Pride of Carthage (20 page)

Sapanibal glanced at her several times throughout the ride but said nothing.

By the time she entered the Chamber of the Palms at her mother-in-law's palace, Imilce walked on unsteady legs. Her insides moved and shifted of their own accord, threatening to spill up and out of her in waves that came without rhythm but often. It was good, at least, to be out of the sun, away from the heat and bustle of the streets. She listened to the wooden door as it swung shut behind them, heard the bolt driven into place. She moved forward behind Sapanibal into a reception area as cool as an ancient forest. Granite pillars grew up from the stone slabs like the trunks of giant trees. The ceiling must have been wooden, but it was planed smooth and painted a dark crimson. The walls were not really so far away, the room not really that large, but the rows of pillars several deep gave the space a feeling of cramped grandeur. Something about it even stilled young Hamilcar. He went limp in his nurse's arms, tilted his head back, and stared, openmouthed, at the ceiling.

Sapanibal halted in the central area of the room, a greater space as one pillar was missing. There were chairs and low sofas nearby, but they did not sit down. Sapanibal stood with her hands clasped before her and was silent for a time. Then she said, “We'll wait here.”

A few moments later, a door at the far end of the chamber swung open, pushed on its wooden hinges by two adolescent boys, each bent to the task. Behind the swinging barricade came Didobal, widow of Hamilcar Barca, mother of the pride of lions now at war with Rome. Attendants framed her on either side and from behind, young and old women in colorful dress. A boy walked at her side, his head a platform on which she rested her left hand.

Imilce had conjured absolutely no image of this woman ahead of time and therefore her appearance was always to have been a revelation. And indeed it was that. Imilce knew that Didobal's mother was of native stock, from the Theveste people who lived south of Carthage, but she was still surprised at the richness of Didobal's skin, darker than any of her sons'. Her eyes sat widely spaced and her cheekbones were high, rounded, and regal. Her hair, woven into an intricate crosshatching of tight braids, was black, thick. From her first glimpse of the Barca matriarch, Imilce knew that she was not a woman easily deceived. Though she did not exactly know why, this realization troubled her.

Sapanibal greeted her mother with a formality Imilce had never seen in her. She touched one knee to the floor, bowed her head, and pressed her hands to her forehead, ready to receive her mother's blessing. Didobal stepped up close to her, studying her as if she might not positively recognize her. Sapanibal whispered a prayer of greeting, speaking reverently, admitting her debt to this woman for her very creation and invoking the blessings of Tanit, the mother goddess of Carthage.

Didobal heard all this indifferently. “Rise, dear,” she said. “I know what you owe, and I know that you know it as well.”

Sapanibal released the woman's hand and straightened. She stood with her arms stiff at her sides, chin upraised in a posture wholly out of character.

“You have not aged well,” Didobal said. “There was always too much of your father's mother in you, too much of the East. But I have made peace with that long ago. You are distinguished in your own way, and you are welcome here. It will give your sister joy to see you. Tell me of this other one now, daughter.”

Released from scrutiny by that simple sentence, Sapanibal resumed herself. She half turned toward Imilce and said, “Mother, this is Hannibal's beloved, Imilce, daughter of a chief of the Baetis named Ilapan. She is known as a beauty and is fertile as well, for she has borne us a son, the first male of his generation.”

Didobal would have known all of this already, but she rested her gaze on Imilce and nodded as her daughter spoke. Imilce knew something of how to greet Carthaginian women, but still she felt completely unprepared for this encounter and wondered how she had ever gotten to this point without thinking more of this moment. When Sapanibal paused, Imilce imitated her formal greeting, her hands outstretched from her forehead, head parallel to the ground, one knee against the cool stone beneath her. It seemed to take forever for the woman to acknowledge her with a touch. Fleeting and brief though it was, Didobal's fingers left a scent on hers, a perfume carried in an oily lotion that Imilce was to smell for days after. She heard the woman bid her rise.

“You have a delicate face,” Didobal said.

