Hannibal's Children (14 page)

"Are these ships solitary?" Marcus wanted to know.

"Sometimes. But, more often, there'll be five or six ships together. That's enough to raid a good-sized village. Sometimes they'll get together in big fleets with scores of vessels, and terrorize a whole province for months, until a real navy comes along to break them up."

"That," Marcus said, "is a messy and disorganized situation. It should not be tolerated by a nation that calls itself a sea power."

Has nodded sagely. "So it is. You must be sure to tell the Shofet that personally, when you see him."

When they came in sight of Carthage, they did not notice it at first, because they took it to be a part of the landscape. It did not occur to them that anything so immense could be the work of human hands.

The ship rounded a low headland and sailed into a broad expanse of water, which Ilas informed them was the Gulf of Carthage. They looked along the curving shore to its western extremity, which featured a set of oddly regular white cliffs. The vessel cut across the bay, the rowers working tirelessly, until the cliffs loomed large ahead of them and they saw the symmetrical, rectangular cuts, the tops of high buildings far behind them.

Someone gasped. "Those are walls!"

"I was wondering when you'd notice," Has said. "Don't feel alone. Only people who've seen Alexandria or Antioch can believe their eyes the first time they set them on Carthage."

Marcus found that his mouth had gone dry. "How high are they?"

"More than two hundred cubits. They're not just walls, they're a whole fortress system. The garrison, armories, beasts and all are housed inside those walls. They're so broad on top that the young bloods of the city race their chariots there, four abreast."

It seemed hard to believe, but there stood the walls and none of the Romans felt inclined to accuse the skipper of exaggeration.

The ship sped for the walls as if it intended to ram them. Its heading took them toward the southern end of the walls, where a dark arch awaited. As they neared, they could see that it was a tunnel. The stone surrounding the tunnel entrance was ornately carved, depicting leaves and vines and flowers with strange, stylized beasts and birds among the foliage. The arch was surmounted by the image of a deity. The upper body was that of a woman, but from the waist down her body was that of a fish, terminating in a broad, upraised tail. In one hand she held a cornucopia, in the other a sword.

"Is, ah, is the tunnel wide enough to admit this ship safely?" Flaccus asked.

"See for yourself," said Has, pointing. Two Carthaginian ships, three-bankers far larger than their vessel, were emerging from the tunnel, side by side. There was room for another ship or two to either side of them. The sheer size of the wall had deceived their sense of scale.

They passed beneath the fish-goddess into the dark tunnel, craning their necks to see overhead. Just within the entrance there was a slot in the ceiling, from which protruded a line of pointed bars.

"Some sort of dropping-gate up there," Norbanus said. "They want to be able to close this tunnel off if the city is attacked."

"Who is it they're worried about?" Flaccus wondered.

They came out into daylight again, this time into a perfectly circular harbor, larger than most lakes they had seen, its periphery consisting entirely of naval docks like the one they had seen in Tarentum. They tried to count the openings but were quickly lost. There was an artificial island in the center of the harbor, likewise perfectly circular. Upon it stood a huge building, its architecture a combination of Greek and elements totally unfamiliar to them. All around it grew stately poplars and cedars, and there were a number of ships moored to its wharfs, including an ornate naval cutter.

"Is this a temple to one of the gods of Carthage?" Marcus asked.

"That's the house of the harbormaster," Has told them.

"Somebody lives in that?" Flaccus said.

"It's far from the greatest mansion in Carthage," Has said. "But this is a very important man, a member of the royal family."

"I could get used to living like that," Norbanus said. Marcus shot him a look. His tone had not been sarcastic.

"You might not like some of the consequences of the job. He's in charge of the naval fleets of Carthage. You see that scaffold?" He pointed to a high platform towering before the great house. A gaunt wooden framework jutted from its top, like an unfinished house. "If there is a naval defeat or disaster, that's where he's crucified, along with the admirals."

"That's what I call incentive," Flaccus said.

Marcus turned to the others and spoke in Latin. "I want a count of those docks before we leave this city. I want a look inside them, too."

