Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

  She was pondering these things one afternoon when Sophonisba called on her. Imilce reclined on the sofa at the edge of her chamber, looking out over the gardens. As usual she had nothing to occupy her, no responsibilities. Hamilcar was engaged in some activity that did not require her supervision. Sophonisba came in behind the maid who escorted her. She did not wait as the servant announced her with the usual formality of Carthaginian households, but pushed past the woman and plopped down on the sofa beside her sister-in-law. The maid tried a moment to continue the introduction, but then gave up. She withdrew, annoyance flashing on her face. Seeing this Imilce nearly chastised her on the spot. No servant should ever comment upon the actions of her masters. But Sophonisba was too eager to talk.

  “If you are good to me,” she said, “I will tell you a secret. You must promise to keep it, though. If you betray me, I'll never forgive you. You'll have an undying enemy for the rest of your life. Do you promise?”

  Imilce looked at her with more seriousness than she intended. The proposition struck her with an unreasonable amount of fear. She could not survive in this place with Sophonisba as an enemy. The introduction of secrets brought with it both camaraderie and the awareness that somebody else was being excluded. Her heart beat a little faster, even though she knew it was silly to find anything ominous in this. The young woman's face was all mirth and welcome. Her threat was nothing but banter between two friends.

  Imilce said, “Of course. Tell me.”

  “I spent the night in the wilds with Masinissa,” the young woman said. She paused for dramatic effect, her lips pursed, eyes mischievous and painfully beautiful. She explained that she and her fiancé had stolen away from the city the previous evening, with her sitting before the prince on the bare back of his stallion. They rode out through a side gate, cut through the peasants' town, out past the fields, and on into the rolling orchards. The sky was clear from horizon to horizon. It was a screen of the darkest blue, alive with numberless stars. The land itself seemed endless, thrown out in ripples stretching deep into the heart of the continent. They sometimes passed campfires of field workers, or saw the signal fires of soldiers, but mostly the night was theirs alone.

  Imilce chided her for the rash danger—not to mention the damage she might have done to her reputation and to the very union. They had only just become engaged, after all, and it was meant to be some time before they were wed. But Sophonisba laughed at both these points. As for the danger, when she said she rode alone with Masinissa, she meant “alone” in princely terms. A guard of fifty horsemen shadowed them.

  As for reputation, nothing mattered to her mother more than the power of her familial connections; and nothing mattered to Gaia, Masinissa's father, more than the security of his kingdom. Everyone wanted them wed. So, she was sure, anything could be overlooked. And, anyway, there were stories that Didobal herself had been as mischievous as a jackal in her youth. She had a few secrets to pressure her with, things she had not even divulged to Imilce, sister though she was.

  “Should I tell you what happened then?” Sophonisba asked. “Or need I find a different confidante?”

  Imilce shut her lips in a tight line, keeping up the look of reproach for as long as she could. But her façade masked very different feelings. She was always amazed at how Sophonisba occupied and acted in the world. It was not just that she flouted tradition and decorum on occasion; it was the casual confidence with which she accomplished this. Imilce, staring at her, wished for a portion of this young woman's strength; with it perhaps she, too, would find a way to act boldly to answer the things that troubled her.

  Eventually Sophonisba overcame the unanswered question and proceeded. Though he rode fast to impress her, and seemed to dash from feature to feature on the landscape at whim, he did have a destination in mind. They stopped at a strange structure set at the top of a gentle crest, with views of the country to either side. They dismounted and walked past a crumbling wall that squared a courtyard, no larger than a pen for a few horses. A tower rose from one corner, although it too was damaged at what must have been its midpoint. Blocks littered the ground.

  “This is Balatur's watchtower,” Masinissa had said. “Many times I've come here and thought about my future, about the world I will shape and the woman who will stand beside me as I do.”

  Sophonisba could tell she was supposed to be impressed, curious. So she showed neither sentiment. “Where is this Balatur?” she asked. “He should be chided for the state of this place.”

