Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

  “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.”

  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.”