Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

  Afterward she balled up in exhaustion. She folded in on herself and tried to separate the threads of narrative in a manner that made sense. She had no idea what would befall Sophonisba. She had seen her sister drop to her knees before the king, seen that Sophonisba was speaking and he listening, but that was all she knew. They could not have stayed a moment longer. Massylii soldiers were working toward them through the crowd, battering people about the heads and upraised arms, jerking them up to their feet and shoving them into groups by sex and rank. At any moment, they would have been noticed. It took a massive effort of cold determination to tug Imilce into motion, but she did it. Sophonisba had made her decision; she and Imilce had to do the same.

  And Hanno. What of her brother? Masinissa had named his method of death. She tried to curse him as a liar, but his very presence suggested he spoke the truth. She could not imagine what Masinissa and the Romans had done, but it must have been something devious. Hanno had gone out to cleanse himself for the meeting with the consul, full of hope. Just a few days ago when they had parted, he had been more alive than she had ever seen him. He stood before her in a corselet of orange, protected by bronze plates that scaled over each other like the skin of some armored fish. He held a helmet clamped under one arm and looked at her with a grave intensity that was, silently, a form of speech.

  “Are you going to make war or peace?” she asked.

  “Let us pray that it be peace,” he said. “We've all had enough of war.”

  Sapanibal had nodded then and said she hoped the Romans felt the same way, but as they were a more warlike people she did not put too much stock in the wish. “At least,” she said, “you've built for yourself a strong position here. You have African brothers, as you wished.”

  Hanno closed his eyes at this, first one and then the other, and then he opened them in the same order, as if they registered a wave of fatigue passing through him. “Sapanibal, for all my days I will grieve that bargain. The union only need last until the war is done. Then, on my word, I'll personally free her—if that's what she wishes.”

  “You make that promise to me?” Sapanibal asked. “Why not make it to Sophonisba?”

  “You'll take the message to her. It's hard for me to look at her now. She utters not a single word of complaint, but that only makes this marriage seem a greater crime.”

  Sapanibal had been surprised at what he said next. The words did not seem to fit the image she had of him standing there, an armored warrior ready to ride toward the enemy. He did not soften his erect posture or come any nearer to her, but he had made a confession to her. He said that for all the years he could remember, he had feared Hannibal, feared and envied him. Hannibal had made his life a misery just by being so gifted, so beloved by all who witnessed his deadly grace. But recently this had not mattered to Hanno as much. He had come to believe that they are all put on the earth to be who they are, not to aspire to be anyone else, not to be measured against others at all, but rather weighed on a scale calibrated each to one's own special trials. And if he could make peace with the consul on the terms they had already set forth, then he would have achieved something great of his own.

  “Hannibal makes war better than anyone,” he had said, “but perhaps Hanno will find a gift for making peace.”

  That was what he had said, what he had thought, felt, hoped. It was madness that a man aspiring to such things died with them undone. He was gone, and she had nothing to take home to present her mother. Nothing that had come from his dead body, no trinket taken from his neck, no locket of hair, no ring.

  When she finally looked up—ashen, cheeks sunk, and lips still trembling—Imilce was sitting near at hand. She cradled her legs up to her chest, hugging them into her, with her chin resting on one knee. Sapanibal did not speak to her, but it filled her with affection just to know Imilce was near and that she was not yet totally alone in the world.

  They did not travel far that night, just out of sight of Cirta, really; then they cut in and anchored off a fishing village. That evening the crew stripped all distinguishing trappings from the vessel. They furled both the flag of Carthage and the Barca lion. They tossed watered-down excrement onto the sail, for it was far too white to go unnoticed. They pried the golden eyeballs of Yam off the prow and scratched at the face painted there with hooks to make it look old and ill maintained, and they piled fishing nets into heaps at visible points on the deck.

