The Glas s Town Game

Lord Byron took in Charlotte and Emily with sloping, sleepy, wolfish eyes.

“She walks in beauty like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies—”

Emily and Charlotte burst out laughing. Byron looked quite hurt, and quite like a kicked dog.

“Oh, I am sorry,” Charlotte said, wheezing a little as she tried to laugh in her corset. “But it’s too good! It’s perfect!”

Emily remembered to put up her fan at the last moment and hide that she was mocking the great man. She wondered suddenly if that’s what fans were always used for. “It’s only that you would quote yourself, you know,” she giggled helplessly. “It’s just all over you. But thank you kindly, we are rather nice-looking!”

Crashey hurried them away from the stricken look on Lord Byron’s face. After a moment, the poet called after them:

“You know my work?”

But they were already on to a new throng.

“Now the short bluestone fellowman tilting at the punch bowl is King George, but he’s only King George today, you see. On other days of the week he fancies himself a crawfish, an oyster, a heather flower, a blue flame, and a soldier called Captain Flower. Mad as a carpet, that one. But best call him His Majesty King George or else he’ll bite you. No use judging! I once had an uncle who thought he was a cricket bat, and I’ve got the paddle-marks to prove it.”

“Who is King if not him?” Charlotte said suddenly. It seemed such a logical thing to ask that it had completely escaped her mind until now.

Crashey stroked the faint beard lines etched into his pine chin. “Well, that is the questionorium, wouldn’t you know it. See, it ought to be Douro, if you go strictly by bloodgeniture. But after the first Boneyonic War, Adrian’s Papa go

t himself slapped down. Kicked out. Deposdicated.”

“The first Boneyonic . . . Napoleonic War?” Emily interrupted. Of course there had been two of them at home, as well, she supposed.

Sergeant Crashey nicked a biscuit from a passing maidservant and popped it into his mouth, talking around the crumbs. “Yeah, love, look, it’s been a fiery mess around here for an eon and a half, but that’s history, innit? I daresay yours don’t look any better after a rough night. So then we had Parliament running the place from Greenhall in Verdopolis, until all the badtacular business with Gondal started up again. That’s when Miss Zenobia’s brother, Lord Elrington, rode in on a rhinoceros and told them all to go get hung. Lucky Rogue! When he marries her, he’ll be the richest man in Glass Town. If he ever gets around to it. But then Elrington diedinated himself with no babies, so, this, that, and the other far too complicated thing to do with half-cousaunts marrying barn doors or summat: It’s meant to be little Victoria now. She had brothers, but they all got killed by frogs back in the Ugly Ages before we inventixperimented up the rhodinus secundi vitae, which the boys call grog and Gravey calls morning tea. But no one’s had a peep out of Vicks since she were ’napped in her nappies. Anyway, it’d be dash hard to rule from a prison in enemy territorizones even if she hadn’t got reared up by who-knows-who. So technicalliwise, it’s Vickie’s Papa, the Duke of Can’t, but he’s only a Regent. I’ll bet you can imagine how that’s going.” Crashey put on a reedy, aristocratic voice. “Terribly sorry, I just can’t run the kingdom. I just can’t decide which troops go where! I just can’t wipe myself of a morning ho, ho, ho!”

The Sergeant stopped them, and his history lesson, beside a tall lady with only one leg, clad all in the brightest blue damask. “But here’s a monarch with none of that baggageosity! This fetching young maidcreature is Wollstonecraft, Queen of the Bluestockings.” Crashey seemed to have an idea. “Perhaps, your Graceroyal Highmajesty, we might have a word with you later, regarding . . . er . . . a sensitive matter?”

“Charmed,” said the Queen, who did not bow or curtsy, for she bent knee to no one. “And perhaps, indeed. I am always on the lookout for new conspiracies, and the beginning is always today, after all. Find me after the entertainments, Sergeant.”

“Is there any end to the people you know?” Emily marveled.

“Haven’t found it yet!” shrugged their man.

The Queen hurried behind her fan and away, leaving them face-to-face with a most extraordinary pair—a young man nailed together out of the parts of a shattered ship and a young girl all of crackling electricity and steel. “Mary and Percy Shelley, may I present Misses Currer and Ellis Bell?” The wooden soldier leaned down and whispered in their ears: “I know, I know, the names can get brutally contwixting! Would it kill this lot to have a few less Marys and lads what start with the letter A?”

