The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  And now the scattered houses and spacious gardens gave place to the streets of Polistopolis, the capital of the kingdom. And the streets were strangely deserted. The children both felt—in that quite certain and unexplainable way—that it would be unwise of them to go to the place where they had slept the last time they were in that city.

  The whole party was very tired. Max walked with drooping tail, and Brenda was whining softly to herself from sheer weariness and weak-mindedness. The parrot alone was happy—or at least contented. Because it was asleep.

  At the corner of a little square planted with southernwood-trees in tubs, Philip called a halt.

  “Where shall we go?” he said; “let us put it to the vote.”

  And even as he spoke, he saw a dark form creeping along in the shadow of the houses.

  “Who goes there?” Philip cried with proper spirit, and the answer surprised him, all the more that it was given with a kind of desperate bravado.

  “I go here; I, Plumbeus, Captain of the old Guard of Polistopolis.”

  “Oh, it’s you!” cried Philip; “I am glad. You can advise us. Where can we go to sleep? Somehow or other I don’t care to go to the house where we stayed before.”

  The captain made no answer. He simply caught at the hands of Lucy and Philip, dragged them through a low arched doorway and, as soon as the long lengths of Brenda and Max had slipped through, closed the door.

  “Safe,” he said in a breathless way, which made Philip feel that safety was the last thing one could count on at that moment.

  “Now, speak low, who knows what spies may be listening? I am a plain man. I speak as I think. You came out of the unknown. You may be the Deliverer or the Destroyer. But I am a judge of faces—always was from a boy—and I cannot believe that this countenance of apple-cheeked innocence is that of a Destroyer.”

  Philip was angry and Lucy was furious. So he said nothing. And she said:

  “Apple-cheeked yourself!” which was very rude.

  “I see that you are annoyed,” said the captain in the dark, where, of course, he could see nothing; “but in calling your friend apple-cheeked I was merely offering the highest compliment in my power. The absence of fruit in this city is, I suppose, the reason why our compliments are like that. I believe poets say ‘sweet as a rose’—we say ‘sweet as an orange.’ May I be allowed unreservedly to apologise?”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Philip awkwardly.

  “And to ask whether you are the Deliverer?”

  “I hope so,” said Philip modestly.

  “Of course he is,” said the parrot, putting its head out from the front of Philip’s jacket; “and he has done six deeds out of the seven already.”

  “It is time that deeds were done here,” said the captain. “I’ll make a light and get you some supper. I’m in hiding here; but the walls are thick and all the shutters are shut.”

  He bolted a door and opened the slide of a dark lantern.

  “Some of us have taken refuge in the old prison,” he said; “it’s never used, you know, so her spies don’t infest it as they do every other part of the city.”

  “Whose spies?”

  “The Destroyer’s,” said the captain, getting bread and milk out of a cupboard; “at least, if you’re the Deliverer she must be that. But she says she’s the Deliverer.”

  He lighted candles and set them on the table as Lucy asked eagerly:

  “What Destroyer? Is it a horrid woman in a motor veil?”

  “You’ve guessed it,” said the captain gloomily.

  “It’s that Pretenderette,” said Philip. “Does Mr. Noah know? What has she been doing?”

  “Everything you can think of,” said the captain; “she says she’s Queen, and that she’s done the seven deeds. And Mr. Noah doesn’t know, because she’s set a guard round the city, and no message can get out or in.”

  “The Hippogriff?” said Lucy.

  “Yes, of course I thought of that,” said the captain. “And so did she. She’s locked it up and thrown the key into one of the municipal wells.”

  “But why do the guards obey her?” Philip asked.

  “They’re not our guards, of course,” the captain answered. “They’re strange soldiers that she got out of a book. She got the people to pull down the Hall of Justice by pretending there was fruit in the gigantic books it’s built with. And when the book was opened these soldiers came marching out. The Sequani and the Aedui they call themselves. And when you’ve finished supper we ought to hold a council. There are a lot of us here. All sorts. Distinctions of rank are forgotten in times of public peril.”

  Some twenty or thirty people presently gathered in that round room from whose windows Philip and Lucy had looked out when they were first imprisoned. There were indeed all sorts, match-servants, domino-men, soldiers, china-men, Mr. Noah’s three sons and his wife, a pirate and a couple of sailors.

  “What book,” Philip asked Lucy in an undertone, “did she get these soldiers out of?”

  “Caesar, I think,” said Lucy. “And I’m afraid it was my fault. I remember telling her about the barbarians and the legions and things after father had told me—when she was my nurse, you know. She’s very clever at thinking of horrid things to do, isn’t she?”

  The council talked for two hours, and nobody said anything worth mentioning. When every one was quite tired out, every one went to bed.

  It was Philip who woke in the night in the grasp of a sudden idea.

  “What is it?” asked Max, rousing himself from his warm bed at Philip’s feet.

  “I’ve thought of something,” said Philip in a low excited voice. “I’m going to have a night attack.”

  “Shall I wake the others?” asked Max, ever ready to oblige.

