The Magic City by E. Nesbit (free e reader .txt) π
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- Author: E. Nesbit
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'I called,' said Philip in a voice that trembled a little. 'There's no one but you who can help. The barbarians of Gaul hold this city. I call on great Caesar to drive them away. No one else can help us.'
Caesar stood for a moment silent in the grey twilight. Then he spoke.
'I will do it,' he said; 'you have often tried to master Caesar and always failed. Now you shall be no more ashamed of that failure, for you shall see Caesar's power. Bid your slaves raise the leaves of my book to the number of fifteen.'[316]
It was done, and Caesar turned towards the enormous open book.
'Come forth!' he said. 'Come forth, my legions!'
Then something in the book moved suddenly, and out of it, as out of an open marble tomb, came long lines of silent armed men, ranged themselves in ranks, and, passing Caesar, saluted. And still more came, and more and more, each with the round shield and the shining helmet and the javelins and the terrible short sword. And on their backs were the packages they used to carry with them into war.
'The Barbarians of Gaul are loose in this city,' said the voice of the great commander; 'drive them before you once more as you drove them of old.'
'Whither, O Caesar?' asked one of the Roman generals.
'Drive them, O Titus Labienus,' said Caesar, 'back into that book wherein I set them more than nineteen hundred years ago, and from which they have dared to escape. Who is their leader?' he asked of Philip.
'The Pretenderette,' said Philip; 'a woman in a motor veil.'
'Caesar does not war with women,' said the man in the laurel crown; 'let her be taken prisoner and brought before me.'[317]
Low-voiced, the generals of Caesar's army gave their commands, and with incredible quietness the army moved away, spreading itself out in all directions.
'She has caged the Hippogriff,' said Philip; 'the winged horse, and we want to send him with a message.'
'See that the beast is freed,' said Caesar, and turned to Plumbeus the captain. 'We be soldiers together,' he said. 'Lead me to the main gate. It is there that the fight will be fiercest.' He laid a hand on the captain's shoulder, and at the head of the last legion, Caesar and the captain of the soldiers marched to the main gate.[318]
CHAPTER XII THE ENDPhilip tore back to the prison, to be met at the door by Lucy.
'I hate you,' she said briefly, and Philip understood.
'I couldn't help it,' he said; 'I did want to do something by myself.'
And Lucy understood.
'And besides,' he said, 'I was coming back for you. Don't be snarky about it, Lu. I've called up Caesar himself. And you shall see him before he goes back into the book. Come on; if we're sharp we can hide in the ruins of the Justice Hall and see everything. I noticed there was a bit of the gallery left standing. Come on. I want you to think what message to send by the Hippogriff to Mr. Noah.'
'Oh, you needn't trouble about that,' said Lucy in an off-hand manner. 'I sent the parrot off ages ago.'[319]
'And you never told me! Then I think that's quits; don't you?'
Lucy had a short struggle with herself (you know those unpleasant and difficult struggles, I am sure!) and said:
'Right-o!'
And together they ran back to the Justice Hall.
The light was growing every moment, and there was now a sound of movement in the city. Women came down to the public fountains to draw water, and boys swept the paths and doorsteps. That sort of work goes on even when barbarians are surrounding a town. And the ordinary sounds of a town's awakening came to Lucy and Philip as they waited; crowing cocks and barking dogs and cats mewing faintly for the morning milk. But it was not for those sounds that Lucy and Philip were waiting.
So through those homely and familiar sounds they listened, listened, listened; and very gradually, so that they could neither of them have said at any moment 'Now it has begun,' yet quite beyond mistake the sound for which they listened was presently loud in their ears. And it was the sound of steel on steel; the sound of men shouting in the breathless moment between sword-stroke and sword-stroke; the cry of victory and the wail of defeat.[320]
And, presently, the sound of feet that ran.
And now a man shot out from a side street and ran across the square towards the Palace of Justice where Lucy and Philip were hidden in the gallery. And now another and another all running hard and making for the ruined hall as hunted creatures make for cover. Rough, big, blond, their long hair flying behind them, and their tunics of beast-skins flapping as they ran, the barbarians fled before the legions of Caesar. The great marble-covered book that looked like a marble tomb was still open, its cover and fifteen leaves propped up against the tall broken columns of the gateway of the Justice Hall. Into that open book leapt the first barbarian, leapt and vanished, and the next after him and the next, and then, by twos and threes and sixes and sevens, they leapt in and disappeared, amid gasping and shouting and the nearing sound of the bucina and of the trumpets of Rome.
Then from all quarters of the city the Roman soldiers came trooping, and as the last of the barbarians plunged headlong into the open book, the Romans formed into ordered lines and waited, while a man might count ten. Then, advancing between their ranks, came the spare form and thin face of the man with the laurel crown.[321]
[323]
Twelve thousand swords flashed in air and wavered a little like reeds in the breeze, then steadied themselves, and the shout went up from twelve thousand throats:
'Ave Caesar!'
