The Glass Town Game, Page 24

  “I forgive you, C,” whispered Emily.

  “I forgive you, E,” Charlotte whispered back.

  They plunged into the Vivisectionists’ Garden.

  The guests of the Wildfell Ball sprawled out in a sparkling half-moon around a luxurious puppet theater. There were no seats; everyone lay about relaxing on a thick lawn of soft purple grass and tiny wild roses. For all the glorious clothes and tiaras and refined voices, it looked just like a country picnic back in Yorkshire. The Duke and Duchess of Can’t even had a hamper of champagne flutes and vol-au-vents like the one Charlotte had had on the train. They wept all over it, which probably got their wine horribly salty, and daubed each other’s eyes with the corners of their checkered blanket. Ross and Parry slurped down seal meat and iced oysters on a walrus-skin. The Shelleys shared sandwiches with the Queen of the Bluestockings. Wellington and his limeskin sailors stood on the outskirts, still smoking and joking and snickering and catcalling Guinevere and never fully joining in. The Marquis of Douro and his lover, Mary, sat nearest to the theater. Mary admired the mauve brocade curtains and the curving, intricate woodwork that ran up and down the base and the poles and the crown of the thing, all painted silver, just like a certain girl in the audience. Crashey, Gravey, Rogue, and their lady companions had staked out a claim under a plum tree heavy with fruit. Lord Byron spread out an ancient, threadbare patchwork quilt with a hundred different coats of arms fading away on it. He judged it fine and lounged back on his elbows, leaving plenty of room on the blanket for company. Someone had thoughtfully hauled Josephine’s cage out so she could see the show. She did not look like she was looking forward to it.

  Not a single one of them was looking at the statues.

  All round the walled garden, there were little alcoves in the holly hedge. In each alcove stood an extraordinary, beautiful, horrible, hideous statue. Charlotte and Emily could not help goggling at them. How could everyone else just sit there like there was nothing unusual about anything? The statues were all handsome men and women, pale and expressive and very realistic. They looked much like the Greek ones they’d seen illustrated in Papa’s magazines. Some of them had arms or legs or heads lopped off—but many of the ones in the magazine pictures did, too. They weren’t troubled by that.

  Charlotte walked up to the one nearest her. It was a young girl, a Venus or a Diana, just exactly as she might have been carved in Athens. Only this Venus didn’t have any marble skin over her stomach. Charlotte could see all her organs, placed in perfect anatomical position, and carved out of precious gems. Her stomach was a huge pearl, her liver a massive black opal, her esophagus a curling length of coral, her kidneys a pair of garnets, the pancreas a lump of emerald, the spleen an uncut topaz. The statues were all like that. Some part of their marble gone and their insides revealed. That man looked like Michelangelo’s David, only strand after strand of amethyst intestines spilled out of his gut. Nearest the puppet stage, the neck of a lithe youth in a short toga ended in a jade skull. Emily reached up to run her fingers along the ruby ropes of muscle showing through a child’s marble arm. She shuddered, but it fascinated her. Bran would love this, she thought. He would draw them over and over until he could get the one with the onyx heart just right. And Anne would have screamed if she saw that sapphire brain. Screamed, and then talked about nothing else for a month. Emily missed them so. She hoped desperately they were all right, wherever they were.

  “Do you like my patients?” came the sleek leather voice of Dr. Home behind them.

  Somehow, Charlotte got the idea Dr. Home preferred to sneak up behind people before he started a conversation with them. That way no one could ever start off on the right foot. They’d stammer and stutter and blink a lot and he’d get to play the calm, reassuring doctor. But she did not find his presence reassuring. He towered above them like a crow, miles of oiled satchel-leather folded tightly and crisply into the shape of a young man.

  “Do you do a large business in healing statues?” Charlotte said archly. She would not stammer. Let him do what he liked with that.

  “Marble needs little medicine,” the doctor demurred. “I made each of these myself, modeled after one of my mortal patients once their case proved . . . inevitable. If you look closely, I have marked out in black stones which villain it was that failed them, in the end. The heart, the liver, the lung, the brain.” Dr. Home’s eyes roved lovingly from statue to statue.

  “This is Lord Byron’s house,” Emily protested softly. “Why should you have a garden in it?”

  “George is very generous when he admires one’s work. I healed his fever after the battle of Lepanto.”

  Charlotte and Emily exchanged glances. The Byron they knew of in England had died at Lepanto. But the physician to the Crown did not seem to notice the expressions on their faces at all. He was far too busy noticing himself. “This place was his personal thank-you note,” he went on, stroking his long, leather nose with long, leather fingers. He seemed entirely lost in his own words. He had come to talk to them! It was tremendously rude, Charlotte thought. But perhaps she could get an answer or two while he was distracted with imagining diseased kneecaps or what-have-you.

  “Doctor, what is the average life-span of a Glass Towner? I only ask because everyone we’ve met seems quite young to be Dukes and Duchesses and getting married and having children and owning houses and building gory gardens.”

  Dr. Home gave her a pointed, black look that plainly said Charlotte’s question was rude at the least and obscene at the worst. He then ignored it completely.