  Masinissa said that Balatur no longer was. He had died many years ago. The tale went that he had been an officer of much repute. While on a campaign against a tribe to the south, he had met a princess of the dark people there. He fell in love with her so completely that his life as a mercenary for Carthage seemed of little value anymore. He believed that she loved him as well, and yet he would not desert the army. He returned to Carthage after the campaign, but he never forgot her. He thought of her always, day and night, and with such hunger that he felt a portion of flesh had been ripped from him. He came to believe that she had bewitched him and that his failure to forget her meant she wanted him just as much. Eventually, he had himself assigned to this watchtower. He sent word to her that if she would come and meet him here, they could be together. If she, too, pledged her love they could flee together and find a life elsewhere. He swore that he would be mercenary or beggar, fisherman or a carpenter: anything and anywhere, so long as he could be with her. From the tower he looked day and night to the south, waiting for a messenger from his princess. He did this for a full forty years. She never came; he died in waiting.

  “Such is the tale of Balatur,” Masinissa had said, finishing his story with somber theatricality.

  Sophonisba burst into laughter and admonished him to speak no more nonsense. “Of course she did not come to him,” she said. “What princess would abandon her people to join a man who wished to be a beggar? Such devotion is not at all attractive. Anyway, never was there born a Massylii that loved one single woman.”

  The prince took exception to all of this. He dropped to his knees and said that he was another Balatur, a man possessed of a love so complete it eclipsed all others, as the sun does the stars. When they were joined, their love would be a tale for the ages. After he helped Carthage to defeat Rome, he would become king. Sophonisba would be his queen and together they would rule an empire second only to Carthage in its glory. He reminded her that he was no mere boy. He was the son of King Gaia and he would prove himself worthy of the Barca family very soon. He promised this with his very life.

  Sophonisba's voice had taken on a passionate urgency as she recalled the prince's words. She breathed them in and out so that they had a husky quality, as if heated with desire. But when she finished this portion of her story, she laughed and let the emotion drop from her face, like a mask lowered by the hand that held it.

  “Can you imagine such a show?” she asked. “I almost burst into tears right there at that moment. Tears of laughter, that is.”

  “Sophonisba!” Imilce said. “Are you so cruel? Never has a man spoken to me thus. Not even my husband!”

  “And in that is a measure of my brother's truthfulness,” she answered. “You see, I did not tell you that during all of this poetry the young prince managed to move next to me and take me in his arms. He bade me look out at the sky and the land and wonder at it—as if he'd created it all for me! And all the time he was trying to rub himself against me. He pretended that he was not, but I could feel his stiffness. He is truly a man of two parts: one of them a poet and the other a serpent with searching tongue. Yes, his words were fine, but fast upon them he was breathing in my ear, begging me for a taste of our wedding night, saying I cannot possibly keep him waiting till then. I told him I could do just that, and that I'd have him hunted down and quartered if he took me against my will.”

  “Sophonisba!”

  The girl laughed. “That is just what he said. ‘Sophonisba!' He looked ready to
cry. He would have, I am sure, except that I did him a small favor.”

  She let this statement linger, waiting for Imilce to rise to it. “What sort of favor?”

  “I touched it,” Sophonisba said, showing with an outstretched finger how gentle and innocent the gesture had been. “I asked him to show me the length of his love, and when he did I gave it a touch. Just a fingertip and he shot his praise to the gods.”

  Imilce did not know how to configure her face. It wavered between amusement and incredulity and outright reproach. Eventually, she said, “Sophonisba, hear me and believe me: You cannot play with men's affections this way.”

  “You should not fear, Imilce, he is only a boy, not yet a man. Though enthusiastic, yes. And handsomely gifted, if you understand me . . . Think of it, sister! The future king of Numidia, brave Masinissa, who says he's going to join Hasdrubal in Iberia this spring—conquered by the touch of a finger! Boys are such strange creatures.”

