Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  Billy went along in, and the footman led him into the presence of the Prime Minister, who was sitting with straws in his hair, wringing his hands.

  ‘Come by post, your lordship,’ the footman said—’from London.’

  The Prime Minister left off wringing his hands, and held one of them out to Billy. ‘You will suit!’ he said. ‘I’ll engage you in a minute. But just pull the straws out of my hair first, will you? I only put them in because we hadn’t been able to find a suitable King, and I find straws so useful in helping my brain to act in a crisis. Of course, once you’re engaged for the situation, no one will ask you to do anything useful.’

  Billy pulled the straws out, and the Prime Minister said:

  ‘Are they all out? Thanks. Well, now you’re engaged — six months on trial. You needn’t do anything you don’t want to. Now, your Majesty, breakfast is served at nine. Let me conduct you to the Royal apartments.’

  In ten minutes Billy had come out of a silver bath filled with scented water, and was putting on the grandest clothes he had ever seen in his life. Everything was of thick, soft, pussy silk, and his boots had gold heels with gold spurs on them.

  For the first time in his life it was with personal pleasure, and not from a sense of duty, that he brushed his hair and satisfied himself that none of his nails were in mourning. Then he went to breakfast, which was so fine that none but a French cook could have either cooked or described it. He was a little hungry — he had had nothing to eat since the bread and cheese at supper in Claremont Square the night before last.

  After breakfast he rode out on a white pony, a thing he might have lived in Claremont Square for ever without doing. And he found he rode very well. After the ride he went on the sea in a boat, and was surprised and delighted to find that he knew how to sail as well as how to steer. In the afternoon he was taken to a circus; and in the evening the whole Court played blind-man’s buff. A most enchanting day!

  Next morning the breakfast was boiled underdone eggs and burnt herrings. The King was too polite to make remarks about his food, but he did feel a little disappointed.

  The Prime Minister was late for breakfast and came in looking hot and flurried, and a garland of straw was entwined in the Prime Ministerial hair.

  ‘Excuse my hair, sire,’ he said. ‘The cook left last night, but a new one comes at noon to-day. Meantime, I have done my best.’

  Billy said it was all right, and he had had an excellent breakfast. The second day passed as happily as the first; the cook seemed to have arrived, for the breakfast was made up for by the lunch. And Billy had the pleasure of shooting at a target at two thousand yards with the Lee-Metford rifle which had arrived by the same post as himself, and hitting the bull’s-eye every time.

  This is really a rare thing — even when you are a King. But Billy began to think it curious that he should never have found out before how clever he was, and when he took down a volume of Virgil and found that he could read it as easily as though it had been the ‘Child’s First Reading-Book,’ he was really astonished. So Billy said to the Prime Minister:

  ‘How is it I know so many things without learning them?’

  ‘It’s the rule here, sire,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘Kings are allowed to know everything without learning it.’

  Now, the next morning Billy woke very early, and got up and went out into the garden, and, turning a corner suddenly, he came upon a little person in a large white cap, with a large white apron on, in which she was gathering sweet pot-herbs, thyme, and basil, and mint, and savory, and sage, and marjoram. She stood up and dropped a curtsy.

  ‘Halloa!’ said Billy the King; ‘who are you?’

  ‘I’m the new cook,’ said the person in the apron.

  Her big flapping cap hid her face, but Billy knew her voice.

  ‘Why,’ said he, turning her face up with his hands under her chin, ‘you’re Eliza!’

  And sure enough it was Eliza, but her round face looked very much cleverer and prettier than it had done when he saw it last.

  ‘Hush!’ she said. ‘Yes, I am. I got the place as Queen of Allexanassa, but it was all horribly grand, and such long trains, and the crown is awfully heavy. And yesterday morning I woke very early, and I thought I’d just put on my old frock — mother made it for me the very last thing before she was taken ill.’

  ‘Don’t cry,’ said Billy the King gently.

  ‘And I went out, and there was a man with a boat, and he didn’t know I was the Queen, and I got him to take me for a row on the sea, and he told me some things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Why, about us, Billy. I suppose you’re the same as I am now, and know everything without learning it. What’s Allexanassa Greek for?’

