David Durham - Pride of Carthage

“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?”