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

word of that,’ whispered Robert, ‘in Hyde Park last Sunday!’

‘Let us strike for more bread and onions and beer, and a longer mid-day rest,’ the speaker went on. ‘You are tired, you are hungry, you are thirsty. You are poor, your wives and children are pining for food. The barns of the rich are full to bursting with the corn we want, the corn our labour has grown. To the granaries!’

‘To the granaries!’ cried half the crowd; but another voice shouted clear above the tumult, ‘To Pharaoh! To the King! Let’s present a petition to the King! He will listen to the voice of the oppressed!’

For a moment the crowd swayed one way and another—first towards the granaries and then towards the palace. Then, with a rush like that of an imprisoned torrent suddenly set free, it surged along the street towards the palace, and the children were carried with it. Anthea found it difficult to keep the Psammead from being squeezed very uncomfortably.

The crowd swept through the streets of dull-looking houses with few windows, very high up, across the market where people were not buying but exchanging goods. In a momentary pause Robert saw a basket of onions exchanged for a hair comb and five fish for a string of beads. The people in the market seemed better off than those in the crowd; they had finer clothes, and more of them. They were the kind of people who, nowadays, would have lived at Brixton or Brockley.

‘What’s the trouble now?’ a languid, large-eyed lady in a crimped, half-transparent linen dress, with her black hair very much braided and puffed out, asked of a date-seller.

‘Oh, the working-men—discontented as usual,’ the man answered. ‘Listen to them. Anyone would think it mattered whether they had a little more or less to eat. Dregs of society!’ said the date-seller.

‘Scum!’ said the lady.

‘And I’ve heard THAT before, too,’ said Robert.

At that moment the voice of the crowd changed, from anger to doubt, from doubt to fear. There were other voices shouting; they shouted defiance and menace, and they came nearer very quickly. There was the rattle of wheels and the pounding of hoofs. A voice shouted, ‘Guards!’

‘The Guards! The Guards!’ shouted another voice, and the crowd of workmen took up the cry. ‘The Guards! Pharaoh’s Guards!’ And swaying a little once more, the crowd hung for a moment as it were balanced. Then as the trampling hoofs came nearer the workmen fled dispersed, up alleys and into the courts of houses, and the Guards in their embossed leather chariots swept down the street at the gallop, their wheels clattering over the stones, and their dark-coloured, blue tunics blown open and back with the wind of their going.

‘So THAT riot’s over,’ said the crimped-linen-dressed lady; ‘that’s a blessing! And did you notice the Captain of the Guard? What a very handsome man he was, to be sure!’

The four children had taken advantage of the moment’s pause before the crowd turned to fly, to edge themselves and drag each other into an arched doorway.

Now they each drew a long breath and looked at the others.

‘We’re well out of THAT,’ said Cyril.

‘Yes,’ said Anthea, ‘but I do wish the poor men hadn’t been driven back before they could get to the King. He might have done something for them.’

‘Not if he was the one in the Bible he wouldn’t,’ said Jane. ‘He had a hard heart.’ ‘Ah, that was the Moses one,’ Anthea explained. ‘The Joseph one was quite different. I should like to see Pharaoh’s house. I wonder whether it’s like the Egyptian Court in the Crystal Palace.’

‘I thought we decided to try to get taken on in a Temple,’ said Cyril in injured tones.

‘Yes, but we’ve got to know someone first. Couldn’t we make friends with a Temple doorkeeper—we might give him the padlock or something. I wonder which are temples and which are palaces,’ Robert added, glancing across the market-place to where an enormous gateway with huge side buildings towered towards the sky. To right and left of it were other buildings only a little less magnificent.

‘Did you wish to seek out the Temple of Amen Ra?’ asked a soft voice behind them, ‘or the Temple of Mut, or the Temple of Khonsu?’

They turned to find beside them a young man. He was shaved clean from head to foot, and on his feet were light papyrus sandals. He was clothed in a linen tunic of white, embroidered heavily in colours. He was gay with anklets, bracelets, and armlets of gold, richly inlaid. He wore a ring on his finger, and he had a short jacket of gold embroidery something like the Zouave soldiers wear, and on his neck was a gold collar with many amulets hanging from it. But among the amulets the children could see none like theirs.

‘It doesn’t matter which Temple,’ said Cyril frankly.

‘Tell me your mission,’ said the young man. ‘I am a divine father of the Temple of Amen Ra and perhaps I can help you.’

‘Well,’ said Cyril, ‘we’ve come from the great Empire on which the sun never sets.’

‘I thought somehow that you’d come from some odd, out-of-the-way spot,’ said the priest with courtesy.

‘And we’ve seen a good many palaces. We thought we should like to see a Temple, for a change,’ said Robert.

The Psammead stirred uneasily in its embroidered bag.

‘Have you brought gifts to the Temple?’ asked the priest cautiously.

‘We HAVE got some gifts,’ said Cyril with equal caution. ‘You see there’s magic mixed up in it. So we can’t tell you everything. But we don’t want to give our gifts for nothing.’

