The Story of the Amulet, E. Nesbit [free children's online books TXT] 📗

them through long, narrow corridors whose walls they somehow felt, were very, very thick, into a sort of garden courtyard. There were thick shrubs closely planted, and roses were trained over trellises, and made a pleasant shade—needed, indeed, for already the sun was as hot as it is in England in August at the seaside.

Slaves spread cushions on a low, marble terrace, and a big man with a smooth face served cool drink in cups of gold studded with beryls. He drank a little from the Queen’s cup before handing it to her.

‘That’s rather a nasty trick,’ whispered Robert, who had been carefully taught never to drink out of one of the nice, shiny, metal cups that are chained to the London drinking fountains without first rinsing it out thoroughly.

The Queen overheard him.

‘Not at all,’ said she. ‘Ritti-Marduk is a very clean man. And one has to have SOME ONE as taster, you know, because of poison.’

The word made the children feel rather creepy; but Ritti-Marduk had tasted all the cups, so they felt pretty safe. The drink was delicious—very cold, and tasting like lemonade and partly like penny ices.

‘Leave us,’ said the Queen. And all the Court ladies, in their beautiful, many-folded, many-coloured, fringed dresses, filed out slowly, and the children were left alone with the Queen.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘tell me all about yourselves.’

They looked at each other.

‘You, Bobs,’ said Cyril.

‘No—Anthea,’ said Robert.

‘No—you—Cyril,’ said Anthea. ‘Don’t you remember how pleased the Queen of India was when you told her all about us?’

Cyril muttered that it was all very well, and so it was. For when he had told the tale of the Phoenix and the Carpet to the Ranee, it had been only the truth—and all the truth that he had to tell. But now it was not easy to tell a convincing story without mentioning the Amulet—which, of course, it wouldn’t have done to mention—and without owning that they were really living in London, about 2,500 years later than the time they were talking in.

Cyril took refuge in the tale of the Psammead and its wonderful power of making wishes come true. The children had never been able to tell anyone before, and Cyril was surprised to find that the spell which kept them silent in London did not work here. ‘Something to do with our being in the Past, I suppose,’ he said to himself.

‘This is MOST interesting,’ said the Queen. ‘We must have this Psammead for the banquet tonight. Its performance will be one of the most popular turns in the whole programme. Where is it?’

Anthea explained that they did not know; also why it was that they did not know.

‘Oh, THAT’S quite simple,’ said the Queen, and everyone breathed a deep sigh of relief as she said it.

‘Ritti-Marduk shall run down to the gates and find out which guard your sister went home with.’

‘Might he’—Anthea’s voice was tremulous—‘might he—would it interfere with his meal-times, or anything like that, if he went NOW?’

‘Of course he shall go now. He may think himself lucky if he gets his meals at any time,’ said the Queen heartily, and clapped her hands.

‘May I send a letter?’ asked Cyril, pulling out a red-backed penny account-book, and feeling in his pockets for a stump of pencil that he knew was in one of them.

‘By all means. I’ll call my scribe.’

‘Oh, I can scribe right enough, thanks,’ said Cyril, finding the pencil and licking its point. He even had to bite the wood a little, for it was very blunt.

‘Oh, you clever, clever boy!’ said the Queen. ‘DO let me watch you do it!’

Cyril wrote on a leaf of the book—it was of rough, woolly paper, with hairs that stuck out and would have got in his pen if he had been using one, and ruled for accounts.

‘Hide IT most carefully before you come here,’ he wrote, ‘and don’t mention it—and destroy this letter. Everything is going A1. The Queen is a fair treat. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

‘What curious characters, and what a strange flat surface!’ said the Queen. ‘What have you inscribed?’

‘I’ve ‘scribed,’ replied Cyril cautiously, ‘that you are fair, and a—and like a—like a festival; and that she need not be afraid, and that she is to come at once.’

Ritti-Marduk, who had come in and had stood waiting while Cyril wrote, his Babylonish eyes nearly starting out of his Babylonish head, now took the letter, with some reluctance.

‘O Queen, live for ever! Is it a charm?’ he timidly asked. ‘A strong charm, most great lady?’

‘YES,’ said Robert, unexpectedly, ‘it IS a charm, but it won’t hurt anyone until you’ve given it to Jane. And then she’ll destroy it, so that it CAN’T hurt anyone. It’s most awful strong!—as strong as—Peppermint!’ he ended abruptly.

‘I know not the god,’ said Ritti-Marduk, bending timorously.

‘She’ll tear it up directly she gets it,’ said Robert, ‘That’ll end the charm. You needn’t be afraid if you go now.’

Ritti-Marduk went, seeming only partly satisfied; and then the Queen began to admire the penny account-book and the bit of pencil in so marked and significant a way that Cyril felt he could not do less than press them upon her as a gift. She ruffled the leaves delightedly.

‘What a wonderful substance!’ she said. ‘And with this style you make charms? Make a charm for me! Do you know,’ her voice sank to a whisper, ‘the names of the great ones of your own far country?’

‘Rather!’ said Cyril, and hastily wrote the names of Alfred the Great, Shakespeare, Nelson, Gordon, Lord Beaconsfield, Mr Rudyard Kipling, and Mr Sherlock Holmes, while the Queen watched him with ‘unbaited breath’, as Anthea said afterwards.

