The Glass Town Game, Page 27

  Bran just stood there in his blue and red pajamas, dumbfounded.

  “Um . . . yes . . . well . . . erm. My name’s Branwell. This is my sister Anne. How do you . . . do?”

  Anne waved shyly.

  “I don’t think you’re scrubby,” she said. “I don’t think you’re scrubby at all.”

  The girl laughed nervously. She lifted her pretty pearl eyes to the ceiling. “Oh my, I forgot, didn’t I? I just forgot. Forgive me, please forgive me. I’ve been locked up in this room for such a long time. Forever, really. Since the beginning of time. Though Uncle Leon says time is only a trick the sun plays on you and the sun is naughty and wicked and it lies and I’ve only just been having a nice holiday and my parents will be along to collect me presently. But they never do. I don’t think the sun lies nearly as much as Uncle Leon. Oh, do come in, come in, it’s not locked, you know.” The girl opened the great heavy door as though it weighed nothing at all. Branwell and Anne stepped uncertainly into the warm, colorful room. “Uncle Leon lets me have the run of the Bastille so long as I never go out and never bother anyone and never look out the windows, only I call it the Pastille, because all that ever happens in here is the present turning into the past over and over and over and also pastilles are candies and I like it when Miss Agnes brings me pastilles because it means she loves me, really. But you must never go out! That’s the law! Never, never, never! Out is where everything bad can happen, only in is safe. Oh, I’m doing it again, aren’t I? I can’t stop once I’ve started.”

  Branwell inched around the edges of the room. He didn’t want to get too close. The question of biting hadn’t been settled yet. “Are you . . . are you a madwoman?” He gave Anne an alarmed look. “Did you make her mad?” he whispered.

  “No! I made her talk and talk and talk so that I would always have someone to talk to me because the three of you are always off talking to yourselves because you think I’m a baby and I had to make sure I’d always have someone to talk to if—”

  “No we don’t!” Bran hissed at her. “You’re a lying liar. Charlotte and Emily are the ones sneaking about whispering; they never include me!”

  “They do so!”

  “I can hear you when you whisper, you know,” Victoria said nervously. “You don’t do it correctly. Other people aren’t supposed to be able to hear. If you didn’t know.”

  “I’m sorry! Oh, I’m so sorry! It’s perfectly all right if you are mad!” Anne said comfortingly.

  Bran shrugged. It wasn’t perfectly all right. “I’ve never met a madwoman before. Always thought it’d be frightfully interesting.”

  The girl made out of a dress tried to calm herself down. She shut her eyes and counted to four. “I am not mad. I am Victoria. That’s my name, which you asked for, if you remember. You might think I’m mad—it’s understandable, anyone might think that if they met me—but mad and lonely aren’t at all the same thing. I promise I’m not mad. I always keep my promises, because I’ve got nothing else to do. I just . . . need p . . . practice with other people. Mostly . . . mostly I talk to them.” She gestured at the dolls strewn everywhere and patted the rocking-horse dog on the head. It grinned glassily at nothing. “I don’t need to introduce myself to them. I gave them all their names, everyone here, everyone in the world. And for a long while, Uncle Leon and Miss Agnes and Mr. Brunty brought me new ones every day. Until it wasn’t every day anymore, or even every week or every month or every year and I wanted something alive so badly, so tremendously badly, just one alive thing to be my friend. So I made up stories about all my toys. Did you ever make up stories about your toys?” Anne and Branwell blinked and stuttered. “Oh, I am so awfully rude! I know you’re not from Gondal. It’s so silly of me to think you know everything I know. A story is a lot of words put together one after another until you get to the end.”

  “We know what a story is,” Anne said, a little offended.

