Pride of Carthage (51 page)

Sapanibal listened to all this with narrowed eyes. He could do what he liked with whomever he liked, she responded, but he could no longer expect to receive her full trust. She could tell this indifference hurt him more than her anger. He recoiled as if from a red-hot poker. This she liked, for through such romantic torture she might just gain valued information. This was exactly what happened in the summer after the year of Cannae. Imago confided in Sapanibal a piece of clandestine news: something not yet public, and sensitive, for it undermined the newfound enthusiasm for Hannibal at home. And also, he saved the family from what she believed could have been a grave error of judgment.

They met as they had ever since Imago's alleged betrayal, not in the inner garden but on the couches in the exterior welcoming chamber, a dim, solemn place. The room had a stifling heaviness. The tall pillars stood like so many silent soldiers, the play of torchlight shifting over them, creating shadows that were ever in motion. Imago chafed at the formality with which they now met, but he accepted it with a resigned expression that yet seemed to say he would not put up with it indefinitely.

“I heard some troubling news this morning,” he said. “News from Rome . . . It seems that your brother sent the cavalry officer Carthalo to the city, along with representatives of the Roman prisoners from Cannae. He was to set a price for their ransom and organize the transfer. The Senate barely deigned to receive him. When they did, they rejected all payment outright. They even forbade the men's families from buying them free themselves.”

Sapanibal thought about this. She wore her hair pulled back from her face so tightly that the skin of her forehead was a smooth, taut sheet. It made her features more rigid than usual. “Clever,” she finally said. “And foolish at the same time.”

Imago nodded his agreement, although he seemed unsure just what she meant. “But no disgrace marks those soldiers except that they had a foolish leader who took them to slaughter. In Carthaginian tradition it's the generals who are nailed to a cross for failure, not their men. But Rome doesn't see it that way. So they deny themselves thousands of soldiers out of pure spite. They are a strange people. When Hadus hears of this he'll claim it proves Hannibal has not been very successful.”

“What does he know of anything?” Sapanibal snapped. “He says black is white one moment, and white is black the next. It's his doing that Mago must go to Iberia instead of returning to Hannibal. If I were to write my brother, I'd tell him to ask the Council for the opposite of what he desires; only then might they, in their spite, be tricked into acting reasonably.”

Imago absently bit a hanging flare of fingernail and ripped it free. It was a rough gesture for a normally gentle man. He seemed to notice this. He flicked the bit of nail away and covered the offending hand with the other. “Strange that you don't pile rage on the Romans as you do upon your own.”

“There's nothing I can do to affect the Roman Senate; I save my spite for targets closer to home. Is there anything else, or are we finished?”

“There's another matter, also. Perhaps more urgent . . .”

Imago inched forward until his bottom rested on the edge of the couch, his heels bouncing as if he were a boy anxious to be somewhere else. He stretched his arms out, palms upward, as if indicating that the matter in question was best transferred to a woman's hands. “It concerns your family. Your sister, to be precise . . .”

Imago hesitated, but Sapanibal said, “Proceed.”

As he did, she listened from behind her tense façade, showing no sign that the story affected her except perhaps in her eyes, which seemed to want to recede into her skull. It was hard to believe what he said, but—despite her show of indifference—she knew that he would not lie to her about things that mattered.

A short time later the two moved toward the front door. Imago stepped slowly, speaking in faster time. “Sapanibal, one day I will call you
my dear Sapanibal.
I want that very badly, and I know you are too wise for me to disguise my longing. I do wish that you were not so cold to me. I am a mature man with many choices. If I choose you, it is because I find in our conversations a depth of life I've never experienced with a woman. Don't shun me forever, Sapanibal.”

The two stopped walking at the edge of the courtyard. A servant stepped out of the wall—not actually, but with such a complete appearance of this as to make it a fact—and stood waiting to let the guest out. Sapanibal gave no indication that she had heard his speech. She only said, “Thank you for the news you've brought me. I'll act on it in a manner that aids the nation. Farewell.”

