Worlds of Ink and Shadow (13 page)

“That's better,” Rogue said. “Name your coconspirators, girl.”

“What I have to say is . . . is . . . Wellesley House is on fire!”

For a moment nothing happened, though Charlotte thought she saw Anne mouthing something else. Was she counting? Then the curtains behind Charlotte and Branwell burst into flame.

“Fire!” a servant screamed, dropping a tray.

In seconds the flames had risen up the curtains and were blackening the ceiling. Someone pushed Charlotte, and she fell. She looked around for Branwell, but she didn't see him.

“Fire! Fire!” The word was shouted on every side. Panic coursed through her. Charlotte was afraid she would be trampled.
Could we die?
she kept thinking.
Why haven't I ever asked myself that before?

She managed to stand up again and look around, but her siblings were lost in the crowd. The party guests had spilled out over the dance floor and were swarming around Rogue and Zamorna, their drama forgotten as everyone pressed toward the double doors at the far side of the room. Rogue towered over most of the guests, so Charlotte could see him scanning the crowd just as she was. He seemed to have lost Anne and Emily in the confusion—that was one blessing, at least.

“Stay calm! Stay calm, everyone!” Mary Henrietta had risen from her sofa and was directing people to the door. “Are you hurt?” She put her hand out to a young woman cowering under
a table. “We must away. Mina, help me with her.” Mina and Mary Henrietta coaxed the young lady from her hiding place and shepherded her away. A moment later they were lost in the crowd. It had been a small exchange, but it amazed Charlotte. She hadn't orchestrated it, and she was sure her siblings hadn't, either. In fact, if she had, Mary Henrietta would have been saved by her husband, or by Castlereagh, but Mary Henrietta had acted on her own. It was in her nature to help people, to be kind, but Charlotte had kept her passive. And here she had taken action—done something noble. Even in the midst of the chaos, Charlotte found this extraordinary.

“Branwell!” she cried, catching sight of her brother in the middle of the dance floor. “Branwell! Here! Where are the girls?”

He didn't turn around. For reasons Charlotte didn't understand, he had a large punch bowl in his arms, red liquid sloshing onto the floor as he pushed his way through the crowd.

“Oh, help!” someone called. Charlotte recognized Anne's voice but couldn't see her. She climbed up on a nearby chair to look over the churning bodies. To her horror, she saw her youngest sister near the fireplace, the bottom of her lovely blue dress in flames. This must be why Branwell had the punch bowl. He had grasped what was happening and was trying to get to her.

He won't make it
, Charlotte thought.
She's burning!

Anne was trying to beat out the fire with her hands to no avail. “Emily!” Charlotte cried, looking around. “Where are you? Someone help!”

She noticed that Zamorna was very close to Anne, standing by the fireside looking distraught.
Oh, why doesn't he do something!
Charlotte thought.
Why doesn't he save her?
Mary Henrietta acted on her own; why didn't he? She tightened her fists and took a deep breath, willing the story to come back under her control.

“
Zamorna, with no thought for his own safety, tore a tapestry from the wall and smothered the flames
,” she said.

Immediately Zamorna sprang to a large tapestry on the wall and ripped it down.

“Oh, hurry,” Charlotte said. She got down from the chair and began to push through the crush of people to get to her sister. She lost sight of her again, but when the crowd thinned, she saw that Anne was sitting on the floor, her bottom half covered by the tapestry. The flames were out.

“Oh, thank heaven,” Charlotte breathed.

Zamorna had a hand on Anne's shoulder and was leaning over her. A moment later Branwell got to them both and tossed the remains of the punch over Anne's legs. Charlotte almost laughed with relief.

She caught sight of Emily and grabbed her by the hand without a word, pulling her toward Anne and Branwell.

I'll never put them in danger again
, she vowed.

CHARLOTTE

W
E SHOULD TELL THEM EVERYTHING,”
Branwell said. They were in the children's study. A mirror was propped up against a chair, and he was working on his own face in the group portrait, eyes moving back and forth between the reflection and the painting.