  ‘Why, something like the Country of Changing Queens, isn’t it?’

  ‘And what does Plurimiregia mean?’

  ‘That must mean the land of many Kings. Why?’

  ‘Because that’s what it is. They’re always changing their Kings and Queens here, for a most horrid and frightening reason, Billy. They get them from a registry office a long way off so that they shouldn’t know. Billy, there’s a dreadful dragon, and he comes once a month to be fed. And they feed him with Kings and Queens! That’s why we know everything without learning. Because there’s no time to learn in. And the dragon has two heads, Billy — a pig’s head and a lizard’s head — and the pig’s head is to eat you with and the lizard’s head will eat me!’

  ‘So they brought us here for that,’ said Billy—’mean, cruel, cowardly brutes!’

  ‘Mother always said you could never tell what a situation was like until you tried it,’ said Eliza. ‘But what are we to do? The dragon comes to-morrow. When I heard that I asked where your kingdom was, and the boatman showed me, and I made him land me here. So Allexanassa hasn’t got a Queen now, but Plurimiregia has got us both.’

  Billy rumpled his hair with his hands.

  ‘Oh, my cats alive!’ he said, ‘we must do something; but I’ll tell you what it is, Eliza. You’re no end of a brick to come and tell me. You might have got off all by yourself, and left me to the pig’s head.’

  ‘No, I mightn’t,’ said Eliza sharply. ‘I know everything that people can learn, the same as you, and that includes right and wrong. So you see I mightn’t.’

  ‘That’s true! I wonder whether our being clever would help us? Let’s take a boat and steer straight out, and take our chance. I can sail and steer beautifully.’

  ‘So can I,’ said Eliza disdainfully; ‘but, you see, it’s too late for that. Twenty-four hours before the beast comes the sea-water runs away, and great waves of thick treacle come sweeping round the kingdoms. No boat can live in such a sea.’

  ‘Well, but how does the dragon get here? Is he on the island?’

  ‘No,’ said Eliza, squeezing up handfuls of herbs in her agitation till the scent quite overpowered the scent of the honeysuckle. ‘No; he comes out of the sea. But he is very hot inside, and he melts the treacle so that it gets quite thin, like when it runs out of a treacle-pudding, and so he can swim in it, and he comes along to the quay, and is fed — with Us.’

  Billy shuddered.

  ‘I wish we were back in Claremont Square,’ said he.

  ‘So do I, I’m sure,’ said Eliza. ‘Though I don’t know where it is, nor yet want to know.’

  ‘Hush!’ said Billy suddenly. ‘I hear a rustling. It’s the Prime Minister, and I can hear he’s got straws in his hair again, most likely because you’re disappeared, and he thinks he will have to cook the breakfast. Meet me beside the lighthouse at four this afternoon. Hide in this summer-house and don’t come out till the coast’s clear.’

  He ran out and took the Prime Minister’s arm.

  ‘What is the straw for now?’

  ‘Merely a bad habit,’ said the Prime Minister wearily.

  Then Billy suddenly saw, and he said:

  ‘You’re a beastly mean, cowardly sneak, and you feel it; th
at’s what the straws are about!’

  ‘Your Majesty!’ said the Prime Minister feebly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Billy firmly; ‘you know you are. Now, I know all the laws of Plurimiregia, and I’m going to abdicate this morning, and the next in rank has to be King if he can’t engage a fresh one. You’re next in rank to me, so by the time the dragon comes you’ll be the King. I’ll attend your Coronation.’

  The Prime Minister gasped, ‘How did you find out?’ and turned the colour of unripe peaches.

  ‘That’s tellings,’ said Billy. ‘If you hadn’t all been such sneaks, I expect heaps of your Kings had sense enough to have got rid of the dragon for you. Only I suppose you’ve never told them in time. Now, look here. I don’t want you to do anything except keep your mouth shut, and let there be a boat, and no boatman, on the beach under the lighthouse at four o’clock.’

  ‘But the sea’s all treacle.’

  ‘I said on the beach, not on the sea, my good straw merchant. And what I say you’ve jolly well got to do. You must be there — and no one else. If you tell a soul I’ll abdicate, and where will you be then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the wretched Prime Minister, stooping to gather some more straws from the strawberry bed.

