David Durham - Pride of Carthage

It had been good to own his hair again and feel it growing thick around him. But it was good to be free of it also. He pressed the blade against his flesh and slid it carefully across the contours created by his skull, drawing blood here and there, once getting the angle wrong and slicing up a ribbon of flesh. But these were tiny wounds compared to others he had suffered. He had never known that the air had fingers. He felt them that night, gentle pressure against the new skin of his scalp, like the spirits of his ancestors reaching out to caress him. Strange as it was, he felt comforted by the touch.

The next day he traded a large Tarentine gold coin for a farmer's old mule. And the following day he bought a fresh-killed boar, a female and no great burden strapped to the mule's back. He secured his spear beneath the load in such a way as to make it look more like a tool and less like a weapon. He gave his other meager possessions to any field workers who acknowledged him as he passed: a few more coins to this one, his dagger to another, random articles of booty to still others. By the time he reached the city he carried nothing on his person but a long cloak that fell back off his shoulders. He had long ago learned that much of one's identity as a slave was revealed in the eyes. He cast them down in the manner he remembered as he entered the Colline gate. If the guards noticed him at all they kept it to themselves.

Again he was within Rome. It was as it had ever been. The bustle and stench were the same; the noise and clatter of wagons and confusion of tongues had not changed in the slightest. He remembered the route to his old master's home, but he did not take it. This mission was less personal than that. He wound through the cramped streets, down the ridge of the Esquiline hill. He led the mule behind him, lowering his eyes whenever he noticed someone watching him. He did not need to look up often, for he knew this city as if he had never left. There was nothing he needed to see again.

He did not even truly look up when he reached the edge of the Forum. He hung back near the wall of an adjacent building, as if waiting for his master. People thronged the place. He heard their talk and smelled their perfumes and the bodies the fragrances disguised. He even felt the heat radiating off their skin and the cool seeping up from the marble of the flooring and out of the pillars and statues adorning the place. He still did not look up. He did not need to study people's faces to know the expressions they would bear. He could see the wrinkled faces of the old women in his mind as clearly as any around him, the prominent noses of senators, held high. He knew he would catch glimpses of matrons' thighs, of young men's hairy torsos, of children at play in a world of their own.

He placed his fingers on the clasp that held his cloak fastened at the neck. He did not loosen it immediately, for to do so was to change everything that could be changed in his life. He did not feel the fear he might have expected. Neither did he feel the hatred that he had harbored for so many years. Instead, each passing breath filled him with a new portion of something like euphoria. For the first time in his adult life, he felt he had complete control of his place in the world. He understood that the crimes Rome had done to him could never be escaped, never mended, never made right or forgotten; they could only be faced and cleansed through blood and oblivion, and through release from memory. There was no defeat in this. Instead, it was the ultimate revelation, a complete refutation of the single thing that had bound him to slavery—the fact that his own mortality had trapped him. Free of that, he would be free of all the chains that weighed him down.

It was a religious moment, one that must be sanctified with an offering. With that in mind, he loosened his spear and tugged it free of the mule. He smacked the creature on the bottom and watched it trot away. Still, nobody paused to note him, but that was about to change. He unclipped the clasp and yanked the robe from his shoulders. He tossed it high into the air with a snap of his wrist and strode toward the center of the crowd.

“Rome!” he yelled, speaking Latin. “How do you live without my black heart to beat for you?”

He punctuated this by thumping his knuckles against his chest. For a moment all around him he watched images of the world slowing from motion to stillness: the tail end of words spoken fluttered away on the breeze, laughter fell to silence, his cloak rumpled onto the stones, a hundred Roman faces turned and stared at him. He swung his spear into a two-handed grip, squatted slightly, stretched his eyes open wide and frantic, quick as those of a hunting leopard. Already he saw soldiers converging on him from several directions.

Good, he thought. Good. Tusselo will be a slave no longer.

To his amazement, Mago discovered that the sun had turned black. That was why he paused on his mount, turned sideways, and stared at it. He could not take his eyes off it. The black orb pulled at him as if it were a deep well and he were tumbling toward it. It did not matter that battle raged around him. The Romans who had boxed them in for days now had sprung their trap and the full brute force of three legions slammed into him from as many sides. His face was wet with blood that had sprayed up from a man some distance from him whose head had been severed from his standing body, making him a momentary fountain. His lieutenant was screaming that they must withdraw, but for a few seconds none of this mattered as much as the fact that the sun had gone black.

He heard a voice call his name. It was urgent, moist, and close to his ear, a whisper that somehow penetrated the din. As if injured by the impact of the voice, Mago's horse shuddered. He felt its forelegs buckle and thought he was going to fly over its head. He was still staring at the sun, however, and instead of toppling forward the mount kicked out twistingly and tilted to the side. Mago saw the sun flare and thought the orb smiled maliciously. Then the horse smashed against the ground. The impact drew his complete attention. He saw the pilum jutting out of the mare's chest, and saw her kicking and struggling to rise, and realized that his leg was trapped all the way up to his groin. It amazed him that he had not been injured; he felt no pain, although he was aware that the animal's weight was grinding him against an exposed rib of gray rock.

“Mago? General, you must wake for a moment. . . .”

He snapped at the speaker, saying he was not asleep. He was trapped! Help him! But the man would not and Mago had to twist and squirm and shove at the horse. The mount looked back at him, neck bent unnaturally, her eyes like those of a mistreated dog, offended, disappointed. Mago kicked her off with his free leg and rose to survey the scene. But what was this? There was no sign of his army at all, not even of the speaker. Instead he was alone among the enemy host. They encircled him, approaching from all directions, stepping slowly, menacingly, pila pointed at him like thousands of erect, deadly penises. Their helmets caught and reflected the black glow of the sun. He realized that his mouth was awash with wine. It was an evil taste. He exhaled it on each breath and had the momentary thought that blood was the same as wine. Perhaps he had already been pierced. He looked down to find the wound and in the anxiety of the moment his vision blurred and darkened. He realized that his eyes were closed and he pried them open.

One view of the world peeled over another. He looked up into the face of a man named Gadeer, a Moor, one of his captains. Gadeer tilted the mouth of a skin to his lips and tried to pour more wine into him. Mago twisted his head away, cursing.

“I'm sorry,” the Moor said, “but we have found nothing better for you. The physician was lost, perhaps captured. If possible we will get some unction from one of the other boats.”