Imago said his parting words, rehearsed phrases spoken with emotion befitting a poet. Sapanibal's face did not crack. Nothing about her suggested the least concession to his ardor. And yet, as he moved away, she brushed her fingers across his upper arm. He turned as if to question this, but she had already begun to walk away, cursing herself for the gesture.

It was no easy work verifying Imago's story. State law and custom provided no excuse for an aristocratic woman to traffic with merchants and seamen. But she had no choice. She was not willing to allow Imago any further role in this. Nor could she entrust the task to a servant. And yet still it had to be done. She went hooded, with a bare-chested guard trailing behind her, a eunuch naked from the waist up and burdened by heavy muscles that hung loosely from his frame. She made her way down to the docks, through the crush of naked slaves, around beasts of burden hauling crates. Woven sacks sat on the stone, swelled to bursting with their burden of fish, the smell of them thick in the air.

Imago had given the time scheduled for the voyage to Capua. He named the vessel, and the captain who had accepted the unusual passengers. She asked several freedmen about the captain and finally found him. He was not an altogether unsavory sort; in fact, he had a councillor's confident bearing, a strong jaw, and a smile set off by several missing teeth. Sapanibal met him before a steaming warehouse. She did not disclose her identity, but she was confident her stature would speak for itself. She told him that the journey would not be going forward with the special passengers. She would double the price he had already received, so that his troubles would not go without reward. But for this she demanded one thing.

The ship itself was a modest vessel. Its wood glinted bone white, silvered by the cloudless days and salt spray. It was a sailing craft but also had slots for oars and rows of benches, well worn, the impression of the unfortunate rowers' backsides cut in the wood. The single chamber used to carry passengers sat at the rear of the deck, a small hut that seemed an afterthought, built of different wood, secured by large wooden pegs nailed through the planks into the deck. The captain had to jerk the door several times to open it. Inside was a tiny, dank chamber, full of stained wood, a pile of rope, and unrecognizable debris.

Seeing the look of revulsion on Sapanibal's face, the captain said, “She did not ask for much. Nor did I promise it. Stay as long as you like.” He grinned, gap-toothed, and said, “But not too long. I put out in the morning. So unless you wish to find a new life at sea . . .”

Sapanibal did not dignify that with an answer. She and the eunuch climbed inside the small chamber. She took a seat on the benchlike structure and he stood off to the side, stooped, for the roof was low. And that was it. She waited.

It was hot, stifling like the baths but foul-smelling instead of pleasant. It was clear that livestock had recently been transported aboard the ship. As her eyes adjusted she began to make out pictures drawn on the rough boards, the coarse work of men of many nations. There were several sexual images, simple drawings that differentiated male from female by exaggerating their sex organs, by their postures of submission or aggression. Why did men's minds always turn to such crudities when left ungoverned? Was a single one of them worth the power and faith women bestowed upon them?

She thought of her husband. Following so fast upon her observation, the recollection hit her with surprising force. It struck low in the abdomen, a longing akin to nostalgia. Hasdrubal the Handsome was so very different from Imago. His physical beauty was much more obvious than the councillor's: features bold and yet sharp, like shapes cut with quick swipes of a blade through smooth clay. His gifts: a quick and sinuous tongue, a smile that melted the unwary of both sexes, a mind for intrigue, a memory that stored minute facts like scrolls in a library. She had been a fool for him entirely. He could suck the very breath from her lungs with a wink.

At least, so it had been to begin with. Once their marriage was official he gave up all pretense of ardor. It was a business transaction concluded favorably. He was wed to the Barcas; that was all it meant to him. The words with which he had wooed her were barely off his lips before he turned from her. He rarely came to her at all, and when he did he fucked her quickly, with his face far from hers, as if he found her very smell repugnant. And yet she had seen him with other women many times, pleasuring in them in more ways than she could have imagined. These were far from being chance encounters: he made her watch him. He brought others to her chambers at night and woke her to laughter and moans and lewd incantations. At times he frolicked with men as well. He had all the qualities of a degenerate, but he managed to keep these entirely separate from his public responsibilities. He was ever within Hamilcar's favor. After Hamilcar's death, he carried out the revenge raids with great skill and then managed Iberia with a silver touch. Through all the petty tortures he inflicted upon Sapanibal, he kept a hold over her and never quite let go—had not let go even now, so many years after his death.

