Pride of Carthage (52 page)

To think of this speech now troubled Publius. His father had been speaking to him as if from beyond the grave, and from now on he always would. He could not find fault with the sentiments Cornelius had spoken. Indeed, it gave him pride to remember them. They lodged at his center beside his unshakable faith in the right of Rome. And yet something about the sincerity of his father's declarations shamed him. He did not know whether he could live up to them. He did not know that he was yet worthy of the man who had been his father. He could not say for certain that his path in life had thus far proved the man's faith well founded.

Recruiting and training new troops kept him in Rome, though he had pleaded to return to the field. All day long he focused his mind on war. He marched the new soldiers—farmers and slaves, tradesmen and merchants—through the midday swelter. He pored over chronicles of earlier wars. He interviewed those who had already suffered from Hannibal's cunning stratagems, absorbing what he heard, taking it in and reworking it, digesting it, making it part of the fabric of his consciousness. He largely kept his opinions to himself as yet, but he inquired much of others and listened to any man with a mouth willing to use it. He set about studying Carthage itself. And he meditated long and hard on the man: Hannibal. No man could be unbeatable, Publius believed. No man. Not even the gods were without weaknesses. He was fond of things Greek, had been since he first bloomed into early manhood. He thought of Homer's aged tale of Achilles. Splendid, beautiful, peerless warrior that he was, even he possessed a weakness. Hannibal must, as well. He must.

Submerged so fully in martial matters, he often drilled his men well past the ninth hour without knowing it. He would find the midafternoon sun slanting into remission, shadows lengthening, men staring at him with veiled questions behind their eyes. More than once his lieutenant had to pull him aside and remind him of the time of day. Even in wartime, he was reminded, a Roman must still be a Roman. He should not forget the day's divisions: the portions of the day set aside for work, and those for leisure.

Waking from the world of his thoughts, Publius was always surprised that the normal workings of Roman life went on undisturbed. Strolling into the Forum in the early evening, head full of military violence, he would look up to find his countrymen's faces turned congenial. Though he invariably wore his toga, the people of the night dressed in bright tunics, reds and yellows and blues, garments embroidered with gold, the hooded cloaks that were the fashion that summer. Perhaps it was the freedwomen who took the most pleasure from these pageants, widows who eyed the limbs and torsos and backsides of young men and giggled like girls with their servants. The air was alive with sounds of merriment, with storytellers plying their trade, with the smells of roasted sausages and fragrant honey cakes. And after all this, the evening meal, the cena, tempted everyone to give in to food and wine and rest.

Most evenings Publius ate reclining, talking quietly with his companion, Laelius. He took joy in these moments, but it was a strange joy. Laelius was the only person he could confide his sadness to. He found it hard to understand how people could go on seeking small pleasures. Were they so forgetful? Were they deceived or overly proud? Or was there a testament to the Roman spirit in this? People had no choice but to live until they died. So it always had been. Perhaps the children of Rome, the prostitutes and lusty matrons and wine-soaked senators, knew this better than he. Perhaps there was wisdom in what seemed like folly.

Even if this were true, there were other moves afoot that Publius could not find virtue in. Terentius Varro still commanded the Senate's respect. No man in history was responsible for the death of more brave Romans than he, and yet few seemed to notice this. Publius bore him no unfair ill will, but he did fear that Rome would not learn from the man's blunders unless they recognized them as such and said so publicly.

On the other hand, aspersion after insult after curse was thrown upon the thousands who had surrendered to Hannibal at Cannae. They were seen as so disgraced that the Senate refused the ransom Hannibal demanded and forbade the men's relatives from paying the sum themselves. Better that they should languish in the enemy's hands. Publius—who had only just escaped disgrace himself—bridled at the insult to those men. Never before had so many soldiers been abandoned by the state.

