The Glas s Town Game

Charlotte had no doubt that this meant, not a glass of brandy, but an actual cap to put on her head at night. Probably with a pom on the end.

“I can play the violin reasonably well. I promise. You won’t be bored. Oh! Your sister may come as well, of course,” the Duke hurried to add.

Emily waved the idea away. She bent to see if Crashey had hurt his knees tussling over the nature of time. But though Charlotte had arrived at the most extraordinary moment of her life, in which the Duke of Wellington asked her to join him for a nightcap and a spot of music, she did not smile. Charlotte stared out to sea. The lights of Ascension Island glowed silver in the distance.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, shaking her head to clear it.

“Arthur,” Wellington insisted.

“Arthur. I’m sorry. I was only thinking of my brother and sister. They’re out there somewhere, alone in the dark. Alone if they’re lucky. They’ve no idea how close we are. They must be so lonely and unhappy. I couldn’t help but think that they won’t have any nightcaps tonight, nor any violin, nor any snuggling lion, nor even any of Gravey’s ragout.”

“Depriving yourself of small happinesses won’t get us to Gondal one hour faster,” Wellington said gently.

“I do wish we could get word to them somehow,” Emily sighed. “Oh! Oh, but, Charlotte, we can! Oh, well done, Em! Stealing does work better if you remember what you’ve stolen, you ninny.”

“What?” Charlotte said sharply. “What have you stolen? You didn’t say a word!”

“Oh, didn’t I?” Emily blinked innocently at her sister. It served her right.

“Would you like me to fetch it, miss?” intoned the HMS Bestminster Abbey’s turtle figurehead. Its voice was deep and huge now, as deep and huge as the sea it sailed. Bestminster had had to wait outside the Wildfell Ball for hours and hours with the other Valises. It had felt quite shabby and shamed and after the third hour, quite convinced it had been Lost, after all. When the girls came running out of the gardens with a gang of hollering men behind them, the suitcase’s relief had been so intense it had nearly fallen apart. Bestminster was eager to be useful. It never wanted to have to wait outside again.

“Oh, yes, thank you, Bestminster!” Emily said, and gave its rail a loving rub.

The great galleon shuddered and wriggled. Knocking, banging sounds burbled up from belowdecks. The turtle at the prow of the ship puffed out its cheeks like it was gargling a dental rinse, and finally spat a small object up, over the bowsprit, and into Emily’s waiting hands.

“Good throw!” Emily cried. Crashey and Dr. Home and Wellington and Charlotte agreed. The suitcase-ship delighted in the praise.

Emily held up her prize. It was a sturdy glass bell with a wooden handle. They could see stars through the surface of it. Emily waited for everyone to be impressed. Charlotte blinked.

“It’s Mr. Bud’s bell! He used it to ring the Ghost Office! Don’t you see? I’ll just . . . ring up a ghost, and we’ll write a letter to Bran and Anne. Mr. Bud said a ghost can find anyone so long as you’ve got a name and a stamp. And Mr. Tree said there’s loads more ghosts in Gondal than in Glass Town. Urg. I suppose that makes sense now, doesn’t it? Rather sad, though. Rather awful. My God, Charlotte, I hate it! It’s so unfair! I can’t bear it!” Emily fought back tears.

“They attacked us first,” Wellington said firmly. “They invaded us. Would you prefer we give them all our cannons and muskets, too? If we told them how to make grog, then we would have war everlasting. Napoleon and all his million men, hopping back up again after every battle, ready and starving for more. He will never be satisfied until he’s conquered all the world. At least, this way, we have some hope of peace.”

Emily dried her eyes. She wanted to argue, but they didn’t have time to discuss the ethics of one-sided immortality just now. “Well . . . however it started . . . it’s awful now. But it means, at least I think it means, that some ghost among all those shades in Gondal will be able to deliver our letter, even to the depths of the Bastille.”

Emily rung her glass bell. It sounded clear and cold in the night. Despite herself, she whispered to Charlotte: “I wonder if it’ll be Richard again? Or maybe Mary Queen of Scots this time? Or one of the Henries?”

It took a long while. Everyone stood in silence, waiting for the ghost to arrive. Finally, Emily saw something streaming low over the waves. A thin, pale, bluish wisp, trailing frost and twinkling ice behind it. Wherever it dropped low enough to brush the whitecaps, the seawater froze and shattered. The ghost of a somewhat pretty, somewhat plain girl circled down onto the deck of the ship. She had a round, kind face and curly hair and wore a dress that would not have looked at all odd on a Lady with a bit of money back home in Yorkshire.

Emily looked at Charlotte expectantly. She’d recognized Richard first, after all. But Charlotte only shrugged.

“I shall guess,” Emily said. “Queen Jane Gray? She only reigned for nine days, but it wasn’t her fault she got beheaded. But she’s still got her head, so . . . perhaps Ophelia? No, she’s fictional, even if Hamlet’s not . . . I know! Elizabeth Cromwell!”

“No,” the girl said. “Just Cathy. Nobody specialer than anyone else. Have you got a letter for me?”

All the men began patting their chests for paper and pen. Emily inched closer to the ghost. She shivered. Frost prickled her arms.

“Who were you? When you were alive?” Emily said, her voice thick with wonder. “Tell me everything.”

“Oh, I wasn’t anybody. Just a girl. I lived in a house like girls do. I loved a man once, loved him so much I couldn’t tell the difference between him and me. But he wasn’t the kind of man anyone should love. He took my heart and he took it and pinched it to death. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. So I married someone else and had a child, like girls do. But my heart stayed pinched. Every time I tell the story, people swoon and say it’s dreadfully romantic, but it was horrible and I died halfway through my own story! I don’t know what’s wrong with the living! They think the blackest, most poisonous things are romantic. At least he’s dead now, too. He tries to talk to me but I stick my fingers in my ears until he goes away.”

“I’m sorry you died,” Emily whispered.

“So am I,” said Cathy. Her face flushed hard white. “I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy and free! Like you are now.”

“I don’t feel half-savage and hardy and free,” Emily said. How could she be free when her life was laid out already? They’d rescue Branwell and Anne and go home, and even if, somehow, they managed to take grog with them, even if they managed to wheedle it out of these wooden fists, it wouldn’t stop time. Sooner or later, it would be the Beastliest Day all over again. School would eat her up and then she’d have to be a governess to someone’s spoiled children and work and work until she had no time at all to write all the stories in her head and then what? She didn’t wish she were a girl, she wished she were Branwell. Then she might have hope that something unexpected could happen to her.

“But you are,” the ghost of Cathy said. “All girls are. We just . . . get stuck sometimes. That’s all. Honeysuckles tangled up in the thorns. At least I’m not stuck anymore.”