by Lena Coakley
“He’s the butcher boy from Stanbury.”
Anne had read in books about a person’s face turning “all colors of the rainbow,” but she had never seen it before. First her aunt seemed to grow pale and almost greenish, but then the color rushed back and she grew an alarming pink. “And you have no news of Branwell?”
Tabby looked a bit sheepish now. “Nay, miss.”
Aunt Branwell took a breath to speak, but Charlotte, perhaps fearing Tabby was about to be unfairly excoriated, interrupted quickly: “Allow Anne to take you to your room, Aunt. You’ve had a shock.”
Ten minutes later, Anne was standing in the middle of the tiny bedroom, not knowing what to do for her aunt, who was clearly distressed. Anne was as shy with her as she was with other people, but nevertheless there was an intimacy between them. The two had shared a bedroom for a long time, and so Anne knew her aunt’s many vulnerabilities. She’d seen her without her false curls. She’d seen her in her underclothes. She knew the sound of her snoring.
Aunt Branwell gave a peevish sigh. She was lying on the bed, facing the wall.
Anne coughed. “Would you like some . . . tea?”
Her aunt didn’t answer. Anne wished she could straighten something, but the room was so plain and austere that there was nothing to straighten. A Bible and a few of Aunt Branwell’s things lay on the dressing table. The only picture was a sentimental seaside scene hanging next to the mirror. It had been there for years, but it had never occurred to Anne before that it must remind her aunt of Penzance. She winced with guilt. Elizabeth Branwell had given up her life and all her friends in the south to help care for the young Brontës.
“I expect that even you know where your brother is hiding,” Aunt Branwell said without turning around. “And why.” She sighed again when Anne failed to answer. “Your father was right. You children are very secretive.”
“Would you . . . May I get you some . . .”
“I’d like to be alone now, please,” her aunt said.
Anne went out into the hall, closing the door quietly, and heard her sisters murmuring in the children’s study. Annoyance washed over her. She entered without knocking and found Emily and Charlotte bent over Branwell’s desk, heads together like coconspirators. They were reading Branwell’s story paper.
“Where is he now?” Emily asked.
“He’s traipsing around the streets of Verdopolis,” Charlotte said. “I shall murder him.”
“Our actions have begun to harm others in an unconscionable way,” Anne interrupted. She hadn’t rehearsed this comment and was pleased by its firmness and its coherence.
The strength of Emily’s reaction surprised her. “Oh, do you think he’ll die?” There were tears in her eyes.
“Who?” Anne asked.
“Michael Redman!”
Anne was at a loss. What did the butcher’s boy from Stanbury have to do with anything? “I was speaking of Aunt Branwell and Papa.”
“She’s right,” Emily cried, taking Charlotte’s arm. “What if the gytrash bites Papa? He could be in danger!”
“Calm yourself,” Charlotte said.
Anne frowned at her sisters in turn, considering all she knew and trying to fill the gaps in her knowledge with intuition. Emily had told her about making a bargain with the mysterious Old Tom; she knew Tabby’s stories well; she knew her sister had vowed not to go to Gondal again.
“The gytrash,” Anne said finally. “Did he come for you? Is he one of Old Tom’s minions?” Charlotte’s eyes widened.
“Don’t be surprised,” Emily told her, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Anne always knows things without being told.”
Charlotte peered at Anne through her spectacles, as if considering her in this new light.
“But, Anne.” Emily came to her and took both her hands. “The gytrash was Rogue. I’m sure of it. Old Tom may have sent him here somehow, but the creatures haunting us are our own characters, come over to this world.”
Haunting us? Anne glanced at Charlotte.
“The gytrash wasn’t some apparition. It was real and solid,” Emily continued, becoming emotional again. “It can do terrible damage. I told Rogue to go and bite someone, and he did! Poor Michael.”
Anne fished a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to her.
“You mustn’t blame yourself,” Charlotte said. “I am at fault.”
“Stop saying that, Charlotte,” Emily said, blowing her nose. “You are too saintly. I can’t bear it.”
