Hannibal had finished with the breastplate and now stood with his father's helmet in his hands. “Maganthus forgets that the gods created us to love life without reason, even in the face of torture.”
Hamilcar motioned that he would not have the helmet on yet. “That makes it seem as if the gods destined us to be slaves,” he said. “Slaves to life, at least.”
Hannibal smiled. “That's how it has to be, but a true man is a slave to nothing else, right? Not a slave to another man. Nor to desires for sex or fear or drink or riches . . .”
“What about to the bondage of marriage? You have no idea, my young son, how much of my time is spent in silent conversation with your mother. She has been a splendid wife to me, given me strong children, and raised them in health. But she doesn't approve of what I—of what we—do. You'll never hear her say so, but I know this to be true. I did something once that I always regretted afterward. I showed her my work. I let her see my bloody masterpiece—a battlefield piled high with mercenary dead. I wanted to shock her with it. I wanted her to see my work, to understand the wrath of Hamilcar Barca and see that I—a lone man—could dominate many others. I should never have done this.”
“Why? Did she not understand what she saw?”
“No,” Hamilcar said, “just the opposite. She understood it completely. She's loathed me ever since.”
“You're joking,” Hannibal said. “Mother never once spoke ill of you.”
“What do you know of it? You were nine years old when we left Carthage. Do you think she would've spoken of such things to you? Didobal did not stop loving me; but she loathes me at the same time.”
“If that's how she feels, she is wrong,” Hannibal said. “Honor comes from battle with formidable opponents. The mercenaries had Carthage on its knees. Only you could save them. No woman can know what that means. So she shouldn't judge.”
Hamilcar placed a hand on his son's shoulder. There was gentleness in the touch, though the hand was callused and misshapen by years of violence. “Don't speak with that tone when you speak of your mother. You believe you have all the answers, I know. But this is a sickness of youth. We get other illnesses in old age, but in youth, when our bodies are strong, we suffer from one thing only—certainty. When I was younger I too had few doubts about my purpose.”
“Do you now?”
“No. You know my goal. I've never wavered from it. I still don't. Despite all my old man's dithering, few know their calling as clearly as I do. I don't truly question the rightness of my deeds in the world. Your mother is a creator; I am a destroyer. There is balance in this.”
The old warrior stepped away and tested the fit of his breastplate again. Resigning himself to the armor, he dropped his arms and looked again at his son. He said, “I do, however, question the rightness of the world itself.”
Hannibal, lying on his cot in his tent of grief, realized he was just now learning to understand the man. How was it possible that conversations of years before could speak to him now in such a different way? He wished he could ask his father what wisdom the intervening years had provided him for his own old questions. But one cannot make new queries of the dead. If there were answers to be found, they must be in the scripts already written. “The rightness of the world itself,” the old man had said. That was what he doubted. Ten years on, Hannibal was beginning to understand Hamilcar. In some ways, he was becoming him.
But the next morning, when he spoke to his assembled generals, he focused on one portion of his father's words and pushed aside this last proclamation. It might have been true, but what use was doubt to those who still breathed air and lived? Doubt undermined; it offered no help to those still slaves to life. When he issued his decision on their opening move of the season, the entire council looked at him in disbelief. Gemel asked him to repeat himself. Hannibal did. There was one way to tie all of these disparate problems together in a single action. They were to strike camp by the end of the week and march north.
“But not to Capua,” he said. “Our target is Rome.”
Word of Hasdrubal's death preceded Hanno's arrival by a scant few days. The Barca family was still in mourning, though they did so in a strange way that angered Sapanibal. The priests, with their fickle wisdom, deemed that Hasdrubal's death should not be marked in the normal manner. They decreed that he had done something to invoke the ill will of Moloch. His failures in Iberia, his flight toward Italy, and his defeat proved it. Because of this the family could show no grief. They could not wail or cut their hair. They could not go veiled. They could not utter his name without speaking it down toward the ground. They could not prick their fingers with pins or cut their veins at the wrist to bleed until they were weak and faint. Instead, the priest forbade them to eat meat for the month. They could make their own offerings to the gods throughout the day, but in the evening all the Barca women were made to bow their heads as the priests offered sacrifices to cleanse the nation of Hasdrubal's sins.
