Pride of Carthage (3 page)

As everyone knew this, few bothered to protest when the commander retired. He did so quietly, leaving his brothers to share among themselves his portion of pleasure, which took on a more carnal tone after his departure. Later that evening, Hannibal stood on the balcony of his bedroom overlooking the city, watching the play of light from the many fires, listening to the muffled shouts of revelry in the streets. He took it all in with a silent stillness at his center that was neither joy nor contentment nor pride but something for which he had no name. Though the night was chill, he was clothed only in a robe. The silken fabric draped over his shoulders and fell the entire length of him, brushing the polished stones beneath his feet.

Behind him, his chamber glowed brightly. It was a luxurious museum of carved mahogany and eastern fabrics, low couches and narrow-legged tables that seemed to produce fruit and drink of their own accord, never empty, never wilting. The architects of this deception hid in the shadows and corners of the room. These slim servants were ever present, but so vacant of face and so secretive in their work that one could stand rimmed by them and feel completely alone. A single fireplace heated the room, so large that a stallion could have walked upright into the flames. Like that of the banquet he had so recently escaped, none of the opulence behind him was of his own design, none of it close to his heart. It corresponded to a role he must fill. And it was a gift to her who had granted him immortality.

Though his robe was too luxurious for his tastes, he was thankful for the thinness of it. With his eyes closed, he concentrated on the heat at his back and the chill night air on his face and the sensation of movement as heat rushed from the room and fled into the sky above. There was something intoxicating about it, as if he might himself fly up with the warmth, overcome the night, and look down upon his city from the sky, might for a moment glimpse the world from a god's perspective. He even saw this in his mind's eye, a strange swirling view that no man had ever had. He looked down upon the curve of creation from a distance so great that the creatures below moved without sound or identity, without the passions and petty desires so apparent from up close.

He opened his eyes and all was as before, the city around him, his marble balcony open to the night sky. The blue light of the moon fell upon him and the stone and even the glimmering sea with the same pale tint. How strange it was that at moments of celebration he was struck with bouts of melancholy. Part of his mind glowed with the knowledge of another success and looked forward to the quiet moments he would soon be able to share with his brothers. But another part of him already viewed the conquest of Arbocala as a distant event, lackluster, a mediocre episode from the past. Some men would have taken such a victory and spent the rest of their lives reminding others of it, accomplishing only the exercise of their tongues in their own praise. Perhaps he was a battleground upon which two gods contested an issue he had no inkling of. Why else would he strive and strive and then feel empty . . . ?

A voice broke through his thoughts. “Hannibal? Come and welcome your beloved.”

He turned to see his wife approaching, arms cradled around a sleeping infant. “You have made us wait long enough,” she said. Her Carthaginian was smooth and measured, though her pronunciation had a rough edge to it, an indelicacy of her native tongue that made her voice somewhat masculine as compared with the fine artistry of her features. She was, after all, a native of Iberia, daughter of Ilapan, a chieftain of the Baetis people. Her marriage had thrown her completely into the arms of a foreign culture, and yet she had adapted quickly, gracefully. Hannibal had even come to believe the apparent affection between them to be real. At times, this gave him great joy; at others, it concerned him more than indifference would have.

Imilce stopped some distance from the balcony. “Come out of the cold. Your son is here, inside, where you should be as well.”

Hannibal did as requested. He moved slowly, taking the woman in with his eyes, a wary look as if he was studying her for signs that she was not who she claimed. Hers was a thin-lined beauty, eyebrows of faint brown that seemed drawn each with the single stroke of a quill, lips with no pout at all but rather a wavering, serpentine elegance. Her features were held together with a brittle energy, as if she were a vessel that contained within it the spirit of a petulant, well-loved child, a glimmering intelligence that had been, in fact, the first thing that drew his eyes to her. He slid a hand to the small of her back, pulled her close, and touched his lips to the smooth olive skin of her forehead. He inhaled her hair. The scent was as he remembered, faintly flowered, faintly peppered. She was just the same.