  The girl nodded. “A story makes a not-alive thing alive. I tell all my toys where to go and what to think about while they’re getting there and who they ought to love and who they ought to hate and what to do for an occupation and when to get born and how to die, only I bring them all back to life again at the end of the day, of course, otherwise I’d miss them so! And that’s why I never have to ask them what they’re called. Because I already know everything they’ll ever be about, and they never have to ask me because in here I’m Queen of Everything and Its Auntie and everyone knows what the Queen’s called. Queen Victoria has a nice sound, doesn’t it? So you see, my toys and I needn’t waste any time with pleasantries. We can all just get on with the business at hand. It’s wonderfully simple that way.” She picked up a wooden man in a black wool suit and stroked his yellow silk hair tenderly. “They never complain. No matter what I do to them. No matter what I make them do. If you make people up, they have to do what you say. That’s the advantage. Oh! I am being scrubby again, I am, I am, don’t deny it. You’ll start complaining in a moment. Of course, you can, because I didn’t make you up! Come along, now, soul of mine, unfurl those manners banners!”

  Victoria curtsied. She wasn’t very good at it. She’d never had to practice.

  “Good evening, Mister Branwell and Miss Anne. Welcome to the Pastille. My supper will be along presently. Wouldn’t you like to share it with me?”

  “Oh, God yes!” Bran said, far too loudly. “Thanks for that; we’re starving!”

  Anne peeked round Victoria at the stack of neat pages on her desk. “What are you doing back there?”

  Victoria blushed. The orange blossoms in her hair turned pink. The maps of Verdopolis and Regina and Ochreopolis and Port Ruby fluttered behind her in the winter breeze. “Writing out my story,” she whispered shyly. “Mr. Brunty says I have to. I’ve got to stay up all night until it’s done.”

  Branwell leaned in a bit. “What’s it about?”

  Far down below in the courtyard came a sudden boom of thundering footsteps. A joyful, deafening crow shook the windows of their prison. It sounded just exactly like a very, very large rooster.

  Victoria hugged her elbows and grinned at them, her pearly eyes bright with excitement. “Oh, this one is brand-new. It’s about a place called England. Oh! Why are you looking at me like that? I’m not used to being looked at! Oh, you don’t like it! Well, I suppose it’s not a very good name, is it? I’ll change it, if you like! It’s no trouble at all!”

  PART IV

  And All the Weary Now at Rest

  TWENTY-TWO

  A Man of Science

  The towering masts and long, taut lines of the HMS Bestminster Abbey creaked and swayed in the moonless night. Black seabirds wheeled and crooned above the huge silver thimble of the crow’s nest. Dolphins leapt through the choppy sea alongside the patched leather hull. Their slick backs caught starlight whenever they broke the surface. A steady northeasterly wind filled the sails and kept the crew bustling up and down the deck. At the prow of the great suitcase-galleon, under the knitting needle that served as a bowsprit, a half-turtle, half-snail head made of scarves and hairbrush bristles and gloves and thimbles howled joyfully at the crashing waves and tried to coax the dolphins into doing a flip or two.

  Emily and Charlotte had long since gotten over the embarrassment of seeing all their most personal belongings taken apart and twisted round and beefed up to take Bestminter’s newest shape. They hardly noticed their petticoats stretched into sails, or their black school dresses knotted together to make the rails and the cannons, or even the little round portrait of their mother pressed into service as the ship’s great wheel.

  They strode proudly up and down the decks in the splendid sailors’ uniforms Wellington had given them. Wellington hadn’t wanted to, of course. He’d insisted they weren’t sailors. Not by any definition. And now that the game with the gold and silver paint was up, thanks to Emily’s first kiss, they weren’t even proper Glass Towners! It was all terrifically awkward, to be sure, and all anyone could do was simply keep pretend
ing they were made of gold and silver, to save everyone the stress of it all. Nevertheless, that hardly meant they were members of the armed forces. But Charlotte had given him a look that could melt iron and asked if he thought that ball gowns were quite the best thing for a clandestine military operation. Emily had pointed out, very fairly, that Bestminster was their ship if it was anyone’s. Not only were they sailors, but, strictly speaking, they were Captains. For the Genii’s sake, man, Lord Byron had shouted. I’m paying to outfit this madness; let them wear what they like!

  And now they walked tall in gold braid, blue velvet, tricorns, loose hair, and best of all, white trousers. Neither of the sisters had ever worn trousers before. Both were now steadfastly convinced that trousers were the greatest invention of man. Buckled at the knee with hose and sensible black shoes! They could move so freely! They could jump on anything!