This galled Sapanibal. They should be praising the man and easing his way into the afterworld. In typical Carthaginian fashion, they betrayed him instead. Hers were a petty people, she thought, who neither reward a man for his successes in life nor honor him in death. Sapanibal raged against this in her private chambers, with only her servants to hear her. In public, she kept her thoughts to herself. Neither Sophonisba nor Imilce showed anything on her face but the fear she expected from them. Even Didobal seemed to accept the advice of the priests. She swore to herself that if one of them looked at her with an inkling of rebellion in her eyes she would rise up and decry the priests' orders. But they did not. Not that she could see, at least.
She wondered if any of them would rouse from stupor if the city one day disrespected Hannibal in a similar manner. She could not imagine that they would not, although this should be no different. A brother was a brother. A husband a husband. Why did only she understand this? She felt, as she often did before, that the male energy inside her was rendered futile by her female body. If she had been born a son instead of a daughter she would have wrung those priests by their necks.
Thinking these things, she rejoiced to hear that Hanno had returned. Wonderful enough that he was alive, but better yet if he arrived in holy anger and cut out the corrupt heart that beat at the center of the city's institutions. He was a warrior, after all. How the soft men of the Council would wither before him!
But in this, too, she was disappointed. Before he had even returned to the family compound, he stopped at the Temple of Baal and there made offerings and underwent a cleansing, to remove the stains of war. The next day he still did not come home but met with the Council instead. From what Sapanibal could gather through her sources, the magistrates grilled him on every aspect of the Iberian wars. Hannon railed against all the Barcas: against Hannibal for starting the war with Rome, against Hasdrubal for abandoning the peninsula without permission, against Hanno and Mago for losing it all through their military ineptitude. Equally reprehensible, they had left alive this Publius Scipio, who reportedly had found killing Carthaginian soldiers so pleasurable that he was now planning to attack Carthage itself. Hadus proposed crucifixion as a just punishment for Hanno's being foolish enough to return. Another peace party member suggested offering Hanno's head as a present to the Romans, along with entreaties to end the conflict. Perhaps Carthage should add his entire family as slaves, Hannibal included.
But even in their foul mood, most councillors balked at this. Many of them had lost fortunes in Iberia and knew that giving in to Rome ruled out ever regaining this source of wealth. And they knew Rome had already been too terrified for too long to settle for an amicable peace. With the exception of the staunchest peace advocates, the others—after chastising Hanno in every manner, over the space of three full days—asked him what he proposed to do next. And he answered, although he gave this portion of his testimony exclusively to the Council of One Hundred Elders. His proposals were best made in secret, so he met with the elders deep in the Temple o
f Moloch, in a chamber protected by the god himself. There were, therefore, a few aspects of his dealings with the councillors that Sapanibal had yet to learn.
When she did lay eyes upon him, she stood beside the other women of the household in the Chamber of the Palms. He paused just inside the reed outer door, blinking in the dim light, waiting for his eyes to adjust. His face was ashen from his ordeal. He seemed to walk in a daze. The thick scent of incense clung to him still, Moloch's powerful aroma. It seemed he brought something of the hungry god into the room with him. He gazed at his family, behind whom towered the pillars meant to look like an ancient forest. Among these clustered the house servants, officials, eunuch guards: all seeking their first glimpse of the returning son.