  “I come here whenever I am able, to contemplate the nature of things,” he pressed on. “Of illness. Of health. Of time and death and memory.” Home waved his hand dismissively in the night air. “This was all before, of course.”

  “Before what?” said Emily and Charlotte together.

  Dr. Home smiled. All his teeth were white tiles, like the floor of a hospital. “Before the invention of rum, my dear girls.”

  Silver trumpets sounded. Two drums began to beat. An oboe slid in and skipped back and forth between its two mates. Young Soult the Rhymer’s show was about to start.

  Crashey finally spotted them. He waved his oak hand excitedly. “Char . . . er! Er! Em. Currer! Charcurrerie! Ellisem! Sorry! Over here, you great metal magpies!”

  Lord Byron turned his head the moment he heard Emily’s half-Crashied name.

  “Ellis!” he called. “You did promise you would sit by me, my darling. Did thy heart forget or thy spirit deceive? Either way, get your silver rump over here; I’ve missed you hideously.”

  “I think I shall be more convincing on my own,” Emily said, a little guiltily. Of course, she did mean to get Byron to help them. But Charlotte didn’t like her calling him George, and she wanted to call him George over and over.

  “Go,” said Charlotte. She shut her eyes and held her hand to her chest. Visions of onyx hearts still beat in her head. “But if he says no, you must move on. As you said. He’s not the only fellow here with a good arm and a good head.”

  Half the Wildfell girls glowered hatefully at Emily as she picked her way through the sea of blankets toward Byron. Charlotte settled down with Crashey and his party of soldiers and eligible ladies. She noticed that the wooden boys had spread out very near Wellington, who had finally consented to lie awkwardly on the grass. He tried to lean against an increasingly irritated Copenhagen, but could not get his iron wings into a comfortable position. Wild roses sizzled where the hot feathers draped too far over his lion’s haunches. He slapped him affectionately with his sea-foam tail. Crashey followed Charlotte’s line of sight.

  “Don’t say I never did a girl any favorindnesses,” he said, and jostled her with his elbow.

  “How did your dance go?” said Miss Jane sourly as she scooted aside to make room. “I hope it was worth your reputation! If anyone in town should hear of it, I shouldn’t think your country manners would be invited back to civilization any time soon. Well, of course, I won’t
breathe a word . . . ”

  “Have you found your gang of roughers yet?” Zenobia Elrington said kindly.

  Lady Elrington handed Charlotte a slice of cake on a sturdy plate. She smiled at her food. It was a mille-feuille cake. That meant a hundred sheets in French. So, of course, her pastry was made of a hundred pages of sheet music held together with butter and sugar. When she bit into it, a sweet, golden song burst into her mind.

  “Would you like me to be her rougher, Zenobia?” Rogue said suddenly, his unpatched eye full of love and that odd slyness it always seemed to keep at the bottom of every other feeling. “Would that please you, my dearest? If I were to go to Gondal? If I were to creep and spy for her sake?”

  “Gang of roughers!” gasped Miss Jane, shocked. “Go to Gondal? What madness is this?”

  Gravey, who seemed pained to be stuck with her while Rogue rested his dark head in Zenobia’s lap, hushed his date. They were all then loudly hushed in turn by the rest of the audience. Torches blazed into life; the show had begun.

  Young Soult the Rhymer’s reedy voice echoed out over the audience.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I, Young Soult the Rhymer, present to you The Douro-ble Dynasty, or, Rule, Glass Town! Written by me, spoken by me, devised by me, costumes by me, sets by me, and . . . oh yes, right, puppets built and . . . er . . . puppeted by me as well.”

  Lord Byron rolled his eyes. He leaned into Emily and whispered: “He chewed my ear off for a week trying to decide between those two limp-lettuce titles. Either of them is about as moving as a boiled egg.”

  “George,” Emily whispered back, “about my brother and sister . . .”

  “Oh, come now, there’s time for all that later!”

  “There’s isn’t, really, it’s very urgent . . . ”

  “Just watch, Ellis!” He took her chin in his hand. Emily gasped at his touch, at the presumption of it! But he only turned her head so that she was looking directly at the blanket belonging to the Marquis of Douro, Mary Percy, and Dr. Home. “Watch.”

  Young Soult released a lovely embroidered and painted backdrop across the rear of the puppet theater. It showed a rather standard Eden: pleasant fields, innocent streams, fawns and rabbits playing among wild carrots and berries and ancient stones. Several marionettes descended onto the stage dressed in rich medieval robes. Young Soult the Rhymer did not like other performers interfering with his vision. He worked his creations with both hands and feet, fingers and toes, perched uncomfortably on a high couch above the whole affair. Soult’s voice cracked in nervous terror as he spoke the first lines of his great work:

  Behold these lands! Rich in both grain and geese

  Where all Glass Towners lived in gentle peace

  “Eeeeeugh,” Crashey giggled. Miss Jane shushed him with a murderous glance. “Those is some tortured wordage right there. What’d those poor geese ever do to him?”

  Six noble Lords stand here before you!

  All things they see do they command

  Zamorna, Wellesley, Calabar,

  Bon-a-parte, and Northangerland!