  ‘But I do,’ said Billy. ‘Now for breakfast.’

  Before four o’clock that afternoon the Prime Minister’s head was a perfect bird’s-nest of straws. But he met Billy at the appointed place, and there was a boat — and also Eliza. Billy carried his Lee-Metford.

  A wind blew from the shore, and the straws in the Prime Minister’s hair rustled like a barley-field in August.

  ‘Now,’ said Billy the King, ‘my Royal Majesty commands you to speak to the dragon as soon as it arrives, and to say that your King has abdicated — —’

  ‘But he hasn’t,’ said the Prime Minister in tears.

  ‘But he does now — so you won’t be telling a lie. I abdicate. But I give you my word of honour I’ll turn King again as soon as I’ve tried my little plan. I shall be quite in time to meet my fate — and the dragon. Say “The King has abdicated. You’d better just look in at Allexanassa and get the Queen, and when you call again I’ll have a nice fat King all ready for you.”’

  The straws trembled, and Eliza sobbed.

  Billy went on; and he had never felt so truly regal as now, when he was preparing to risk his life in order to save his subjects from the monthly temptation to be mean and cowardly and sneakish. I think myself it was good of Billy. He might just have abdicated and let things slide. Some boys would have.

  The sea of greeny-black treacle heaved and swelled sulkily against the beach. The Prime Minister said:

  ‘Very well; I’ll do it. But I’d sooner die than see my King false to his word.’

  ‘You won’t have to choose between the two,’ said Billy, very pale, but determined. ‘Your King’s not a hound, like — like some-people.’

  And then, far away on the very edge of the green treacly sea, they saw a squirming and a squelching and clouds of steam, and all sorts of exciting and unpleasant things happening very suddenly and all together.

  The Prime Minister covered his head with dry seaweed and said:

  ‘That’s Him.’

  ‘That’s He,’ corrected Eliza the Queen and Billy the King in one breath.

  But the Prime Minister was long past any proper pride in his grammar.

  And then, cutting its way through the thick, sticky waves of the treacle sea, came the hot dragon, melting a way for himself as he came. And he got nearer and nearer and bigger and bigger, and at last he came close to the beach, snouting and snorting, and opened two great mouths in an expecting, hungry sort of way; and when he found he was not being fed the expression of the mouths changed to an angry and surprised question. And one mouth was a pig’s mouth and one was a lizard’s.

  Billy the King borrowed a pin from Eliza the Queen to stick into the Prime Minister, who was by this time nearly buried in the seaweed which he had been trying to arrange in his hair.

  ‘Speak up, silly!’ said His Majesty.

  The Prime Minister spoke up.

  ‘Please, sir,’ he said to the two-headed dragon, ‘our King has abdicated, so we’ve nothing for you just now, but if you could just run over to Allexanassa and pick up their Queen, we’ll have a nice fat King ready for you if you’ll call on your way home.’

  The Prime Minister shuddered as he spoke. He happened to be very fat.

  The dragon did not say a word. He nodded with both his heads and grunted with both his mouths, and turned his one tail and swam away along the track of thin, warm treacle which he had made in swimming across the sea.

  Quick as thought, Billy the King signed to the Prime Minister and to Eliza, and they launched the boat. Billy sprang on board and pushed off, and it was not till the boat was a dozen yards from shore that he turned to wave a farewell to Eliza and the Prime Minister. The latter was indeed still on the beach, searching hopefully among the drifts and weeds for more straws, to mark his sense of the constitutional crisis, but Eliza had disappeared.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Billy the King; ‘surely that brute of a Prime Minister can’t have killed her right off, so as to have her ready for the dragon when he comes back. Oh, my dear little Eliza!’

  ‘I’m here,’ said a thick voice.

  And, sure enough, there was Eliza, holding on to the gunwale of the boat and swimming heavily in the warm treacle. Nearly choked with it, too, for she had been under more than once.

