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 a 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, and then?” said Anthea, who wanted to get to the princess part of the story.
“Well, then,” said the Queen, “when he’d got everything out of us that he could, and only given the meanest presents in return, he sent to say he would esteem the honour of an alliance very highly, only unfortunately he hadn’t any daughter, but he hoped one would be born soon, and if so, she should certainly be reserved for the King of Babylon!”
“What a trick!” said Cyril.