  Wellington manned the wheel from the quarterdeck, which was the cover of one of Emily’s composition books. He stared into the sea with steely eyes. Copenhagen, the lion with seawater for skin, lay curled around his legs. He seemed even bigger now that they were at sea. Lord Byron spent the evenings in the crow’s nest, working on a new sonnet. Dr. Home kept to himself down below in the sick berth. Charlotte and Emily hadn’t wanted him to come at all. Lord Byron insisted that if they meant to fight so much as a thumbnail clipping, they’d need a doctor, and he wasn’t friends with any other ones.

  “But why is she here?” Charlotte had asked Wellington when they boarded back in Lavendry. “Why would we ever bring her?”

  Josephine slept in her cage near the mizzenmast. The red roses of her hair fluttered in the following wind. She would not look at anyone, or speak to them. Wellington had made noises about strategy, and hostages, and needed to have something up his sleeve just in case Old Boney actually agreed to negotiations. But it made Charlotte uneasy all the same. Emily had turned away and hidden her face the moment she saw the heavy cage being hoisted on board.

  Behind the Bestminster glided the royal fleet of Glass Town. A hundred ships filled with stalwart limey soldiers and sailors. Wellington had let it be known far and wide that he intended to make his stand at Bravey’s Inn in Calabar Wood. Even Douro had heard him say it, while he whirled Charlotte around that jeweled dance floor. Now Charlotte knew otherwise. When Gondal’s forces arrived they would find no one but Quartermaster Stumps cooking them supper. They would surprise Napoleon and take the Bastille and Verdopolis in one stroke. When Bran and Anne were safe, they’d dig in their heels at the capital and defend it to the last.

  All the wooden soldiers pottered round the decks, called up urgent from shore leave. Leftenant Gravey doled out the stores for dinner. He sported a new gnarl where Douro had shot him, but otherwise seemed quite well, now that he’d had his grog. Corporal Cheeky, Bombadier Cracky, Warrant Officers Goody and Baddy, the Company Quartermaster, Hay Man, Lance Sergeant Naughty, Lance Corporal Sneaky, even Private Tracky checked the knots, rolled cannonballs down the gun deck, and prepared the sails for the next tack into the wind. Leftenant Gravey discussed their plans with the Duke of Wellington. Half his body gleamed strong and golden in the torchlight. Half was still burnt black and blistered. The tale of the Battle at Bravey’s Inn had been told night after night in the Officers’ Mess.

  Only Sergeant Major Rogue was missing.

  Sergeant Crashey sat on the poop deck with a bandage round his ruined eyes. He played a sea shanty on a mournful concertina and smoked a hand-rolled cigar clamped between his wooden lips. The Sergeant played very poorly. It was a fine night—the last night before landfall. Even Dr. Home was up and about on deck. Emily and Byron stood on the forecastle deck (the gigantic soles of Charlotte’s Sunday shoes) watching the constellations sinking into the deep sea. He’d forgiven her for not being made of silver—but only just. Charlotte heard her sister saying:

  “It’s a game we used to play, the four of us. It’s easy. You just say something outlandish or fantastical or unlikely and end by saying and.”

  “Perhaps Old Boney won’t put up a fight when we find him,” Lord Byron said. His face looked so soft and young. Nothing at all like his portraits. They were all done when he was grown up. That Byron frightened Emily a little. This Byron was just her size. “Perhaps he’ll just ask us all in for tea and call off the war with a scone in each hand . . . er . . . and.”

  “And a flock of ravens will pick us all up and carry us straight to Branwell and Anne as fast as you can caw . . . and . . .”

  Charlotte winced. She felt something in her chest crack a little. Just a little, like one frozen twig on a tall tree. The Game of And was theirs. I don’t care if he is Lord Byron, she thought resentfully. He’s not us.

  Charlotte settled down next to Crashey with her evening’s ration in one hand and his in the other. She still sat as though she were wearing a proper dress. It looked odd on her, now she had trousers on. Tonight, Gravey had made them all a nice ragout. Charlotte knew that was meant to be a sort of soup. But in Glass Town, naturally, the Leftenant had handed her a beaten tin mug with all manner of colorful rags hanging out of it. She took a deep breath of the salt air and pulled out her rags with a little smile, wrapping them round her neck like a scarf. Not ragout but rag-out. The taste of mutton and carrot stew flooded her mouth, and she felt quite full.

