The Story of the Amulet Read online

  Produced by Jo Churcher

  THE STORY OF THE AMULET

  by E. Nesbit

  TO Dr Wallis Budge of the British Museum as a small token of gratitude for his unfailing kindness and help in the making of it

  CONTENTS

  1. The Psammead 2. The Half Amulet 3. The Past 4. Eight Thousand Years Ago 5. The Fight in the Village 6. The Way to Babylon 7. 'The Deepest Dungeon Below the Castle Moat' 8. The Queen in London 9. Atlantis 10. The Little Black Girl and Julius Caesar 11. Before Pharaoh 12. The Sorry-Present and the Expelled Little Boy 13. The Shipwreck on the Tin Islands 14. The Heart's Desire

  CHAPTER 1. THE PSAMMEAD

  There were once four children who spent their summer holidays in a whitehouse, happily situated between a sandpit and a chalkpit. One day theyhad the good fortune to find in the sandpit a strange creature. Its eyeswere on long horns like snail's eyes, and it could move them in and outlike telescopes. It had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body wasshaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur--and it had handsand feet like a monkey's. It told the children--whose names wereCyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane--that it was a Psammead or sand-fairy.(Psammead is pronounced Sammy-ad.) It was old, old, old, and itsbirthday was almost at the very beginning of everything. And it hadbeen buried in the sand for thousands of years. But it still kept itsfairylikeness, and part of this fairylikeness was its power to givepeople whatever they wished for. You know fairies have always been ableto do this. Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane now found their wishes cometrue; but, somehow, they never could think of just the right things towish for, and their wishes sometimes turned out very oddly indeed. Inthe end their unwise wishings landed them in what Robert called 'a verytight place indeed', and the Psammead consented to help them out of itin return for their promise never never to ask it to grant them any morewishes, and never to tell anyone about it, because it did not want tobe bothered to give wishes to anyone ever any more. At the moment ofparting Jane said politely--

  'I wish we were going to see you again some day.'

  And the Psammead, touched by this friendly thought, granted the wish.The book about all this is called Five Children and It, and it ends upin a most tiresome way by saying--

  'The children DID see the Psammead again, but it was not in the sandpit;it was--but I must say no more--'

  The reason that nothing more could be said was that I had not then beenable to find out exactly when and where the children met the Psammeadagain. Of course I knew they would meet it, because it was a beast ofits word, and when it said a thing would happen, that thing happenedwithout fail. How different from the people who tell us about whatweather it is going to be on Thursday next, in London, the South Coast,and Channel!

  The summer holidays during which the Psammead had been found andthe wishes given had been wonderful holidays in the country, and thechildren had the highest hopes of just such another holiday for the nextsummer. The winter holidays were beguiled by the wonderful happeningsof The Phoenix and the Carpet, and the loss of these two treasures wouldhave left the children in despair, but for the splendid hope of theirnext holiday in the country. The world, they felt, and indeed had somereason to feel, was full of wonderful things--and they were really thesort of people that wonderful things happen to. So they looked forwardto the summer holiday; but when it came everything was different, andvery, very horrid. Father had to go out to Manchuria to telegraph newsabout the war to the tiresome paper he wrote for--the Daily Bellower,or something like that, was its name. And Mother, poor dear Mother, wasaway in Madeira, because she had been very ill. And The Lamb--I mean thebaby--was with her. And Aunt Emma, who was Mother's sister, had suddenlymarried Uncle Reginald, who was Father's brother, and they had gone toChina, which is much too far off for you to expect to be asked to spendthe holidays in, however fond your aunt and uncle may be of you. Sothe children were left in the care of old Nurse, who lived in FitzroyStreet, near the British Museum, and though she was always very kind tothem, and indeed spoiled them far more than would be good for the mostgrown-up of us, the four children felt perfectly wretched, and whenthe cab had driven off with Father and all his boxes and guns and thesheepskin, with blankets and the aluminium mess-kit inside it, thestoutest heart quailed, and the girls broke down altogether, and sobbedin each other's arms, while the boys each looked out of one of the longgloomy windows of the parlour, and tried to pretend that no boy would besuch a muff as to cry.

