Pride of Carthage (57 page)

As he neared the lands of the Oretani, a messenger approached him with instructions he claimed to have received from Bayala. Hasdrubal was not to enter Oretani land. Instead, he should meet his wife in Baecula, to the southeast. Hasdrubal exchanged glances with Noba. The Ethiopian sucked his cheeks and muttered that he did not favor this. He asked the messenger to explain himself. And where was Andobales? Their business was that of men. This army did not turn at the whim of any woman, even Bayala. Did the other tribes not await them?

The messenger said that everything would be explained at Baecula. It was only three days' march away. Noba still had questions and he framed them one after another, so intensely that the messenger finally looked away from him and addressed Hasdrubal simply. “Bayala calls for you, Commander,” he said. “You know Baecula is loyal to you and has been since your father's time. Bayala is there and she begs you to make haste to her. You will understand the rest when you see her.”

But at the gates of Baecula the messenger approached Hasdrubal again, stopped him, and said he had one last message to convey. “It is meant for your ears alone,” he said. Once Hasdrubal had sent the others onward and had his guards back up a few steps, the messenger said, “Andobales says you are no longer his son.”

Hasdrubal stared at him dumbly a moment. Then scowled. Then grinned and then scowled again. “How? How? Did I not marry his daughter? Does she not have my child in her? He hasn't turned to embrace this Scipio, has he? Andobales is not such a fool! Go back and tell him to be no pawn to Rome. I am his family, now and forever. We are wed by blood.”

The messenger took this barrage silently. Like all the Oretani, he wore a leather band around his forehead, into which he slipped the feathers of certain birds. Hasdrubal, in his sudden exasperation, ripped this from the man's head. This insult got no response. When Hasdrubal concluded, the man said, “Sit with this news and you will come to understand it. But—have no doubt—you are Andobales' son no more.” Without waiting for dismissal, the man mounted and galloped back along the marching army. Hasdrubal watched him for a few moments, confounded, filled now to the crown of his head with unease.

This grew worse as he walked into the city. A band of ten mounted Oretani surged past him without so much as a glance. And inside the palace reserved for the Barcas, he did not receive the usual welcome but found only a chattering confusion among the servants and city officials. He heard Noba yelling. Guards of the Sacred Band rushed past him in a clatter of armor and unsheathed weapons and black cloaks. Silenus, who had entered early to summon Bayala, met him with outstretched arms. He grasped the commander and repeated something over and over again, though Hasdrubal did not listen to him. He threw the Greek off. Moments later he had to elbow through his men, who for some reason barred him from Bayala's chambers.

A crowd of women servants sprung from their hunched grouping around the central bed and scattered. Bayala lay supine on the platform, her arms cast out to either side, her shift high on one thigh. For a moment he was mystified—why would she lie in such a position in a crowded room? The thought had not fully matured before it was silenced. He moved nearer, calling her name, even though he knew already that she could not answer. Again he knew the Greek was at his side, trying to pull him away. He could have swatted the bowlegged man to the far side of the room. But one glimpse of the gaping crescent carved in Bayala's neck stole all anger from him. He crumpled and crawled forward across the floor and clawed his way up onto the blood-drenched bed. She was still warm. She was still warm! He yelled this as if somehow it was the key to everything. Then he felt himself enveloped, first by Silenus' arms, soon after by Noba's. He knew both men were speaking to him. Did neither of them realize that she was still warm?

To say Hasdrubal mourned his wife's death puts a complex thing too simply. He beat his chest and pounded his fists against his eyes and shouted curses into the night sky. He wished he had listened to her and never trusted her father. He wished he had cut Andobales' head from his shoulders when he had the chance. He wished that he had never met her, that he had no memories of her, that he was not cursed to recall a thousand different pleasures now turned around and revealed as tortures.