  “Boys grow to men quickly,” Imilce said. “As do girls to women.”

  “Yes, yes.” Sophonisba poured herself a drink of lemon-flavored water. She drained the glass in a few long drafts, as quickly as any thirsty worker. But when she glanced up, her face was again a beguiling conglomeration of features. Imilce realized that the trick of her beauty was that her face was always surprising. Somehow, each time one saw her she seemed newly created, as if her features were still wet from the touch of a sculptor's fingers. It took Imilce's breath away and filled her with warmth just because of their proximity. Masinissa did not stand a chance.

  On a morning early in the spring, Hannibal found the letter waiting for him like any other piece of mail. It lay upon his desk among several other scrolls: dispatches from Carthage; inventories and figures compiled by Bostar; noncommittal missives from several Roman ally states, whose chiefs were willing to speak secretly with him but as yet gave him nothing; and a document from the king of Macedon. Compared to these, it had the least authority on a commander's desk, but his eyes settled on it alone out of all the rest. He recognized the size of the papyrus and the emblem on the seal. His own.

  Hannibal dismissed his secretaries with instructions that he not be disturbed. Alone in the small cottage, he took a seat, plucked up the scroll, and wiped the others to the side with his forearm. He dug under the seal with his fingernail and rolled out the brittle material. It crackled under his fingers, ridged and imperfect, an ancient fabric born of the most aged of lands.

  The words had been written upon it by a passionless hand, precise, formal, looking as official as any correspondence from the Council itself. But the words were Imilce's. They drew him with all the force of a witch's incantation. He heard her greeting as if she were whispering in his ear. He mumbled aloud in response to her questions of his safety, reassuring her of his health. Just the mention of his homeland's names brought forth a host of memories, images not dimmed by time. The mention of perfidy in the Council touched him with anger, reminded him that he never had to hide his emotions completely from this woman. Had she been with him he would have cursed the old men, the misers, those jealous of him and thwarting their own success because of it. How he would have liked to speak of these things with her, naked, in bed, sated and moist from being inside her.

  The reading was over all too quickly. The space of minutes it took to finish the document was painfully insufficient, and the letter left too much unanswered. There was no mention of Little Hammer, not a word of how he grew, whether he spoke now, whether he remembered his father and still looked so much like him. And who was this Sophonisba? His sister, yes, but a person wholly unknown to him. He could not imagine her at all. He had lived apart from her almost all of her life, a strange thought now that she was nearly an adult. Stranger still that he wished to protect her, to meet this young prince, Masinissa, for himself and judge him as men do each other. And no, he was not sure of the wisdom of his decision to send Imilce to Carthage. Of course he wanted her with him, but how could he be the man he must be with her near at hand, drawing emotions out of him that he would have no other man witness? Surely, separation was the best course.

  Not yet ready to roll the papyrus away, he lifted it, absently, to his nose and inhaled. The scents were faint at first, reluctant and shy. The longer he breathed in, the more he found traces of fragrances beyond the papyrus's dry flavor. Something of his mother's fragrant oils came to him. Something of Carthaginian palms. A taste of sea air and of dust blown high and far-traveled on desert winds. And there was Imilce. Her scent was the last to come to him. When it finally revealed itself it was the most potent. It filled him with a longing so painful that he pulled himself forcibly from it. He threw the letter on the table and stared at it as if he expected it to rise and attack him. He had searched for her scent, but having found it he knew that such passions had no place in a commander's chambers. They were more dangerous than Roman steel or cunning.

  He called Gemel and ordered the letter rolled and stored away. “Put it somewhere safe,” he said. “Safe and distant.”