  Billy hastened to haul her aboard, and, though she was quite brown and very, very sticky, the moment she was safe in the boat he threw his arms round her and said:

  ‘Dear, darling Eliza, you’re the dearest, bravest girl in the world. If we ever get out of this you’ll marry me, won’t you? There’s no one in the world like you. Say you will.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Eliza, still spluttering through the treacle. ‘There’s no one in the world like you, either.’

  ‘Right! Then, if that’s so, you steer and I’ll sail, and we’ll get the better of the beast yet,’ said Billy.

  And he set the sail, and Eliza steered as well as she could in her treacly state.

  About the middle of the channel they caught up with the dragon. Billy took up his Lee-Metford and fired its eight bullets straight into the dragon’s side. You have no idea how the fire spurted out through the bullet-holes. But the wind from shore had caught the sails, and the boat was now going very much faster than the dragon, who found the bullet-holes annoying, and had slowed up to see what was the matter.

  ‘Good-bye, you dear, brave Eliza,’ said Billy the King. ‘You’re all right, anyhow.’

  And, holding his reloaded Lee-Metford rifle high over his head, he plunged into the treacly sea and swam back towards the dragon. It is very difficult to shoot straight when you are swimming, especially in nearly boiling treacle, but His Majesty King Billy managed to do it. He sent his eight bullets straight into the dragon’s heads, and the huge monster writhed and wriggled and squirmed and squawked, all over the sea from end to end, till at last it floated lifeless on the surface of the clear, warm treacle, and stretched its wicked paws out, and shut its wicked eyes, all four of them, and died. The lizard’s eyes shut last.

  Then Billy began to swim for dear life towards the shore of Plurimiregia, and the treacle was so hot that if he hadn’t been a King he would have been boiled. But now that the dreadful dragon was cold in death there was nothing to keep the treacle sea thin and warm, and it began to thicken so fast that swimming was very difficult indeed. If you don’t understand this, you need only ask the attendants at your nearest swimming-baths to fill the baths with treacle instead of water, and you will very soon comprehend how it was that Billy reached the shore of his kingdom quite exhausted and almost speechless.

  The Prime Minister was there. He had fetched a whole truss of straw when he thought Billy’s plan had failed, and that the dragon would eat him as the next in
rank, and he wanted to do the thing thoroughly; and when he warmly embraced the treacly King, Billy became so covered with straws that he hardly knew himself. He pulled himself together, however, enough to withdraw his resignation, and then looked out over the sea. In mid-channel lay the dead dragon, and far in the distance he could see the white sails of the boat nearing the shores of Allexanassa.

  ‘And what are we to do now?’ asked the Prime Minister.

  ‘Have a bath,’ said the King. ‘The dragon’s dead, and I’ll fetch Eliza in the morning. They won’t hurt her over there now the dragon’s killed.’

  ‘They won’t hurt her,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘It’s the treacle. Allexanassa is an island. The dragon brought the treacle up by his enchantments, and now there is no one to take it away again. You’ll never get a boat to live in a sea like that — never.’

  ‘Won’t I?’ said Billy. ‘I’m cleverer than you.’

  But, all the same, he didn’t quite see his way to sailing a boat in that sea, and with a sad and aching heart he went back to the palace to the silver bath. The treacle and straws took hours to wash off, and after that he was so tired that he did not want any supper, which was just as well, because there was no one to cook it. Tired as he was, Billy slept very badly. He woke up again and again to wonder what had become of his brave little friend, and to wish that he could have done something to prevent her being carried away in that boat; but, think as he might, he failed to see that he could have done any differently. And his heart sank, for, in spite of his bold words to the Prime Minister, he had no more idea than you have how to cross the sea of thick treacle that lay between his kingdom and Allexanassa. He invented steamships with red-hot screws and paddle-wheels all through his dreams, and when he got up in the morning he looked out of his window on the dark sea and longed for a good, gray, foamy, salt, tumbling sea like we have at home in England, no matter how high the waves and the winds might be. But the wind had fallen, and the dark brown sea looked strangely calm.

  Hastily snatching a dozen peaches out of the palace garden by way of breakfast, Billy the King hurried to the beach by the lighthouse. No heaving of the treacle sea broke the smooth line of it against the beach. Billy looked — looked again, swallowed the last peach, stone and all, and tore back to the town.