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“I don’t think so, love,” Sergeant Crashey sighed.
“It’s my fault. I made him come. I danced with him and I bantered with him and I fluttered my stupid eyelashes and I talked him into all of this terrible mess. I shall never, ever forgive myself. I shall never flutter anything again. I killed the Duke of Wellington!”
Branwell’s guts twisted. She never was going to get up, was she? Charlotte didn’t really know how to let things go. She always blamed herself. It dawned on him that perhaps this was part of the Eldest Child’s Chores. Taking the blame. Being the one responsible. Being the one at fault. He was terrifically glad he wasn’t the eldest, for once. But his guts weren’t glad. His guts knew the truth.
“Don’t say that,” Emily said softly. “You didn’t.”
“It’s not your bullet in his chest, is it?” Anne suggested.
“I did,” Charlotte insisted. “As sure as Napoleon, I did. If I hadn’t convinced him to come to Verdopolis, he’d never have thought he could catch the Gondaliers off-guard. He’d never have tried the feint at Calabar Wood. It’s all my fault. If I . . . if I’d just . . . gone to School like a good girl . . .” Charlotte was sobbing in big, choking breaths now, and nobody thought it was only because of Wellington for a moment. “If I’d only protected them . . . if I’d only been . . . been good . . . good enough, nobody would ever have died.” She buried her face in her hands. “I should have died instead. If I’d gotten the fever first, they’d have gone home and we’d never have invented Glass Town or come here at all and none of it would have happened . . . ”
“Who’s they?” asked Leftenant Gravey. Crashey shook his head.
“I got lost a ways back, mate.” The Sergeant shrugged.
Emily and Anne fell to the ground beside Charlotte and hugged her tight.
“No, Charlotte, no,” they whispered over and over.
“Yes,” Charlotte wept. “Yes.”
Branwell’s guts couldn’t stand it any longer. He was supposed to protect them. Papa had said. He couldn’t let her go on like that, with all that pain. It was worse than a cannonball, and he hadn’t hesitated to throw himself in front of that, had he? His head didn’t want to do it. No one would ever know. He was safe. It was all done. But his guts were always much stronger than his head.
“No,” he said firmly. No one had been paying any attention to him, just like always. They all turned to look. They heard him now. They were paying attention now. “It’s my fault.”
Anne slapped her knee with one hand. “I knew it,” she whispered.
“I . . .” Oh god, thought Bran. They’ll hate me forever. But he didn’t stop. A middle child has chores too, and one of them was Fessing Up. “I told Old Boney you were coming. When and where.”
Emily’s eyes went wide. “Bran, why? We were coming to rescue you! We could have been killed!”
“I didn’t need you to rescue me! I was doing it myself! And I paid him, didn’t I? He promised to keep you safe. That we’d all come out alive. I paid him Aunt Elizabeth’s shilling and sixpence, only I told him it was a fortune, and he swore no one would have to die. And look! We are all alive and well! I rescued you, don’t you see? I didn’t do anything wrong! It’s not as though it was tremendously clear that Gondal was wicked and Glass Town was good, if you recall.” Crashey flushed an ugly color. “They deserved a fighting chance! It’s not sporting to let a million frogs lose a war in their beds. I didn’t know Wellington would snuff it. Of course I didn’t! I thought . . . I rather thought he couldn’t, because he didn’t. Just like you said, Charlotte. Wellington doesn’t die at Waterloo. Why should I have thought he’d die at Verdopolis? We never killed him at Verdopolis. And the Glass Towners had grog, after all. I never thought they’d run out. And I never thought they’d run out because you never told me it was all some lady’s weird hair juice, Detective Inspector Anne,” he snarled at her, and then wished he could take it back. He meant to shoulder the burden with nobility, but it was all coming out wrong. The way they were looking at him! Like he was a less than a worm in the dirt. He started to cry, and hated himself for it. “Oh, you always think I’m bad anyway. What’s the point of ever trying to be anything else? I’m just another soldier in your box, aren’t I? Look at Captain Branwell, always mucking it up! Doesn’t he look funny, marching about, thinking he matters?”
A cool voice interrupted, cutting through Bran’s words like a soft blue knife. “Captain? We do think rather highly of ourselves, don’t we? I don’t remember giving you a field commission, boy.”
For a moment, no one breathed.
The Duke of Wellington stood behind them, wrapped up in frosty blue and white and silver light. His officer’s uniform had a sad little tear in it, and his proud bicorne hat was gone. His thin brown hair moved softly in the twilight breeze. He carried a postman’s bag, slung over one shoulder. The Duke looked curiously at his iron body.
“Does my nose really crook like that?” he asked, and his voice sounded like the wind wuthering the moors.
Charlotte wiped her eyes and stuttered out: “But . . . but you didn’t die along a highway! I thought of that, I thought of ringing Em’s bell, but you didn’t die by a road and Mr. Bud and Mr. Tree said that was the rule.”
“All roads lead to Verdopolis,” the Duke said with a soft smile. “Didn’t you know? They’re your roads, after all.”
“Sir,” Branwell said quietly. He was saluting, and no one noticed, but he persevered.
“But no one called for the Ghost Office,” Emily said. “My bell shattered into a hundred pieces, so I know I didn’t ring for the post.”
“Did it hurt very badly?” Anne asked gently.
“Sir,” Branwell said again.
“I am here for myself alone, young lady,” Wellington answered, and bent forward in a small bow, for the dead can never outrank the living. “I wished to deliver a letter, and so I shall.”
The Duke of Wellington reached one glowing pale hand into his post-bag and drew out a note sealed in black wax with his own crest stamped on it. It was very like Wellington’s crest at home in England, save that all the lions were Copenhagen. He placed the note in Charlotte’s hand and closed her fingers over it.
“It’s not so bad,” he said kindly. “It is only a strange holiday that lasts forever.”