  I hope you notice that they were not cowardly enough to cry till theirFather had gone; they knew he had quite enough to upset him withoutthat. But when he was gone everyone felt as if it had been trying not tocry all its life, and that it must cry now, if it died for it. So theycried.

  Tea--with shrimps and watercress--cheered them a little. The watercresswas arranged in a hedge round a fat glass salt-cellar, a tasteful devicethey had never seen before. But it was not a cheerful meal.

  After tea Anthea went up to the room that had been Father's, and whenshe saw how dreadfully he wasn't there, and remembered how every minutewas taking him further and further from her, and nearer and nearer tothe guns of the Russians, she cried a little more. Then she thought ofMother, ill and alone, and perhaps at that very moment wanting a littlegirl to put eau-de-cologne on her head, and make her sudden cups of tea,and she cried more than ever. And then she remembered what Mother hadsaid, the night before she went away, about Anthea being the eldestgirl, and about trying to make the others happy, and things like that.So she stopped crying, and thought instead. And when she had thought aslong as she could bear she washed her face and combed her hair, and wentdown to the others, trying her best to look as though crying were anexercise she had never even heard of.

  She found the parlour in deepest gloom, hardly relieved at all bythe efforts of Robert, who, to make the time pass, was pulling Jane'shair--not hard, but just enough to tease.

  'Look here,' said Anthea. 'Let's have a palaver.' This word dated fromthe awful day when Cyril had carelessly wished that there were RedIndians in England--and there had been. The word brought back memoriesof last summer holidays and everyone groaned; they thought of the whitehouse with the beautiful tangled garden--late roses, asters, marigold,sweet mignonette, and feathery asparagus--of the wilderness whichsomeone had once meant to make into an orchard, but which was now,as Father said, 'five acres of thistles haunted by the ghosts of babycherry-trees'. They thought of the view across the valley, where thelime-kilns looked like Aladdin's palaces in the sunshine, and theythought of their own sandpit, with its fringe of yellowy grasses andpale-stringy-stalked wild flowers, and the little holes in the cliffthat were the little sand-martins' little front doors. And they thoughtof the free fresh air smelling of thyme and sweetbriar, and the scent ofthe wood-smoke from the cottages in the lane--and they looked round oldNurse's stuffy parlour, and Jane said--

  'Oh, how different it all is!'

  It was. Old Nurse had been in the habit of letting lodgings, till Fathergave her the children to take care of. And her rooms were furnished 'forletting'. Now it is a very odd thing that no one ever seems to furnisha room 'for letting' in a bit the same way as one would furnish it forliving in. This room had heavy dark red stuff curtains--the colour thatblood would not make a stain on--with coarse lace curtains inside. Thecarpet was yellow, and violet, with bits of grey and brown oilcloth inodd places. The fireplace had shavings and tinsel in it. There wasa very varnished mahogany chiffonier, or sideboard, with a lock thatwouldn't act. There were hard chairs--far too many of them--with crochetantimacassars slipping off their seats, all of which sloped the wrongway. The table wore a cloth of a cruel gre
en colour with a yellowchain-stitch pattern round it. Over the fireplace was a looking-glassthat made you look much uglier than you really were, however plain youmight be to begin with. Then there was a mantelboard with maroon plushand wool fringe that did not match the plush; a dreary clock like ablack marble tomb--it was silent as the grave too, for it had long sinceforgotten how to tick. And there were painted glass vases that never hadany flowers in, and a painted tambourine that no one ever played, andpainted brackets with nothing on them.

  'And maple-framed engravings of the Queen, the Houses of Parliament, the Plains of Heaven, and of a blunt-nosed woodman's flat return.'

  There were two books--last December's Bradshaw, and an odd volume ofPlumridge's Commentary on Thessalonians. There were--but I cannotdwell longer on this painful picture. It was indeed, as Jane said, verydifferent.

  'Let's have a palaver,' said Anthea again.

  'What about?' said Cyril, yawning.

  'There's nothing to have ANYTHING about,' said Robert kicking the leg ofthe table miserably.