  In the dead of night, they lifted anchor and moved on. They tried to go slowly, for the coast was not without dangerous shoals, but they were passing the Roman landing point and had no wish to dally either. Indeed, at first light they spotted an entire fleet of Roman vessels beached along the shore. Hundreds of them. And there were more coming. The captain had thought to pass at half-sail, but spotting several ships moving in from the north, he gave the order to bend all the sails and fly behind the wind. Fortunately, the gods favored them again. They passed unnoticed, or at least without piquing the enemy's interest.

  Later that day a Roman quinquereme came upon them at an angle heading toward the shore. The warship passed within shouting distance, a lean craft four times their length. Oars, stacked three rows high and numbering almost three hundred, dipped into the water, sliced up into the air, and splashed back down, all to the beat of a great drum that even from a distance thudded against Sapanibal's temples. The vessel dwarfed theirs completely. It cut the sea into two foaming curls, interrupted by the lifting and submerging of the prow through the waves, an armored prong that looked like the head of an angry whale each time it broke the surface. Had it rammed them it would have splintered their boat into pieces and plowed through them without losing the slightest momentum. But the quinquereme did not turn toward them. It just rowed on, some of the crew peering over long enough to inspect them in passing, uninterested, on other business they deemed more important.

  They sailed on into the night, turned the point of Cape Farina the next morning, and steered straight for Carthage across a frothy sea, the glass-clear water whipped into foam by the same wind that carried them home. That afternoon, the captain approached the two women where they sat behind a shelter toward the rear of the boat. He walked steadily, even though the boat heaved with their progress, and he stood before them, body swaying to adjust to the boat's pitching. He did not look at them at first, but just remained nearby, kneading the coarse hairs of his beard with his thick fingers.

  “It's ill news that we carry home with us,” he said finally. “It's likely we'll be the first back with word of Hanno's defeat. The Council won't look on this kindly at all. Perhaps you should report the news in your brother's name.”

  “You fear they'll kill the messenger?”

  He squatted and looked at Sapanibal. His eyes were a remarkable blue, as if they held the sea. “They wouldn't harm you, but me or one of my men?” He pinched the air and flicked his fingers, as if tossing sand into the wind. “Tell them to call Hannibal back, if they haven't done so already. Nothing else can save us now. Without him, Rome will grind us like wheat beneath a millstone . . .”

  “Is this the state of Carthaginian manhood?” Sapanibal asked, scornfully. “You ask a woman to do your work, and then despair of the nation in same breath. Have you no pride?”

  Under his sunburn the captain flushed, but he answered calmly, so firm in his reasoning that anger was not necessary. “If I speak out of turn, please silence me before I offend. But think of Troy, my lady. Think of Thebes. And there are other cities whose names are no longer spoken. If Rome seeks a pretext to wipe us off the earth they have only to look into the past. Only a fool believes that a victor knows mercy.”

  “So you know the future as well as the past? No one yet wears the crown of victory in this war.”

  “Just so,” the captain said. “This is why the Council must call Hannibal home. I pray they already have.”

  Once the captain rose and moved off Imilce said, “Carthage will not perish. My son's life will never turn on such catastroph
e. I must believe this, or lie down and die of grief right now.”

  Imilce stopped short, glancing sideways, inhaling through her nose to indicate that perhaps she was being foolish. But in a few moments she lifted her eyes. “Do you love no one, sister?” she asked. “No one who makes you imagine the best of the coming world?”

  Sapanibal's first impulse was to answer scornfully. Did the question suggest that she was unlovable? But looking into Imilce's eyes she knew otherwise. They were a wonderfully light gray, flecked with streaks of metallic brilliance, set against a white background almost clear of blemish. They stared at her with such naked kindness that she wanted to reach out and kiss each orb. Why was her instinct always to calculate her place in the world as if in combat? She had to put such thoughts behind her. And how could she have thought herself superior to this woman? Sapanibal knew nothing more than Imilce did. She was no wiser. No stronger. She answered honestly.

  “There is a man,” she said.

  “Is there? And do you love him truly?”

  “I've never told him so,” Sapanibal said, “but perhaps I do. He fills me with fear, but it's not only fear . . .”