“Thank you,” Imilce murmured. She tried to look at Didobal directly but this was no easy thing. The woman's eyes were not hers alone but were also those of her son, deep-set, of a similar color, and with the same simmering intelligence. Strange that the quality of the mind behind the eyes can be conveyed through them. Imilce knew she would never be able to look at Didobal without seeing her husband. What she did not know yet was whether this was going to be a blessing or a curse.

“If my son married for beauty alone, then he chose well,” Didobal said, “but old ones such as me know that counts for little. There is more to a woman than her face and bosom. More even than her abundance in childbearing. I told my son this in writing and he assured me more substance was to be found within you. He asked of me the patience to see you slowly. I will grant him that. But, daughter, I have no love for your country. It's a mistress that has kept my men from me for too many years. This is hard to forgive. . . . But now, before we take our leisure, let me see my son's child.”

Imilce motioned to her maid, who offered her Little Hammer. She held him awkwardly on her hip. The child was surprisingly still, his fists clamped tight around folds of his mother's gown.

Didobal frowned: The view was not sufficient. She slipped her dark hands around the boy and pried him away from his mother. Hamilcar seemed ready to protest, but he paused before doing so, unsure how such an action would be dealt with. Didobal took a few steps away and studied him in a shaft of light that cut down diagonally from a window high on the wall.

Imilce wished she had answered more strongly. She should have said that Carthage was her country now and it was war that was their men's mistress, not any particular nation. She should have said that she too regretted that her husband was always away, always in danger. She should have said many things, she thought, but they were already dead inside her. Silent, she glanced up at the ceiling. Her eyes were first attracted by the flight of a tiny bird, but then lingered up there because of the sudden suspicion that the ceiling was not solid at all but was a dark liquid threatening to drop down on them in a sudden deluge. It was hard to pull her eyes away from it.

Didobal turned around. Her façade was composed and calm as before, but her eyes tinged a watery red. She handed the boy back, not to Imilce but to the maid. She half turned away, but paused long enough to say, “Come. You are welcome in my house.”

Imilce searched the woman's profile for any sign of the emotions behind it. But there was nothing to betray her thoughts. Viewed from the side and heavy-lidded, her eye was flat and without perspective, a single dimension and therefore harder to read.

The interview over, Didobal withdrew. The two women waited a moment as the matriarch's servants escorted her out, like insects buzzing protectively around their queen.

Though Didobal did not speak directly to Imilce again that day, she formally introduced her to the aristocracy of Carthage. The women greeted her as if modeling themselves on the matriarch: aloof, distant, grandiose, indicating in their words and gestures that she had yet to prove herself to them. The men were a little kinder, but clearly, however, this was not a measure of true respect but of an irreverent flirtation. They commented upon Hannibal's good fortune in winning her, upon his epicurean eye. They alluded to the women the commander could have chosen from, the others he must have sampled prior to her, the attentions she could, in turn, wring from the besotted hearts of other men.

Despite even these flatteries, the essence conveyed throughout the afternoon was that she was not very important. Her presence was of note for two reasons: her link to her long-absent husband, and the role she filled as mother to another generation of Barcas. They asked again and again about her son, and told her again and again about her husband, as if she did not actually know the man but was in need of education by these Carthaginians, people who, despite their distance from him in space and time, seemed to believe they knew him better than she. She felt increasingly ill at ease throughout the afternoon. Her stomach still churned and protested within her. Cramps racked her from low in the pelvis, radiating up.

In a lull before the evening's activities, Imilce excused herself to go to her bath chambers. There, as she squatted to relieve herself, she discovered the reason for her physical symptoms. They were not borne of the day's stresses alone, but were the long forgotten symptoms of her monthly bleeding, which she had not had since the blessed month she became pregnant with Little Hammer. How many moons had passed since last this flow issued from her? How many years? She had hoped that Hannibal's seed would somehow take hold in her again—even before she knew that her cycle had resumed—but clearly this had not happened.

Still squatting, she let herself lean back against the stone wall. She grasped her head in her hands and squeezed; she did not know why. She thought of Hannibal—wherever he might be at that moment—and she silently chastised him for leaving her alone with all of this.

