Pride of Carthage (12 page)

“Do you truly mean that?” Hannibal asked. “Father was not so
with Mother. . . .”

“Yes, but her strength equaled his. You are a man, Hannibal. You can have no idea of the sacrifices required of women. Mother was the foundation from which Hamilcar Barca launched himself at the world. But she was never, never a source of weakness to him. This is something you cannot know, but believe your older sister.”

“So you think my wife is not such a foundation?”

“I've never said a sour word against Imilce. I'm just voicing my thoughts on a subject, and on the virtues of our mother. Of any wife of yours . . . She should be handled strictly, so as to cause the least distraction.”

Hannibal heard this with pursed lips, a frown tugging at one corner but not completely allowed. It faded with a few moments of silence. “Sister, we should have spoken more often. Your counsel is wise where I am shortsighted. It would have been good for us to debate the matters of life more fully.”

“Why do you say ‘should' and ‘would'? Are we not at council now? You speak as if we've no future before us.”

Just then, both siblings caught movement at the mouth of the corridor. Imilce stepped in. She met the two with her gaze, cleared her throat, and placed a hand upon her delicate collarbones.

Hannibal placed a hand on his sister's fingers. She withdrew them. As he rose and approached his wife he said, softly and—though his eyes were on Imilce—to Sapanibal alone, “We've a war before us. Beyond that very little is certain.”

How the child escaped his governess's care none could say, but he was a lively boy, recently emboldened by his mastery of two-legged travel, and such children have their own, secret devices. He progressed unnoticed through several long corridors, through a room set off with a long dining table under which he walked, out onto a balcony into the winter afternoon, and then back into the warmth by another entrance. He stepped flat-footed, bowed at the legs, his fat feet slapping against the smooth stones, chubby legs rotating from the hips so that his cloth-bound behind served as the pivot from which he wiggled himself forward. He pushed through a curtain partition and into a room filled with male voices. These drew him, for among them was the timbre and cadence that he recognized as his father's. It was only there, standing at the edge of the room, looking shyly toward the table and the large men around it, that he was recognized.

Hannibal's expression had been serious, his hand massaging the ball of his chin-beard in thought. But his eyes brightened on spotting the child. “Little Hammer!” he said, cutting off one of his guests in mid-sentence. “Excuse me, friends, but we're being spied upon.” The commander rose from his place at the table and strode toward the child. He snatched him up and held him above his head a moment, the boy convulsing with sudden glee. “What are you doing here, Hamilcar?”

“He's come to learn of matters political and martial,” Bomilcar said.

Bostar, to explain to the guests, spoke in Greek. “Hannibal's son,” he said, “named in honor of his grandfather, of course. He keeps the maids on their toes, but this time he's escaped them.”

The three Macedonians nodded at this. None seemed offended by the interruption. Instead, one commented on the boy's healthy looks; another offered that perhaps it was not maids the boy needed but young soldiers to keep up with him.

Lysenthus, head of the Greek party and therefore seated at the center, asked to see Hamilcar up close. He wore a dark leather breastplate on which ridged abdominal and chest muscles had been outlined in silver studs. He was a solid man, scarred across the cheek and nicked on the eyebrow in a raised welt. His straight brown hair hung in somewhat greasy strands around his face. But for all his warrior's appearance he had about him the look of a sensualist, an easy manner and smirking mouth. He reached for young Hamilcar and propped him up on the table before him.

Hannibal stood nearby for a moment, but as the child seemed fascinated by the Macedonian he returned to his seat. Lysenthus uttered a string of nonsense words to the boy, neither Greek nor Carthaginian but the babble so often spoken to children. Hannibal felt Bostar's gaze and knew he was being invited to mirth at the sight of Lysenthus—warrior of Macedon, personal envoy of Philip the Fifth—reduced to using nonsense words by a small boy. For the first time in the several hours they had been talking, Hannibal noticed that Lysenthus was missing a finger from his left hand. Not an unusual wound by any means, but it surprised him that he only noticed now, when the absence of the digits so stood out on hands cupped around his son's back.

“I've made a few like this myself,” Lysenthus said. “More than I can count, actually. Will he wield a sword like his father?”