“It is her fault,” Anne said.
Her sisters both looked up in surprise. Emily put her arm through Charlotte’s, and Anne saw that something had brought them closer in the night. She bowed her head, but she didn’t mean to take back her words. Aunt Branwell had called them all secretive—and it was bad enough that they were so with the adults, but the Brontë siblings had been secretive with one another, and this, Anne was sure, had led them to disaster.
“It’s time to tell us everything, Charlotte,” Anne said, hardly believing her own nerve. “It’s time to tell us the price you pay for crossing over.”
ANNE
IHARDLY KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN,” CHARLOTTE said.
There weren’t enough chairs for all of them, and it had seemed somehow improper to sit on Branwell’s unmade bed, and so they elected to sit on the floor, as they often had when they were children. Anne was glad she had swept the day before.
“I was wearing my black dress with the tight collar,” Charlotte said. “I remember that.” Idly she pulled at the neck of her dress. “And it was autumn, so Elizabeth must have been about four months gone and Maria five . . .” She frowned. “That means I was only nine years old, and Branwell only eight.”
And I was five, Anne thought. Her clearest memory of that time was of Charlotte and Emily’s return from Clergy Daughters’ School. While everyone else was mourning the loss of two sisters, in her little mind she had gained two. Suddenly she had a pair of fascinating playmates instead of only Branwell, who was so loud and wouldn’t let her touch his toys.
“Branwell and I were just getting to know each other again,” Charlotte said. “We’d been separated for a year, and that’s a long time for children. I found him very arrogant, but very clever. When I mentioned that Maria had told me stories at school, he positively hounded me to tell them—he became quite desperate. You know how he can be. When I relented, he hung upon my every word as if he were hearing Maria’s voice from beyond the grave.” She paused. “Then came a day when we were outside at the stone wall . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“You were at the stone wall,” Anne prompted.
“Please understand.” Charlotte looked at them now with remorse in her eyes. “The world was so gray to us then. We missed Maria and Elizabeth so terribly, and we were so young . . .”
“Go on.”
Charlotte nodded, pushing up her spectacles. “One day I caught Branwell in the yard, holding out a shilling in his hand.” She held out her hand palm up, a gesture Anne knew well. “He explained he was calling for Old Tom, and it became a great game with us. We’d promise all sorts of things. Old Tom, Old Tom, I’ll give you all my hair. I’ll give you all my teeth. I’ll give you my firstborn child. We offered more and more, but nothing ever happened. It became a dare of sorts. Who had the courage to promise the most?”
Anne shivered. She had expected something like this, but actually hearing the story was like hearing about babies playing with sharp knives.
“Then I had an idea. A bargain Old Tom wouldn’t refuse. I even wrote down the words, so that they would be perfect. Branwell was very impressed and called them ‘fine poetry.’” Charlotte looked at Anne and Emily again. “You must understand that I only half believed what we were doing!”
“What was the bargain?” Anne said firmly.
“I won’t hold out my palm now,” Charlotte said, and she sat on her hands, as if afraid they might hold themselves out of their own accord. “We stood with our backs to the parsonage, and w
e said . . .” She took a deep breath. “We said, ‘Old Tom, Old Tom, listen please. We ask passage between our mundane world and sunlit places far from here. In return, we offer our days—one for every crossing.’”
Anne felt her heart sink.
“At first nothing happened, and we thought we’d failed again, but Branwell said we should tell a story, to make that sunlit place real. I started telling a story I’d cobbled together from Gulliver’s Travels, and then . . .” Charlotte stared at the center of the room as if she could see something now. “We saw a ripple. A crack in the world. And beyond the crack was something very bright. I knew, I knew with certainty, that the story I was telling lay just through that strange door—a whole world. We still had our hands out . . .” She lowered her head. “How awful to hear myself say these things aloud.”
“One day,” Emily said. “One day from the span of your life every time you go to Verdopolis or any other invented world?”
“Two,” Charlotte said, barely audibly. “We have to hold out our hands to go back as well.”