  Philip thought a moment. Then:

  “No,” he said, “it’s rather dangerous; and besides I want to do it all by myself. Lucy’s done more than her share already. Look out, Max; I’m going to get up and go out.”

  He got up and he went out. There was a faint greyness of dawn now which showed him the great square of the city on which he and Lucy had looked from the prison window, a very long time ago as it seemed. He found without difficulty the ruins of the Hall of Justice.

  And among the vast blocks scattered on the ground was one that seemed of grey marble, and bore on its back in gigantic letters of gold the words De Bello Gallico.

  Philip stole back to the prison and roused the captain.

  “I want twenty picked men,” he said, “without boots—and at once.’

  He got them, and he led them to the ruins of the Justice Hall.

  “Now,” he said, “raise the cover of this book; only the cover, not any of the pages.”

  The men set their shoulders to the marble slab that was the book’s cover and heaved it up. And as it rose on their shoulders Philip spoke softly, urgently.

  “Caesar,” he said, “Caesar!”

  And a voice answered from under the marble slab.

  “Who calls?” it said. “Who calls upon Julius Caesar?”

  And from the space below the slab, as it were from a marble tomb, a thin figure stepped out, clothed in toga and cloak and wearing on its head a crown of bays.

  “I called,” said Philip in a voice that trembled a little. “There’s no one but you who can help. The barbarians of Gaul hold this city. I call on great Caesar to drive them away. No one else can help us.”

  Caesar stood for a moment silent in the grey twilight. Then he spoke.

  “I will do it,” he said; “you have often tried to master Caesar and always failed. Now you shall be no more ashamed of that failure, for you shall see Caesar’s power. Bid your slaves raise the leaves of my book to the number of fifteen.”

  It was done, and
Caesar turned towards the enormous open book.

  “Come forth!” he said. “Come forth, my legions!”

  Then something in the book moved suddenly, and out of it, as out of an open marble tomb, came long lines of silent armed men, ranged themselves in ranks, and, passing Caesar, saluted. And still more came, and more and more, each with the round shield and the shining helmet and the javelins and the terrible short sword. And on their backs were the packages they used to carry with them into war.

  “The Barbarians of Gaul are loose in this city,” said the voice of the great commander; “drive them before you once more as you drove them of old.”

  “Whither, O Caesar?” asked one of the Roman generals.

  “Drive them, O Titus Labienus,” said Caesar, “back into that book wherein I set them more than nineteen hundred years ago, and from which they have dared to escape. Who is their leader?” he asked of Philip.

  “The Pretenderette,” said Philip; “a woman in a motor veil.”

  “Caesar does not war with women,” said the man in the laurel crown; “let her be taken prisoner and brought before me.”

  Low-voiced, the generals of Caesar’s army gave their commands, and with incredible quietness the army moved away, spreading itself out in all directions.

  “She has caged the Hippogriff,” said Philip; “the winged horse, and we want to send him with a message.”

  “See that the beast is freed,” said Caesar, and turned to Plumbeus the captain. “We be soldiers together,” he said. “Lead me to the main gate. It is there that the fight will be fiercest.” He laid a hand on the captain’s shoulder, and at the head of the last legion, Caesar and the captain of the soldiers marched to the main gate.

  CHAPTER XII

  THE END

  Philip tore back to the prison, to be met at the door by Lucy.

  “I hate you,” she said briefly, and Philip understood.

  “I couldn’t help it,” he said; “I did want to do something by myself.”

  And Lucy understood.

  “And besides,” he said, “I was coming back for you. Don’t be snarky about it, Lu. I’ve called up Caesar himself. And you shall see him before he goes back into the book. Come on; if we’re sharp we can hide in the ruins of the Justice Hall and see everything. I noticed there was a bit of the gallery left standing. Come on. I want you to think what message to send by the Hippogriff to Mr. Noah.”

  “Oh, you needn’t trouble about that,” said Lucy in an off-hand manner. “I sent the parrot off ages ago.”

  “And you never told me! Then I think that’s quits; don’t you?”

  Lucy had a short struggle with herself (you know those unpleasant and difficult struggles, I am sure!) and said:

  “Right-o!”

  And together they ran back to the Justice Hall.

  The light was growing every moment, and there was now a sound of movement in the city. Women came down to the public fountains to draw water, and boys swept the paths and doorsteps. That sort of work goes on even when barbarians are surrounding a town. And the ordinary sounds of a town’s awakening came to Lucy and Philip as they waited; crowing cocks and barking dogs and cats mewing faintly for the morning milk. But it was not for those sounds that Lucy and Philip were waiting.

  So through those homely and familiar sounds they listened, listened, listened; and very gradually, so that they could neither of them have said at any moment “Now it has begun,” yet quite beyond mistake the sound for which they listened was presently loud in their ears. And it was the sound of steel on steel; the sound of men shouting in the breathless moment between sword-stroke and sword-stroke; the cry of victory and the wail of defeat.

  And, presently, the sound of feet that ran.

