The Wanton Troopers Read Online Free

on a field of white. And he invented names for ships and regiments, pages of them. He would christen his first battleship El Gringo , and his personal bodyguards, whose uniform, which he spent an entire evening designing, bore a strong resemblance to the garb of a guardsman as depicted in A Boy’s Life of Napoleon , would be known as King Kevin’s Royal Hussars.
    He supposed he would have to marry. Kings needed sons to continue their dynasties. And Princess Margaret Rose was only a little older than he . . . Then he remembered that Napoleon had divorced Josephine because she could not provide him with an heir. This puzzled him. He asked his mother: “Why couldn’t Josephine have any children, Mummy?”
    â€œJosephine who, sweetikins?”
    â€œYou know, Josephine, the one that married Napoleon.”
    Laughing, Mary threw her arms around him. She slid her hand inside the back of his shirt and ran her fingers up and down the little bumps in his spine. This was one of her favourite ways of caressing him.
    â€œOh, Scampi darling, you ask the craziest questions!”
    He drew away sulkily. “I don’t see nothin’ crazy about that.”
    â€œNo, it isn’t really crazy. Just funny, sort of. But I don’t know, lamb. I really don’t know why Josephine couldn’t have children. I suppose someday you’ll find out all about it. When Mummy’s little sugar baby gets to be a man, he’s going to know all sorts of wonderful things.”
    Grandmother O’Brien spoke from her rocker, beneath the clock shelf. “Yer spoilin’ the boy, Mary. Yer spoilin’ the boy with yer foolishness.”
    Mary stroked Kevin under the chin and winked at him.
    â€œWe’re poor people,” Grandmother O’Brien said. “It ain’t fittin’ fer people like us tuh put on airs.”
    Mary winked at Kevin again.
    Grandmother O’Brien said this often, to rebuke what she called the false pride of Kevin and his mother. “People like us should be willin’ tuh take what’s handed out tuh us. We’re poor as dirt and allus will be. Puttin’ on high and mighty airs ain’t gonna change things none.”
    To ease the perpetual pain in her stomach, Martha O’Brien held a brick, heated on top of the stove and wrapped in an old wool sock, against her waist. She lived on crackers soaked in milk until they’d become an oozing pulp, but her soul was nourished on the flesh offered in sacrifice to the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.
    â€œThe O’Briens has allus been poor, boy. But they allus knew their place. And they was allus willin’ tuh work. The same with my people, the Havelocks; when a man hired a Havelock he knowed he was a-gonna git a day’s work outta him. Yuh never caught a Havelock givin’ hisself no stud-horse airs. They knew what they was and they never pretended tuh be nothin’ else. I don’t like that false pride I see in yuh, boy.”
    â€œOh, my goodness, Grammie! Scampi just asked a simple little question!” Mary’s voice rose in irritation.
    Martha adjusted the pin in her black, bowl-shaped hairdo. “Mark my words, Mary, yer a-spoilin’ that boy. Children should be seen and not heard, I allus say, children should be seen and not heard.” Rocking complacently, she looked at Kevin with undisguised disapproval. “If that was my boy I’d Josephine him! I’d Josephine him out in the garden with a hoe. There’s work tuh be done here. Ain’t no earthly use of Judd workin’ his heart out every night after he comes home from the mill. Put that boy out in the garden. Put him tuh work around the barn. He’s big enough tuh work if he’s ever gonna be!”
    â€œOh, Grammie, Scampi is only a baby. Things were different when you were young. You don’t realize that, Grammie.”
    â€œI realize a long-legged cockalorum like that one should