Zarabel was carried up the steps of the great temple of Tanit in a golden litter carried by sixteen eunuchs of matched size and color. The high priest, also a eunuch, stood at the top of the stair to greet her. His head was shaven, his pudgy body wrapped from armpits to ankles in a gown of the finest Egyptian gauze. He clasped his hands before his breast and bowed deeply as her litter was set down upon the broad porch of polished purple marble. Slave girls drew aside the curtain of golden chain links and the princess stepped from her conveyance. Her tiny feet were bare, their soles stained with henna, golden rings encircling each, the rings connected by fine golden chains to bands of the same metal encircling her ankles. She wore leggings made of seed pearls strung into a wide-meshed net that hugged her legs and complemented the whiteness of her flesh. The gown she wore was black, its weave so sheer that it looked like smoke.

"Welcome, Moon of Tanit, daughter of Hasdrubal," the priest fluted. "Welcome to your house, the house of the goddess."

The woman placed her palms together, fingertips touching her chin, and bowed. "Holy Echaz, guardian of the veil, I greet you in the name of the goddess."

This ritual accomplished, she straightened and surveyed the scene from the great porch of the temple. The city of Carthage stretched an incredible distance in all directions. Upon its highest point frowned the Byrsa, the great citadel that contained the Shofet's palace, now more than double the size it had been in the great Hannibal's day. Atop its walls stood the great observatory founded by her grandfather, Hannibal II. Its huge instruments of bronze and crystal gleamed above the parapets like the crown of a god.

Throughout the city, smoke ascended from countless sacrificial fires. The gods had granted Carthage preeminence in the west, but the gods were frighteningly mutable, and their favor had to be bought with constant sacrifice. Fruit and grain, wine and oil and incense, the blood of countless animals went onto their altar fires. The greatest gods demanded human sacrifice. In ordinary times, these human immolations were supplied by the subject peoples, levied like a tax at so many men, women or children per thousand of population.

In the truly terrible times, when famine, pestilence or war threatened the very existence of the Carthage and her empire, the children of citizens went into the fires that burned in the belly of Baal-Hammon, the god sometimes called Moloch. Even the highest nobles were not spared, and demonstrated their devotion to the gods by casting their infants and young children into the fires with their own hands. The gods of Carthage had always been satisfied with these holocausts, and had withdrawn their wrath when their hunger was appeased, and had blessed the city and its empire with matchless power and magnificence.

In every district of the city she could see the colossal images of the gods towering above the rooftops of the houses. Each district and suburb had its own god and these bronze colossi were mounted on huge carriages, so that they could be towed through the streets to meet with one another at the great festivals. They were beautiful or grotesque, animal-headed, horned, fanged, majestic, bestial. They reflected every power for good or evil in the cosmos.

She was a young woman, pale-skinned and black-haired like all the royal family of Carthage. They were the descendants of Hannibal and since his day had married only within the extended Barca family. Her hair was tightly curled and tumbled over her shoulders like black foam. Hazel eyes outlined in kohl dominated her triangular face. Beneath each eye were tattooed three lines of descending dots, the ceremonial tears shed for Adonais. Her mouth was wide, the lips stained deep purple.

She was the high priestess of Tanit, only goddess of the trinity whose other members were Eshmun and Moloch. She ruled this temple and its eunuch priesthood. She was the only surviving sister of the Shofet, Hamilcar II, and between the royal siblings lay a violent hatred.

"Has the incense been delivered?" she asked.

"It has been arriving since midnight, my lady. Do you wish to inspect?"

"Of course."

They passed within the temple, its interior laid out in the Greek style, with a long nave illuminated by a clerestory. Its walls were painted with scenes from the tale of Adonais, who was once the Phrygian Attis, but who over the centuries had entered the cult of Tanit. The paintings depicted his birth from a tree, his youthful infatuation with the chaste goddess, his despairing self-castration and, finally, his death and dismemberment at the tusks of the great boar.

There was no image of the goddess, not even the usual abstract symbols of her ancient cult. Instead, this temple held in its sanctuary the holiest object of Punic religion: the veil of Tanit. Only the eunuch priests could look upon it.

Even Zarabel had never seen the veil.

A flight of steps descended to the uppermost of the temple's cellars. Zarabel inhaled rapturously, for this was the storeroom of the aromatics used in the ceremonies and sacrifices of the goddess: myrrh, nard, cardamom, calamus, attar of roses and a hundred other barks, gums, resins, essences and perfumes. Overwhelming all was the scent of the noblest of them, frankincense.