Hannibal tilted his head and spoke careful Greek, perhaps more pure in his pronunciation than the Macedonians themselves. “If he lives to see that day, by Baal's grace . . . I believe his fate in life was chosen by powers other than my own.”

“The child of a lion is a lion, yes?”

The other visitors agreed with solemn nods, but Bostar was not so sure. “I heard a tale from the land of Chad that might dispute that. It's said that once, not too many years ago, a lioness gave birth to an antelope and raised her with affection.”

“You're mad!” Bomilcar said, speaking in Carthaginian. “Did I hear you right? A lion give birth to an antelope?”

“That is what I've heard,” Bostar said, keeping to Greek. “The Ethiopians swear such things have happened more than once and each time foretells a shift in the world's fortunes.”

Bomilcar frowned at this and looked about for a translation. His Greek sufficed for giving military orders, but was not up to casual conversation.

Hannibal said, “I know not the order of things beyond the great desert. One certainly hears tales, but this child is born of my blood—a cub from a lion. Perhaps he will exceed me in time.”

Hamilcar, as if in answer, reached for the dagger sheathed beneath Lysenthus' arm. The Macedonian moved the boy out to arm's length and laughingly asked, “Has he ever held a blade?”

Hannibal shook his head, lips in a tight line now and forehead creased uneasily.

Lysenthus held the boy by one hand and with the other pulled the short dagger from its holder. He held it before the child a moment, watching the fascination in his eyes, rotating the blade so that it reflected glimmers of light on Hamilcar's face. The boy reached for it, delicately, as if he knew that he must show care if he was to be allowed the object. Lysenthus, looking only at the boy now, slid his fingers onto the blade and offered the child the handle. The young Hamilcar took the weapon and held it before him, clasped in two hands, upright and as large as a sword to a man. He was all stillness for a long moment, and the party watched in a hush that suggested awe, as if they were witnessing something prophetic. But then the young one remembered he was a child. He let out a babbling gurgle and jerked the knife up and down, suddenly wild. Lysenthus snapped his head back, an instant too late. The tip of the blade sliced a tiny nick in his nose that dripped red instantly. Just as Hannibal snapped to his feet the Macedonian's hand fell over the child's and pried the blade away.

“A warrior indeed!” he called, laughing and trying to sheath the weapon. “A year old only, and he has already cut the flesh of a warrior. Were you so young as this when you first drew blood, Hannibal?”

The tension in Hannibal's body was slow to uncoil. Eventually, he smiled, pulled a cloth from inside his tunic, and tossed it to Lysenthus. “I do not remember the first time I drew blood,” he said. “And neither will he.”

Hannibal hefted his son and set him down on the floor. He motioned for Bostar to amuse the boy, a task the officer went at awkwardly, but well enough to permit the meeting to go on. They had already been through the long, gradual introductions to their respective positions and plans for the future. Hannibal had offered a pact of friendship with Macedon and found the king's ambassadors as receptive as he could have hoped. But the matter to which he had turned just before Hamilcar's entry was more delicate. Lysenthus returned to it in a roundabout way.

“Philip has no love for Rome,” he said. “On the contrary, he loathes the manner in which they interfere in Adriatic matters that should not concern them. He will watch your progress with interest, but Commander, he is not yet ready to join you in war against Rome.”

Bomilcar somehow managed to follow this well enough to form a response. “Philip would have us do all the work first—is that what you're saying? Then he'd join in the victory celebrations.”

Lysenthus dabbed at the cut on his nose. “Philip would take an active part in any victory over the Romans,” he said. “You might well find you need our formidable aid in achieving it, but events will have to unfold somewhat before that time comes. You have fought admirably against the barbarians of Iberia, but Rome will be an altogether different test. They will come at you, and quickly.”

“Not quickly enough,” Hannibal said. “I know much of what transpires in Roman councils. They plan a two-pronged attack: one consul and his army attacking Carthage itself, the other aimed at us here in Iberia. This is a reasonable plan, but they will find things progress in a way they cannot imagine.”

Lysenthus thought about this a moment, glanced at his aides, and then looked back at Hannibal, a new understanding etched on his features. “You're going to attack them first, on their own soil? How? You have no navy . . . no way to reach them.”

Hannibal glanced at Bostar, who seemed anxious to rise from the floor and say something, if Hamilcar had not been climbing over his knees and attempting to unlace his sandals.

