by E. Nesbit
‘It’s nearly time now. We ought to be getting on towards the palace. It’s as well to be early.’ So they went to the palace, and when they got there it was more splendid than anything they had seen yet.
For it was glowing with colours, and with gold and silver and black and white—like some magnificent embroidery. Flight after flight of broad marble steps led up to it, and at the edges of the stairs stood great images, twenty times as big as a man—images of men with wings like chain armour, and hawks’ heads, and winged men with the heads of dogs. And there were the statues of great kings.
Between the flights of steps were terraces where fountains played, and the Queen’s Guard in white and scarlet, and armour that shone like gold, stood by twos lining the way up the stairs; and a great body of them was massed by the vast door of the palace itself, where it stood glittering like an impossibly radiant peacock in the noon-day sun.
All sorts of people were passing up the steps to seek audience of the Queen. Ladies in richly-embroidered dresses with fringy flounces, poor folks in plain and simple clothes, dandies with beards oiled and curled.
And Cyril, Robert, Anthea and Jane, went with the crowd.
At the gate of the palace the Psammead put one eye cautiously out of the basket and whispered—
‘I can’t be bothered with queens. I’ll go home with this lady. I’m sure she’ll get me some sand if you ask her to.’
‘Oh! don’t leave us,’ said Jane. The woman was giving some last instructions in Court etiquette to Anthea, and did not hear Jane.
‘Don’t be a little muff,’ said the Psammead quite fiercely. ‘It’s not a bit of good your having a charm. You never use it. If you want me you’ve only got to say the name of power and ask the charm to bring me to you.’
‘I’d rather go with you,’ said Jane. And it was the most surprising thing she had ever said in her life.
Everyone opened its mouth without thinking of manners, and Anthea, who was peeping into the Psammead’s basket, saw that its mouth opened wider than anybody’s.
‘You needn’t gawp like that,’ Jane went on. ‘I’m not going to be bothered with queens any more than it is. And I know, wherever it is, it’ll take jolly good care that it’s safe.’
‘She’s right there,’ said everyone, for they had observed that the Psammead had a way of knowing which side its bread was buttered.
She turned to the woman and said, ‘You’ll take me home with you, won’t you? And let me play with your little girls till the others have done with the Queen.’
‘Surely I will, little heart!’ said the woman.
And then Anthea hurriedly stroked the Psammead and embraced Jane, who took the woman’s hand, and trotted contentedly away with the Psammead’s bag under the other arm.
The others stood looking after her till she, the woman, and the basket were lost in the many-coloured crowd. Then Anthea turned once more to the palace’s magnificent doorway and said—
‘Let’s ask the porter to take care of our Babylonian overcoats.’
So they took off the garments that the woman had lent them and stood amid the jostling petitioners of the Queen in their own English frocks and coats and hats and boots.
‘We want to see the Queen,’ said Cyril; ‘we come from the far Empire where the sun never sets!’
A murmur of surprise and a thrill of excitement ran through the crowd. The door-porter spoke to a black man, he spoke to someone else. There was a whispering, waiting pause. Then a big man, with a cleanly-shaven face, beckoned them from the top of a flight of red marble steps.
They went up; the boots of Robert clattering more than usual because he was so nervous. A door swung open, a curtain was drawn back. A double line of bowing forms in gorgeous raiment formed a lane that led to the steps of the throne, and as the children advanced hurriedly there came from the throne a voice very sweet and kind.
‘Three children from the land where the sun never sets! Let them draw hither without fear.’
In another minute they were kneeling at the throne’s foot, saying, ‘O Queen, live for ever!’ exactly as the woman had taught them. And a splendid dream-lady, all gold and silver and jewels and snowy drift of veils, was raising Anthea, and saying—
‘Don’t be frightened, I really am so glad you came! The land where the sun never sets! I am delighted to see you! I was getting quite too dreadfully bored for anything!’
And behind Anthea the kneeling Cyril whispered in the ears of the respectful Robert—
‘Bobs, don’t say anything to Panther. It’s no use upsetting her, but we didn’t ask for Jane’s address, and the Psammead’s with her.’
‘Well,’ whispered Robert, ‘the charm can bring them to us at any moment. It said so.’
‘Oh, yes,’ whispered Cyril, in miserable derision, ‘we’re all right, of course. So we are! Oh, yes! If we’d only got the charm.’
