The Glass Town Game

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “Stab him in the face, you moron!” hollered another.

  “If only! If only!” Sergeant Crashey joined in.

  But nothing they could say would alter Young Soult’s play. Charlotte leaned forward, trying to piece it all together with the Battle of Port Ruby and everything she’d ever learned in her history books about Waterloo and Trafalgar and the thousand versions of those battles they’d acted out in their room at the top of the stairs while it rained on the moors outside.

  Why did the old man mercy choose?

  “Because he had cheese biscuits for brains!” a drunken Lord bellowed. Everyone roared with laughter, except Adrian and Mary Percy, who seemed to have nailed scowls to their faces. Soult cleared his throat and started over.

  Why did the old man mercy choose?

  We dare not ask his mind,

  Or if REGRET and SHAME can taint

  Each stop along a family line!

  The partiers gasped. The nerve of the young poet! The cheek! Savage little whispers ran up and down the rows.

  “Now just a moment!” cried Adrian, the present Marquis of Douro, and very definitely a stop along the family line in question. Mary Percy tried to calm her love. Their faces looked so young in the moonlight. He pushed her bronze hand aside. The Marquis punched the ground with his ashen fist and called out, coldly and clearly: “Don’t forget who butters your bread, you impudent, unemployed hedgehog!”

  Young Soult wiped the sweat from his peppercorn brow on his shoulder. He tried to laugh it off, but his giggle sounded like a terrified hummingbird. Back to the sure hit—he dangled the Bonaparte puppet again. Its sword arms glittered in the moonlight. Once again Emily bit her tongue to keep from correcting Young Soult right there. His ridiculous Gondal accent bleated out into the night once more. Charlotte rolled her eyes.

  I never rests! I never sleeps!

  I hungers for ze world entire!

  Deed zat dumb Douro reellie zink zat

  Bonaparte vould joost retires?

  With a blast of the trumpets, a new puppet crashed down onto the boards. Emily lit up. This was the Napoleon they’d seen! He had proper rifle-arms and his huge hat and his giant rooster. Lord Byron stared at Emily as she clapped her hands in delight.

  “Do you like Old Boney so much?”

  “Oh, no, it’s not that . . . it’s just . . .” Ellis Bell could hardly say she’d gotten shot at by the man himself earlier that afternoon. “The rooster,” she finished lamely. “It’s very cleverly done.”

  Young Soult had banged up rather a brilliant horror-bird out of a milk pitcher, a pair of scissors for the beak, and scraps of green gauze to represent its fire-breath.

  Now my grandboy’s in ze family biz—

  Zat bebe’s got ze knack.

  Big Boney may be in ze ground,

  But Leetle Boney’s on ze attack!

  Little squibs and tiny rockets fired off as the younger Bonaparte rampaged through the countryside once more, laughing maniacally and shooting holes in the silken backdrop. Red ribbons tumbled out of the puppets’ bodies like real gouts of blood.

  Oh, Bran would have gone mad for that, Charlotte thought. Maybe we can act it out for him when we get home. I’ve got red ribbons and so has Em.

  Home. She shut her eyes. It did not seem possible that Haworth or Keighley or even Yorkshire still existed somewhere far behind her on the railroad line. If we ever get back. And then an awful, alien thought crept up through the stairs of her mind like a black cat. What if we do get back, all of us, with grog in hand? What will happen if it works? What will happen if it doesn’t?

  Young Soult tossed woolen pink intestines stuffed with barley out of the puppet-battle and into the front row. Miss Jane fainted into Gravey’s irritated arms.

  “Oh, come off it, you poodle,” the Leftenant groaned. “I lost my innards three times in a week once. The least you can do is stay awake for it.”

  Miss Jane opened one eye and glared up at the Leftenant, who steadfastly refused to behave as a suitor should. “You just ruin everything,” she whined. “You’re meant to make a fuss over me!”

  “That’s preposterous,” said Charlotte evenly. “What do they teach you in the city?”

  Young Soult’s next tortured verse sang out over Gravey’s roars of laughter.

  How bitterly the widows wept

  As Glass Town bent and broke!

  Because we would not kneel and place

  Our necks beneath his yoke!

