Kabanata Kabanata 6 · The Way To Babylon
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THE WAY TO BABYLON
“How many miles to Babylon?
Three score and ten!
Can I get there by candle light?
Yes, and back again!”
Jane was singing to her doll, rocking it to and fro in the house which
she had made for herself and it. The roof of the house was the
dining-table, and the walls were tablecloths and antimacassars hanging
all round, and kept in their places by books laid on their top ends at
the table edge.
The others were tasting the fearful joys of domestic tobogganing. You
know how it is done—with the largest and best tea-tray and the surface
of the stair carpet. It is best to do it on the days when the stair
rods are being cleaned, and the carpet is only held by the nails at the
top. Of course, it is one of the five or six thoroughly tip-top games
that grown-up people are so unjust to—and old Nurse, though a brick in
many respects, was quite enough of a standard grown-up to put her foot
down on the tobogganing long before any of the performers had had half
enough of it. The tea-tray was taken away, and the baffled party
entered the sitting-room, in exactly the mood not to be pleased if they
could help it.
So Cyril said, “What a beastly mess!”
And Robert added, “Do shut up, Jane!”
Even Anthea, who was almost always kind, advised Jane to try another
song. “I’m sick to death of that,” said she.
It was a wet day, so none of the plans for seeing all the sights of
London that can be seen for nothing could be carried out. Everyone had
been thinking all the morning about the wonderful adventures of the day
before, when Jane had held up the charm and it had turned into an arch,
through which they had walked straight out of the present time and the
Regent’s Park into the land of Egypt eight thousand years ago. The
memory of yesterday’s happenings was still extremely fresh and
frightening, so that everyone hoped that no one would suggest another
excursion into the past, for it seemed to all that yesterday’s
adventures were quite enough to last for at least a week. Yet each felt
a little anxious that the others should not think it was afraid, and
presently Cyril, who really was not a coward, began to see that it
would not be at all nice if he should have to think himself one. So he
said—
“I say—about that charm—Jane—come out. We ought to talk about it,
anyhow.”
“Oh, if that’s all,” said Robert.
Jane obediently wriggled to the front of her house and sat there. She
felt for the charm, to make sure that it was still round her neck.
“It _isn’t_ all,” said Cyril, saying much more than he meant because he
thought Robert’s tone had been rude—as indeed it had. “We ought to go
and look for that Amulet. What’s the good of having a first-class charm
and keeping it idle, just eating its head off in the stable.”
“_I’m_ game for anything, of course,” said Robert; but he added, with a
fine air of chivalry, “only I don’t think the girls are keen today
somehow.”
“Oh, yes; I am,” said Anthea hurriedly. “If you think I’m afraid, I’m
not.”
“I am though,” said Jane heavily; “I didn’t like it, and I won’t go
there again—not for anything I won’t.”
“We shouldn’t go _there_ again, silly,” said Cyril; “it would be some
other place.”
“I daresay; a place with lions and tigers in it as likely as not.”
Seeing Jane so frightened, made the others feel quite brave. They said
they were certain they ought to go.
“It’s so ungrateful to the Psammead not to,” Anthea added, a little
primly.
Jane stood up. She was desperate.
“I won’t!” she cried; “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t! If you make me I’ll
scream and I’ll scream, and I’ll tell old Nurse, and I’ll get her to
burn the charm in the kitchen fire. So now, then!”
You can imagine how furious everyone was with Jane for feeling what
each of them had felt all the morning. In each breast the same thought
arose, “No one can say it’s _our_ fault.” And they at once began to
show Jane how angry they all felt that all the fault was hers. This
made them feel quite brave.
“Tell-tale tit, its tongue shall be split,
And all the dogs in our town shall have a little bit,”
sang Robert.
“It’s always the way if you have girls in anything.” Cyril spoke in a
cold displeasure that was worse than Robert’s cruel quotation, and even
Anthea said, “Well, _I’m_ not afraid if I _am_ a girl,” which of
course, was the most cutting thing of all.
Jane picked up her doll and faced the others with what is sometimes
called the courage of despair.
“I don’t care,” she said; “I _won’t_, so there! It’s just silly going
to places when you don’t want to, and when you don’t know what they’re
going to be like! You can laugh at me as much as you like. You’re
beasts—and I hate you all!”
With these awful words she went out and banged the door.
Then the others would not look at each other, and they did not feel so
brave as they had done.
Cyril took up a book, but it was not interesting to read. Robert kicked
a chair-leg absently. His feet were always eloquent in moments of
emotion. Anthea stood pleating the end of the tablecloth into folds—she
seemed earnestly anxious to get all the pleats the same size. The sound
of Jane’s sobs had died away.