  “I’m so sorry about your eyes, Crash,” Charlotte said. The Sergeant kept on squeezing his concertina. “Are you sure they won’t heal up?”

  “Grog’s for kicking the dead out of you,” he said sadly. “It don’t do a lot for the complexion.”

  Grog. They would have to give it to them for the battle. They were enlisted now. Possibly even officers. Charlotte didn’t need to beg or bargain. She had earned it. She thought. Well, at any rate, she would earn it. And everything that could ever be right in the world would be.

  “What will you do now?”

  Charlotte lifted her hand to stroke Sergeant Crashey’s carved pinewood hair. She remembered the day Papa had brought that box of wooden soldiers home from Leeds. She remembered the snow on Papa’s coat. She remembered snatching up soldiers before Branwell could claim them all, even though they were meant to be his present, really, crying out: This one’s mine and he’s Wellington! Branwell had grabbed the biggest soldier and snarled at her: Well, this one’s Bonaparte! Em and Anne plucked this and that one while Aunt Elizabeth begged them all to be civilized. They’d danced round the kitchen table waving their boys in the air like maypole ribbons. And then, then Charlotte had pulled the last one out of the box and kissed him on the head and hollered above the din of Christmas at the parsonage: I shall call this one Sergeant Crashey! He’ll be the best soldier there ever was! He was hers, he always had been, and she loved him. She wanted to stroke his hair, like a little brother, or a son. But at the same time, he was not hers at all. The Sergeant had gone far beyond that Christmas table. And so had Charlotte.

  Crashey stretched his bandaged face toward the space where he thought Charlotte was. He was almost right. “What am I gonna do now’s I can’t shoot? You rudiful scamp! Blunt as a kick in the head! What if I’m sensitive about it, hm?”

  Charlotte shrunk back as though she’d touched a hot stove. She stuck her hand between her knees. How silly of her. She was twelve. He wasn’t her son. How bizarre it would have been for her to stroke his hair like a doll! “Oh, I’m sorry. I am sorry! Are you?”

  “Naw,” Crashey laughed. “I can’t shoot, but I can think! I can talk! I can probably box if someone points me in the right direction! I can do my experimentypotheses full time. No, no time for the Sensitive Sergeant hereabouts. What’s wanted are the Three R’s! Revenge, Rescue, and Retirement! And, to answer your originalnitial query, when all is well and walloped and won, Sergeant Crash C. Crashey will devote himself to the life braintastic! Dr. Home and me, we’re already archtecturializing a new laboratory specially for geniuses who can’t see what they’re doing. Doc!” The Sergeant waved at the black leather satchel walking
around in the shape of a man. “Come stare moodily at things with us! Plenty of room!”

  Charlotte started to protest. “I wanted to talk to you, Crashey. Alone. It’s important.”

  “Anything you want to talkverse with me about you can conversalk with Dr. Home about just as well. Better, even! Dr. Home is a man of science! A real champ on the intellectulogical pitch.”

  But she could not suppress a shudder as the sleek, thin doctor perched beside them like a morbid scarecrow. She did not like the vivisectionist. She didn’t like him when Bran thought him up and she didn’t like him in the flesh. Who could like a vivisectionist? It was his job to be horrid. But then, you never had to like everyone you invented for your stories. It wasn’t as though you’d have to sit on the deck of a warship with the minor ne’er-do-wells and pass the time.

  “You are both men of science,” she said quietly. The seabirds crowed overhead. A wave burst against the side of the good ship Bestminster. “Do you think . . . in your scientific opinion . . . do you think . . . there may be other worlds than this one?”

  “What, you mean like the moon?” Sergeant Crashey said, swigging back something from a hip flask.

  “No, I don’t think she does mean the moon,” Dr. Home said in that dark, slippery voice.

  “I do not.” Charlotte tried again. “I mean . . . the place where we met, Crashey.”

  “What, Angria? That’s far away, I’ll grant you, but it’s not another world. Not like the moon.”