  A pale little puppet all of white silk stepped hesitantly into the scene. She wore a silver crown. A marionette covered in paper roses strode confidently from the other side of the curtains.

  They took Victoria by night,

  We stole their Josephine,

  But all for naught as hills turned red

  That once were rich and green.

  Young Soult’s hands and feet twitched and shuddered so quickly Charlotte could hardly see them move. The puppets waged war with every jerk and pull of a finger or a toe. Old Douro marched back across the ribbon-soaked battlefields. Now he sported a gray beard made out of old batting. A firecracker burst. The torches flickered. The oboe blew a long, low note. The marionette collapsed, clutching his heart.

  Our sons and daughters bled and died

  To save us from his chains!

  And on the fields of gray Weghlon

  Even old Douro was slain.

  Soft whimpering sounds rose up as even a few of the older men wept. Lord Byron rolled his eyes impatiently.

  “He’s not gotten any better. Chain and slain? I wonder if he sprained himself coming up with that? Just because it’s historical doesn’t mean it’s good.”

  Emily looked at him sidelong. She wondered how Lord Byron would take a bit of teasing. Branwell usually kicked something or upended something on her head. Anne cried sometimes, and sometimes called her a badger or a nixie or an owl’s breakfast. But she couldn’t stop herself now any more than she could back home.

  “I think you just don’t like anyone else’s poems getting a good reaction.”

  She awaited the kick or the upending or the badger or the breakfast.

  Byron raised a furry eyebrow at her. His wolfy eyes smoldered petulantly.

  “Watch the edge on that wit, girl! You’ll cut yourself before you cut me.” Then he was all secret smiles and anticipation again. “Hush, hush now, we’re going to miss it!”

  Still more puppets crowded on. How many had the boy made? A black leather marionette with long, thin limbs and a soldier made of simple yellow wood knelt beside Douro and lifted him up onto an invisible gurney. The drums beat wildly. A scarlet flower caked with crystal beads rose up from below the stage.

  But ho! But lo! What flower is this

  Beneath dead Douro’s head?

  These unassuming petals stained

  With Glass Town blood so red?

  What luck, what joy! A miracle!

  Heaven turned against the frogs!

  The angels brought us Dr. Home

  And Crashey’s death-defying grog!

  Sergeant Crashey threw his arms in the air. “Bullyblimey it all down the road and back! It’s me! Would you lookagander at that! It’s puppet me! I’m famous! Look at my legs! Good Lord, but I never was that thin!”

  The Shelleys, Keats, Jane, and Kate Crackernuts shushed Crashey violently. Dr. Home bent his shiny leather head as the folk around him showered the man in praise.

  “I will not shush!” Crashey announced. “I have never been a puppet or done up theatrisculpturally and I am chuffed as a steam train! Dunno why he couldn’t use the Latin, though. He’s overstuffed the meter as it is! Who’d notice one more bit of fatticus in that rex sausageorum?”

  “Shut it, Crash!” Lord Byron yelled. Beside him, Emily’s mouth had dropped open in surprise.

  “Crashey!” said Charlotte. “It was you? You invented the . . . the . . . something . . . vitae . . . grog?”

  The Sergeant preened. “What did I say? What d
id I expressxactically say? I said you two didn’t know a thing about me and I could be brainyrich and bigshotted as anything for all you could guess. Sergeant Crash C. Crashey is an enigmariddluzzleman and a half!”

  Miss Jane narrowed her eyes at Charlotte. Lady Zenobia whispered in her fiancé’s wooden ear.

  “Surely Thrushcross is not so remote that such basic facts have not reached your muddy, unhinged door,” Miss Jane hissed.

  Charlotte’s stomach turned cold. She cast about for something to shut up the nasty little gossip. “A . . . a Lady . . . needn’t concern herself with stuffy old things like history books.” She couldn’t help it. The idea of not concerning herself with books was so hilarious to Charlotte that she threw in a giggle for good measure. She was warming up to the lie, now. “Papa said it dries out a girl’s brain and ruins her for marriage.”

  This seemed to satisfy her.

  “He hasn’t got it on straight, anyhow, Austen old girl.” Crashey dismissed her with a flutter of his fingers. “It was mostly Dr. Home what did it. It were only my laboratoryottage and my equipment and my idea.”