Suddenly Anthea said, “Oh! let it be ‘pax’—poor little Pussy—you know
she’s the youngest.”
“She called us beasts,” said Robert, kicking the chair suddenly.
“Well,” said Cyril, who was subject to passing fits of justice, “we
began, you know. At least you did.” Cyril’s justice was always
uncompromising.
“I’m not going to say I’m sorry if you mean that,” said Robert, and the
chair-leg cracked to the kick he gave as he said it.
“Oh, do let’s,” said Anthea, “we’re three to one, and Mother does so
hate it if we row. Come on. I’ll say I’m sorry first, though I didn’t
say anything, hardly.”
“All right, let’s get it over,” said Cyril, opening the
door.“Hi—you—Pussy!”
Far away up the stairs a voice could be heard singing brokenly, but
still defiantly—
“How many miles (sniff) to Babylon?
Three score and ten! (sniff)
Can I get there by candle light?
Yes (sniff), and back again!”
It was trying, for this was plainly meant to annoy. But Anthea would
not give herself time to think this. She led the way up the stairs,
taking three at a time, and bounded to the level of Jane, who sat on
the top step of all, thumping her doll to the tune of the song she was
trying to sing.
“I say, Pussy, let it be pax! We’re sorry if you are—”
It was enough. The kiss of peace was given by all. Jane being the
youngest was entitled to this ceremonial.
Anthea added a special apology of her own.
“I’m sorry if I was a pig, Pussy dear,” she said—“especially because in
my really and truly inside mind I’ve been feeling a little as if I’d
rather not go into the Past again either. But then, do think. If we
don’t go we shan’t get the Amulet, and oh, Pussy, think if we could
only get Father and Mother and The Lamb safe back! We _must_ go, but
we’ll wait a day or two if you like and then perhaps you’ll feel
braver.”
“Raw meat makes you brave, however cowardly you are,” said Robert, to
show that there was now no ill-feeling, “and cranberries—that’s what
Tartars eat, and they’re so brave it’s simply awful. I suppose
cranberries are only for Christmas time, but I’ll ask old Nurse to let
you have your chop very raw if you like.”
“I think I could be brave without that,” said Jane hastily; she hated
underdone meat. “I’ll try.”
At this moment the door of the learned gentleman’s room opened, and he
looked out.
“Excuse me,” he said, in that gentle, polite weary voice of his, “but
was I mistaken in thinking that I caught a familiar word just now? Were
you not singing some old ballad of Babylon?”
“No,” said Robert, “at least Jane was singing ‘How many miles,’ but I
shouldn’t have thought you could have heard the words for—”
He would have said, “for the sniffing,” but Anthea pinched him just in
time.
“I did not hear _all_ the words,” said the learned gentleman. “I wonder
would you recite them to me?”
So they all said together—
“How many miles to Babylon?
Three score and ten!
Can I get there by candle light?
Yes, and back again!”
“I wish one could,” the learned gentleman said with a sigh.
“Can’t you?” asked Jane.
“Babylon has fallen,” he answered with a sigh. “You know it was once a
great and beautiful city, and the centre of learning and Art, and now
it is only ruins, and so covered up with earth that people are not even
agreed as to where it once stood.”
He was leaning on the banisters, and his eyes had a far-away look in
them, as though he could see through the staircase window the splendour
and glory of ancient Babylon.
“I say,” Cyril remarked abruptly. “You know that charm we showed you,
and you told us how to say the name that’s on it?”
“Yes!”
“Well, do you think that charm was ever in Babylon?”
“It’s quite possible,” the learned gentleman replied. “Such charms have
been found in very early Egyptian tombs, yet their origin has not been
accurately determined as Egyptian. They may have been brought from
Asia. Or, supposing the charm to have been fashioned in Egypt, it might
very well have been carried to Babylon by some friendly embassy, or
brought back by the Babylonish army from some Egyptian campaign as part
of the spoils of war. The inscription may be much later than the charm.
Oh yes! it is a pleasant fancy, that that splendid specimen of yours
was once used amid Babylonish surroundings.”
The others looked at each other, but it was Jane who spoke.
“Were the Babylon people savages, were they always fighting and
throwing things about?” For she had read the thoughts of the others by
the unerring light of her own fears.
“The Babylonians were certainly more gentle than the Assyrians,” said
the learned gentleman. “And they were not savages by any means. A very
high level of culture,” he looked doubtfully at his audience and went
on, “I mean that they made beautiful statues and jewellery, and built
splendid palaces. And they were very learned—they had glorious
libraries and high towers for the purpose of astrological and
astronomical observation.”
“Er?” said Robert.
