Semiramis

by William Fitzgerald Jenkins

 

SEMIRAMIS

By William F. Jenkins

THE king lay grouchily on his couch and watched Babylon building. He had had a huge mound of earth thrown up, on top of which was his pavilion. There, where cooling breezes blew and his eye could reach to the farthest corner of the mighty city his brain had planned, he lay and watched his workmen.

He saw gangs of slaves carrying loads of bricks, draft-animals dragging huge timbers, boats floating on the canals loaded with materials for the great edifices to be constructed. He saw the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle being driven in to feed the army of his workmen. He saw the orderly bustle of this, the greatest enterprise of the civilization of his time.

Knowing that the enterprise was his, the plan his plan, and the carrying out of that plan but a proof of the extent of his power, he felt the vastness of that power as never before—yet was unsatisfied. A woman held him in thrall. Semiramis—a tiny, red-haired girl from one of the Syrian provinces—bent his will to hers until he felt a very slave.

He was as putty in her hands. He had built her a palace requiring the revenues of a kingdom to maintain—at her demand. She did not ask, she demanded.

He had sent an army sorely needed elsewhere to conquer a certain small kingdom because she, Semiramis, had been told that the queen of that country was more beautiful than she, and wished to know. He had ordered that queen slain at the nod of the Syrian’s imperious red head.

Lying on his couch, watching the endless industry and the ever-rising dust from the multitude of laborers working on the city which was to be the Queen of all the World, the king groaned.

A courier rode madly up to the foot of the royal mound, dismounted and rushed up to the top. A message from the king’s friend and ally, the King of Arabia.

Dismissing the message until a later time, the king curiously examined the little casket of gifts which had accompanied the roll of parchment. The casket was of ebony, beautifully inlaid with gold. Opened, a little tray of precious gems was seen, and below a costly dish full of the Arabian sweetmeats of which the Babylonian king had so often heard.

The king poked them with his finger. Dates from the most carefully guarded and cultivated date trees of all Arabia were there, preserved in sugar. In those days sugar was worth far more than its weight in gold. And this was no ordinary sugar. It was colored with strange and beautiful colors, and scented with sweet scents.

The king’s mouth watered.

Instinctively, he thought of sending them to Semiramis, and then in a flash of rebellion—she had been unusually exacting of late—he determined to eat them all himself.

He carefully selected a particularly striking piece of lavender sugar, skilfully moulded into a spirited likeness of a horseman charging, and put it into his mouth. He sucked it meditatively.

For an instant he smiled, and then he howled. There was a cavity in one of his rear teeth—and there was not a dentist in the whole valley of the Euphrates! It was a large cavity, and reached deep down to a tender nerve. The king howled frankly and openly. He kicked the courier who had brought the gifts. His entourage gazed at him in alarm. Such outbursts were not rare.

But presently the king, having kicked nearly every article of furniture out of his tent and down the slope of the mound, together with two or three of the nearest courtiers, in a measure subsided. He sank down on his couch—which was too heavy to kick—and held both hands to his jaw.

It was at precisely this instant that a messenger from Semiramis arrived. He was a slave, frightened beyond even the wont of slaves entering the royal presence. The king had a reputation or having people—and slaves in particular—flayed, hanged, crucified or boiled in oil if they offended him or sought to interfere with his plans, and this slave was very sure he was near the end of his span of life. His message was that his mistress, the imp from Syria, was displeased because when the wind came from the east dust from the work of the city blew out to the tents in which her suite reposed and not only annoyed her suite but Semiramis herself. Therefore, she desired that the king order all work to cease when the wind blew from such a quarter, in order that no dust be raised to annoy her.

Having given his message, the slave cowered to the ground and waited for his doom.

For one instant, amazed at the colossal impudence of the woman who had made such a request, the king stared. Then he leaped to his feet. The slave turned and ran, but the royal toe caught him and he soared through the air. The king roared again. In some way the quick motion had irritated his tooth and he was again frantic. He roared again. The slave was beyond his reach, but the king threw the ebony casket after him, missed and shouted in a frenzy of rage, “… … …—and tell her to go to Hell!”

Two hours later, his tooth quieted, the king was engaged in wondering how on earth he would square himself with the red-haired one. Ruefully, he supposed he’d have to give in. … It was criminal, especially as the wind blew from the east at least half the time, but it would have to be done. He knew Semiramis much too well to suppose she would permit him to have her pavilion shifted to another position.

But when he went to her tent that night he found her in tears. He stared at her in amazement and she clasped his feet and begged him to forgive her and tell her once more that he loved her.