  But one true soul surpassed them all

  In honor, faith, and honesty—

  The brave Marquis of Douro,

  Whose grandson pays my fee.

  Some nervous laughter bubbled up from the audience. They were all far too rich to be entirely comfortable discussing money, even in verse. The puppeteer cleared his throat and pressed on.

  Explorers all and pioneers,

  They conquered jungle, plain, and sea

  So that Young Soult could tell his tale

  Of how our nation came to be.

  Jeers and whistles and boos greeted the Bonaparte puppet, who had tiny tin swords for arms and a jumble of rat and sparrow bones for a body. Yet the other lordly puppets greeted him as a brother, bowing their little wooden heads and embracing him fondly. That’s not right at all, Emily thought. Boney has rifles for arms! I saw it myself! But she did not want to seem foolish or ignorant. Emily of Haworth might not know the history of Glass Town and Gondal and ask a hundred questions freely, but it would all be old news to Ellis Bell of Thrushcross.

  “Oh, don’t give him the satisfaction!” Lord Byron snorted resentfully. “It’s not even the same number of syllables as the first bit! Will you listen to him mangle Old Boney’s name just to fit the meter? And he shoved himself in there for no good reason. Someone have that boy arrested at once. Crimes against the noun!”

  “Be nice,” Emily said, though secretly she rather liked him being awful.

  Equally amongst these giants

  All the earth divided was

  And all devised together

  Certain just and gracious laws!

  Young Douro led them all in honor,

  In industry and cleverness.

  Then he smote the ground

  Whereat the borders of their nations kissed,

  And by his will (and by his wallet)

  There rose the city of Verdopolis!

  The Douro puppet, who had diamond chips for eyes, slapped his sword against the stage. A loud bang sounded and a puff of green smoke billowed out into the night, making everyone cough till they were nearly sick all over the garden. When it cleared, a pretty model of the capital of Glass Town stood at Douro’s feet, all spangled green towers and houses and steeples. Applause rippled round, for it had been a rather good trick, even if their eyes still smarted. But Lady Zenobia did not blink. The white flames of her eyes burned the smoke away. She was not clapping.

  “I am heir to Northangerland,” she growled. “And that skinny little craven pepper pot knows it. My grandfather had just as much hand in Verdopolis as Douro and bloody well more than Calabar. Wellesley and Zamorna designed the Tower of All Nations in the Great Square! Even Bonaparte laid the bricks of the wall with his own hands. How can Wellesley snooze on his lion over there while this brat insults his family? What is this rubbish?”

  But the current Marquis of Douro seemed pleased enough. He smiled tightly and waved his ashen hand, recognizing the honor Young Soult meant to do him with his poetry.

  Emily raised her eyebrow at Byron. Was this what he wanted her to see? It didn’t seem much, and was taking an awfully long time to get to the point.

  “Wait,” he assured her.

  But the next verse did not move things along much.

  Thus the years passed, as they do,

  With sons and grandsons numberless,

  New Douros and Boneys born

  To all their ancestors possessed.

  “Yes?” Lord Byron groused, rolling his eyes. “That is how inheritance works. Thank you so much for explaining it. Whatever would we do without you, Soulty? Get on with it, man! Exposition does not become us!”

  A new puppet dangled down. This one had a long, wicked nose, cruel eyes, and wore a black cloak lined in red. All the ancient Lords shrank back from it, save Douro and Bonaparte. Drops of Young Soult’s sweat began to drip onto the planks of the little stage.

  “Here we are!” Lord Byron chortled. He leaned forward eagerly. “Now the beef ’s on the plate!”

  But ho! What’s this? Who now intrudes

  Upon our happy scene?

  I say! It is the very devil!

  With his fangs and hooves . . . er . . . unclean.

  What crawls from out the darkness

  Of the frail and mortal heart?

  Foul AMBITION comes at night

  To tear our peace apart!

  “Almost skidded off the road there, lad,” Rogue smirked. “Also, there were eight Lords, you dolt.” He turned to his beloved. “That cretin forgot Elseraden and Almadore. And of course it’s the Gondal nobles tossed on the rubbish heap. But Calabar sneaks in? That fat fool hit his head on a rock jumping off his stupid boat onto the beach at Gaaldine and died before they even got around to naming the place!”

  Zenobia and Gravey blinked curiously at Rogue.

  “Why should you care?” the Leftenant whispered. “Forget Gondal!�
�

  But the crowd roared over whatever answer the Sergeant Major gave. However poor the poetry, the story got their blood up. Highborn ladies threw bits of their feasts at the stage as though they were in the cheap seats of a bawdy dance hall. Earls and Barons shouted in English, French, and highly unauthorized mixes of the two. The miniature Bonaparte rattled his saber-arms and waggled a long, velvet tongue. Soult put on an obnoxiously over-the-top voice for his Bonaparte puppet. Charlotte felt so embarrassed for him she turned her eyes away. Napoleon doesn’t even sound like that! she thought grumpily at the grass.

  Eez not enuf to own all zis,

  To rule Gondal wiz me dainty fist

  One country? Pfft! Iz nothing muches!

  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.