  'I don't want to play,' said Jane, and her tone was grumpy.

  Anthea tried very hard not to be cross. She succeeded.

  'Look here,' she said, 'don't think I want to be preachy or a beast inany way, but I want to what Father calls define the situation. Do youagree?'

  'Fire ahead,' said Cyril without enthusiasm.

  'Well then. We all know the reason we're staying here is because Nursecouldn't leave her house on account of the poor learned gentleman on thetop-floor. And there was no one else Father could entrust to take careof us--and you know it's taken a lot of money, Mother's going to Madeirato be made well.'

  Jane sniffed miserably.

  'Yes, I know,' said Anthea in a hurry, 'but don't let's think about howhorrid it all is. I mean we can't go to things that cost a lot, but wemust do SOMETHING. And I know there are heaps of things you can see inLondon without paying for them, and I thought we'd go and see them. Weare all quite old now, and we haven't got The Lamb--'

  Jane sniffed harder than before.

  'I mean no one can say "No" because of him, dear pet. And I thoughtwe MUST get Nurse to see how quite old we are, and let us go out byourselves, or else we shall never have any sort of a time at all. And Ivote we see everything there is, and let's begin by asking Nurse to giveus some bits of bread and we'll go to St James's Park. There are ducksthere, I know, we can feed them. Only we must make Nurse let us go byourselves.'

  'Hurrah for liberty!' said Robert, 'but she won't.'

  'Yes she will,' said Jane unexpectedly. '_I_ thought about that thismorning, and I asked Father, and he said yes; and what's more he toldold Nurse we might, only he said we must always say where we wanted togo, and if it was right she would let us.'

  'Three cheers for thoughtful Jane,' cried Cyril, now roused at last fromhis yawning despair. 'I say, let's go now.'

  So they went, old Nurse only begging them to be careful of crossings,and to ask a policeman to assist in the more difficult cases. But theywere used to crossings, for they had lived in Camden Town and knew theKentish Town Road where the trams rush up and down like mad at all hoursof the day and night, and seem as though, if anything, they would ratherrun over you than not.

  They had promised to be home by dark, but it was July, so dark would bevery late indeed, and long past bedtime.

  They started to walk to St James's Park, and all their pockets werestuffed with bits of bread and the crusts of toast, to feed the duckswith. They started, I repeat, but they never got there.

  Between Fitzroy Street and St James's Park there are a great manystreets, and, if you go the right way you will pass a great many shopsthat you cannot possibly help stopping to look at. The children stoppedto look at several with gold-lace and beads and pictures and jewelleryand dresses, and hats, and oysters and lobsters in their windows, andtheir sorrow did not seem nearly so impossible to bear as it had done inthe best parlour at No. 300, Fitzroy Street.

  Presently, by some wonderful chance turn of Robert's (who had been votedCaptain because the girls thought it would be good for him--and indeedhe thought so himself--and of course Cyril couldn't vote against himbecause it would have looked like a mean jealousy), they came into thelittle interesting criss-crossy streets that held the most interestingshops of all--the shops where live things were sold. There was one shopwindow entirely filled with cages, and all sorts of beautiful birds inthem. The children were delighted till they remembered how they had oncewished for wings themselves, and had had them--and then they felt howdesperately unhappy anything with wings must be if it is shut up in acage and not allowed to fly.

  'It must be fairly beastly to be a bird in a cage,' said Cyril. 'Comeon!'

  They went on, and Cyril tried to think out a scheme for making hisfortune as a gold-digger at Klondyke, and then buying all the cagedbirds in the world and setting them free. Then they came to a shop thatsold cats, but the cats were in cages, and the children could not helpwishing someone would buy all the cats and put them on hearthrugs, whichare the proper places for cats. And there was the dog-shop, and that wasnot a happy thing to look at either, because all the dogs were chainedor caged, and all the dogs, big and little, looked at the four childrenwith sad wistful eyes and wagged beseeching tails as if they were tryingto say, 'Buy me! buy me! buy me! and let me go for a walk with you; oh,do buy me, and buy my poor brothers too! Do! do! do!' They almost said,'Do! do! do!' plain to the ear, as they whined; all but one big Irishterrier, and he growled when Jane patted him.

