The Glas s Town Game

“You need better friends than us. Braver friends. Grander friends. More . . . more famous friends.”

“What’s famous got to do with anything?” Emily asked.

“Fame means money, money means power, power means getting to do whatever you want. A couple of poor editors can’t mount a rescue mission to Gondal in dead of night. But the Duke of Wellington can. The Marquis of Douro can. Lord Byron can.”

“We don’t know any of those people,” protested Charlotte.

“Lord Byron?” Emily gasped.

A great sigh of relief rippled through the bookends and bindings of Mr. Bud and Mr. Tree.

“Well, I suppose I can do you a decent turn, then.” Mr. Bud smiled and reached behind the reception desk to fiddle with something. “I’ll send word to our Ginny right away. She’s dressing maid to Miss Mary Percy—the missus and me are terrifically proud! It’ll be no trouble at all. Ochreopolis has the fastest ghost in Glass Town.”

“Ghost?” Charlotte repeated, sure she’d heard it wrong.

“Ghost,” Mr. Tree repeated, sure the child was deaf.

“Post?” said Emily hopefully.

“Ghost,” answered Mr. Bud firmly. “The Ghost Office. How else do you get your messages into the hands what want them? I can’t think how a post could deliver letters. It hasn’t got hands, you know. If a body dies along the highway, sometimes their spirit keeps walking or riding or driving a cart up and down the same patch of lane, back and forth, as ghosts will do. Well, back in the timey mists, the first Marquis of Douro, may the Genii bless his soul, got the inking gorgeous idea to give those poor wights a job. Every man’s happier on the gainful, yeah? As long as they were haunting this and that, why not take a sack of letters and parcels and suchlike while they’re moping on their way? A ghost doesn’t have to obey the laws of the mortal world. They can find anybody, anywhere, so long as you’ve got a name and a stamp. They just listen to the earth or the heavenly spheres or something. Can’t say I’ve ever understood it. Now, Glass Town has regular routes all up and down the county! Wonder of the modern world!”

“Ah, but even patriots like ourselves must admit Glass Town is nothing to Gondal on that score. For”—the tall bookend-man cleared his throat politely—“obvious reasons. A Gondalier can get a letter from Elseraden to Zedora before the ink is dry.”

“Wait! What reasons? They’re not obvious to us,” interrupted Emily, wiping the sweat from her forehead.

The editors glanced at one another knowingly, then away guiltily, then at their hands furtively, then toward heaven at last. “There are . . . ahem . . . many more ghosts in Gondal than in Glass Town, my dear,” Mr. Tree mumbled shamefacedly. “War is such a very dreadful thing, when the singing and the marching and the hurrahs are all done.”

“Don’t you go feeling sorry for them! Gondal attacked us! They’re getting their just desserts, and I hope there’s a fat cherry on top for each of them.” Mr. Bud stomped his foot. “Why shouldn’t there be more of them dead than us? Why have we got to feel guilty for winning? Well, I won’t! We weren’t doing a thing but minding our own business when Napoleon decided he just had to be Napoleon and shoot up the place of a Sunday. Old Boney could end it all in an instant, if he’d only inking well go home.”

“But he won’t,” Mr. Tree sighed. “Not now. None of them will. We’re in it till the end, I’m afraid.” And he would say no more.

“We know a man called Napoleon as well,” Charlotte said very carefully. “He was . . . much the same. Perhaps it’s the name that does it.”

Emily wanted to tell them not to worry, that it would be all right. Their war was only a bit behind hers, you see, and once events caught up, Napoleon would die alone on a rock in the middle of the ocean like he did back home, and everyone would be able to speak French and be happy and eat vol-au-vent again. But she couldn’t be sure of that rock, not completely sure. Would there still be battles called Trafalgar and Waterloo in a place where Leftenant Gravey could come back to life a hundred times and Old Boney really was a lot of old bones with guns for arms?

Mr. Bud waved his braided hand. “Yes, well, I hope you drowned him so thoroughly even his grandchildren never got dry. Bah! Enough of the war! I was bragging, and you shouldn’t interrupt a fellow bragging unless you want to cause a stroke.” He cleared his throat to praise the Glass Town post again. “If you think a horse can shake a leg, you’ve never seen a ghost gallop. Our local’ll be along presently. I’ve already rung the bell.”

And indeed, down from the highest windows of the towers came a pale mustard-colored shade, all smoke and sunlight. They could see straight through him as he circled down to where they stood, especially as he had several holes through him made by some sword or other. The ghost left a trail of frost in the air like skate scratches in an ice pond. His clothes were beautiful velvet tatters, his face long and sad and noble, with a tidy beard, but his back and shoulder were oddly twisted. He wore a white rose on his tunic and tall crown on his head.

“Em,” whispered Charlotte. Her breath fogged, though it had been warm a moment before. But Emily just stared. Her mouth hung open. She clasped her hands together in delight. She didn’t seem to notice the sudden cold at all.

“Em!” Charlotte whispered harder, and jabbed her sister in the ribs with her thumb.

“A ghost, Charlotte! A real ghost, do you see him? He’s amazing!”

“Emily!” Charlotte hissed. The spirit was almost upon them. “I think that’s Richard the Third!”

“What? Don’t be silly. He died on Bosworth Field! I don’t even think there is a Bosworth Field here!”

“I think there’s everything here we’ve got back home, only turned around and shaken up till it doesn’t know its own name,” Charlotte sighed, but though everything was as dire as any war for any roses, she couldn’t help smiling all the same. It was Richard. She knew that face, from the woodcuts and paintings in their history books, from the illustration beside the list of characters in their collection of Mr. Shakespeare’s plays. If they had a Napoleon in Gondal, and a Duke of Wellington in Glass Town, why not Richard and the Princes in the tower and all the rest? She knew it was him, she was so sure! Dick the Bad, as big as life and twice as dead!

Suddenly Emily knew it, too. The hunchback, the put-upon expression, the crown! She clapped her hands like they’d just seen a magician pull an English monarch out of his hat. Both girls quickly remembered themselves as subjects to the Crown, even if the Crown was in another world and stone dead. They knelt before the last Plantagenet.

“I suppose there are roads enough through Bosworth now,” Emily said thoughtfully.

“There you are, Dickie, my lad, there’s you set,” Mr. Bud chirped bossily. He handed a note card to the King of England as though it wasn’t the most remarkable thing that had ever happened. Richard took it without complaint. He inclined his head toward the kneeling girls, touched, perhaps, that someone would still think to do such a thing. He laid his misty amber hands upon their heads and looked down with love and a sadness as deep as the grave. When he spoke, no more than a whisper, his voice was misty and amber, too:

“So wise, so young, they say, do never live long.”