The Story of the Amulet, E. Nesbit [free ebook reader for iphone txt] 📗

towers and houses, gleaming with gold and bright colours. Away to the left ran the steel-blue swirl of a great river. And the children could see, through a gap in the trees, that the river flowed out from the town under a great arch in the wall.

“Those feathery things along by the water are palms,” said Cyril instructively.

“Oh, yes; you know everything,” Robert replied. “What’s all that grey-green stuff you see away over there, where it’s all flat and sandy?”

“All right,” said Cyril loftily, “I don’t want to tell you anything. I only thought you’d like to know a palm-tree when you saw it again.”

“Look!” cried Anthea; “they’re opening the gates.”

And indeed the great gates swung back with a brazen clang, and instantly a little crowd of a dozen or more people came out and along the road towards them.

The children, with one accord, crouched behind the tamarisk hedge.

“I don’t like the sound of those gates,” said Jane. “Fancy being inside when they shut. You’d never get out.”

“You’ve got an arch of your own to go out by,” the Psammead put its head out of the basket to remind her. “Don’t behave so like a girl. If I were you I should just march right into the town and ask to see the king.”

There was something at once simple and grand about this idea, and it pleased everyone.

So when the work-people had passed (they were work-people, the children felt sure, because they were dressed so plainly⁠—just one long blue shirt thing⁠—of blue or yellow) the four children marched boldly up to the brazen gate between the towers. The arch above the gate was quite a tunnel, the walls were so thick.

“Courage,” said Cyril. “Step out. It’s no use trying to sneak past. Be bold!”

Robert answered this appeal by unexpectedly bursting into “The British Grenadiers,” and to its quickstep they approached the gates of Babylon.

“Some talk of Alexander,
And some of Hercules,
Of Hector and Lysander,
And such great names as these.
But of all the gallant heroes⁠ ⁠…”

This brought them to the threshold of the gate, and two men in bright armour suddenly barred their way with crossed spears.

“Who goes there?” they said.

(I think I must have explained to you before how it was that the children were always able to understand the language of any place they might happen to be in, and to be themselves understood. If not, I have no time to explain it now.)

“We come from very far,” said Cyril mechanically. “From the Empire where the sun never sets, and we want to see your King.”

“If it’s quite convenient,” amended Anthea.

“The King (may he live forever!),” said the gatekeeper, “is gone to fetch home his fourteenth wife. Where on earth have you come from not to know that?”

“The Queen then,” said Anthea hurriedly, and not taking any notice of the question as to where they had come from.

“The Queen,” said the gatekeeper, “(may she live forever!) gives audience today three hours after sunrising.”

“But what are we to do till the end of the three hours?” asked Cyril.

The gatekeeper seemed neither to know nor to care. He appeared less interested in them than they could have thought possible. But the man who had crossed spears with him to bar the children’s way was more human.

“Let them go in and look about them,” he said. “I’ll wager my best sword they’ve never seen anything to come near our little⁠—village.”

He said it in the tone people use for when they call the Atlantic Ocean the “herring pond.”

The gatekeeper hesitated.

“They’re only children, after all,” said the other, who had children of his own. “Let me off for a few minutes, Captain, and I’ll take them to my place and see if my good woman can’t fit them up in something a little less outlandish than their present rig. Then they can have a look round without being mobbed. May I go?”

“Oh yes, if you like,” said the Captain, “but don’t be all day.”

The man led them through the dark arch into the town. And it was very different from London. For one thing, everything in London seems to be patched up out of odds and ends, but these houses seemed to have been built by people who liked the same sort of things. Not that they were all alike, for though all were squarish, they were of different sizes, and decorated in all sorts of different ways, some with paintings in bright colours, some with black and silver designs. There were terraces, and gardens, and balconies, and open spaces with trees. Their guide took them to a little house in a back street, where a kind-faced woman sat spinning at the door of a very dark room.

“Here,” he said, “just lend these children a mantle each, so that they can go about and see the place till the Queen’s audience begins. You leave that wool for a bit, and show them round if you like. I must be off now.”

The woman did as she was told, and the four children, wrapped in fringed mantles, went with her all about the town, and oh! how I wish I had time to tell you all that they saw. It was all so wonderfully different from anything you have ever seen. For one thing, all the houses were dazzlingly bright, and many of them covered with pictures. Some had great creatures carved in stone at each side of the door. Then the people⁠—there were no black frock-coats and tall hats; no dingy coats and skirts of good, useful, ugly stuffs warranted to wear. Everyone’s clothes were bright and beautiful with blue and scarlet and green and gold.

The market was brighter than you would think anything could be. There were stalls for everything you could possibly want⁠—and for a great many things that if you wanted here and now, want would be your master. There were pineapples and peaches in heaps⁠—and stalls of crockery and glass things, beautiful shapes and glorious colours, there were stalls