Charlotte sat at the desk. She had been working on a sketch of Anne, but now she set her pencil down. “No,” she said. “I'm sure I'm right. What good would it do to stir up old mistakes? We must make a clean break—never go to Verdopolis again, never write about it again, never think about it, never talk about it.” She looked down at her drawing, and a wave of guilt swept over her. “Especially after what's happened to Anne.”

Anne had come back from Verdopolis burned, not on the
legs, as it happened, but on her hands and fingers from where she'd tried to put out the fire. They'd made up a story about her burning herself on the stove, but it hadn't been very convincing.

“She's not so badly injured,” Branwell said as he dabbed his brush on his palette. “Even Papa says we needn't call for the doctor, and he always errs on the side of caution in such matters.”

“Anne is so stoic. He doesn't realize—”

“Charlotte, you must stop torturing yourself.”

She rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “How could we have exposed them to such dangers?” she asked, more to herself than to her brother.

Branwell set down his brush and came over to her. She could see that he wanted to comfort her, but instead of putting a hand on her shoulder or saying something kind, he only made a show of inspecting her drawing. “Not bad. A better likeness than the sketch you did in June.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said. She nodded to the easel. “You are showing improvement as well.” She picked up her pencil. “Although you've made your head too big.”

Branwell's face soured, but he went back to his work without comment, taking up the brush again. For a while they worked in silence. Anne's likeness
was
rather good, Charlotte allowed herself to admit, though the nose was a little too sharp. She had drawn her sister in profile, eyes downcast, hair around her shoulders. This was the quiet Anne, the Anne she knew—but who was that girl who had been so brave when Rogue's hands were
around her neck? Who was the girl who had set Wellesley House on fire?

“Whatever will you say to Emily?” Branwell asked. “She wants to know why we're leaving the story unfinished.”

The tip of Charlotte's pencil broke, leaving an ugly streak across her drawing. “Isn't Anne's injury explanation enough?” she said, more sharply than she meant. “And can't you and I find some new topic of conversation?”

“There is no need to snap.” Branwell drew himself up. He had his smock on and there was paint in his hair, but he had a way of making himself as imperious as a young emperor when he wanted to. “Anne's injury is not my fault. We should never have allowed the girls back into Verdopolis in the first place. Or rather,
you
shouldn't have allowed it. Why were they with us at all?”

“Why were any of us there? Why did any of us cross over again? Because of you, Branwell! Because you begged and blackmailed until you wore me down!”

“Wore you down? It was surprisingly easy.”

“You were desperate! You had that . . . that mad look in your eyes. I made a vow, a vow to Papa not to go back, and you made me break it!”

“Spare me, Charlotte. I know what your vows are worth.” He said this very smugly, with a superior look in his eye that infuriated her. Then he lifted his brush and pretended to turn his attention back to the painting—but Charlotte had no intention of letting him get the last word.

“Explain yourself! I am not in the habit of going back on my promises.”

“Aren't you?” He came to the desk now, leaning against it until he was very close to her face. “We quit Verdopolis once before, you and I. Do you remember? When you went away to school?”

“Oh. That.” Charlotte picked up a wadded piece of bread and carefully began to use it to erase the pencil mark on Anne's portrait.

“Yes. That.”

She brushed tiny breadcrumbs from her page. It was all she could do not to shrink away from him, to pretend his closeness didn't bother her.

It was true that they had pledged to quit the invented worlds when she went away to Roe Head School. Branwell had been terribly upset when he learned she was writing there in secret, snatching moments to cross over when she could, always having to come back too soon. She didn't understand why he was still angry about it. It was all so long ago, and he'd started writing again himself soon enough, sending her Rogue's adventures by post, sometimes twice a week.

“So this is a true resolution?” he asked. “You're serious this time?”

“Of course. I've said I am.”

Branwell took a step back and a joyless grin spread over his face. “Then you will have it, too, soon enough. That mad look
in the eyes, as you called it. You'll see what I went through when you were at school.”

“What do you mean?”

Branwell made his eyes wide and began to flap his arms like a bird. “Mad, mad, it's a family trait.” He began to dance around the room, his long, thin legs jerking out from under his smock, making him look like a scarecrow.