Then Robert saw, and he murmured, ‘Crikey!’ at the foot of the throne of Babylon; while Cyril hoarsely whispered the plain English fact—
‘Jane’s got the charm round her neck, you silly cuckoo.’
‘Crikey!’ Robert repeated in heart-broken undertones.
CHAPTER 7
‘THE DEEPEST DUNGEON BELOW THE CASTLE MOAT’
The Queen threw three of the red and gold embroidered cushions off the throne on to the marble steps that led up to it.
‘Just make yourselves comfortable there,’ she said. ‘I’m simply dying to talk to you, and to hear all about your wonderful country and how you got here, and everything, but I have to do justice every morning. Such a bore, isn’t it? Do you do justice in your own country?’
‘No,’ said Cyril; ‘at least of course we try to, but not in this public sort of way, only in private.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said the Queen, ‘I should much prefer a private audience myself—much easier to manage. But public opinion has to be considered. Doing justice is very hard work, even when you’re brought up to it.’
‘We don’t do justice, but we have to do scales, Jane and me,’ said Anthea, ‘twenty minutes a day. It’s simply horrid.’
‘What are scales?’ asked the Queen, ‘and what is Jane?’
‘Jane is my little sister. One of the guards-at-the-gate’s wife is taking care of her. And scales are music.’
‘I never heard of the instrument,’ said the Queen. ‘Do you sing?’
‘Oh, yes. We can sing in parts,’ said Anthea.
‘That is magic,’ said the Queen. ‘How many parts are you each cut into before you do it?’
‘We aren’t cut at all,’ said Robert hastily. ‘We couldn’t sing if we were. We’ll show you afterwards.’
‘So you shall, and now sit quiet like dear children and hear me do justice. The way I do it has always been admired. I oughtn’t to say that ought I? Sounds so conceited. But I don’t mind with you, dears. Somehow I feel as though I’d known you quite a long time already.’
The Queen settled herself on her throne and made a signal to her attendants. The children, whispering together among the cushions on the steps of the throne, decided that she was very beautiful and very kind, but perhaps just the least bit flighty.
The first person who came to ask for justice was a woman whose brother had taken the money the father had left for her. The brother said it was the uncle who had the money. There was a good deal of talk and the children were growing rather bored, when the Queen suddenly clapped her hands, and said—
‘Put both the men in prison till one of them owns up that the other is innocent.’
‘But suppose they both did it?’ Cyril could not help interrupting.
‘Then prison’s the best place for them,’ said the Queen.
‘But suppose neither did it.’
‘That’s impossible,’ sa
id the Queen; ‘a thing’s not done unless someone does it. And you mustn’t interrupt.’
Then came a woman, in tears, with a torn veil and real ashes on her head—at least Anthea thought so, but it may have been only road-dust. She complained that her husband was in prison.
‘What for?’ said the Queen.
‘They said it was for speaking evil of your Majesty,’ said the woman, ‘but it wasn’t. Someone had a spite against him. That was what it was.’
‘How do you know he hadn’t spoken evil of me?’ said the Queen.
‘No one could,’ said the woman simply, ‘when they’d once seen your beautiful face.’
‘Let the man out,’ said the Queen, smiling. ‘Next case.’
The next case was that of a boy who had stolen a fox. ‘Like the Spartan boy,’ whispered Robert. But the Queen ruled that nobody could have any possible reason for owning a fox, and still less for stealing one. And she did not believe that there were any foxes in Babylon; she, at any rate, had never seen one. So the boy was released.
The people came to the Queen about all sorts of family quarrels and neighbourly misunderstandings—from a fight between brothers over the division of an inheritance, to the dishonest and unfriendly conduct of a woman who had borrowed a cooking-pot at the last New Year’s festival, and not returned it yet.
And the Queen decided everything, very, very decidedly indeed. At last she clapped her hands quite suddenly and with extreme loudness, and said—
‘The audience is over for today.’
Everyone said, ‘May the Queen live for ever!’ and went out.
And the children were left alone in the justice-hall with the Queen of Babylon and her ladies.
‘There!’ said the Queen, with a long sigh of relief. ‘That’s over! I couldn’t have done another stitch of justice if you’d offered me the crown of Egypt! Now come into the garden, and we’ll have a nice, long, cosy talk.’
She led 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 s
aid. ‘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.’