Hanno bent his knee and lowered his head and explained that his safe arrival was not his doing alone. It was allowed by the gods, and so he acknowledged the power of Baal, who blew the wind across the sea that bore him home; the kindness of Tanit, who protected Carthage and blessed her crops; the blood rage of Moloch, which took lives other than his own; Astarte, from whose fertility he issued, without whom his homeland would be a barren wound; Eshmun, by whose power his many injuries were healed; Ares, who had filled him with fury in battle. . . . He had always been devout, and he did not forget any of the Carthaginian pantheon for the role they had played in any good fortune he had experienced. His prayers took some time but he completed them without rushing. Only then did he bridge the few steps between them and fall into the women's embraces. Up close, Sapanibal could smell more than the initial aroma of the incense. With her nose close to his ear she smelled the essence shared by all Barca men. It nearly brought tears to her eyes.
Finally, late that night when the household was quiet and the fires burned low and the lyre player in the garden had stopped her plucking and lain down beside the instrument, Hanno came to Sapanibal in her room. She embraced him again, hanging from his neck like a lover. They sat on the terrace overlooking the olive groves. Hanno sipped a heavy red wine, so thick it tinted his teeth a brownish color in the torchlight. And he told her everything. He spoke with a voice both dull and honest, describing the life that he had seen these few years. He spoke with the complete honesty he saved for her among all people. He even described the tortures the Romans had inflicted upon him, the things they promised him if he would turn on his brothers. It was not that he had ever been close to Sapanibal or loved her overly. But he had never been able to lie to her. She had been an older sister who had always seen through him. She judged him, yes, but he ever sought her for confession. Their relationship was no different now. At first, it warmed Sapanibal to fill this role again.
But at the first mention of Syphax she felt a tightness in her throat. She realized that the sensation mirrored a constriction that had gripped Hanno's own voice. He spoke more slowly and kept his eyes pointed out toward the darkness beyond the orchards. He explained that the Roman consul, as part of his plan for attacking Carthage, had made overtures to the Libyan king. This could not be allowed. It would have spelled their death in and of itself. King Gaia was ill and powerless; some said he was already dead but that it was being kept secret until word could reach his son, Masinissa. In any event the Massylii were about to be swallowed into Syphax' empire. This was certain. This was happening no matter what. Carthage, drained by the other theaters of war, was powerless to stop it. Masinissa was a brilliant young man, of whom Hanno was personally fond. He had been a great soldier in the Iberian campaign. They had parted as the best of friends, but Fortune thinks little of such emotions.
“Masinissa has been outmaneuvered without even knowing he was in a game,” Hanno said. “This is tragic for him, but if Syphax joined with Rome and turned against Carthage it would be the end of everything we have ever worked for. It would mean the destruction of the nation. Barcas nailed to crosses. Amazing punishments. Unthinkable things . . .”
“I understand the picture you paint,” Sapanibal said. “What did you do about it?”
“I saved our nation,” Hanno said. “I made an arrangement with Syphax that won him to us. I promised that we would not contest his actions against the Massylii. And I gave him Sophonisba for his wife.”
Sapanibal had been looking intently at her brother and went on doing so for a few moments. But then the meaning of his words drew all of her attention as a dry sponge sucks up water. Her vision blurred. Hanno went out of focus. She had to blink to bring him back again. Her response was first a simple refutation. He had not done that. “Sophonisba is betrothed to Masinissa,” she explained. “She's been promised.”
Hanno pursed his lips. “I'm sorry. I like Masinissa well, but their marriage is not to be. It is unfortunate . . .”
Sapanibal's look of complete disbelief hushed him. “Who gave you the authority?”
Hanno pressed his chin to his chest and held it like that for a moment. Then he looked out again into the night. “The Council sanctified it,” he said. “Didobal agreed. They've already annulled the engagement. It doesn't exist. It never did. To speak of it will be a crime punishable by death.”
“You are not telling the truth.”
“Why would I lie?”
“But she loves him. Do you understand? She wants to marry him. Is this how you save your neck? By trading your sister into slavery? Have Barca men fallen so low? When she hears of this she will die inside—”
“She already knows,” Hanno said. He waited for his sister's response to this, but she only stared at him. He sighed and tried to regain a calmer tone. “Sapanibal, if the gods one day ordain that I may split Syphax on my sword and watch the life escape him, I will do so. At present, I cannot.”
