The Story of the Amulet Part 16

'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 cus.h.i.+ons 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,' said 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 n.o.body 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 st.i.tch 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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, s.h.i.+ny, 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.