Sophonisba appeared like an answer to prayers Imilce had not even uttered. Hannibal's youngest sibling approached Imilce in the garden of the palace in the early evening light. She carried two small goblets, one of which she offered up. They had met earlier in the afternoon but had exchanged only nods and the routines of greeting.

“Have you tried this?” Sophonisba asked. “It's a wine made from the fruit of palm trees. It's a poor person's drink, but Mother is fond of it and always has a little on hand. We should drink discreetly, though. Come, talk with me by the fish ponds.”

Sophonisba could not have been more than twelve or thirteen, just budding with the first indications of the woman she was to become. But she walked this line between childhood and maturity nimbly, with a confidence that touched Imilce with shame. And it only took her a few glances to realize that Sophonisba was at the verge of a monumental beauty. She was her mother's daughter, in her forehead and the character of her cheekbones and in her nose, but her skin tone was the lightest of all her siblings' and her mouth was narrower, a soft, full oval. Imilce felt her own appearance wanting beside this girl. Fortunately, Sophonisba did not agree.

“You're the most graceful woman in Carthage,” she said. “The others will be jealous, so pay them no mind. One would think you were carved by an artist instead of born from between a woman's legs. And your baby . . . Mother was beside herself. You cannot tell it to look at her now, but this afternoon she went to her chambers and cried, thinking about him. She hasn't done that since she learned of my father's death.”

Imilce held the palm wine without lifting it. “Did the child so disappoint her?”

“Disappoint?” Sophonisba asked. She ridged her forehead in a manner that temporarily rendered her surprisingly unattractive. Then she dropped the expression and all was as before. “She was moved to tears of joy. She beheld her firstborn grandson for the first time today. She saw her son in his face and in that is her husband's face made immortal. No, she was not disappointed. What she felt
was . . . It was rapture.”

Imilce stared at her for a moment.

Noting the look, Sophonisba stepped closer. She said, “Though I am just a girl, I think perhaps we can be friends. Would you like that?”

Imilce nodded. “Very much.”

“Good. As my service to you, I will tell you everything there is to know about Carthage. Everything important, at least. But first, you must speak to me. Tell me of my brothers. I've not seen any of them save Mago in years. Truthfully, sister, I do not remember my other brothers at all. Tell me about them, and then about other young men. The noble ones. I am as yet unmarried. There is a boy here, a Massylii prince named Masinissa, who is quite taken with me. He says he will have me for his wife someday. Have you heard of him?”

“No,” Imilce answered.

A ripple of disappointment passed over the girl's face. “Well . . . You will in years to come. I might have him as a husband, but not without knowing something of real men, men of action. Masinissa is handsome, but he is as yet a boy. So, tell me. Talk. I will hold my tongue while you do.”

Though the girl did hold her tongue, Imilce began slowly. She wanted to convey how much Sophonisba had just done for her, how she was awash in relief and affection. How only this girl among all those whom Imilce had so far met had spoken to her with an open face. But she had not been asked this, so instead she cleared her throat, sipped the palm wine, and answered all of Sophonisba's questions as completely as she could. Though she carried on bleeding, silently, secretly, she knew she could bear this world a little longer.

When he first heard about the Roman legions' arrival in northern Iberia, Hanno desperately wished that he possessed his eldest brother's brilliance, or Mago's intelligence, or Hasdrubal's boldness. But he also remembered that he had left them all months before, with farewells given through gritted teeth. The last time he spoke with Hannibal, the words between them had boiled almost to violence. It was the nearest Hanno had come since they were adolescents to lashing out physically at his brother. There had been a time when they often fought each other to the ground and came away bruised and bloody. But as they both became more adept at warcraft they seemed to recognize a tendril of threat that they dared not touch. Still, when Hannibal ordered him to stay south of the Pyrenees Hanno suffered through a few moments of wanting to swing for his brother's head with something heavy and sharp. It was not just the order. It was the timing as well, the evening he received it, and the host of things it suggested his brother knew of and thought about him.