‘Beware how you insult the god,’ said the priest sternly. ‘I also can do magic. I can make a waxen image of you, and I can say words which, as the wax image melts before the fire, will make you dwindle away and at last perish miserably.’

‘Pooh!’ said Cyril stoutly, ‘that’s nothing. I can make FIRE itself!’

‘I should jolly well like to see you do it,’ said the priest unbelievingly.

‘Well, you shall,’ said Cyril, ‘nothing easier. Just stand close round me.’

‘Do you need no preparation—no fasting, no incantations?’ The priest’s tone was incredulous.

‘The incantation’s quite short,’ said Cyril, taking the hint; ‘and as for fasting, it’s not needed in MY sort of magic. Union Jack, Printing Press, Gunpowder, Rule Britannia! Come, Fire, at the end of this little stick!’

He had pulled a match from his pocket, and as he ended the incantation which contained no words that it seemed likely the Egyptian had ever heard he stooped in the little crowd of his relations and the priest and struck the match on his boot. He stood up, shielding the flame with one hand.

‘See?’ he said, with modest pride. ‘Here, take it into your hand.’

‘No, thank you,’ said the priest, swiftly backing. ‘Can you do that again?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then come with me to the great double house of Pharaoh. He loves good magic, and he will raise you to honour and glory. There’s no need of secrets between initiates,’ he went on confidentially. ‘The fact is, I am out of favour at present owing to a little matter of failure of prophecy. I told him a beautiful princess would be sent to him from Syria, and, lo! a woman thirty years old arrived. But she WAS a beautiful woman not so long ago. Time is only a mode of thought, you know.’

The children thrilled to the familiar words.

‘So you know that too, do you?’ said Cyril.

‘It is part of the mystery of all magic, is it not?’ said the priest. ‘Now if I bring you to Pharaoh the little unpleasantness I spoke of will be forgotten. And I will ask Pharaoh, the Great House, Son of the Sun, and Lord of the South and North, to decree that you shall lodge in the Temple. Then you can have a good look round, and teach me your magic. And I will teach you mine.’

This idea seemed good—at least it was better than any other which at that moment occurred to anybody, so they followed the priest through the city.

The streets were very narrow and dirty. The best houses, the priest explained, were built within walls twenty to twenty-five feet high, and such windows as showed in the walls were very high up. The tops of palm-trees showed above the walls. The poor people’s houses were little square huts with a door and two windows, and smoke coming out of a hole in the back.

‘The poor Egyptians haven’t improved so very much in their building since the first time we came to Egypt,’ whispered Cyril to Anthea.

The huts were roofed with palm branches, and everywhere there were chickens, and goats, and little naked children kicking about in the yellow dust. On one roof was a goat, who had climbed up and was eating the dry palm-leaves with snorts and head-tossings of delight. Over every house door was some sort of figure or shape.

‘Amulets,’ the priest explained, ‘to keep off the evil eye.’

‘I don’t think much of your “nice Egypt”,’ Robert whispered to Jane; ‘it’s simply not a patch on Babylon.’

‘Ah, you wait till you see the palace,’ Jane whispered back.

The palace was indeed much more magnificent than anything they had yet seen that day, though it would have made but a poor show beside that of the Babylonian King. They came to it through a great square pillared doorway of sandstone that stood in a high brick wall. The shut doors were of massive cedar, with bronze hinges, and were studded with bronze nails. At the side was a little door and a wicket gate, and through this the priest led the children. He seemed to know a word that made the sentries make way for him.

Inside was a garden, planted with hundreds of different kinds of trees and flowering shrubs, a lake full of fish, with blue lotus flowers at the margin, and ducks swimming about cheerfully, and looking, as Jane said, quite modern.

‘The guard-chamber, the storehouses, the queen’s house,’ said the priest, pointing them out.

They passed through open courtyards, paved with flat stones, and the priest whispered to a guard at a great inner gate.

‘We are fortunate,’ he said to the children, ‘Pharaoh is even now in the Court of Honour. Now, don’t forget to be overcome with respect and admiration. It won’t do any harm if you fall flat on your faces. And whatever you do, don’t speak until you’re spoken to.’

‘There used to be that rule in our country,’ said Robert, ‘when my father was a little boy.’

At the outer end of the great hall a crowd of people were arguing with and even shoving the Guards, who seemed to make it a rule not to let anyone through unless they were bribed to do it. The children heard several promises of the utmost richness, and wondered whether they would ever be kept.

All round the hall were pillars of painted wood. The roof was of cedar, gorgeously inlaid. About halfway up the hall was a wide, shallow step that went right across the hall; then a little farther on another; and then a steep flight of narrower steps, leading right up to the throne on which Pharaoh sat. He sat there very splendid, his red and white double crown on his head, and his sceptre in his hand. The throne had a canopy of wood and wooden pillars painted in bright colours. On a low, broad bench that ran all round the hall sat the friends, relatives, and courtiers of the King, leaning on richly-covered cushions.

The priest led the children up the steps till they all stood before