Imago Messano would never treat her as Hasdrubal had. Sapanibal knew it, and the knowledge pained her the more because she wanted badly to answer his declarations with her own. But she did not know whether she could stretch her emotions between two such different men. Try as she might, the girl inside her had yet to fall out of love with that dead lecher. She still carried the pain he caused her draped over her neck like a necklace made of a slave's chains. How could she ever look at Imago except with fear? He might carry the keys to unlock her and set her free; or he might simply wish to add more links to her burden.

She was still staring vacantly at the obscene pictures when she heard noise outside the door. She snapped upright, hands folded across her lap, legs crossed. The door opened roughly, lifted first and then swung back on its leather hinges. Blinding light flooded in. Sapanibal fought the urge to block the sun with her hand until a shape stepped into the portal and cut the glare. Imilce. Her son stood at her hip, peering in at his aunt in complete bewilderment.

Sapanibal rose and stared into the young mother's shocked face. She had had words in mind for this moment, but they sat like stones inside her. She held Imilce's gaze, conveying as much as she felt she needed to, and then she said, “Let us go now. There's nothing in this ship for us.”

As she brushed past Imilce she slipped an arm over Little Hammer's shoulder and placed her palm against the flat area at the bottom of his neck. She turned him with a slight pressure and led him away, bending low to prattle with him. She felt the coldness of all this: Imilce's awful silence, the way her face drained of color, the brevity of her own words, and the fraction of time it took to pull Imilce's plans out from under her. She felt something like satisfaction. And something that was very much the opposite: the bitter joy that is the pain of seeing loved ones hurt, of knowing they suffer just as much as you.

Still, some things were necessary. Some things were for the greater good. Imilce would see her husband again after the war, but not until then, on his terms and not on hers. A wife could not go to her husband during war; he could only return or not return to her. Imilce would accept this eventually.

Publius Scipio first heard the announcement of his father's and uncle's deaths in the Senate, surrounded by hundreds of eyes that turned to study him. There had been such confusion in Iberia and so much preoccupation in Rome that the news took many months to reach them. He wanted to jump from his bench and grab the messenger by the throat, call him a liar, and demand that he prove the death he had just proclaimed. But he would have disgraced his father with such a show. He had no choice but to set his jaw and listen unflinchingly. He fought to make sure his face betrayed no inkling of his emotions, and then to stand and lead the chamber in remembering the two men.

Later, alone in his father's home, he dropped to his knees in the center of the atrium and clasped his head in his hands and wept. Waxen images of his prominent ancestors hung on the walls around him. The faces were hidden behind the façades of miniature temples, each etched with inscriptions detailing their achievements: offices held, honors won. The last time he had seen his father they met in just this spot. Cornelius, for some reason, had spoken of Publius' mother, who had been dead for as many years as her son had lived. Cornelius said that that woman was still precious to him. His love for her had been undignified, far beyond the terms of their marriage contract. He had adored her like some Greek poet his muse. Should she have lived, he might well have become an absurd creature. Senators would have called him effeminate, too much a slave to a woman's love. And they would have been right. Perhaps that was why Fortune took her from him on the day she gave him a son.

“But don't look at me like that,” Cornelius had said. “You're too old to despair over such things. Your mother wanted you born, so much so that when the birth went wrong she begged the surgeon to cut her open and bring you forth. Our lives are only passing events. The things we do or fail to do are not ours to own; they belong to the honor of the family. Perhaps the gods will see fit to allow me to return to this home again. But perhaps not. This is not for me to say. So I must remind you that all I am, all I have accomplished, I pass on to you. In your turn, you must add to our glory and pass the spirit of the Scipios on to your sons. We are all links in a chain. Be as strong a link as I know you can be, and raise your sons to be even stronger.”