  And now a man shot out from a side street and ran across the square towards the Palace of Justice where Lucy and Philip were hidden in the gallery. And now another and another all running hard and making for the ruined hall as hunted creatures make for cover. Rough, big, blond, their long hair flying behind them, and their tunics of beast-skins flapping as they ran, the barbarians fled before the legions of Caesar. The great marble-covered book that looked like a marble tomb was still open, its cover and fifteen leaves propped up against the tall broken columns of the gateway of the Justice Hall. Into that open book leapt the first barbarian, leapt and vanished, and the next after him and the next, and then, by twos and threes and sixes and sevens, they leapt in and disappeared, amid gasping and shouting and the nearing sound of the bucina and of the trumpets of Rome.

  Then from all quarters of the city the Roman soldiers came trooping, and as the last of the barbarians plunged headlong into the open book, the Romans formed into ordered lines and waited, while a man might count ten. Then, advancing between their ranks, came the spare form and thin face of the man with the laurel crown.

  Twelve thousand swords flashed in air and wavered a little like reeds in the breeze, then steadied themselves, and the shout went up from twelve thousand throats:

  “Ave Caesar!”

  And without haste and without delay the Romans filed through the ruins to the marble-covered book, and two by two entered it and disappeared. Each as he passed the mighty conqueror saluted him with proud mute reverence.

  When the last soldier was hidden in the book, Caesar looked round him, a little wistfully.

  “I must speak to him; I must,” Lucy cried; “I must. Oh, what a darling he is!”

  She ran down the steps from the gallery and straight to Caesar. He smiled when she reached him, and gently pinched her ear. Fancy going through the rest of your life hearing all the voices of the world through an ear that has been pinched by Caesar!

  “Oh, thank you! thank you!” said Philip; “how splendid you are. I’ll swot up my Latin like anything next term, so as to read about you.”

  “Are they all in?” Lucy asked. “I do hope nobody was hurt.”

  Caesar smiled.

  “A most unreasonable wish, my child, after a great battle!” he said. “But for once the unreasonable is the inevitable. Nobody was hurt. You see it was necessary to get every man back into the book just as he left it, or what would the schoolmasters have done? There remain now only my own guard who have in charge the false woman who let loose the barbarians. And here they come.”

  Surrounded by a guard with drawn swords the Pretenderette advanced slowly.

  “Hail, woman!” said Caesar.

  “Hail, whoever you are!” said the Pretenderette very sulkily.

  “I hail,” said Caesar, “your courage.”

  Philip and Lucy looked at each other. Yes, the Pretenderette had courage: they had not thought of that before. All the attempts she had made against them—she alone in a strange land—yes, these needed courage.

  “And I demand to know how you came here?”

  “When I found he’d been at his building again,” she said, pointing a contemptuous thumb at Philip, “I was just going to pull it down, and I knocked down a brick or two with my sleeve, and not thinking what I was doing I built them up again; and then I got a bit giddy and the whole thing seemed to begin to grow—candlesticks and bricks and dominoes and everything, bigger and bigger and bigger, and I looked in. It was as big as a church by this time, and I saw that boy losing his way among the candlestick pillars, and I followed him and I listened. And I thought I could be as good a Deliverer as anybody else. And the motor veil that I was going to catch the 2.37 train in was a fine disguise.”

  “You tried to injure the children,” Caesar reminded her.

  “I don’t want to say anything to make you let me off,” said the Pretenderette, “but at the beginning I didn’t think any of it was real. I thought it was a dream. You can let your evil passions go in a dream and it don’t hurt any one.”

  “It hurts you,” C
aesar said.

  “Oh! that’s no odds,” said the Pretenderette scornfully.

  “You sought to injure and confound the children at every turn,” said Caesar, “even when you found that things were real.”

  “I saw there was a chance of being Queen,” said the Pretenderette, “and I took it. Seems to me you’ve no occasion to talk if you’re Julius Caesar, the same as the bust in the library. You took what you could get right enough in your time, when all’s said and done.”

  “I hail,” said Caesar again, “your courage.”

  “You needn’t trouble,” she said, tossing her head; “my game’s up now, and I’ll speak my mind if I die for it. You don’t understand. You’ve never been a servant, to see other people get all the fat and you all the bones. What you think it’s like to know if you’d just been born in a gentleman’s mansion instead of in a model workman’s dwelling you’d have been brought up as a young lady and had the openwork silk stockings and the lace on your under-petticoats.”

  “You go too deep for me,” said Caesar, with the ghost of a smile. “I now pronounce your sentence. But life has pronounced on you a sentence worse than any I can give you. Nobody loves you.”

  “Oh, you old silly,” said the Pretenderette in a burst of angry tears, “don’t you see that’s just why everything’s happened?”

  “You are condemned,” said Caesar calmly, “to make yourself beloved. You will be taken to Briskford, where you will teach the Great Sloth to like his work and keep him awake for eight play-hours a day. In the intervals of your toil you must try to get fond of some one. The Halma people are kind and gentle. You will not find them hard to love. And when the Great Sloth loves his work and the Halma people are so fond of you that they feel they cannot bear to lose you, your penance will be over and you can go where you will.”

  “You know well enough,” said the Pretenderette, still tearful and furious, “that if that ever happened I shouldn’t want to go anywhere else.”