  This done, he sorted through the other scrolls with an absent hand. Nowhere among them was the one he wished for, the one from Rome itself. Such obstinate fools they were. Other races would have conceded the war already. They could have come to terms, as strong peoples always had. Though he knew Romans were shaping themselves into a different sort of nation—that was why this war was necessary, after all—it still confounded him that they did not behave in accordance with age-old practice. He tried to imagine the men of Rome, the senators in the chamber, the citizens in their homes throughout the city, the allies in all their various forms. He even spoke inside himself in their language, trying to divine what their hearts told them. Over the years he had done this time and again with different races, sometimes with his focus on individual persons. It was a technique his father had schooled him in. To know the mind of the enemy was to defeat him, Hamilcar had said. Many times this wisdom had proved to be true. With the Romans, however, he was never at ease with what he imagined.

  He paced the room absently. He moved to the doorway and looked out over the fields, just beginning to bud in the strengthening sun. Something in the smell of the air reminded him of riding through the Carthaginian spring with his father, surveying the family's lands. He had believed, in his early years, that his father was chief among the men of the world, wiser than any, stronger, braver. Almost as early, he understood that with these traits came responsibilities. That was why his father was called upon to put down the mercenary revolt so harshly. That was why he went to Iberia to carve out an empire. That was why he could never forgive Rome for its crimes against Carthage. This had all been completely right to him, undeniable certainties.

  He thought of an incident he had not recalled for some time. It was in his ninth year. He had just learned that his father was to leave Africa for Iberia for a long campaign. Perhaps because Hamilcar had been absent for so much of his childhood, hearing this cut him with new agony. He accosted his father in the public square and begged to be taken with him. He grasped at his legs and swore that he was man enough for it. He was strong and could throw a spear and knew no fear of war.

  Hamilcar had at first swatted him away, but the more the boy spoke the bolder his claims became and more the man began to listen. Eventually, he grabbed the boy by the wrist and dragged him to the temple of Baal, shouting as he entered that the priest should prepare a sacrifice. In Carthage the custom of infanticide was an ancient one, rarely practiced at that time but prevalent a little earlier. Hannibal, staring at the altar of the god for a few stunned moments, believed his father had had enough of him and was about to offer him up.

  But then he heard the baying of the goat led in by the priests. The animal was solid white, its eyes pinkish in hue and horns so pale they seemed almost translucent. They had brought a fine animal, unblemished and likely to please the god. The priests were like all such that he had seen since, often deformed men, men strange in one way or another from birth an
d suited to the priesthood because of this.

  His father knelt next to him. He felt the gnarled strength of his hand clasped over his, the skin of his palm like rough stone. “Listen to me,” Hamilcar said. “I am not a priest, but you are my son. I hold the right to tell you the history of our gods. In a time long ago the father of gods, El, mistakenly decided to place Yam, the Sea-River, above all other gods. Yam reveled in this and became a tyrant and imposed his will upon all others. No other god had the courage to fight him. All thought him too mighty, even El who had blessed him. To appease him, Asherah, the wife of El, offered herself to Yam, so that he might learn joy and treat them all more kindly. When Baal heard this he was furious. He, alone among the gods, knew that Yam was an impostor who would never treat them justly. He made two great weapons—Yagrush, the chaser, and Aymur, the driver. With them, he strode toward Yam. He struck him in the chest with Yagrush, but this did not slay the god. So he smote him on the forehead with Aymur. Yam fell to the earth. So balance was restored to the world, with Baal as the supreme, yet just, deity.”

  Hamilcar turned his son to face the goat. He knelt close behind him and with one arm pulled the boy against his chest. “Understand me now. Carthage is the servant of Baal; Rome is like those who followed Yam. Rome has been placed above us now by a mistake of Fortune, but it will not remain so. You and I, we can be Yagrush and Aymur, the chaser and the driver. I do not claim that we are divine. This is a human affair, based more on justice than on the gods' favor. I do not ask you to hate without reason. I do not condemn Rome simply because it is full of Romans. It is Rome's actions I hate. It is the way Rome seeks to make slaves of all the world. So, I ask you now, will you swear your life to avenge the wrongs done us by Rome? Will you stand beside me as I take justice to them? Will you devote your life to seeing them brought down, as Baal brought down Yam?”