“I mean for—star-gazing and fortune-telling,” said the learned
gentleman, “and there were temples and beautiful hanging gardens—”
“I’ll go to Babylon if you like,” said Jane abruptly, and the others
hastened to say “Done!” before she should have time to change her mind.
“Ah,” said the learned gentleman, smiling rather sadly, “one can go so
far in dreams, when one is young.” He sighed again, and then adding
with a laboured briskness, “I hope you’ll have a—a—jolly game,” he went
into his room and shut the door.
“He said ‘jolly’ as if it was a foreign language,” said Cyril. “Come
on, let’s get the Psammead and go now. I think Babylon seems a most
frightfully jolly place to go to.”
So they woke the Psammead and put it in its bass-bag with the
waterproof sheet, in case of inclement weather in Babylon. It was very
cross, but it said it would as soon go to Babylon as anywhere else.
“The sand is good thereabouts,” it added.
Then Jane held up the charm, and Cyril said—
“We want to go to Babylon to look for the part of you that was lost.
Will you please let us go there through you?”
“Please put us down just outside,” said Jane hastily; “and then if we
don’t like it we needn’t go inside.”
“Don’t be all day,” said the Psammead.
So Anthea hastily uttered the word of power, without which the charm
could do nothing.
“Ur—Hekau—Setcheh!” she said softly, and as she spoke the charm grew
into an arch so tall that the top of it was close against the bedroom
ceiling. Outside the arch was the bedroom painted chest-of-drawers and
the Kidderminster carpet, and the washhand-stand with the riveted
willow-pattern jug, and the faded curtains, and the dull light of
indoors on a wet day. Through the arch showed the gleam of soft green
leaves and white blossoms. They stepped forward quite happily. Even
Jane felt that this did not look like lions, and her hand hardly
trembled at all as she held the charm for the others to go through, and
last, slipped through herself, and hung the charm, now grown small
again, round her neck.
The children found themselves under a white-blossomed, green-leafed
fruit-tree, in what seemed to be an orchard of such trees, all
white-flowered and green-foliaged. Among the long green grass under
their feet grew crocuses and lilies, and strange blue flowers. In the
branches overhead thrushes and blackbirds were singing, and the coo of
a pigeon came softly to them in the green quietness of the orchard.
“Oh, how perfectly lovely!” cried Anthea.
“Why, it’s like home exactly—I mean England—only everything’s bluer,
and whiter, and greener, and the flowers are bigger.”
The boys owned that it certainly was fairly decent, and even Jane
admitted that it was all very pretty.
“I’m certain there’s nothing to be frightened of here,” said Anthea.
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “I suppose the fruit-trees go on just the
same even when people are killing each other. I didn’t half like what
the learned gentleman said about the hanging gardens. I suppose they
have gardens on purpose to hang people in. I do hope this isn’t one.”
“Of course it isn’t,” said Cyril. “The hanging gardens are just gardens
hung up—_I_ think on chains between houses, don’t you know, like trays.
Come on; let’s get somewhere.”
They began to walk through the cool grass. As far as they could see was
nothing but trees, and trees and more trees. At the end of their
orchard was another one, only separated from theirs by a little stream
of clear water. They jumped this, and went on. Cyril, who was fond of
gardening—which meant that he liked to watch the gardener at work—was
able to command the respect of the others by telling them the names of
a good many trees. There were nut-trees and almond-trees, and apricots,
and fig-trees with their big five-fingered leaves. And every now and
then the children had to cross another brook.
“It’s like between the squares in _Through the Looking-glass_,” said
Anthea.
At last they came to an orchard which was quite different from the
other orchards. It had a low building in one corner.
“These are vines,” said Cyril superiorly, “and I know this is a
vineyard. I shouldn’t wonder if there was a wine-press inside that
place over there.”
At last they got out of the orchards and on to a sort of road, very
rough, and not at all like the roads you are used to. It had cypress
trees and acacia trees along it, and a sort of hedge of tamarisks, like
those you see on the road between Nice and Cannes, or near
Littlehampton, if you’ve only been as far as that.
And now in front of them they could see a great mass of buildings.
There were scattered houses of wood and stone here and there among
green orchards, and beyond these a great wall that shone red in the
early morning sun. The wall was enormously high—more than half the
height of St Paul’s—and in the wall were set enormous gates that shone
like gold as the rising sun beat on them. Each gate had a solid square
tower on each side of it that stood out from the wall and rose above
it. Beyond the wall were more towers and houses, gleaming with gold and
bright colours. Away to the left ran the steel-blue swirl of a great
river. And the children could see, through a gap in the trees, that the
river flowed out from the town under a great arch in the wall.
“Those feathery things along by the water are palms,” said Cyril
instructively.
“Oh, yes; you know everything,” Robert replied. “What’s all that
grey-green stuff you see away over there, where it’s all flat and
sandy?”