“Stop it! You're acting like a fool.”

Branwell laughed, and Charlotte was alarmed by the edge of hysteria in his voice. “You're the fool. Do you think we can simply stop? Do you think he'll let us?”

“Shh!” Charlotte hissed, eyeing the door.

He spun across the floor, arms wide, knocking over a stack of books. “Two little fools made a bargain, and now their lives are lost!”

“Branwell!” There were certain words they never said to each other, and
bargain
was one of them. “Hush! Honestly! I thought I heard something.” She rose and opened the door, but no one was there. She looked both ways down the hall. There had been something—the creak of floorboards—but the parsonage was old, and it made all sorts of sounds.

Branwell stopped his capering and came to stand behind her. “Was it Emily?”

“Perhaps. Our voices were raised, and it's not above her to eavesdrop.” She went to the desk and took up her sketchbook and pencil box.

“Where are you going?”

“I'll work in my room.”

“Oh.” Branwell looked genuinely disappointed. “You don't have to do that. I enjoy your company.”

Charlotte could only gape. “I really don't understand you at all, Branwell,” she said, and she nudged past him out the door.

EMILY

B
ARGAIN
, EMILY THOUGHT, HER CHIN IN HER
hands. She was sure her brother had used that word.
Two little fools made a bargain.
What bargain? And with whom?

“Tabby,” she asked, straightening up, “didn't you tell us a story once about a pact . . . between some wicked thing and . . . someone you knew? Was it your mother?”

Tabby squinted at her for a moment, then pushed a knife toward her across the kitchen table. “Pilloputate!” she said.

What she meant was: “Peel a potato.” And what she meant by
that
was: “If you want a story, you are going to have to work for it.”

Emily pulled a very large bowl of potatoes toward herself. The old wooden table where she sat took up most of the small kitchen and was scarred from many years of slicing and chopping.

“My mother would never make a pact with Old Tom, I'll have you know,” Tabby said, after Emily had begun to peel. “No more'n I would.”

Old Tom. Emily had heard of him, of course. Whenever anyone claimed to see something strange on the moor, be it the ghost of a loved one or a brownie or the spectral hound, Tabby always said that they must have displeased Old Tom. Depending on which story she was telling, either these creatures were mad visions sent by him or they were his “minions” taking revenge.

“But she saw him?” Emily asked, frowning as fragments of the story came back to her. “And there
was
something about a bargain, wasn't there?”

Tabby gave a stir to the stew she was keeping warm on the hob, then fetched a large bunch of carrots from the sideboard and sat down next to Emily. “What made you think on that story?”

Emily kept her eyes on her potato. Eavesdropping was wrong and beneath her, and it was Charlotte's fault for making her stoop to it. “Nothing.”

Tabby gave her a sidelong glance but didn't challenge her. She picked up a carrot and began to scrape. “Folks saw a lot of things afore the factories come. Haworth was a different place then. Why, when I was a young'un, our only tie to the outside world were the pack horses that come through town once a week.” Her fingers paused as she remembered. “How I listened for the bells on those harnesses. 'Twere an event, their coming. They brung us our needles and our apples and our sugar, and took away our
packets of wool. Even Leeds was worlds away t' me then. And London might as well have been the moon.”

“But what about Old Tom?” Emily asked, trying to keep any impatience out of her voice. Getting Tabby to talk wasn't difficult, but sometimes steering her toward a particular topic was like steering a wayward sheep toward a pen.

“Harken her grilling me like a magistrate,” Tabby teased. “Must be some important information you're wanting me to impart.” She smiled and pushed her carrots over to Emily. “Worth scraping these, I expect. Once you've done with the tayters, of course.”

Emily nodded without a word.

“Maybe I was wrong to tell you childer such stories,” Tabby said, standing again. She could no more stop telling stories than a skylark could stop singing, but Emily didn't point this out. “You were such sweet little motherless waifs, the four of you. You'd gobble up me ramblings like they were food and you were starved for 'em, and then you'd look up at me with big famished eyes, wanting more.”