  “Such is the one cruelty of Tanit,” Imilce said. “She binds together love and loss so that one always lies beneath the skin of the other. But you must tell him. Go to him at the first opportunity. We have so little, Sapanibal. All around us things come and go. People live and die. We kill each other for petty things. We make such a great noise across the world, and why? Who is ever happy because of any of this? Who? Have you ever been happy?”

  One of the sailors shouted that he had spotted Carthage. The two women rose and looked out over the water.

  “There were times when I thought I was,” Sapanibal said, “but those were delusions.”

  Sapanibal felt the other woman's thin fingers grip her wrist. “No! No, those moments were the truth. It's all the confusion we make that's the delusion. I know this for sure. I asked Hannibal to bring me the world. I wanted to be queen over all that I could, but that was the fancy of a child. If he delivered the world to me now, I would hand it back. I would ask, At what cost, this? What I want most now is to make new memories like the old ones that I cherish. Like birthing Little Hammer and putting him to my breast the first time. Like lying cradled in the hollow of my husband's back. Hannibal once fed me grapes by putting them first into his mouth so that I took them from his lips to mine. That was truth. Sister . . . why do you cry?”

  Sapanibal shook her head fiercely, and then swiped at the tears with her fingers. “The salt water stings my eyes. That's all.” And a moment later—as she found herself thinking of Imago Messano and the best route from the harbor up to his villa—she said, “Please continue, Imilce. Tell me more of what you've found to be truth.”

  For several days after arriving in Cirta, Masinissa felt near to bursting with bliss. He had solved the two great problems of his life: his enemy was defeated; his love his to possess. And not only had Syphax been crushed; he was virtually forgotten. That first afternoon in the courtyard, Sophonisba had dropped to her knees and looked up at him from behind the amazing beauty that was her face. Tears hung at the rims of both her eyes. Her lips glistened from the moisture of her tongue. Two maroon swipes of color flushed across her cheeks. She swore to him that she had never stopped being true to him. She said she loved him and only him, and would love only him her entire life. Each time Syphax touched her, she had cursed the fact that she had skin. Each time he pushed inside her, she felt pain and revulsion instead of pleasure and love. She asked the gods to change her from a woman into some other creature. She said she would rather be a vulture, a frog, or a crocodile or a scorpion. She said that each night she would break a vase of Grecian clay and hold the jagged shards to her skin and pray for the power to sink them home and cut her face to shreds. She wanted him to know—no matter what fate held for her—that she had only ever wanted to be his wife. That was why it saddened her so to know that instead she would be ravaged by Roman soldiers. In a few days they would shove her onto a ship and sail her into slavery. They would take everything that she had wanted to give him and twist it into torturous retribution.

  By all the gods, she was a revelation. The fascination he had felt for her in his youth was simply boyish infatuation compared with the ardor that gripped him as he looked down on her. And she spoke the truth! Clearly, she spoke the truth, both about her feelings for him and about the danger she now faced. And as this was so . . . Well, he could not let it be so. He did not have to. He was the king of all Numidia. Nothing that he wished to see done was impossible.

  He lifted her to her feet and before the magistrates of the city, before even the eyes of the former king, with the hasty blessings of Syphax' own priests, as his army continued to pour in through the gates, without asking her views, in the space of a few moments . . . he married her. And then began his bliss. For the next few days, he barely left their private chambers at all. He made love to and with her again and again on the bed that had once been Syphax'. She laughed at him as they took pleasure in each other, and this was sweeter still. When her body was close to his, he wanted to possess every inch of her being. He could not stop his hands moving all over her, his fingers kneading, feeling the smoothness of her skin, the weight and contours of her. He wanted to consume her, to bury his face in the cleft between her breasts and cry with a joy so complete it felt akin to pain.