Emily seemed to wince. “And you never saw Old Tom at all?”
“Never.”
Emily pulled thoughtfully at her lip, considering what she’d heard. She looked very solemn, but this was no surprise to Anne, who knew what she had bargained. How many days? she wondered. How many years? If Emily had promised as many days as Charlotte and Branwell had lost, all for just one crossing to Gondal, and if she had paid this price a second time to cross home, how much of her life had been sheared off already?
“How dare you, Charlotte!” Anne said. “The days God gave you. The life God gave you. Have all Papa’s sermons fallen on deaf ears? What were you thinking?”
“We were children!” Charlotte said.
Anne was so angry that her words seemed to speak themselves. “When you made the bargain, yes, but you have been crossing over for years, and every time . . .”
Anne had never felt this way before. She suddenly knew what it meant for one’s blood to boil. She stood up—she had to—and began to pace the room.
“I . . . I . . . I can’t believe I thought you were the sensible sister!”
“A long life of drudgery stretched out before me,” Charlotte cried. “Making it shorter didn’t seem like such a sin.”
“Oh!” Anne flung up her arms, knocking Branwell’s Martin canvas right off its easel. She ignored this and continued her attack. “You would rather die than be a governess? It’s not prostitution, for heaven’s sake!”
Charlotte gaped, and Emily, pale and stricken as she was, stifled a giggle.
“I shudder to think where you learned of such things,” Charlotte said, standing.
“The Bible,” Anne snapped. “Allow me to recommend it to you.”
Good heavens, Anne thought. What am I saying? Where are these words coming from?
“You are overwrought, my dear,” Charlotte told her, brushing off her skirts.
Anne could feel that Charlotte was now trying to take back the position of seniority she had lost by being scolded, but Anne felt that she had hours more of scolding to impart—a lifetime of unsaid words.
“It seems an appropriate moment to become overwrought. I’m sorry you disagree.”
“Let me assure you that this can all be put to rights,” Charlotte said.
“Indeed?” She didn’t think Charlotte could return what Emily had lost, but she found that, angry as she was, she didn’t have the heart to tell her elder sister about Emily’s bargain.
“We must cross over one more time.”
Anne’s mouth dropped open, but no sound emerged.
“Emily and I have discussed this,” Charlotte said. “It has been decided.”
“Are you . . . are you quite . . .” Do not leave me, words, she thought. I need just a few more. Anne picked up Branwell’s painting and set it back upon the easel, trying to calm herself. “Are you quite mad?”
“Emily will not pay for the crossing. I will cross her over to Verdopolis, as I have before.” Anne found this little consolation. “We have no choice. We have an idea for how to stop Old Tom’s minions, but we can only do it from inside the invented worlds.”
Anne took a deep breath. “No,” she said. “No. I don’t want any part of it. I won’t go.”
Charlotte and Emily shared a glance. “We are not asking you to, my dear,” Charlotte said.
BRANWELL
BRANWELL HELD OUT HIS HAND, PALM UPWARD, ready to go home. He closed his eyes, but when he opened them, it was the rich oak paneling and velvet curtains of the Elysium Club that he saw, not the plain white walls of his bedroom. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried again. Something was pressed into his outstretched hand. This time when he opened his eyes, the barman was standing at his side.
“The Earl of Northangerland said that you would cover the bill, sir.”
Branwell stared at the slip of paper. “Put it on my account.”
“Yes, my lord. It’s only . . . my lord’s account is rather high . . .”
“What the deuce . . . ?” No one had ever asked him to pay a bill in Verdopolis before. He patted his breast pockets and found them empty, but this was no matter. “The barman had forgotten,” he said, “that Lord Thornton had paid the bill in full with his gambling winnings.”
He waited for this change in the plot to take effect and for the barman to slink away, but instead the man’s face grew stony. “My lord cannot drink free forever.”
Branwell sputtered. “I beg your pardon. Do you have any idea who I am?”