“All right,” said Cyril loftily, “_I_ don’t want to tell you anything.
I only thought you’d like to know a palm-tree when you saw it again.”
“Look!” cried Anthea; “they’re opening the gates.”
And indeed the great gates swung back with a brazen clang, and
instantly a little crowd of a dozen or more people came out and along
the road towards them.
The children, with one accord, crouched behind the tamarisk hedge.
“I don’t like the sound of those gates,” said Jane. “Fancy being inside
when they shut. You’d never get out.”
“You’ve got an arch of your own to go out by,” the Psammead put its
head out of the basket to remind her. “Don’t behave so like a girl. If
I were you I should just march right into the town and ask to see the
king.”
There was something at once simple and grand about this idea, and it
pleased everyone.
So when the work-people had passed (they _were_ work-people, the
children felt sure, because they were dressed so plainly—just one long
blue shirt thing—of blue or yellow) the four children marched boldly up
to the brazen gate between the towers. The arch above the gate was
quite a tunnel, the walls were so thick.
“Courage,” said Cyril. “Step out. It’s no use trying to sneak past. Be
bold!”
Robert answered this appeal by unexpectedly bursting into “The British
Grenadiers”, and to its quick-step they approached the gates of
Babylon.
“Some talk of Alexander,
And some of Hercules,
Of Hector and Lysander,
And such great names as these.
But of all the gallant heroes...”
This brought them to the threshold of the gate, and two men in bright
armour suddenly barred their way with crossed spears.
“Who goes there?” they said.
(I think I must have explained to you before how it was that the
children were always able to understand the language of any place they
might happen to be in, and to be themselves understood. If not, I have
no time to explain it now.)
“We come from very far,” said Cyril mechanically. “From the Empire
where the sun never sets, and we want to see your King.”
“If it’s quite convenient,” amended Anthea.
“The King (may he live for ever!),” said the gatekeeper, “is gone to
fetch home his fourteenth wife. Where on earth have you come from not
to know that?”
“The Queen then,” said Anthea hurriedly, and not taking any notice of
the question as to where they had come from.
“The Queen,” said the gatekeeper, “(may she live for ever!) gives
audience today three hours after sunrising.”
“But what are we to do till the end of the three hours?” asked Cyril.
The gatekeeper seemed neither to know nor to care. He appeared less
interested in them than they could have thought possible. But the man
who had crossed spears with him to bar the children’s way was more
human.
“Let them go in and look about them,” he said. “I’ll wager my best
sword they’ve never seen anything to come near our little—village.”
He said it in the tone people use for when they call the Atlantic Ocean
the “herring pond”.
The gatekeeper hesitated.
“They’re only children, after all,” said the other, who had children of
his own. “Let me off for a few minutes, Captain, and I’ll take them to
my place and see if my good woman can’t fit them up in something a
little less outlandish than their present rig. Then they can have a
look round without being mobbed. May I go?”
“Oh yes, if you like,” said the Captain, “but don’t be all day.”
The man led them through the dark arch into the town. And it was very
different from London. For one thing, everything in London seems to be
patched up out of odds and ends, but these houses seemed to have been
built by people who liked the same sort of things. Not that they were
all alike, for though all were squarish, they were of different sizes,
and decorated in all sorts of different ways, some with paintings in
bright colours, some with black and silver designs. There were
terraces, and gardens, and balconies, and open spaces with trees. Their
guide took them to a little house in a back street, where a kind-faced
woman sat spinning at the door of a very dark room.
“Here,” he said, “just lend these children a mantle each, so that they
can go about and see the place till the Queen’s audience begins. You
leave that wool for a bit, and show them round if you like. I must be
off now.”
The woman did as she was told, and the four children, wrapped in
fringed mantles, went with her all about the town, and oh! how I wish I
had time to tell you all that they saw. It was all so wonderfully
different from anything you have ever seen. For one thing, all the
houses were dazzlingly bright, and many of them covered with pictures.
Some had great creatures carved in stone at each side of the door. Then
the people—there were no black frock-coats and tall hats; no dingy
coats and skirts of good, useful, ugly stuffs warranted to wear.
Everyone’s clothes were bright and beautiful with blue and scarlet and
green and gold.
The market was brighter than you would think anything could be. There
were stalls for everything you could possibly want—and for a great many
things that if you wanted here and now, want would be your master.
There were pineapples and peaches in heaps—and stalls of crockery and
glass things, beautiful shapes and glorious colours, there were stalls
for necklaces, and clasps, and bracelets, and brooches, for woven
stuffs, and furs, and embroidered linen. The children had never seen
half so many beautiful things together, even at Liberty’s.
It seemed no time at all before the woman said—
“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.