CHAPTER XIII
MOTHER AND SON
Not the least sumptuous range of halls and chambers in the queen's palace had been devoted, from his boyhood, to the accommodation of her son. Here, surrounded by his own servants, he had lived ever since he could walk alone in princely state and magnificence, imitating, though on a less extended scale, the splendour of the Great King's court, and exacting from his attendants those ceremonious observances which somewhat chafed his father's spirit, causing the fiery old warrior to break out in words and gestures savouring rather of the swordsman's impatience than the monarch's dignity. Here too he had been trained under the queen's own eye in manly exercises befitting his rank, practising mimic warfare on the wide terraces of the royal dwelling, and even hunting the lion in dangerous earnest through its spacious paradise, a wilderness in the heart of the swarming city.
It had been the policy of Semiramis, as it was her pleasure, to keep the future monarch under her own eye and within her immediate influence, teaching him to depend on her alone for all his occupations and amusements, thus obtaining an ascendancy over his young mind, which daily custom rendered so easy and natural, that he never attempted to shake it off.
Arrogant at the feast, valorous in the fray, reckless and unscrupulous in the gratification of every passing desire, every whim of the moment, he was yet in his mother's presence the same loving wayward child, who, though wilful and petulant, had ever looked to her alone for succour and encouragement, had run to her knee with a bruised skin or a tear-stained face, and would have begged of her, with equal confidence, a bunch of grapes and a string of pearls worth a king's ransom.
It was not strange then, that, waking from his heavy slumbers after the banquet, with a vague impression of some unfulfilled desire burning at his heart, his first wish was for his mother's presence, even before he remembered the purpose for which he wanted her assistance and advice.
Semiramis, on this the morning after his return from a campaign in which her boy had won no slight reputation as a warrior, passing into his chamber according to custom, found him, as she had often found him before, tossing, heated, and restless on his couch, pushing his short dishevelled locks off his brow, while he turned on her a glance, half mirthful, half imploring, from eyes deep liquid and beautiful as her own.
The queen's head was tired, her dress arranged with the utmost skill and care, while in her gait and bearing there was a dignity of repose no less graceful than becoming; but if her dark locks had been unbound, her robes shaken into disorder, and her fair face heated with the flush of mirth, pleasure, or excitement, surely never had been seen so wondrous a resemblance as existed between that unquiet youth on the couch and the beautiful woman who bent over him to lay her hand against his hot forehead with a gesture of endearment and caress.
"What ails my boy?" asked Semiramis, looking fondly down on her graceless offspring. "Was the triumph yesterday so long and wearisome? the wine of Eshcol last night so rough and new? Or has he left his heart among the daughters of Egypt, in exchange for the fame and high repute of valour he has brought with him from the Nile?"