King Richard pressed the card to his wounded breast, and melted away like butter in summer. Warmth returned to the lobby of Bud & Tree Publishing House.
“Rude,” Charlotte said when the King had gone.
“What a morbid thing to say to a person you’ve just met!” Emily scoffed. “Just because you’re a ghost doesn’t mean you have to go around saying creepy things all the time. What’s the matter with how do you do, happy to take your letter, isn’t it a bit of weather we’re having? I suppose nobody raps a King’s knuckles for bad manners, even if they clearly should.” The color drained from her cheeks. “You don’t think he’s cursed us, do you? Richard is meant to be a villain, after all!”
Mr. Bud chatted away at them, too fast and too loud, trying to outrace and outshout both his guilty conscience and any mention of ghostly curses. But Charlotte and Emily kept staring after Richard’s ghost, trying to memorize forever the vision of a King delivering their post.
“What Mr. Bud means to say,” interrupted Mr. Tree, “and what he is not saying very well at all, is that the Wildfell Ball’s on tonight, up at Lavendry-on-Puce.”
“Good gracious, we haven’t got time for a ball,” Charlotte scoffed. “My brother and sister have been kidnapped by a book! I’m not going to dance while they’re tied to some horrid chair in Verdopolis getting that vicious acid dripped on them till they give up everything they know.” Charlotte had begun to wobble. It started in her legs and moved everywhere, all through her, till she thought she might come apart. All she could see was poor Branwell lying on that red glass street, bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. . . .
“I can’t be wrong again,” Charlotte whispered. No one bothered to hear.
“Ugh, I’ll tell you twic
e for free and three times for a penny, I’d trade that whole town for a pair of wool socks.” Mr. Bud grumbled on as though Charlotte hadn’t said a word. “They’ve got a ball or a festival or a holiday or a feast for every day of the calendar. You’d think they’d get sick of it! Too much pastry spoils the beef!”
“It’s to benefit the war hospital, Mr. Bud! Don’t be ungracious. We must all do our part.”
“Oh, they always say it’s to benefit St. Tosh’s Home for Poncery and Blatherall. But really, it’s only ever to benefit their bellies with donations of champagne and cakes!”
Emily clapped her hands to get the editors’ attention. “This is ridiculous! Mr. Bud, Mr. Tree, we are not going to a party. We are going to Gondal. We are going to save Annie and Branwell! What kind of person could drink champagne at a time like this? There’s no time for rouge and fans and all that nonsense. They’re getting farther away with every second and all you want to talk about is cake!”
Mr. Bud shook his leather-lashed head. “My dearies, you misunderstand. It’ll be an inking battlefield for the likes of you. Rouge? Fans? Champagne? Yes, you will, for their sake. With all that frippery you must arm and armor yourselves. They’ll all be there, every one of those high-class ponies with silk for snot. Wellington, Douro, Byron, Elrington, the Duke and Duchess, the Queen of the Blues. You’ve got half a clever tongue between the two of you and a ripping sob story in your pockets. So play your hand. Mind you, you look like a couple of spaniels who’ve been at the mud again, but Ginevra will get you sorted out. Be big, be bright, tell your tale! Go about with hat in hand and hand on heart and make the ball benefit you.”
Emily let the book-binding man natter. She glanced sidelong over the ledge of Mr. Tree’s desk. Her burglar’s instincts pricked up. She couldn’t help herself. They needed to press on and Mr. Bud simply insisted on talking and talking and talking. He liked talking and Mr. Tree liked listening so much neither of them saw Emily’s quick fingers disappear into the desk and then into her pockets without a sound.
Charlotte desperately wanted to run, all the way to Gondal if she had to. Running seemed far more useful than dancing. But perhaps the publishers were right. Perhaps they needed friends. Perhaps two young girls from Yorkshire could not invade a country entirely by themselves. And perhaps, if the highest of the high were all together in one place, they would have brought enough grog with them to revive all the elephants in the Alps. The rich and the political were very partial to their own skin, after all.
I can’t be wrong again.
