you. I really did. All by myself.”
Charlotte reached up and stroked his dark hair.
“We’ve got to save them, too,” Anne cried. Anne would never allow any creature to suffer, no matter how small or pathetic or wicked or ugly, no matter how many times it bit her, no matter how little it would do for her if she were in its place and it in hers. Not right in front of her. Not while Anne from Haworth could still put two words and a flying leap together. The girl who stood over Brunty and would not take one step was buried deep in her heart now. She was thoroughly Anne again.
“Oh, Old Boney can go hang but poor Josephine? I can’t bear it! What if they didn’t get eaten really? Luggage doesn’t just sit still. It goes places. What if Napoleon and Josephine didn’t die in the suitcase after all, but were transported to an island in the sea, and . . . and . . .”
Charlotte smiled as Branwell let her up and took up the Game of And. “And the island was so far from everyone that they couldn’t ever escape and start conquering again, but there was plenty of elk to hunt and clams to dig and the soil was very good for potatoes, with a little house for Josephine and none for Napoleon . . .”
Branwell hugged his elbows to his sides. “And they lived there until they got old and never caused any more trouble because the island was surrounded by wormsharks and at least one leviathan who kept guard and kept them safe, and for a little while, Old Boney didn’t have to be Old Boney anymore.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The Door in the Wall
Charlotte knelt quietly near a little mound of crushed green glass and spent cannonballs. She was wearing her old dress again, long and black and dusty. Her traveling dress.
It was over. A few of the soldiers were still skirmishing in the halls of the Parsonage, but it was over, really. The bat-trees lay uselessly on the streets of Verdopolis like broken beer bottles on Sunday morning. The evening sun turned everything to dazzling emerald prisms. Emily, Branwell, and Anne stood a little ways behind, with the soldiers. They stared at the green glass mound. They all felt sick, but they knew without asking that this was specially Charlotte’s sadness.
“It’s not possible,” she whispered.
Crashey rubbed the back of his wooden neck and adjusted his bandages. “We had to use so much, don’t you know. In the battle. To keep everyone on their feet. And we hadn’t enough to begin with, since we sent the . . . er . . . lion’s share to Calabar. On account of the trickeryfeint. Remember? S’why we brought Josey along.”
Leftenant Gravey wept drops of sticky amber sap all over the rows of medals on his chest. “I had three portions! If only I’d known! Oh, I’m a miserable selfish monster, I am.”
“By the time he took his bullet,” said Sergeant Crashey mournfully, “every medical man on the field was dry as . . . well . . . as . . . er. An old bone. And with Josephine off and vanished—you did say vanished, yeah?—we won’t be whipping up a new batch any day soon.”
“What difference does that make?” A tear slipped down Charlotte’s cheek. “Go get
some more! Send to Calabar! Send to anywhere! Glass Town must still be full of grog. Open up some cabinets! Tip out the milk bottles! Scrape out the mixing bowls!”
Anne opened her mouth and closed it several times. She wanted to say something, she truly did, but she couldn’t make herself. Not for a Duke she barely knew. Gravey and Crashey exchanged looks.
“It’s been hours and hours, miss,” Gravey whispered miserably. “He’s already rusting, poor chap.”
Charlotte leaned over the man lying on the mound of glass and shot. She put her hand on the Duke of Wellington’s cold iron cheek. She folded his hands on his chest so that they covered the hole in his heart, arranging them in a noble sort of way. The way kings’ hands got folded in Westminster Abbey. Gravey was right. His fingernails had a fine sheen of red rust on them already.
Branwell watched Charlotte’s thin little back heave in grief. He hated it. He wanted to feel triumphant. Napoleon was safe on an island and Wellington was dead. Boney never won when they played back home. Charlotte wouldn’t let it happen because it wasn’t historical. He had a right to be pleased! But Charlotte just would not get up from that green glass grave. The game was over. They were supposed to be happy and ravenous and tumble downstairs to stuff themselves with mutton and bread. Everyone always came back to life at the end of the game. Back to life and put away in their boxes for another day. That was why it was fun. That was why it was a game. Because in a game, death didn’t matter. He controlled it. He doled it out and he took it back. If dying really meant anything, then it wasn’t a game at all. It was just life. And in life he didn’t control anything. Come on, Welly, he pleaded silently. You old scrap-heap. Get up. Get up and it’s still a game. Get up and Charlotte will laugh. Please! You’re ruining it.
“But it’s all wrong,” she said helplessly. “Wellington doesn’t die fighting Napoleon. He gets to go home. He gets to be Prime Minister! He gets to drink brandy and pick out a grand old chair to put by the fire and smoke pipes and be alive.”