Eventually, most of them trickled home. Hannibal gained nothing from them monetarily, so he released them and set them walking through a country that no longer wished to claim them. Many considered it an insane gesture, but Publius saw reason in it in terms of striking blows at the nation's heart. On the other hand, he despised the Senate's reaction. They sent the bulk of the men to Sicily, to serve Rome's cause on foreign soil, where the sight of them need not offend the eye. Surely this was madness. Publius, imagining the men's shame, knew that they would make valiant fighters yet. Who more than they had cause to prove themselves? And Publius knew that any survivor of Cannae had stared a particular horror in the face, a vision of hell unlike anything in living memory. This bound them together and made them special, even if other men's petty understandings suggested otherwise.

In the Senate, on the Ides of the new year, he rose to speak. He invoked his father's presence and asked for his blessing on what he was about to propose. And then he said out loud, “My countrymen, if ever you valued my father and called him and his brother heroes of the nation, then give me what I ask of you now. Let me go to Iberia and take up my father's command. The Scipios left their task unfinished there, and I would dearly love to see it through.”

The chamber was silent for some time. Then, gradually, various senators posed questions. A few debated the issue of Publius' youth. Still others suggested that he need not sacrifice himself out of mourning. The truth was that with several enemy armies roaming Iberia some in the Senate were whispering that they should write the place off for the time being. But this was just talk. In the end, the senators, knowing that no one else wanted the assignment, acquiesced to the young man's wishes. He would not have a great army. He would not have the full resources of the state. And the task was formidable. But if he wanted it . . .

Sapanibal never spoke a word to Imilce about her attempt to sail to Italy. She never explained how she found out about her plan, never chastised her for the foolishness of it. To Imilce, this silence became an even greater admonishment. Hers had been too absurd an idea even to merit reproach. She could not explain it herself. It had just come upon her suddenly: the knowledge that Hannibal wintered near Capua, the desire to fly to him. What might she have found, arriving unannounced in some foreign port? Would Hannibal have welcomed her? Would he even have recognized her, or she him? And what if she had been captured by the enemy?

She still believed Sapanibal a coldhearted creature, but with each passing day Imilce felt herself more and more in her sister-in-law's debt. One of the strange things about the family she had married into was that there was something about each of them that made Imilce crave their approval. This was not usual for her. Most people, she had learned long ago, are not worthy to judge others. She had found that many wore their avarice in the motion of their hands, their lust in the pout of their lips, their insecurities on their tongues, their petty minds behind the flutter of their eyelids. Not so with Barcas. Each was an island of stillness to her. Sapanibal had taken inside herself the discipline of her family name and demonstrated it in the only ways possible for a woman of their class. Even Sophonisba—for all her chatter and gossiping—contained strength unusual for her age. And Didobal awed Imilce with every motion: every word said or not said, each gesture, the placement of her gaze and the tilt of her head and the flare of her nostrils in breathing. Their encounters were tense affairs, during which the matriarch rarely uttered more than the polite minimum.

In the mild, damp weather of early spring, Imilce earned the honor of braiding the older woman's hair. She had been in training for this throughout her time in Carthage. The intricacy of Carthaginian headdresses was wholly new to her, influenced, she heard, by the ways of people far to the south. On odd days of the week, she met Didobal in her quarters, in a small chamber whose walls were hung with layer upon layer of colorful cloth. The room was always warm, heady with incense and full of threat. Oil lamps stood on stands all around the floor: tiny flames, but so many that they gave off an almost even light. Imilce once singed her gown negotiating them. Another time she knocked two over with a single misstep. Servants dashed in with wet blankets to squelch the fire. Didobal did not comment on either incident.

One morning, weeks after her aborted journey, Imilce ran her fingers from the top of the woman's head down through her tresses. Didobal's hair was thick in her fingers, dark and heavy. It did not fall limply around her, but had a wavy, tensile strength in each strand. Imilce combed the hair into strips measured by fingers. With the aid of an assistant, she began to treat them separately. Some she sprinkled with an oil fragrant with cinnamon. Into others she combed dust flecks of silver. Still others she bound in ribbons of seaweed. Today she was to fashion her mother-in-law's hair in imitation of a certain bust of Elissa, a design of tight plaits low across the back of the head, building a platform into which to set the gold headpiece that would anchor two great curving horns of hair.