Though she was the same as before, his son most certainly was not. Five months seemed to have doubled his size. No longer was he a seed of child that Hannibal could hold completely within his upheld palms. No longer was he pale and wrinkled and bald. His complexion had ripened. He was thick around the wrists, and his clenched fists already seemed mallets to be contended with. The father saw himself in the child's full lips and this pleased him. He took the boy awkwardly from his mother. The child's head lolled back. Hannibal righted it and cautiously lowered himself to a stool.

“You're just like your older sister,” Imilce said. “Kind as she has been to me, Sapanibal, too, tries to wake him through clumsiness. Always wants to see his gray eyes, she says. But it will not work this time. He's full of his mother's milk and content, drunk with all the food he asks of all the world.”

Hannibal raised his eyes to study her. “Enjoy it, Mother, for soon this one will look up and see a world beyond your breasts. Then he'll be all mine.”

“Never,” Imilce said. She made as if to take the child, but did not. “So how do you feel in victory, husband?”

“As ever, Imilce. I feel the nagging of neglect.”

“Hungry already?”

“There is always some portion of me left unfilled.”

“What can you tell me of the campaign?”

The commander shrugged and sighed and cleared his throat. He said there was little to tell. But she waited, and he found first one thing and then another to mention. The three brothers had returned in good health, each unscathed. Arbocala was theirs, not that this was a great gain, for the city was a sadder collection of hovels than Mastia had been before Hasdrubal the Handsome built New Carthage upon it. The Arbocalians had been not only defiant but also arrogant and disrespectful and treacherous. They murdered a party sent inside the city to present surrender terms. They flung the decapitated bodies out with catapults and had their heads mounted on posts above the city's walls. This insult Hannibal felt keenly, for he had almost sent Hasdrubal in with the delegation. They were so stubborn a people that the only good he could see in the whole venture was the possibility of making them into soldiers for Carthage. If they had the sense to see this, they would find themselves richer than they had ever imagined. But he doubted it would be an easy thing to convince them of. He imagined that even now they were bubbling with hatred and anxious for some way to break the treaties and be free again.

“It will never be an easy task to hold this domain together,” he said. “You Iberians are a troublesome lot, like wild dogs mastered by neither force nor friendship.”

The baby grimaced, cocked his head, and strained against his father's arms. Imilce reached for him.

“He's got the blood of those wild dogs in his veins, you know,” she said. “Do not anger him. We should let him sleep in peace now. You'll have your fill of him tomorrow.”

She walked to the edge of the room and handed the child to a servant who stood waiting. She whispered to her and the girl withdrew, moving backward and bowing and cradling the baby all at once. Imilce spoke then to the room, two sharp words in her native tongue. She was answered by rustling in the shadows along the wall, the slight sound of movement, servants slipping from the room through several different exits, never seen except in glimpses.

A moment later they were all gone, and Imilce turned back to her husband. Her face already looked different, as if her cheeks had flushed and her eyes grown more sensual. As she walked toward him she pulled the pins from her tightly bound hair. The dark strands fell loose and draped around her shoulders. It seemed the mother in her had left the room with the child, and here was a different sort of creature.

“Now we are alone,” she said. “So show me.”

The commander smiled and stood for this custom of theirs. He released the belt of his gown and slid the material off his shoulders and let it drop to the ground. He stood naked before her, hands held out beside his hips, palms upward so that she could see the parts of his body. The long muscles of his legs stood out each in its layered place; his calves seemed smooth river stones slipped beneath his flesh, the cords of his inner thigh like ribbons stretched taut. His sex nestled in its place somewhat shyly, and above it the ridged compartments of his torso swept up into the bulk of his chest and the wide stretch of his shoulders.

“As you can see,” he said, “there's no new mark upon me, neither nick nor bruise.”

The woman's eyes dipped down toward his groin. “Nothing lopped off?”

Hannibal smiled. “No, I am still complete. They did not touch me.”

“But you touched them?” she asked.

“Surely. There are many now who regret their actions, some that do so from the afterworld.”