And without haste and without delay the Romans filed through the ruins to the marble-covered book, and two by two entered it and disappeared. Each as he passed the mighty conqueror saluted him with proud mute reverence.
When the last soldier was hidden in the book, Caesar looked round him, a little wistfully.
'I must speak to him; I must,' Lucy cried; 'I must. Oh, what a darling he is!'
She ran down the steps from the gallery and straight to Caesar. He smiled when she reached him, and gently pinched her ear. Fancy going through the rest of your life hearing all the voices of the world through an ear that has been pinched by Caesar!
'Oh, thank you! thank you!' said Philip; 'how splendid you are. I'll swot up my Latin like anything next term, so as to read about you.'
'Are they all in?' Lucy asked. 'I do hope nobody was hurt.'
Caesar smiled.[324]
'A most unreasonable wish, my child, after a great battle!' he said. 'But for once the unreasonable is the inevitable. Nobody was hurt. You see it was necessary to get every man back into the book just as he left it, or what would the schoolmasters have done? There remain now only my own guard who have in charge the false woman who let loose the barbarians. And here they come.'
Surrounded by a guard with drawn swords the Pretenderette advanced slowly.
'Hail, woman!' said Caesar.
'Hail, whoever you are!' said the Pretenderette very sulkily.
'I hail,' said Caesar, 'your courage.'
Philip and Lucy looked at each other. Yes, the Pretenderette had courage: they had not thought of that before. All the attempts she had made against themβshe alone in a strange landβyes, these needed courage.
'And I demand to know how you came here?'
'When I found he'd been at his building again,' she said, pointing a contemptuous thumb at Philip, 'I was just going to pull it down, and I knocked down a brick or two with my sleeve, and not thinking what I was doing I built them up again; and then I got a bit giddy and the whole thing seemed to begin to growβcandle[325]sticks and bricks and dominoes and everything, bigger and bigger and bigger, and I looked in. It was as big as a church by this time, and I saw that boy losing his way among the candlestick pillars, and I followed him and I listened. And I thought I could be as good a Deliverer as anybody else. And the motor veil that I was going to catch the 2.37 train in was a fine disguise.'
'You tried to injure the children,' Caesar reminded her.
'I don't want to say anything to make you let me off,' said the Pretenderette, 'but at the beginning I didn't think any of it was real. I thought it was a dream. You can let your evil passions go in a dream and it don't hurt any one.'
'It hurts you,' Caesar said.
'Oh! that's no odds,' said the Pretenderette scornfully.
'You sought to injure and confound the children at every turn,' said Caesar, 'even when you found that things were real.'
'I saw there was a chance of being Queen,' said the Pretenderette, 'and I took it. Seems to me you've no occasion to talk if you're Julius Caesar, the same as the bust in the library. You took what you could get right enough in your time, when all's said and done.'[326]
'I hail,' said Caesar again, 'your courage.'
'You needn't trouble,' she said, tossing her head; 'my game's up now, and I'll speak my mind if I die for it. You don't understand. You've never been a servant, to see other people get all the fat and you all the bones. What you think it's like to know if you'd just been born in a gentleman's mansion instead of in a model workman's dwelling you'd have been brought up as a young lady and had the openwork silk stockings and the lace on your under-petticoats.'
'You go too deep for me,' said Caesar, with the ghost of a smile. 'I now pronounce your sentence. But life has pronounced on you a sentence worse than any I can give you. Nobody loves you.'
'Oh, you old silly,' said the Pretenderette in a burst of angry tears, 'don't you see that's just why everything's happened?'
'You are condemned,' said Caesar calmly, 'to make yourself beloved. You will be taken to Briskford, where you will teach the Great Sloth to like his work and keep him awake for eight play-hours a day. In the intervals of your toil you must try to get fond of some one. The Halma people are kind and gentle. You will not find them hard to love. And when the Great Sloth loves his work and the Halma[327] people are so fond of you that they feel they cannot bear to lose you, your penance will be over and you can go where you will.'
'You know well enough,' said the Pretenderette, still tearful and furious, 'that if that ever happened I shouldn't want to go anywhere else.'
'Yes,' said Caesar slowly, 'I know.'
Lucy would have liked to kiss the Pretenderette and say she was sorry, but you can't do that when it is all other people's fault and they aren't sorry. And besides, before all these people, it would have looked like showing off. You know, I am sure, exactly how Lucy felt.
The Pretenderette was led away. And now Caesar stood facing the children, his hands held out in farewell. The growing light of early morning transfigured his face, and to Philip it suddenly seemed to be most remarkably like the face of That Man, Mr. Peter Graham, whom Helen had married. He was just telling himself not to be a duffer when Lucy cried out in a loud cracked-sounding voice, 'Daddy, oh, Daddy!' and sprang forward.
And at that moment the sun rose above the city wall, and its rays gleamed redly on the helmet and the breastplate and the shield and the sword of Caesar. The light struck at the children's eyes like a blow. Dazzled, they[328] closed their eyes and when they opened them, blinking and confused, Caesar was gone and the marble book was closedβfor ever.
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