  The weight of doubt so long on him lifted. He had his throne, his wife, his world. With Publius recalled to Rome, he could get on with carving his name across Africa. Maybe, he even ventured to think, Carthage would sue for peace. He could make overtures of friendship to them once more. Perhaps he had been wrong. Things done can sometimes be undone. . . . Sophonisba said it herself. When Hannibal returned, Carthage would again see reason. Perhaps Masinissa would find them an ally still. Their old friendship was worth more than this new dalliance with Rome. Sophonisba made things seem amazingly clear.

  So he thought for a few precious days. Then Publius arrived, fresh from overseeing the aftermath of the fiery massacre, already having squelched several other Libyan towns and taken their leaders prisoner.

  From the first glimpse of him striding into the room—strong-arming his guard to the side—Masinissa felt the substance behind the façade of his world crumbling. Publius yelled at him in Greek, cursed him, and asked him the same questions over and over again. It was so shocking an entrance that Masinissa could only stare at him, openmouthed, trying to make sense of his words and yet yearning not to. The Roman asked: Was he mad? A fool? Had he lost his reason? Publius repeated these questions until they became accusations. Did he really think he could wed her? It was pure madness. Sophonisba was a prisoner of Rome, as a member of the Barca family and as Syphax' wife. That's who she was, and that's why she would have to be sent to Rome. Had he forgotten that they were at war?

  “I let you take the city as a gift,” Publius said, “so that you might know I was true to my word, but do you believe you can play me for a fool? Why would you do this?”

  “What do you mean, why?” Masinissa asked.

  “Why would you do this?”

  “Have you never loved? Ask me why I breathe; the reason is the same.”

  “Are you bewitched?” Publius asked.

  Masinissa stuttered that he might be. He stared into the other man's eyes and nodded. Maybe he had been bewitched. But it did not matter: They were married already. Sophonisba was his wife, and no harm could come to her now. He had slipped into speaking Massylii, but the consul brought him back to Greek.

  “Foolish boy,” Publius said. His anger seemed to fade. “My foolish boy. You thought this would save her? Listen, let us sit down and speak like brothers. Speak plainly to me and I will do the same to you.”

  What passed between the two men after that, Masinissa would only remember in a fragmented jumble that could not possibly have comprised an entire day, but did, apparently—spanned all the hours from the sun
's rising to its setting. Publius asked him about Sophonisba and listened as the Numidian told him everything. He went all the way back to the first time he saw her. He told him about the time they had ridden out from Carthage under the cover of night. He had told her all the things that could be and she had laughed at him. So cruel she sometimes was. But she had also brought him to ecstasy with a single touch of her fingers. And cruelty was a useful trait. She would make a fine queen. She was a woman—not a girl—who made anything possible.

  The consul paced through most of this, but he did not interrupt. He did not frown or joke or shout. But finally he stepped close and slipped a hand over the Numidian's shoulder. He caressed the back of his neck and pulled him in. With his forehead touching Masinissa's temple, Publius' words brushed his face like the hot breaths of a lover. “Masinissa, do not think I'm deaf to your love. But what you wish cannot be. We are fighting for the world together. Why would you risk this for the pleasures of a woman? If you are to be worthy of a partnership with Rome, you must prove yourself—not just with your skill atop a horse but with your reason, with your wisdom in thought and action. Sophonisba can never be your wife. I'm sorry I did not make this clearer to you before you came here. She has a strong pull and men such as you feel emotion deeply. I understand this. But the promise of union you shared with her as a youth is no more. It's gone with the past and will never be again. There is something more. . . .”

  The consul brushed his lips against the man's cheek. He ran his hand up into the African's locks and clamped his fingers there. “Do you think this is easy for me?” he whispered. “Think about it. My nation has been humiliated, my family destroyed. I am here trying to save the world as my people know it. In Iberia, some of the tribes declared me a living god. Even some among my own troops believe I walk blessed by Jupiter's hand. But you and I know the truth of these things, don't we? The gods are silent in me; are they the same in you? It may be that I lose everything tomorrow. I simply don't know. I have nothing but these hands and this mind. . . . These are the things with which I try to save my people. That is why I need you with me. The hour soon comes when I will meet Hannibal himself. You must be there.”