  'Grrrrr,' he seemed to say, as he looked at them from the back cornerof his eye--'YOU won't buy me. Nobody will--ever--I shall die chainedup--and I don't know that I care how soon it is, either!'

  I don't know that the children would have understood all this, only oncethey had been in a besieged castle, so they knew how hateful it is to bekept in when you want to get out.

  Of course they could not buy any of the dogs. They did, indeed, ask theprice of the very, very smallest, and it was sixty-five pounds--but thatwas because it was a Japanese toy spaniel like the Queen once had herportrait painted with, when she was only Princess of Wales. But thechildren thought, if the smallest was all that money, the biggest wouldrun into thousands--so they went on.

  And they did not stop at any more cat or dog or bird shops, but passedthem by, and at last they came to a shop that seemed as though it onlysold creatures that did not much mind where they were--such as goldfishand white mice, and sea-anemones and other aquarium beasts, andlizards and toads, and hedgehogs and tortoises, and tame rabbitsand guinea-pigs. And there they stopped for a long time, and fed theguinea-pigs with bits of bread through the cage-bars, and wonderedwhether it would be possible to keep a sandy-coloured double-lop in thebasement of the house in Fitzroy Street.

  'I don't suppose old Nurse would mind VERY much,' said Jane. 'Rabbitsare most awfully tame sometimes. I expect it would know her voice andfollow her all about.'

  'She'd tumble over it twenty times a day,' said Cyril; 'now a snake--'

  'There aren't any snakes, said Robert hastily, 'and besides, I nevercould cotton to snakes somehow--I wonder why.'

  'Worms are as bad,' said Anthea, 'and eels and slugs--I think it'sbecause we don't like things that haven't got legs.'

  'Father says snakes have got legs hidden away inside of them,' saidRobert.

  'Yes--and he says WE'VE got tails hidden away inside us--but it doesn'teither of it come to anything REALLY,' said Anthea. 'I hate things thathaven't any legs.'

  'It's worse when they have too many,' said Jane with a shudder, 'thinkof centipedes!'

  They stood there on the pavement, a cause of some inconvenience tothe passersby, and thus beguiled the time with conversation. Cyril wasleaning his elbow on the top of a hutch that had seemed empty when theyhad inspected the whole edifice of hutches one by one, and he was tryingto reawaken the interest of a hedgehog that had curled itself into aball earlier in the interview, when a small, soft voice just below hiselbow
said, quietly, plainly and quite unmistakably--not in any squeakor whine that had to be translated--but in downright common English--

  'Buy me--do--please buy me!'

  Cyril started as though he had been pinched, and jumped a yard away fromthe hutch.

  'Come back--oh, come back!' said the voice, rather louder but stillsoftly; 'stoop down and pretend to be tying up your bootlace--I see it'sundone, as usual.'

  Cyril mechanically obeyed. He knelt on one knee on the dry, hot dustypavement, peered into the darkness of the hutch and found himself faceto face with--the Psammead!

  It seemed much thinner than when he had last seen it. It was dusty anddirty, and its fur was untidy and ragged. It had hunched itself up intoa miserable lump, and its long snail's eyes were drawn in quite tight sothat they hardly showed at all.

  'Listen,' said the Psammead, in a voice that sounded as though it wouldbegin to cry in a minute, 'I don't think the creature who keeps thisshop will ask a very high price for me. I've bitten him more than once,and I've made myself look as common as I can. He's never had a glancefrom my beautiful, beautiful eyes. Tell the others I'm here--but tellthem to look at some of those low, common beasts while I'm talking toyou. The creature inside mustn't think you care much about me, or he'llput a price upon me far, far beyond your means. I remember in the dearold days last summer you never had much money. Oh--I never thought Ishould be so glad to see you--I never did.' It sniffed, and shot out itslong snail's eyes expressly to drop a tear well away from its fur. 'Tellthe others I'm here, and then I'll tell you exactly what to do aboutbuying me.' Cyril tied his bootlace into a hard knot, stood up andaddressed the others in firm tones--

  'Look here,' he said, 'I'm not kidding--and I appeal to your honour,' anappeal which in this family was never made in vain. 'Don't look at thathutch--look at the white rat. Now you are not to look at that hutchwhatever I say.'