When Charlotte touched Mary Shelley’s hand, the electricity of the other girl burned her golden fingertips within her glove. “I . . . I am honored. I . . . I read your book. Papa said I oughtn’t. But I did anyhow and it was so awfully splendid and Frankenstein is the most terrifying creature I could ever think of until . . .” She thought of Brunty grinning horribly over the top of his acid machine and shuddered. “Until quite recently, actually.” Then, it occurred to her that perhaps Frankenstein was not called Frankenstein here, just as Juliet wasn’t Juliet. Maybe in Glass Town, Shelley had named her wicked scientist Edward or Mason or Rochester or something.

“Frankenstein is the creator, you know,” Mary said, her lips firing off sparks when they met. “Not the monster.”

“I know,” Charlotte squeaked. “But . . .” She thought she might fall to the ground or lift up through the air. These dresses wouldn’t let your heart beat more than once an hour. Don’t say another thing, Charlotte, don’t you do it! “But he . . . he is, you know. He is a bit. The monster.”

Mary Shelley quirked one sizzling blue eyebrow.

“Your poems are very nice as well, Mr. Shelley,” Emily hurried to add, as it was clear the other felt slighted.

Sergeant Crashey guessed that his young charge was about to faint with the excitement of meeting the Shelleys. He pushed them further in and farther on through the crowds, pointing here and there and everywhere. “The fellow who’s all over lace handkerchiefs is our own Mr. Keats. You look awful cold, Johnny! Put some mittens on before you catch your death! Right, where was I? That pile of pine-branches swiping purses ’cause he thinks I can’t see him is Robin Hood, the tall drink of mulled wine dancing by herself is Lady Guinevere, that plaid wool scamp is Sir Walter Scott, aaaaand he’s making off with a bit of silverware, good for him! Ah, and the girl with the black walnut cheeks playing with the little babies in the corner is Miss Katie Crackernuts. Thought I was to marry her once upon a time, but she got cursed by a fairy and we just drifted apart after that. Oh, well! Ooh, there! The ice-lads playing dice at the green table are Captains Ross and Parry, the gallant explorequistadors of Ascension Island and the frigid wastes of Parrysland, which, obviclearly he named for himself, but that’s the paybackoff for having to eat your sails and getting were-scurvy twice. And lo! Here we are, here we land, here we anchormoor our barking barques! Good gravy in a leaky boat, I am parched from all this naming and shaming! Where’s that butler?”

Crashey pulled them along after a tuxedoed boy carrying goblets on a tray and nearly ran right over into two wooden soldiers with dear, familiar faces. One with a knotty burl on his forehead where he’d been wounded earlier that afternoon, and one with an eye patch Anne had made out of pitch on a rainy afternoon back home in Haworth. But now they had two handsome ladies on their arms instead of rifles. One was made of teacup handles and quill pens. She wore a pale, plain dress the color of a real, deep, proper blush, the kind that flood’s a girl’s face when society has offended her. The other had long green leaves for skin and wore a lovely delicate gray, the color of ash in an attic. Crashey greeted them with embraces and slaps on the back. “Of course, you know Sergeant Major Rogue and Leftenant Gravey!”

Gravey and Rogue exclaimed and kissed their cheeks and were informed by a wide variety of eyebrow-waggles and nose-tappings from Sergeant Crashey that they were not to spill any flavor of beans about the girls’ new names and faces. Rogue looked tremendously dashing in his eye patch and formal coat. Leftenant Gravey had worn a splendid lime-green sash for the occasion, the only way to display all his medals at once. The sash sagged with the weight of hundreds of crosses and coins and bars and stars. Emily caught her breath. One for each time he’s died on the field. Oh, poor, poor Leftenant Gravey!

But Gravey did not seem to feel himself poor at all. He kissed their cheeks and proudly displayed his newest: a brilliant red sunburst with The Battle of Port Ruby engraved on one side and Distinguished Service Above and Beyond the Call on the other.

“They do make those up rather quick, don’t they!” said Charlotte.

“Command’s got a special press for Gravey in the big tent,” Sergeant Major Rogue laughed. “He gets cross if he doesn’t get his praise on time.”