David Durham - Pride of Carthage

The prince took exception to all of this. He dropped to his knees and said that he was another Balatur, a man possessed of a love so complete it eclipsed all others, as the sun does the stars. When they were joined, their love would be a tale for the ages. After he helped Carthage to defeat Rome, he would become king. Sophonisba would be his queen and together they would rule an empire second only to Carthage in its glory. He reminded her that he was no mere boy. He was the son of King Gaia and he would prove himself worthy of the Barca family very soon. He promised this with his very life.

Sophonisba's voice had taken on a passionate urgency as she recalled the prince's words. She breathed them in and out so that they had a husky quality, as if heated with desire. But when she finished this portion of her story, she laughed and let the emotion drop from her face, like a mask lowered by the hand that held it.

“Can you imagine such a show?” she asked. “I almost burst into tears right there at that moment. Tears of laughter, that is.”

“Sophonisba!” Imilce said. “Are you so cruel? Never has a man spoken to me thus. Not even my husband!”

“And in that is a measure of my brother's truthfulness,” she answered. “You see, I did not tell you that during all of this poetry the young prince managed to move next to me and take me in his arms. He bade me look out at the sky and the land and wonder at it—as if he'd created it all for me! And all the time he was trying to rub himself against me. He pretended that he was not, but I could feel his stiffness. He is truly a man of two parts: one of them a poet and the other a serpent with searching tongue. Yes, his words were fine, but fast upon them he was breathing in my ear, begging me for a taste of our wedding night, saying I cannot possibly keep him waiting till then. I told him I could do just that, and that I'd have him hunted down and quartered if he took me against my will.”

“Sophonisba!”

The girl laughed. “That is just what he said. ‘Sophonisba!' He looked ready to cry. He would have, I am sure, except that I did him a small favor.”

She let this statement linger, waiting for Imilce to rise to it. “What sort of favor?”

“I touched it,” Sophonisba said, showing with an outstretched finger how gentle and innocent the gesture had been. “I asked him to show me the length of his love, and when he did I gave it a touch. Just a fingertip and he shot his praise to the gods.”

Imilce did not know how to configure her face. It wavered between amusement and incredulity and outright reproach. Eventually, she said, “Sophonisba, hear me and believe me: You cannot play with men's affections this way.”

“You should not fear, Imilce, he is only a boy, not yet a man. Though enthusiastic, yes. And handsomely gifted, if you understand me . . . Think of it, sister! The future king of Numidia, brave Masinissa, who says he's going to join Hasdrubal in Iberia this spring—conquered by the touch of a finger! Boys are such strange creatures.”

“Boys grow to men quickly,” Imilce said. “As do girls to women.”

“Yes, yes.” Sophonisba poured herself a drink of lemon-flavored water. She drained the glass in a few long drafts, as quickly as any thirsty worker. But when she glanced up, her face was again a beguiling conglomeration of features. Imilce realized that the trick of her beauty was that her face was always surprising. Somehow, each time one saw her she seemed newly created, as if her features were still wet from the touch of a sculptor's fingers. It took Imilce's breath away and filled her with warmth just because of their proximity. Masinissa did not stand a chance.

On a morning early in the spring, Hannibal found the letter waiting for him like any other piece of mail. It lay upon his desk among several other scrolls: dispatches from Carthage; inventories and figures compiled by Bostar; noncommittal missives from several Roman ally states, whose chiefs were willing to speak secretly with him but as yet gave him nothing; and a document from the king of Macedon. Compared to these, it had the least authority on a commander's desk, but his eyes settled on it alone out of all the rest. He recognized the size of the papyrus and the emblem on the seal. His own.

Hannibal dismissed his secretaries with instructions that he not be disturbed. Alone in the small cottage, he took a seat, plucked up the scroll, and wiped the others to the side with his forearm. He dug under the seal with his fingernail and rolled out the brittle material. It crackled under his fingers, ridged and imperfect, an ancient fabric born of the most aged of lands.

The words had been written upon it by a passionless hand, precise, formal, looking as official as any correspondence from the Council itself. But the words were Imilce's. They drew him with all the force of a witch's incantation. He heard her greeting as if she were whispering in his ear. He mumbled aloud in response to her questions of his safety, reassuring her of his health. Just the mention of his homeland's names brought forth a host of memories, images not dimmed by time. The mention of perfidy in the Council touched him with anger, reminded him that he never had to hide his emotions completely from this woman. Had she been with him he would have cursed the old men, the misers, those jealous of him and thwarting their own success because of it. How he would have liked to speak of these things with her, naked, in bed, sated and moist from being inside her.

The reading was over all too quickly. The space of minutes it took to finish the document was painfully insufficient, and the letter left too much unanswered. There was no mention of Little Hammer, not a word of how he grew, whether he spoke now, whether he remembered his father and still looked so much like him. And who was this Sophonisba? His sister, yes, but a person wholly unknown to him. He could not imagine her at all. He had lived apart from her almost all of her life, a strange thought now that she was nearly an adult. Stranger still that he wished to protect her, to meet this young prince, Masinissa, for himself and judge him as men do each other. And no, he was not sure of the wisdom of his decision to send Imilce to Carthage. Of course he wanted her with him, but how could he be the man he must be with her near at hand, drawing emotions out of him that he would have no other man witness? Surely, separation was the best course.

Not yet ready to roll the papyrus away, he lifted it, absently, to his nose and inhaled. The scents were faint at first, reluctant and shy. The longer he breathed in, the more he found traces of fragrances beyond the papyrus's dry flavor. Something of his mother's fragrant oils came to him. Something of Carthaginian palms. A taste of sea air and of dust blown high and far-traveled on desert winds. And there was Imilce. Her scent was the last to come to him. When it finally revealed itself it was the most potent. It filled him with a longing so painful that he pulled himself forcibly from it. He threw the letter on the table and stared at it as if he expected it to rise and attack him. He had searched for her scent, but having found it he knew that such passions had no place in a commander's chambers. They were more dangerous than Roman steel or cunning.

He called Gemel and ordered the letter rolled and stored away. “Put it somewhere safe,” he said. “Safe and distant.”

This done, he sorted through the other scrolls with an absent hand. Nowhere among them was the one he wished for, the one from Rome itself. Such obstinate fools they were. Other races would have conceded the war already. They could have come to terms, as strong peoples always had. Though he knew Romans were shaping themselves into a different sort of nation—that was why this war was necessary, after all—it still confounded him that they did not behave in accordance with age-old practice. He tried to imagine the men of Rome, the senators in the chamber, the citizens in their homes throughout the city, the allies in all their various forms. He even spoke inside himself in their language, trying to divine what their hearts told them. Over the years he had done this time and again with different races, sometimes with his focus on individual persons. It was a technique his father had schooled him in. To know the mind of the enemy was to defeat him, Hamilcar had said. Many times this wisdom had proved to be true. With the Romans, however, he was never at ease with what he imagined.