  The petals on the beaded scarlet flower slowly fell away to reveal a miniature bottle filled with the moonlit fluid she’d seen seeping into Leftenant Gravey’s wounds at Port Ruby. Grog. Rhodinus Secundi Vitae. Young Soult’s effects were rewarded with an appreciative gasp.

  From Gondal’s humble flowers they brewed

  The answer to our prayers.

  They took our lives, we took their weeds—

  I’d say that’s pretty fair!

  This was answered by a great whooping and cheering and stomping of feet.

  “Well,” Crashey whispered bashfully. “It’s a dashbittle more complicated than that, you know. The blossom’s just the beginning. There’s berries and vitalegetable flooooids and stufflike. We found old Douro dead as a fatherless donkey, that’s true, but he had all these petals and that stuck to him and wherever they stuck the wounds were all stitched up like a doctor did it! But he were still donkeyed, poor lump. Took us ages to science it down to size, especially in the field— lucky me I had a summer house in Gondal back before the war—so we recommandeerandered it and anyhow, this, that, and the other biochemical thing, Dr. Home and me beat death. Not bad for a boy who never so much as met Mr. Cambridge or Mr. Oxford! I thought I’d get a Knighthood out of all that excitement but the Duke just said: Terribly sorry, old chap, but I just can’t. What a snorfling, dripping nose of man!”

  Charlotte goggled, delighted and dumbfounded all together at once. But then that black cat came creeping up the stairs of her thoughts again. If such a thing can be made with science and study, not magic, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . perhaps it is no different than medicine. . . .

  The trumpets grew triumphant; the oboe grew overjoyed; the drums grew delighted.

  Now the day approaches when

  Fair Glass Town shall prevail!

  For our boys live and live again

  While theirs must die and fail!

  “Why?” Charlotte whispered, horrified. “Why do they keep attacking, if you can’t die and they can?”

  Sergeant Major Rogue looked up at the moon, his eyes full of shadows. “If they win, at least their children will live forever. What would a man not do for that?”

  Our journey through the veils of time

  Is drawing towards its end.

  Remember when I take my bow

  How I have been your friend!

  A hundred people leapt to their feet, applauding wildly. Wolf whistles and hoorays bounced merrily around the walled garden. Charlotte and Emily cheered and jumped and snatched up flowers from the lawn to throw at the stage. Only Lord Byron kept his seat, smiling to himself. He drew out a pocket watch, checked it, and put it back in his lavender waistcoat. Even Adrian and Mary Percy reluctantly stood and clapped quietly. If a man made of ash could go pale, young Douro had. But he gritted his glowing teeth.

  Young Soult was breathing heavily. His thin peppercorn chest rose and fell as he gulped for air. His voice rang out—but now it trembled with terror. It trembled, but it did its work. This show, of all shows, must go on.

  But wait! My tale is not complete!

  My story is not done!

  AMBITION’s not yet quit the field,

  Nor has VIRTUE won.

  The long-nosed, black-and-red cloaked puppet representing Ambition rose up again, rubbing his wooden hands together in demonic glee. A murmur passed through the crowd. Seats were taken once more. Silence settled over the garden like a fisherman’s net. Young Douro glared icily at the stage, his nostrils flaring in fury.

  In innocence has Glass Town danced,

  Thinking all was saved.

  You do not know what Young Soult knows:

  A BARGAIN HAS BEEN MADE!

  Confused cries of protest fired out from the throng like bullets. This was not any part of the familiar story they’d come for, the patriotic pageant designed to make them resolute and eager for the final campaign against Gondal and Boney.

  “What’s happening?” Sergeant Major Rogue said nervously. He looked toward the stone archway, the only exit.

  “Dunno!” Crashey shrugged. “I like it, though. I am always presentary and accounted for if there’s going to be a bit of audience participation!”

  “What’s happening?” Emily whispered.

  George Gordon, Lord Byron, turned to her and smiled fit to light up heaven. It was a terrifying smile. All the gorgeous pelts of his face seemed to rearrange themselves into something both ferocious and full of fun.

  “I told you, darling.” His golden eyes glittered—so near! “I’m going to bring a house down.”