“So instead you'll call him brother? What's happened to you? I thought war made men, not turned them back into children.”
For the first time Hanno's voice rose, heated, quick of tongue. “Sister, look at me. I return defeated, without an army. I have nothing but my life, and that's worth very little. The Council was half a breath away from nailing me to a cross. Hadus would have disemboweled me himself and eaten my entrails while they were still warm. Do you understand? I am alive because I could promise those fat men that an army of sixty thousand Libyans wouldn't be banging on the gates of our city. Instead they'll fight for us. I've hardly saved my neck, sister—not considering the plan I've devised and the risks of it. None of our necks are yet safe. Sophonisba understood this better than you appear to. You surprise me. You are wise in so many ways, but you have a woman's blind spots in your vision.”
Sapanibal stood and moved near to her brother. She placed her hands to either side of his chair and, looking close into his face, she said, “I see more clearly than you imagine, but if I could turn my eyes into stones and rip them out to throw at you I would. You don't know what you've done to her. Syphax? Syphax?”
She had spoken calmly, but something changed with her proximity to him. Hanno began to remind her that Syphax was no demon. He was a king, who would treat Sophonisba well—
Before either of them knew it was going to happen, Sapanibal slapped her brother. “Was Hasdrubal the Handsome a demon?” she asked. “Was he? Was he? Was he?” She slapped him again, with the right and then with the left hand, and then with a mad barrage from both. He sat taking it, his features smudged and reddened; then she dropped on him and hugged him in a strange embrace, her fingers digging into his shoulder blades.
Later still, Sapanibal walked barefoot down the hall toward her sister's quarters. She stood between the eunuchs who guarded the entry, which was open to them but hidden around a corner. The two men each straightened when she approached. They did not speak, did not ask after her business or even set their eyes upon her for more than the instant it took to recognize her. She just stood, not sure what she would say to Sophonisba, or that she would even enter. She told herself that it was her duty to soothe her sister while also reminding her of the union's importance to their nation. Of course, this was what her reasoning mind believed. Her outburst a
gainst Hanno was a confused thing, the product of prolonged worry, of her own weakness. Fortune spins like a top and one never knows on what symbol it may land.
The soft, round notes of a pipe chime came to her, pushed by an evening breeze. For a moment she had the strange thought that some spirit had brushed past the chimes as it rushed to confront her, to grab her by the neck and squeeze all that nonsense out of her throat. She did not believe any of it. Maybe she never had. Maybe that was why this pained her so, because her whole life in duty had been an empty torture, a slow, prolonged strangulation. She heard movement inside, the murmur of a voice, and then a short, clipped sound that could have been either laughter or crying. This prompted her to move, although she did not know what she would say.
Rounding the corner into the soft lamplight she noticed Imilce first, leaning on Sophonisba's makeup table. Once, Sapanibal would have felt a pang of jealousy. She was no great friend to her sister, but Imilce had become one. She had taken the place in Sophonisba's life that Sapanibal might have occupied, if she had not been so cold to Sophonisba, if she had not envied her beauty and disdained the joys she took from life. She got no farther than the entrance, and then stood, elbows tucked into her sides.
Her younger sister sat on a stool before the small desk in which she kept her makeup and jewelry. Sapanibal caught her breath, frightened by how beautiful she was. She wore her hair pulled back and her face in profile was a twin to the goddess Tanit's. The curve at the ball of her nose, the full richness of her lips: all glistened as if they were molded anew each morning. She seemed ever to step out of a sculptor's workshop, unblemished, not even a grain of imperfection in the marble of her skin. Her gown fell off one knee, exposing the weight of her calf, a single foot, five toes, the smallest of which wore a tiny gold ring. Perfection. Tragic perfection.
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