The Glas s Town Game

I want zem all wizzin my clutches!

Tiny swords clanged as Napoleon advanced on the noble, innocent Lords of Glass Town, cutting them down one by one. The Douro puppet danced out of the way, carefully placing other men between himself and Boney’s onslaught. Soult flicked the marionette’s strings this way and that as Zamorna, Wellesley, Northangerland and all the rest fell beneath Napoleon’s blades. Douro’s descendant frowned and began to scratch nervously at his picnic blanket.

We fought him back and Gondal reaped

The bloody wheat they sowed,

But when the hour of victory dawned,

Old Douro let the villain go!

The Douro puppet raised his sword above Bonaparte’s head, then bowed to him instead and knelt to help the marionette to his feet. Moans and sighs of knowing, rueful sadness passed through the crowd like waves. The Duchess of Can’t wiped away even more tears than usual.

“Kill him!” someone yelled from the back.

“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.