As happened too often, Imilce found herself speaking to fill the nervous silence. Words issued from her mouth of their own accord: an observation about the rising level of water in the cisterns, a recollection of her dream from the previous evening, a question—which went unanswered—about the fate of Tanit's veil, that holy relic so beloved of the goddess. And then, without knowing she was about to say it, she commented on the pain of being separated from her husband for so long. It was unfair, she said, that he fought so far away that he could not return for the winter as most soldiers had throughout history.

Didobal cleared her throat. She touched her assistant with her eyes. The girl stepped back, turned, and moved away. The other servants followed suit. They retreated into the folds of fabric on the walls; their faces went blank, eyes glazed and unfocused, still as statues. All this, Didobal accomplished with a single look. Imilce feared the woman was about to dismiss her, but instead she asked, “You feel a great passion for my son?”

“Yes,” Imilce said.

“Such as few women feel for their husbands?”

“I don't know what other women feel, but I think of him always.”

“By your tone, you suggest that I know nothing of this. Do you think you are the only one who has loved her husband almost to foolishness?”

“No. No, I did not mean . . .”

“I did not know what to make of you when we first met,” Didobal said. “I did not trust you. Forgive me, but it's hard for a mother to watch his son give his affection to another woman. A mother always feels that she came first: the first womb, the first breast between their teeth, the first unreasoning love . . .”

The woman turned her head slowly, tugging the thick braids from Imilce's hands. Her eyes were large, the whites slightly yellowed, deep-veined and very dark in the iris, a brown that at the moment looked solid black. She said, “I'm sure you understand this.”

She turned back and again showed the younger woman her face in profile. “Because of this I couldn't help but receive you warily,” she continued. “I had you watched. It's shameful—but, Imilce, you have hardly done a thing while in Carthage that I did not know of minutes later. Why did I do this? Because a person proves who they are not with their mouth but through the accumulation of actions over time. Were you in my household purely for our riches? Did you care for the fate of your husband, and did you honor his people's traditions in your secret moments? Did you partake in the diversions this city offers even to women of our class? Did you simper and smile beneath the gazes of powerful men? Forgive me, but I had many anxieties.”

Throughout this discourse Imilce attempted to carry on with her work. She set pins to keep the lower plaits in place. Then she picked up an ivory comb to work on the mass of higher hair, somewhat wild now, chaotic compared to the close weave at the back of the neck. But she slowed down as Didobal spoke and, eventually, stood with the comb in hand, held out to the side, inlaid pearls pressed tight between her white fingers. What a set of questions, Imilce thought. For all the world at that moment she could not imagine the answers the woman might have received. She had been watched! All this time . . . In a strange way it made sense. It explained much of her discomfiture. All this time . . .

“Hamilcar was as hard not to love as Hannibal now is,” Didobal said. “They are of the same mold, those two. We who live near to their fire are as blessed as we are cursed. It seems also that you and I are not so different as we seem. During the Mercenary War, I couldn't bear to be separated from my husband. I did what you—with greater wisdom—did not do. I followed him into the desert when he chased the mercenaries away. I caught up with him two days after the battle at Leptis Minor. He was victorious, but never had I seen him so, caked in blood and filth, eyes reddened and skin peeling from him as if he'd been burned. I expected him to be angry, and I was afraid, but he said not a word of reproach. Instead he took me as he never had before, like a lion, growling at me. His passion was beyond words and he did not speak to me through the act at all. He did me no kindness, left me red with the stains of war.

“It was horrible, Imilce, but I thought, that night, that if this was my husband's ardor on campaign, then it was well I should be there, for who but me should receive him like that? The next day he took me by the hand and led me over the ridge and down into the valley where they had fought. He showed me the battlefield. He walked me through the high-piled mounds of bodies. Imilce, it was a sight you should never wish to see. Three days in the heat, and the bloated bodies belched gases and shivered as if life still resided in them and came to them in spasms. Some burst as if boiled too long. They sent up the foulest of scents. Scavenging birds blackened the sky, long-necked creatures that flew in from all directions, bald demons.