“But yourself, you have nothing to regret?”

He followed her with his eyes as she circled him. “Baal was beside me in this venture. I was simply the humble servant of his will.”

From behind him, she said, “Is that so? Hannibal bends to another's will?”

“If that other is my god, yes.”

Imilce placed a finger at the base of his neck and traced the line of his spine, pulling away just above his buttocks. “I see,” she said. “And what's this?”

“What?” Hannibal craned his neck around to see, but before he had done so Imilce showed her teeth and nipped the flesh of his shoulder. He spun away from her and then swept back and pressed her to his chest and carried her toward the bed, feet dangling above the floor.

Later that evening, Hannibal lay upon blankets thrown across the floor. He spread out on his chest, eyes intent on nothing except the folds on the fabric just before him, the ridges and swells of it, the range of peaks that he had plucked up with his fingers and now studied like objects made of stone. Imilce slipped quietly back into the room. She paused to watch him from a dim place against the wall, and then she let her gown drop again. She dipped her fingers into a bowl of flavored water and swept them across her swollen nipples. She moved forward into the lamplight. She climbed on her husband's back and settled with her spine cradled in his, her shoulders resting on the stretch of his back, his buttocks molded into the hollow above hers. Neither spoke for some time, but when Imilce did it was clear enough of what she spoke.

“So, you are going to do it, are you not? You will attack Rome?”

“The time is near and I am ready.”

“Of course you are ready. When were you ever not ready? But Hannibal, I do think you push things too quickly. I will not try to convince you of this. I know your mind is your own, but tell me, love, where will this course lead?”

“To glory.”

Imilce stared up at the ceiling as she thought about this. One of the lamps had begun to smoke and a ribbon of black haze floated across the plaster like an eel seeking a home. “Is that all?” she asked. “Glory?”

“And justice as well. Freedom. And yes, you might ask—vengeance.” Hannibal exhaled a long breath and spoke with a curtness to his words. “I will not have this discussion with you. Imilce, your husband is no normal man. I was born for this. That is all there is to it. I love you too much to be vexed with you; so stop.”

Imilce rolled over and nestled under his arm. He adjusted to suit her and pulled her in close. “Do you know what I thought when I first saw you?” Imilce asked. “It wasn't on our wedding day, as you may think. I spied on you before that. I hid once in the curtains along the walls in my father's court when he was entertaining you. I slit the fabric just enough to look out at you.”

“You're father would've skinned you alive for that,” Hannibal said.

“Perhaps, but he was desperate to wed himself to the Barcas. He was not so powerful as you believed.”

“I know. The Baetis are of little importance now. Perhaps I should throw you to the side and find another bride.”

Imilce pressed her teeth against the flesh of his shoulder, but otherwise ignored his comment. “I was afraid of you,” she said. “Resting on the couches you looked like a lion so confident in his strength he has only to lie down and stretch to make others tremble. I feared that you would devour me. I thought for a moment that I should step out from behind that curtain and disgrace myself and ruin the marriage plans.”

“But you did not do that.”

“No, because as much as I trembled at the thought of you, you pulled me toward you. I felt, perhaps, like an insect so attracted to the light of the torch that it flies into the flame. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

Hannibal nodded. “At Arbocala I met a young soldier who'd behaved bravely,” he said. “In honor of this I bestowed upon his humble family a plantation outside of Carthage. I gave his people slaves and a small fortune in silver and in the space of a few moments changed their lives forever. That is the power I have because of the things I accomplish. And if I can give all of that to a boy soldier, what is a suitable present for my wife? Not simply treasure. Not more servants. These things are not enough. In two years, you will be able to look from the balcony of this or any other palace you choose and know that all the Mediterranean world is yours to shape. How many men can say that to their wives and mean it? Would you like that to be so?”

Imilce squeezed herself further under him, until he rose up and she could wrap her legs around him. She looked at him frankly, long, as if she might disclose some secret to him. But then she smiled and stretched up toward him and brushed her lips across his and touched him gently with her tongue.