The barman shrugged. Branwell noticed with embarrassment that the few patrons left in the club were glancing toward him and whispering among themselves. “I will send payment today.”
“See that you do.”
Branwell stood up, cheeks burning. “And then I will see to it that you are dismissed!” He crumpled the bill and tossed it onto the table, then strode to the exit with as much dignity as he could muster. Laughter erupted behind him as he went out the door.
Outside, morning had dawned, bleak and overcast. What time was it back home, he wondered? Was it morning there as well? What would Father think if his bed were found empty? He stood in the cobblestoned street with his hand outstretched, trying one more time to will himself back to the parsonage. His head ached, probably from the beer. Was that why he couldn’t concentrate? He had never thought much about how he returned to his own world. A scene would come to an end, he would hold out his hand, and he would find himself home again. If crossing over was like calling a door, then going home again was like pushing a door away—a simple gesture of the mind that he had done a thousand times. But now, he couldn’t seem to manage it.
“Watch out below!” someone called.
Branwell looked up to see a servant emptying a chamber pot from the window above him. He leapt away to avoid its contents, stumbling to his knees and twisting his ankle in the process. “In the name of murder, madame!” he shouted up to her. “There is a gentleman below!”
The servant, a sour-faced woman in a dirty cap, spat and closed the shutters with a bang. Perhaps Charlotte was right and Branwell had gone a bit too far when creating the seedier side of Verdopolis.
He decided to go to Sneaky Hall, reasoning that if he went to sleep in his character’s bed, he might—with any luck—wake up in his own, and so he started down toward the valley where the wealthy neighborhoods were, limping as he went. It should have been easy enough to find his way. The huge Tower of All Nations was always visible, dwarfing everything else around it. All Branwell had to do was make his way toward this landmark, and yet it appeared to be getting farther and farther away from him. The streets twisted and turned. Instead of growing more refined, the city grew rougher and dirtier as he went. He reached a dead end in a deserted laneway and stopped.
“Old Tom!” he yelled to the sky. “I did what you want! Now send me home!”
Of course there was no response. He turned and walked on for what seemed like an hour,
then for what seemed like another. Drying laundry crisscrossed the narrow streets above his head, and groups of grubby children loitering on corners whispered to one another. Branwell knew that he had made these places, but nothing was familiar. He thought of what Verdopolis had been when he and Charlotte first created it, when it was Glasstown—a glittering, perfect place. How had his creation wandered so far from that ideal? He had wanted Glasstown to be a monument to his sister Maria. With nothing more than a hand mirror and light from a window, she had taught him that even the deepest sorrows could be lessened by looking at something beautiful—but somehow he had allowed ugliness to spread across her city like a stain. Up ahead at a cross street, a hackney coach was passing.
“Stop!” Branwell called. “Driver!”
The coach drove on, but Branwell chased madly after it, wincing with every step. Finally he managed to grab the driver’s coat. “Please stop!”
The driver pulled at the reins and stopped his horse, but he scowled down at Branwell from his perch and pointed his whip threateningly. “I am engaged, sir!” he said. “Do not detain me.”
The coach’s curtain was lifted, and a figure, white and ghostly, peered out at him through the glass. The door opened.
“Come in if you must, Lord Thornton,” said a woman’s voice. “But I fear our errand will take you far out of your way.”
Branwell climbed in with relief, and the conveyance drove on. Two women sat on the seat opposite, both in veils that covered their hair and face, but he had recognized the voice of the one who had spoken. It was Mary Henrietta, Zamorna’s wife. Her white gossamer gown seemed to take up most of the room in the coach. The other woman wore a simple dove-gray dress and veil. Branwell decided that this must be her maid, Mina Laury.
“I cannot thank you enough, Duchess,” Branwell said. The white figure made no response. “What brings you to these rough neighborhoods? And why are you not in your own carriage?” Mary Henrietta’s equipage with its four chestnut stallions was a well-known sight in Verdopolis.
She was silent for a moment. “I did not wish to call attention to my errand. In fact, I hoped you would not recognize me. May we rely on your discretion?”