She took the book and hid it reverently among the bright folds of her gown.

‘You shall teach me later to say the great names,’ she said. ‘And the names of their Ministers—perhaps the great Nisroch is one of them?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Cyril. ‘Mr Campbell Bannerman’s Prime Minister and Mr Burns a Minister, and so is the Archbishop of Canterbury, I think, but I’m not sure—and Dr Parker was one, I know, and—’

‘No more,’ said the Queen, putting her hands to her ears. ‘My head’s going round with all those great names. You shall teach them to me later—because of course you’ll make us a nice long visit now you have come, won’t you? Now tell me—but no, I am quite tired out with your being so clever. Besides, I’m sure you’d like ME to tell YOU something, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Anthea. ‘I want to know how it is that the King has gone—’

‘Excuse me, but you should say “the King may-he-live-for-ever”,’ said the Queen gently.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Anthea hastened to say—‘the King may-he-live-for-ever has gone to fetch home his fourteenth wife? I don’t think even Bluebeard had as many as that. And, besides, he hasn’t killed YOU at any rate.’

The Queen looked bewildered.

‘She means,’ explained Robert, ‘that English kings only have one wife—at least, Henry the Eighth had seven or eight, but not all at once.’

‘In our country,’ said the Queen scornfully, ‘a king would not reign a day who had only one wife. No one would respect him, and quite right too.’

‘Then are all the other thirteen alive?’ asked Anthea.

‘Of course they are—poor mean-spirited things! I don’t associate with them, of course, I am the Queen: they’re only the wives.’

‘I see,’ said Anthea, gasping.

‘But oh, my dears,’ the Queen went on, ‘such a to-do as there’s been about this last wife! You never did! It really was TOO funny. We wanted an Egyptian princess. The King may-he-live-for-ever has got a wife from most of the important nations, and he had set his heart on an Egyptian one to complete his collection. Well, of course, to begin with, we sent a handsome present of gold. The Egyptian king sent back some horses—quite a few; he’s fearfully stingy!—and he said he liked the gold very much, but what they were really short of was lapis lazuli, so of course we sent him some. But by that time he’d begun to use the gold to cover the beams of the roof of the Temple of the Sun-God, and he hadn’t nearly enough to finish the job, so we sent some more. And so it went on, oh, for years. You see each journey takes at least six months. And at last we asked the hand of his daughter in marriage.’

‘Yes, and then?’ said Anthea, who wanted to get to the princess part of the story.

‘Well, then,’ said the Queen, ‘when he’d got everything out of us that he could, and only given the meanest presents in return, he sent to say he would esteem the honour of an alliance very highly, only unfortunately he hadn’t any daughter, but he hoped one would be born soon, and if so, she should certainly be reserved for the King of Babylon!’

‘What a trick!’ said Cyril.

‘Yes, wasn’t it? So then we said his sister would do, and then there were more gifts and more journeys; and now at last the tiresome, black-haired thing is coming, and the King may-he-live-for-ever has gone seven days’ journey to meet her at Carchemish. And he’s gone in his best chariot, the one inlaid with lapis lazuli and gold, with the gold-plated wheels and onyx-studded hubs—much too great an honour in my opinion. She’ll be here tonight; there’ll be a grand banquet to celebrate her arrival. SHE won’t be present, of course. She’ll be having her baths and her anointings, and all that sort of thing. We always clean our foreign brides very carefully. It takes two or three weeks. Now it’s dinnertime, and you shall eat with me, for I can see that you are of high rank.’ She led them into a dark, cool hall, with many cushions on the floor. On these they sat and low tables were brought—beautiful tables of smooth, blue stone mounted in gold. On these, golden trays were placed; but there were no knives, or forks, or spoons. The children expected the Queen to call for them; but no. She just ate with her fingers, and as the first dish was a great tray of boiled corn, and meat and raisins all mixed up together, and melted fat poured all over the tray, it was found difficult to follow her example with anything like what we are used to think of as good table manners. There were stewed quinces afterwards, and dates in syrup, and thick yellowy cream. It was the kind of dinner you hardly ever get in Fitzroy Street.

After dinner everybody went to sleep, even the children.

The Queen awoke with a start.

‘Good gracious!’ she cried, ‘what a time we’ve slept! I must rush off and dress for the banquet. I shan’t have much more than time.’

‘Hasn’t Ritti-Marduk got back with our sister and the Psammead yet?’ Anthea asked.

‘I QUITE forgot to ask. I’m sorry,’ said the Queen. ‘And of course they wouldn’t announce her unless I told them to, except during justice hours. I expect she’s waiting outside. I’ll see.’

Ritti-Marduk came in a moment later.

‘I regret,’ he said, ‘that I have been unable to find your sister. The beast she bears with her in a basket has bitten the child of the guard, and your sister and the beast set out to come to you. The police say they have a clue. No doubt we shall have news of her in a few weeks.’ He bowed and withdrew.

The horror of this threefold loss—Jane, the Psammead, and the Amulet—gave the children something to talk about while the Queen was dressing. I shall not report their conversation;