It was this precious substance that an endless chain of slaves carried in hundredweight bags, casting them upon a growing pile while a priest seated at a small desk marked each bag on his tally sheet. The slaves emerged from a tunnel that connected the temple to its dock beside the commercial waterfront. The temple maintained its own fleet of vessels to transport tribute from all the lands of the Empire, as well as to bring in the necessary materials for the service of Tanit.

Of these exotic substances, none was more precious than frankincense. The shrubs that were its source grew in only a few restricted areas of Ethiopia and Arabia Felix, their location closely guarded for centuries by fierce tribes. Every temple of every god in the world demanded frankincense and the greater the god, the more was needed.

"The amount seems extravagant," Echaz commented.

"The Greek Herodotus wrote that at the great feast of Bel in Babylon, one thousand talents of frankincense were burned at his altar. Does Tanit deserve less?" Zarabel took a short curved dagger from her sash and slit open one of the bags. Thrusting a fine-boned hand within, she withdrew a handful of the crystals. The yellow crystals sifted between her fingers, falling in golden strands as she raised the substance to her nostrils. Eyes, nose and fingers told her that it was the finest quality, as ordered. Any man who tried to sell her less held his life cheap.

"Where is the white Ethiopian incense?" she demanded.

"Over there, Princess," piped the accountant. He pointed his stylus toward a neat stack of small wooden chests. The Ethiopian merchants, conscious of the higher value of their product, shipped it only in chests made of the finest cedar from Lebanon. The chests themselves were more valuable than most cargoes. She ordered one opened and a slave brought an iron pry bar. Very carefully, so as not to damage the valuable wood, he loosened the boards of one, raising the bronze nails until he could pull them free with his powerful fingers.

Zarabel raised the lid and lifted out some of the translucent white crystals. These would burn more fragrantly, leaving less ash residue, than the yellow sort. They would be cast upon the fires at the opening of the ceremony, and at the most crucial moments of the rites, and at the final invocation.

Following the last porter in the slave-chain came a man dressed in a blue tunic, traditional garb of the Carthaginian merchant marine. He wore boots with pointed upturned toes and there was a long curved dagger thrust beneath his sash. When he saw the princess he swept the high-crowned cap from his head and bowed deeply.

"Light of Tanit, I rejoice in your presence. I live for your service. I kiss your shadow."

"Captain Mahabal," she said, inclining her head slightly. "I see that your voyage was successful."

"Six months ago I sailed from Carthage with six ships and a cargo of goods. I returned with six ships laden with frankincense. It was a successful voyage."

"Well done," she acknowledged.

He bowed even more deeply. "My lady does me too much honor." He straightened. "I heard a strange rumor as I was overseeing the unloading, my princess."

"What sort of rumor?" she asked. It was not idle conversation. All her servants had instructions to keep her informed concerning events in the empire. She received no intelligence from her brother.

"A warship arrived today from the base at Tarentum. On board were some very strange foreigners. They claim to be a delegation of Romans, come to present their credentials to the Shofet!"

"Romans?" she murmured, releasing the handful of white incense. "How curious."

"Curious?" said Echaz. "I would have said impossible! The Romans are an extinct people."

"They seem to think they are not," Zarabel said. Without another word she strode back to the stairway. When she climbed back into her litter she told the lead bearer, "Take me to the Shofet's palace."

Hamilcar II, Shofet of Carthage, was a tall, wiry man with hair and beard dressed in the Greek fashion. Though he was of the purest Carthaginian blood, like so many kings of the Middle Sea he affected Greek fashions in everything from dress to coinage. For centuries Carthage had struggled with the Greeks for commercial and political domination over the western sea, but in so doing she fell under the Hellenizing influence of her traditional enemy. The priesthood and traditionalists fumed that the Baalim were coming to resemble the Olympians, that the young men were exercising naked in the palaestra, that the poems of Homer were more popular than the ancient tales of the Punic gods and heroes and monster-slayers. All to no avail. Like other peoples of the Middle Sea, the Carthaginians were growing besotted with the vital, invigorating culture of Greece.