  He stood in front of it to prevent mistakes.

  'Now get yourselves ready for a great surprise. In that hutch there'san old friend of ours--DON'T look!--Yes; it's the Psammead, the good oldPsammead! it wants us to buy it. It says you're not to look at it. Lookat the white rat and count your money! On your honour don't look!'

  The others responded nobly. They looked at the white rat till they quitestared him out of countenance, so that he went and sat up on his hindlegs in a far corner and hid his eyes with his front paws, and pretendedhe was washing his face.

  Cyril stooped again, busying himself with the other bootlace andlistened for the Psammead's further instructions.

  'Go in,' said the Psammead, 'and ask the price of lots of other things.Then say, "What do you want for that monkey that's lost its tail--themangy old thing in the third hutch from the end." Oh--don't mind MYfeelings--call me a mangy monkey--I've tried hard enough to look likeone! I don't think he'll put a high price on me--I've bitten him eleventimes since I came here the day before yesterday. If he names a biggerprice than you can afford, say you wish you had the money.'

  'But you can't give us wishes. I've promised never to have another wishfrom you,' said the bewildered Cyril.

  'Don't be a silly little idiot,' said the Sand-fairy in trembling butaffectionate tones, 'but find out how much money you've got between you,and do exactly what I tell you.'

  Cyril, pointing a stiff and unmeaning finger at the white rat, so as topretend that its charms alone employed his tongue, explained matters tothe others, while the Psammead hunched itself, and bunched itself,and did its very best to make itself look uninteresting. Then the fourchildren filed into the shop.

  'How much do you want for that white rat?' asked Cyril.

  'Eightpence,' was the answer.

  'And the guinea-pigs?'

  'Eighteenpence to five bob, according to the breed.'

  'And the lizards?'

  'Ninepence each.'

  'And toads?'

  'Fourpence. Now look here,' said the greasy owner of all this caged lifewith a sudden ferocity which made the whole party back hurriedly on tothe wainscoting of hutches with which the shop was lined. 'Lookee here.I ain't agoin' to have you a comin' in here a turnin' the whole placeouter winder, an' prizing every animile in the stock just for yourlarks, so don't think it! If you're a buyer, BE a buyer--but I neverhad a customer yet as wanted to buy mice, and lizards, and toads, andguineas all at once. So hout you goes.'

  'Oh! wait a minute,' said the wretched Cyril, feeling how foolishly yetwell-meaningly he had carried out the Psammead's instructions. 'Justtell me one thing. What do you want for the mangy old monkey in thethird hutch from the end?'

  The shopman only saw in this a new insult.

  'Mangy young monkey yourself,' said he; 'get along with your bloomingcheek. Hout you goes!'

  'Oh! don't be so cross,' said Jane, losing her head altogether, 'don'tyou see he really DOES want to know THAT!'

  'Ho! does 'e indeed,' sneered the merchant. Then he scratched his earsuspiciously, for he was a sharp business man, and he knew the ring oftruth when he heard it. His hand was bandaged, and three minutesbefore he would have been glad to sell the 'mangy old monkey' for tenshillings. Now--'Ho! 'e does, does 'e,' he said, 'then two pun ten's myprice. He's not got his fellow that monkey ain't, nor yet his match,not this side of the equator, which he comes from. And the only one everseen in London. Ought to be in the Zoo. Two pun ten, down on the nail,or hout you goes!'

  The children looked at each other--twenty-three shillings and fivepencewas all they had in the world, and it would have been merely three andfivepence, but for the sovereign which Father had given to them 'betweenthem' at parting. 'We've only twenty-three shillings and fivepence,'said Cyril, rattling the money in his pocket.

  'Twenty-three farthings and somebody's own cheek,' said the dealer, forhe did not believe that Cyril had so much money.

