The Glas s Town Game

Josephine slept in her cage near the mizzenmast. The red roses of her hair fluttered in the following wind. She would not look at anyone, or speak to them. Wellington had made noises about strategy, and hostages, and needed to have something up his sleeve just in case Old Boney actually agreed to negotiations. But it made Charlotte uneasy all the same. Emily had turned away and hidden her face the moment she saw the heavy cage being hoisted on board.

Behind the Bestminster glided the royal fleet of Glass Town. A hundred ships filled with stalwart limey soldiers and sailors. Wellington had let it be known far and wide that he intended to make his stand at Bravey’s Inn in Calabar Wood. Even Douro had heard him say it, while he whirled Charlotte around that jeweled dance floor. Now Charlotte knew otherwise. When Gondal’s forces arrived they would find no one but Quartermaster Stumps cooking them supper. They would surprise Napoleon and take the Bastille and Verdopolis in one stroke. When Bran and Anne were safe, they’d dig in their heels at the capital and defend it to the last.

All the wooden soldiers pottered round the decks, called up urgent from shore leave. Leftenant Gravey doled out the stores for dinner. He sported a new gnarl where Douro had shot him, but otherwise seemed quite well, now that he’d had his grog. Corporal Cheeky, Bombadier Cracky, Warrant Officers Goody and Baddy, the Company Quartermaster, Hay Man, Lance Sergeant Naughty, Lance Corporal Sneaky, even Private Tracky checked the knots, rolled cannonballs down the gun deck, and prepared the sails for the next tack into the wind. Leftenant Gravey discussed their plans with the Duke of Wellington. Half his body gleamed strong and golden in the torchlight. Half was still burnt black and blistered. The tale of the Battle at Bravey’s Inn had been told night after night in the Officers’ Mess.

Only Sergeant Major Rogue was missing.

Sergeant Crashey sat on the poop deck with a bandage round his ruined eyes. He played a sea shanty on a mournful concertina and smoked a hand-rolled cigar clamped between his wooden lips. The Sergeant played very poorly. It was a fine night—the last night before landfall. Even Dr. Home was up and about on deck. Emily and Byron stood on the forecastle deck (the gigantic soles of Charlotte’s Sunday shoes) watching the constellations sinking into the deep sea. He’d forgiven her for not being made of silver—but only just. Charlotte heard her sister saying:

“It’s a game we used to play, the four of us. It’s easy. You just say something outlandish or fantastical or unlikely and end by saying and.”

“Perhaps Old Boney won’t put up a fight when we find him,” Lord Byron said. His face looked so soft and young. Nothing at all like his portraits. They were all done when he was grown up. That Byron frightened Emily a little. This Byron was just her size. “Perhaps he’ll just ask us all in for tea and call off the war with a scone in each hand . . . er . . . and.”

“And a flock of ravens will pick us all up and carry us straight to Branwell and Anne as fast as you can caw . . . and . . .”

Charlotte winced. She felt something in her chest crack a little. Just a little, like one frozen twig on a tall tree. The Game of And was theirs. I don’t care if he is Lord Byron, she thought resentfully. He’s not us.

Charlotte settled down next to Crashey with her evening’s ration in one hand and his in the other. She still sat as though she were wearing a proper dress. It looked odd on her, now she had trousers on. Tonight, Gravey had made them all a nice ragout. Charlotte knew that was meant to be a sort of soup. But in Glass Town, naturally, the Leftenant had handed her a beaten tin mug with all manner of colorful rags hanging out of it. She took a deep breath of the salt air and pulled out her rags with a little smile, wrapping them round her neck like a scarf. Not ragout but rag-out. The taste of mutton and carrot stew flooded her mouth, and she felt quite full.

“I’m so sorry about your eyes, Crash,” Charlotte said. The Sergeant kept on squeezing his concertina. “Are you sure they won’t heal up?”

“Grog’s for kicking the dead out of you,” he said sadly. “It don’t do a lot for the complexion.”