His first impulse was to fall on the Oretani. Although the messenger who had led him to Baecula escaped, the Sacred Band did catch the fleeing assassins. Only three of the ten survived to become prisoners. One of these proved impervious to torture, but the other two spoke before they died. They swore that Bayala had been murdered on her father's orders. It was meant to be an irreversible declaration: Andobales severed all bonds with Carthage. He was an ally to the young Roman now. Hasdrubal hated the chieftain with blinding ferocity. It seemed he had always loathed Andobales but only now understood how completely. He was a waste of the life breathed into him. He was vermin. He was a murderer. He had killed his future and killed beauty and killed a child as yet unseen by human eyes. He had slit a most perfect neck. He had split flesh that should never have known pain. He had coldly ordered the blood drained from her body. The shock she must have felt . . . The fear in those last moments . . . Andobales deserved the worst possible of deaths and Hasdrubal ached to bring it to him.

Noba, however, convinced him that Romans were too near for him to risk engaging with Iberians. The council he had called would never come. Everyone, it seemed, was anxious to befriend this Publius. To attack when fueled by passion would surely be to blunder; it must have been what Andobales hoped for. So he could not give it to them. The two men argued long about this. At times they even came to blows, each man leaning into the other and pounding his frustrations into the other's torso, jolts that would have doubled lesser men over in pain.

In the end they moved the army to a wide plateau near Baecula, a high tilted table atop two terraced steps that rose out of the plains below. Hasdrubal watched as Publius' army approached and offered battle. The Carthaginian held fast, not venturing out to meet them. He did not budge for a week. Perhaps, vaguely, he was awaiting his brothers, hoping they would converge on the Roman force. But he did not send messengers to speed this along. The world around him and the threats it offered paled next to the storm inside. This is why he did not think twice about the troops skirmishing on the lower terrace. His forces had just met the climbing soldiers when another force emerged on the right. He sensed the peril in this, but he was slow to understand.

Noba awakened him from his stupor. He strode up from the second terrace and, without a word, slapped Hasdrubal openhanded across the cheek and temple. He was a strong man and the blow nearly knocked the general off his feet. Silenus, who had been standing just beside him, had to catch the commander by the arm to stay him from drawing his sword.

“Are you all mad?” Hasdrubal hissed, twisting from the Greek's grip. “Why do you touch me?”

“I may be mad,” Noba said, “but I slap you like a woman because that's what you're acting like. Mourn your beloved some other time. You'll find another tight rump before long, but right now we're about to be destroyed. Wake up and do something about it!”

“I could kill you for speaking to me thus.”

“You could,” Silenus said, “but do it later. I think Noba speaks harsh wisdom.”

“She meant more to me—”

Noba stepped close enough that his breath billowed off Hasdrubal's face. “I know. Tell me of her tomorrow. And then again next week. Then in the many years to come. But right now, call a retreat!”

And he did. These two men served him well. Under Noba's directions, the better part of the army fled. Elephants roared down the far side of the plateau, careening through the trees. The baggage train—wagons and laden pack animals and sledges—bumped down the slope to the relative flat. The army marched a semicontrolled retreat, the very rear brawling for every backward step. It was dangerously close to a rout, but Noba again acted quickly. He shouted orders that none considered questioning. He told the camp staff to abandon the wagons and sledges. These proved temptation enough to slow the Romans, one soldier anxious lest some other get booty meant for him.

By nightfall, Publius had pulled up. Hasdrubal pressed his troops on, putting all the distance he could between them under the light of a thin moon. He barely understood what had happened, neither why his strong position had been overturned so quickly nor what it meant to be running headlong into the night. But as motion and danger returned him to his senses, he decided one thing with certainty: He had had enough of Iberia. How many times had Iberians betrayed his people? How many times had they killed those he loved? His wife, his brother-in-law, his father . . . So many others. He cursed the land and spat on it. He could not stand the sight of it, not the feel of it brushing his toes nor the stench of it in his lungs. The next morning he sent messengers to both his brothers, begging their forgiveness, asking for their blessing. And he sent another that he hoped would eventually reach Carthage itself. He had decided; now they could only hear his will.

Hasdrubal Barca marched for Rome.