  There was a miserable pause. Then Anthea remembered, and said--

  'Oh! I WISH I had two pounds ten.'

  'So do I, Miss, I'm sure,' said the man with bitter politeness; 'I wishyou 'ad, I'm sure!'

  Anthea's hand was on the counter, something seemed to slide under it.She lifted it. There lay five bright half sovereigns.

  'Why, I HAVE got it after all,' she said; 'here's the money, now let'shave the Sammy,... the monkey I mean.'

  The dealer looked hard at the money, but he made haste to put it in hispocket.

  'I only hope you come by it honest,' he said, shrugging his shoulders.He scratched his ear again.

  'Well!' he said, 'I suppose I must let you have it, but it's worththribble the money, so it is--'

  He slowly led the way out to the hutch--opened the door gingerly,and made a sudden fierce grab at the Psammead, which the Psammeadacknowledged in one last long lingering bite.

  'Here, take the brute,' said the shopman, squeezing the Psammead sotight that he nearly choked it. 'It's bit me to the marrow, it have.'

  The man's eyes opened as Anthea held out her arms.

  'Don't blame me if it tears your face off its bones,' he said, and thePsammead made a leap from his dirty horny hands, and Anthea caught itin hers, which were not very clean, certainly, but at any rate were softand pink, and held it kindly and closely.

  'But you can't take it home like that,' Cyril said, 'we shall have acrowd after us,' and indeed two errand boys and a policeman had alreadycollected.

  'I can't give you nothink only a paper-bag, like what we put thetortoises in,' said the man grudgingly.

  So the whole party went into the shop, and the shopman's eyes nearlycame out of his head when, having given Anthea the largest paper-bag hecould find, he saw her hold it open, and the Psammead carefully creepinto it. 'Well!' he said, 'if that there don't beat cockfighting! Butp'raps you've met the brute afore.'

  'Yes,' said Cyril affably, 'he's an old friend of ours.'

  'If I'd a known that,' the man rejoined, 'you shouldn't a had him undertwice the money. 'Owever,' he added, as the children disappeared, 'Iain't done so bad, seeing as I only give five bob for the beast.
Butthen there's the bites to take into account!'

  The children trembling in agitation and excitement, carried home thePsammead, trembling in its paper-bag.

  When they got it home, Anthea nursed it, and stroked it, and would havecried over it, if she hadn't remembered how it hated to be wet.

  When it recovered enough to speak, it said--

  'Get me sand; silver sand from the oil and colour shop. And get meplenty.'

  They got the sand, and they put it and the Psammead in the round bathtogether, and it rubbed itself, and rolled itself, and shook itself andscraped itself, and scratched itself, and preened itself, till it feltclean and comfy, and then it scrabbled a hasty hole in the sand, andwent to sleep in it.

  The children hid the bath under the girls' bed, and had supper. OldNurse had got them a lovely supper of bread and butter and fried onions.She was full of kind and delicate thoughts.

  When Anthea woke the next morning, the Psammead was snuggling downbetween her shoulder and Jane's.

  'You have saved my life,' it said. 'I know that man would have throwncold water on me sooner or later, and then I should have died. I saw himwash out a guinea-pig's hutch yesterday morning. I'm still frightfullysleepy, I think I'll go back to sand for another nap. Wake the boys andthis dormouse of a Jane, and when you've had your breakfasts we'll havea talk.'

  'Don't YOU want any breakfast?' asked Anthea.

  'I daresay I shall pick a bit presently,' it said; 'but sand is all Icare about--it's meat and drink to me, and coals and fire and wife andchildren.' With these words it clambered down by the bedclothes andscrambled back into the bath, where they heard it scratching itself outof sight.

  'Well!' said Anthea, 'anyhow our holidays won't be dull NOW. We've foundthe Psammead again.'

  'No,' said Jane, beginning to put on her stockings. 'We shan't bedull--but it'll be only like having a pet dog now it can't give uswishes.'

  'Oh, don't be so discontented,' said Anthea. 'If it can't do anythingelse it can tell us about Megatheriums and things.'