Grog. They would have to give it to them for the battle. They were enlisted now. Possibly even officers. Charlotte didn’t need to beg or bargain. She had earned it. She thought. Well, at any rate, she would earn it. And everything that could ever be right in the world would be.

“What will you do now?”

Charlotte lifted her hand to stroke Sergeant Crashey’s carved pinewood hair. She remembered the day Papa had brought that box of wooden soldiers home from Leeds. She remembered the snow on Papa’s coat. She remembered snatching up soldiers before Branwell could claim them all, even though they were meant to be his present, really, crying out: This one’s mine and he’s Wellington! Branwell had grabbed the biggest soldier and snarled at her: Well, this one’s Bonaparte! Em and Anne plucked this and that one while Aunt Elizabeth begged them all to be civilized. They’d danced round the kitchen table waving their boys in the air like maypole ribbons. And then, then Charlotte had pulled the last one out of the box and kissed him on the head and hollered above the din of Christmas at the parsonage: I shall call this one Sergeant Crashey! He’ll be the best soldier there ever was! He was hers, he always had been, and she loved him. She wanted to stroke his hair, like a little brother, or a son. But at the same time, he was not hers at all. The Sergeant had gone far beyond that Christmas table. And so had Charlotte.

Crashey stretched his bandaged face toward the space where he thought Charlotte was. He was almost right. “What am I gonna do now’s I can’t shoot? You rudiful scamp! Blunt as a kick in the head! What if I’m sensitive about it, hm?”

Charlotte shrunk back as though she’d touched a hot stove. She stuck her hand between her knees. How silly of her. She was twelve. He wasn’t her son. How bizarre it would have been for her to stroke his hair like a doll! “Oh, I’m sorry. I am sorry! Are you?”

“Naw,” Crashey laughed. “I can’t shoot, but I can think! I can talk! I can probably box if someone points me in the right direction! I can do my experimentypotheses full time. No, no time for the Sensitive Sergeant hereabouts. What’s wanted are the Three R’s! Revenge, Rescue, and Retirement! And, to answer your originalnitial query, when all is well and walloped and won, Sergeant Crash C. Crashey will devote himself to the life braintastic! Dr. Home and me, we’re already archtecturializing a new laboratory specially for geniuses who can’t see what they’re doing. Doc!” The Sergeant waved at the black leather satchel walking

around in the shape of a man. “Come stare moodily at things with us! Plenty of room!”

Charlotte started to protest. “I wanted to talk to you, Crashey. Alone. It’s important.”

“Anything you want to talkverse with me about you can conversalk with Dr. Home about just as well. Better, even! Dr. Home is a man of science! A real champ on the intellectulogical pitch.”

But she could not suppress a shudder as the sleek, thin doctor perched beside them like a morbid scarecrow. She did not like the vivisectionist. She didn’t like him when Bran thought him up and she didn’t like him in the flesh. Who could like a vivisectionist? It was his job to be horrid. But then, you never had to like everyone you invented for your stories. It wasn’t as though you’d have to sit on the deck of a warship with the minor ne’er-do-wells and pass the time.

“You are both men of science,” she said quietly. The seabirds crowed overhead. A wave burst against the side of the good ship Bestminster. “Do you think . . . in your scientific opinion . . . do you think . . . there may be other worlds than this one?”

“What, you mean like the moon?” Sergeant Crashey said, swigging back something from a hip flask.

“No, I don’t think she does mean the moon,” Dr. Home said in that dark, slippery voice.

“I do not.” Charlotte tried again. “I mean . . . the place where we met, Crashey.”

“What, Angria? That’s far away, I’ll grant you, but it’s not another world. Not like the moon.”

“Is that where you think you picked us up? Angria?”

“There have been theories.” Dr. Home tried to interrupt, but Charlotte and the wooden soldier were off and yelling.

“Where else? That’s where the train goes. Glass Town Royal Express Main Line! South Angrian Loop!” Crashey thumped his flask twice on the deck.