  And then, though he ought to have had better manners, being a Baron and only having just met this strange silver person, Byron let the moment get caught up in him. He kissed Emily suddenly, shockingly, scandalously. It was only quick, but Emily thought she might very probably never get her breath back again. When the poet pulled away, her silver paint was smeared all over his lips. He touched his mouth, wiped it off, and looked curiously at his fingertips.

  “What a funny little thing,” he said wonderingly. In fact, he was wondering so hard, he nearly missed what he’d been waiting hours to see.

  Young Soult screamed out his lines as though he was afraid they’d tear him apart if he kept them in any longer.

  Not three months past in weakened Gondal

  Douro’s voice did ring:

  ALL THE LANDS MY TROOPS HAVE TOUCHED,

  OF THESE I WILL BE KING!

  Gladly will I share the secret of

  Dear Glass Town’s precious rum

  If you’ll divide the world with me

  When all is said and done!

  Chaos erupted. Adrian went black with rage. The banked embers beneath his skin roared to white-hot life.

  “I gave you everything, Soult! Is this how you pay me back for the whole of your detestable life? I found you singing nursery rhymes to the rats in the gutters of Verdopolis and I made you the greatest poet in Glass Town!”

  “Second greatest,” Lord Byron said casually. He popped a raspberry into his mouth. “Possibly third.”

  Mary Percy grabbed Douro by the shoulders. She was bronze, he was ash. He had never been able to stand against her. It was what he liked best about Mary. Onstage, the young Douro puppet and the young Bonaparte puppet embraced. A wide brass crown lowered on black ribbons. It settled down over both their heads.

  Our grandpas did it! Why not us?

  There IS no reason why!

  What matters acres, counties, fields,

  If Gondal need not die?

  Mary Percy shook her beloved like a doll. She spoke sweetly. She did her best. “My darling, my darling, it’s only theater! It’s only art! Art is nothing but frippery and lies; everyone knows that!”

  “Stand aside or I shall stand aside you,” Douro snarled. His eyes were as full of murder as Mary’s were with tears.

  “Don’t
be an imbecile, Adrian!” she hissed. “You’re always like this! Years and years with me and you never learn a thing! Laugh, you giant, stubborn moose of a man! Laugh and it’s a comedy! Just a bit of political satire. You can take it. Anyone can. Kill him and you’ll make it true.”

  Young Douro locked eyes with Mary. They stood unmoving for an endless moment. Charlotte and Emily watched them from their separate blankets, not understanding, and then understanding too well, just as the bronze beauty did.

  “Oh,” Mary said, and in that little, sad oh, her heart broke. “Oh, Adrian. My love. No.”

  The Marquis flung her aside and charged at the stage. Crashey and Gravey leapt to their feet and barreled into him. They wrestled him up between them, scrambling in the mud to hold the last scion of the house of Douro where he stood, his trousers covered in crumbs and crushed wildflowers. Charlotte wanted desperately to help, but she couldn’t see how. All the while, Young Soult hurried to finish, to get it all out before his greatest work ended in a rather abrupt and thorough murder.

  Drown Victoria or hang her,

  I care nothing for her lot.

  Usurpers get what they deserve—

  Let the little vixen rot!

  The once-tidy lawn fell apart into pandemonium. The Duchess of Can’t’s eyes dried for the first time in years. She threw her head back and screamed like a banshee. The Duke balled his hands into impotent fists—for a ruler can’t strike a subject, no matter how much of a cow he’s been.

  Over all creation our immortal

  Banners shall unfurl

  And in this crown let Glass Town be

  The lowliest of pearls!

  Soult let all the puppets drop at once. He fell back onto his high cushion, exhausted. All the shouting and fighting and accusing only grew louder. Douro kicked at the wooden soldiers like a child caught stealing. Bit by bit, he dragged them all toward the poor poet, who was beside himself with fear and pride.

  “He betrayed us!” Soult shrieked as Adrian’s long fingers reached up for his throat. “His grandfather betrayed us then and he’s betrayed us now! He’s sold us out to Gondal for a crown!”

  The green poet’s eyes were wild and panicked. In that moment, up there above everyone, trying to do the right thing and ruining himself anyway, Charlotte could not help but think how like Bran he looked. She whirled round to face Sergeant Major Rogue. Jane had fainted again, and this time she’d come by it honestly. Zenobia was stroking her hair and calling her name.