“You'll forgive me, Lysenthus,” the commander continued, “if I do not reveal all the details. But do make sure that Philip watches these opening moves with close attention. He'll see what we are made of and what we can accomplish—we hope with his friendship and aid. At the very least, let us continue to correspond.”

Lysenthus assured him that this was possible and that the message would reach the king as soon as he did. With that, the meeting drew to a close. The two officers escorted the Macedonians away and off to an afternoon hunt, their last before preparing for the hazardous sea voyage back to Macedon.

Hannibal sat a moment, watching his son at play with the balls of wadded paper Bostar had improvised as toys while the men spoke. It was a joyful image, yet quick behind the joy came a tension low in his gut, almost like the anxiety of battle. He had lied in answering Lysenthus' question: In truth, he did remember the first time he drew blood. The memory was seared into his consciousness, one of his earliest, from before he came to Iberia.

He was still living in Carthage, at the family's palace on the hill of Byrsa. His father had roused him from sleep. His face was ragged and coated with sweat and filth. He smelled foul and he still wore the soiled armor of battle. “Come, I would show you something,” Hamilcar said.

The boy Hannibal's heart thumped in his chest; not only from the abruptness of his awakening, but he had not even known his father had returned from the war. Mercenaries had turned on the city and besieged it. The conflict had been brutal beyond recent memory, but under Hamilcar's leadership the Carthaginian nobles had finally driven the mercenaries out into the desert, where the traitors made their last stand. What exactly had transpired, the boy had no idea.

Nor did Hamilcar open his lips as he led Hannibal through the dark palace and out onto the grounds. They passed through several courtyards and down into the stables. A torch burned at the far end of the corridor. They moved toward it through the shadows. The horses snorted and shifted nervously, watching their progress; they seemed as aware as Hannibal that something profound was to happen.

But it was not until they had actually halted that Hannibal saw the figure to whom they were drawn. A man had been nailed to wood supports by the wrist, his body drooping, head down upon his chest. He was covered in crusted fluids and dust and had been hanging for long enough that the blood dripping from his impaled wrists had congealed into black globules. Hamilcar grasped a handful of the man's hair and yanked his head upright. The man's eyes opened, rolled up, and then veered off into semiconsciousness.

“This man betrayed Carthage,” Hamilcar said, his voice a dry rasp that he could not shake, though he cleared his throat several times. “Do you understand that? This man conspired to open the gates of our city to the mercenaries. He did it for money, for power, out of a sheer hatred that he hid behind the mask of a countryman. He almost succeeded. Had this man the power, he would yank you up by the ankles and bash your skull against the stones beneath us. He would nail me to a cross and leave me to die slowly. He'd see me a rotting, maggot-filled corpse, and he would laugh at the sight. He would slit your brother's necks and rape your mother and have her sold into slavery. He would live in our house and eat our food and rule over our servants. This is the man before you. Do you know his name?”

Hannibal shook his head, his eyes pinned to the stones and not moving even as he answered.

“His name is Tamar. Some call him the Blessed, others the Foul. Some call him friend. Some father. Some lover. Do you understand? He has other names also: Alexander. Cyrus. Achilles. Khufu. Yahweh or Ares or Osiris. He is Sumerian, Persian, Spartan. He is the thief in the street, the councillor who sits beside you, the man who covets your wife. You choose his name, for he has many, as many names as there are men born to women. His name is Rome. His name is mankind. This is the world we live in, and you'll find it full of men like this.”

Hamilcar released the man's head and placed his hands on his son's shoulders. He pulled him close and let the boy rest his forehead against his cheek. Hannibal did this willingly, for he did not want to look at the man about whom they spoke. “Son,” he said, “there was a noose around our neck and to cut it I had to kill many men most horribly. You are a child, but the world you were born into is no kind place. This is why I teach you now that creation is full of wolves aligned against us. To live in it without falling into madness, you must make of yourself more than a single man. You love with all your heart as a father and son and husband. You wrap your arms around your mother and know the goodness of women. You find beauty in the world and cherish it. But never waver from strength. Never run from battle. When the time comes to act, do so, with iron in your hand and your loins and your heart. Unreservedly love those who love you, and protect them without remorse. Will you always do that?”