For once, Charlotte did not know what to do. She had failed. Half her family was gone. Maria and Lizzie had been the oldest their whole lives and never lost even one of them. She had been wrong when she said they couldn’t be hurt. What if she was about to be wrong again? The Wildfell Ball sounded like the right sort of thing for a girl in a story to do, and they were in a story, in a manner of speaking. But people made the wrong choices all the time in stories. Wrong choices were what made stories go. But making one for a doll was ever so much different than making one for Bran and Anne. What if the only thing to do was get into Bestminster and run for Gondal, run and never stop, no matter who shot at them, no matter whether she had any idea what to do when they got there? Someone else be oldest, Charlotte wept in her heart, without a single tear showing on her face. Someone else.
Emily reached out and tucked a strand of loose brown hair behind her sister’s ear. She smiled into Charlotte’s frantic eyes. Emily tried to give her back a bit of that magic spell of bossiness she doled out so freely to the rest of them.
“We will attend the ball, Mr. Bud, Mr. Tree,” Emily said with a hard brightness in her voice.
Mr. Tree laid a hand over his bookend-heart. “Poor innocent lambs fed to Gondal’s fattest lion! Woe betide these unfortunate maidens! You know the song. Get a Duke or two on your side and I daresay you’ll have your brother and sister back by the crack of the Sunday church bell.”
Mr. Bud and Mr. Tree beamed eagerly at them, and for a moment, Charlotte and Emily almost believed everything would be all right.
THIRTEEN
Sir Rotter and Lady Rubbish
Deep down in the earth beneath Ochreopolis, an awful buzzing sound filled the dark.
“Lay off it, you dog-ears,” grunted Brunty, the Magazine Man, Master Spy of Gondal. Inky beads of sweat stood out on his papery brow. “I’m not afraid to smack you one if you keep pulling and shoving and biting. . . . ow! You little splitter! If I drop you, you won’t land in Mummy’s lap, you know. You’ll land in a broken neck on wet black nothing, so hold bloody still!”
“Our mother’s dead, you great glocky beast!” Anne snarled and bit their captor again savagely, though she couldn’t see where her teeth landed. “Let us go!”
“You’ll get worse than a bite when Charlotte finds us,” Branwell scoffed with confidence. No one could beat his older sister for punishments when a game got spoiled. He couldn’t help it. His sister drove him sideways, but when he was in trouble, he turned to her as toward the sun. That’s what came of being the oldest, he suspected. Nothing more than that. All the same, Branwell wondered what it would be like to be that sun instead. “Believe me. She once sentenced a doll to vivisection. I almost feel sorry for you.”
The Magazine Man chuckled softly. “She won’t find us, young master Lackbrains. Haven’t you heard about bad news? It travels fast and it travels invisible. And just look at me! Have you ever seen worse?”
But they couldn’t see a thing beyond blackness. They hadn’t seen a thing but blackness since the Magazine Man dragged them underground and shoved that horrible machine with its green and blue lights back into his seemingly bottomless waistcoat pocket. At first, it was a very thick, hot blackness, a blackness you could taste on your tongue and swallow and feel very sick over, like bad treacle. Then, as Brunty plowed through lightless tunnels and caverns and catacombs at the speed of wickedness, scrambling down ladders of shadow and shade, it changed into a cool, slick blackness that ran all up and down their arms and legs like midnight rainwater. Now, wherever they were, so deep beneath the city they could no longer hear the distant, muffled, comforting sounds of their sisters arguing with somebody or other, trying to save them, surely, trying to get to them, the blackness froze them to the bones of their thumbs. It chewed at their fingertips and slashed at their noses. And this new blackness had a sound, too. It buzzed and thrummed and whirred. The buzz came from everywhere at once and nowhere at all. It bounced and echoed off invisible walls. Branwell thought Brunty was making it when it first began. Then he thought perhaps somehow he himself was doing it. Then, he was quite sure Anne was playing some silly game to annoy him. But he couldn’t tell one idiot thing in the dark, really. It might be the buzzing of a bee in South America for all he or Anne knew about their situation. All together the buzzing and the cold and the dark ground against them like the spinning gears of some terrible factory where winter and despair were made and it would not stop; it just would not.
Brunty wheezed in the shadows. They could feel the beating of his gluey heart. His breath smelled like a burnt-down library.