The Greatest Works of E. Nesbit (220+ Titles in One Illustrated Edition). Эдит Несбит
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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 two thousand five hundred 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.
‘Oh, 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 said. ‘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.’
‘I see,’ said Anthea, gasping.
‘But oh, my dears,’ the Queen went on, ‘such a to-do as there’s been about this last wife! You never did! It really was too funny. We wanted an Egyptian princess. The King may-he-live-for-ever has got a wife from most of the important nations, and he had set his heart on an Egyptian one to complete his collection. Well, of course, to begin with, we sent a handsome present of gold. The Egyptian king sent back some horses – quite few; he’s fearfully stingy! – and he said he liked the gold very much, but what they were really short of was lapis lazuli, so of course we sent him some. But by that time he’d begun to use the gold to cover the beams of the roof of the Temple of the Sun-God, and he hadn’t nearly enough to finish the job, so we sent some more. And so it went on, oh, for years. You see each journey takes at least six months. And at last we asked the hand of his daughter in marriage.’
‘Yes,