The boat pushed out from a small port north of Salapia just after sunrise on the planned day, signs having been provident and the winds northeasterly. They would sail through the morning and stop at the far spur of land pointing toward Greece. There they would rest, and the next dawn—conditions being favorable—they would shoot across the Adriatic in a single day. Considering the distances Aradna had traveled till now, this would not have been a very long journey. And it might have been her last, for it would have carried her and her modest wealth back to the territory of her birth, as she had so long wanted. Nevertheless, she was not aboard the vessel.

Instead she sat on the shore, watching the small craft plunge through the waves, rising and falling. Once it was past the breakers and onto the breathing swells, the oars lifted and flapped a moment in the air, like featherless wings. The captain moved about the deck, his silhouette gilded by the glare of the new sun. Some bit of his speech careened toward her, only to be snapped back by a current of air. The rowers laid the oars down along the deck and a single square sail unfurled and snapped taut against the wind. From then on the ship's progress was steady, the fate of the passengers aboard it no longer tied to hers.

Aradna dug her hands down into the sand and squeezed the coarse grains between her fingers. She had pulled her hair back from her face and fastened it with a strip of leather. Because she hated the things men and women saw when they looked at her she rarely exposed her face for the world to view. She had never thought of beauty as anything but a misfortune, but there was no one to see her at that moment and she needed to feel the movement of the air on her features. Her eyes shone with their accursed, startling blue; her wretched full lips tilted downward at their pouting edges. Tiny curls of dried skin clung to the curve of her nose, but these only served to verify that her face was that of an earthly being made of the same materials as all others.

Touching her hips at either side and just behind her lay all the possessions she had in the world. One sack held the coins she had traded her stores of booty for. Another contained the simple provisions of life: food and knives, herbs and bedding and pieces of fabric and needles. The third had not been hers until a few days ago but had been bequeathed to her. A little distance away lay a dead crab Aradna had not seen when she chose this spot. Its body was longer than it was wide, with two enormous claws that the indignity of death had flung out to either side. She tried not to look at the crustacean or think of it as a comment on the decision she had made in the dead hours of the previous night.

It had not been easy. It had not happened as she had wanted. If anything, she would have welcomed the certainty she needed to be aboard that vessel. Atneh had nearly succeeded in instilling this in her. When she had sought excuses for not leaving, the old woman shot them down like an archer pinning pigeons to the sky. “What fear of the sea?” she had asked. “As far as I can tell, you fear nothing. A little water beneath you? What is that compared with the trials life has already shown you? If the gods had wanted you dead, they would've taken you already.” When she would not come to terms with the merchants who would translate her motley finds into coin, Atneh smacked her on the back of the head and named reasonable terms for her. When she complained that none of the vessels she had seen looked seaworthy, the old woman found one that was. And when she suggested one last scavenging mission, the woman shook her head at the foolishness of it.

“Casilinum?” Atneh had asked. “Forget it. What's one more city? You have enough already. Don't let me see you become a fool. I see what this is about, and it's nothing to do with a few more coins. You know, don't you, that the gods sometimes play us as toys? Think about that. Imagine yourself with a string pinned to your heart. If you feel that string tug you in one direction or another, know it for what it is—the whim of the foolish ones. It can do you no good. Remember my words. Anyway, I'm an old woman. You mustn't leave me to make this journey myself.”

So Aradna had taken Atneh's certainty inside herself and set her sights across the sea. But just when she thought her path lay before her as clear as ever it had . . . just as she lifted her foot to step upon it with prayers that it was the right one and would lead her to the happiness she sought and the future Atneh assured her was awaiting them both . . . at just that moment the old woman fell ill. She could not name what had laid her on her back but she said she could feel it eating at her from the inside. It was a pain in her two breasts that radiated into her whole chest and interlocked its fingers in the gaps between her ribs. She found it difficult to breathe and within a few days she could only manage shallow inhalations. By the end of a moon's cycle she had developed a cough that tortured her. It came as regular as breathing, one painful shock after another.