yet tasted.”
“If that is your wish,” Imilce said. “But I had held some hope that I might go with you.”
Hamilcar rose to his feet and pulled a bowl of olives from the serving table. Imilce half-rose to attend him, but was stayed by her husband's arm. She watched the child spill the fruit and roll it beneath his palms.
“You would ride with me into battle?” Hannibal asked, squinting as if the thought of this bewildered him. “I knew not that you were of the Amazon race.”
“Do not joke at my expense. I wish to travel with you, so that I might see you at times and so that your son need not forget you. I am not so feeble as to be a burden. Hasdrubal schooled me well in riding last year.”
“Did he teach you to hurl a javelin as well? Did he teach you of the parts inside a man's body and how best to destroy them?” Imilce began to respond, but Hannibal continued, his voice edged. “Life on campaign would ill suit you. What would become of you should I die? Should the Romans lay their hands on you they would dishonor you. They might well form a train behind you and each of them—hundreds of them—push their seed inside you and so punish me as well. This is no idle threat but the way of war, the nature of hatred. What if they captured my son? What might they do with him? The thought is unimaginable.”
“You misunderstand me,” Imilce said, though her voice was chastened and had lost its playful timbre. “I meant only that we be near. You might capture a city early and we might come to it and live in safety, in a fortress you thought of as a home within their—”
Hannibal pushed her caressing hand away, kicked his legs off the bed, and rose. “And when word got out that Hannibal's beloved wife dwelled in that city? It would soon become a target. If I were at the gates of Rome with my hands upon the ram and word came to me that you were in danger, what would you have me do? No, the very idea is absurd. You would create in me a weakness where there need not be one.”
“If it came to that, I would die before—”
“You would be fortunate to be allowed death,” Hannibal said. “No. That is my answer. You go to Carthage with all that is precious to me. Let us talk of it no more.”
Though her eyes were cast aside and her visage tight with things unsaid, Imilce nodded. She rose and scooped up her son and started to move away.
“What are you doing?”
In answer, Imilce clicked her tongue twice on the roof of her mouth. The boy's maid appeared, took the boy, and slipped away with him. Imilce turned back toward her husband. Reaching to loosen her hair, she said, “Perhaps the commander would like a second child. If so, we should not waste time.”
The men gathered for the meeting with a nervous, expectant air. Hannibal was finally to set all the pieces of his plan before them and each would learn his own position within it. Though they had attended councils throughout the winter and most had even spoken privately with the commander, this meeting marked a new stage, the moment at which preparation met the bridge into action. They sat on cushions around a low table, at ease for the moment but not slouching or leaning back as they might while at leisure. Mago and Hasdrubal, Bostar and Bomilcar, Maharbal and Carthalo, Monomachus and Vandicar: all men of importance in the campaign to come, each a representative of components of the army serving under them. Hannibal disdained clutter at meetings such as these. Instead he trusted in the generals beneath him to hear his desires and to carry them through.
Hanno, taciturn as ever, took a seat at the edge of the low table, his cushion pushed back a little way so that those next to him had to look almost over their shoulders to address him. He had long dreaded this meeting. He felt the fear now in the pulsing of the arteries in his hands. Whether he clenched them into fists or held them loose or laid them flat on his thighs, in each position his heart seemed to be contained within them and to thump, thump, thump. It was most distracting, all the more because he had to concentrate to think past it, to brace himself for the role he would soon be assigned. Which would be worse, a position of prominence from which to err yet again in decision-making, or a demotion to some lesser role that would indicate to all that Hannibal found him wanting?
The arrival of the historian roused Hanno from his thoughts. Silenus entered laden with the writing supplies with which he would keep a record of all of Hannibal's accomplishments. He took a seat near Hanno, greeting him with a smile that the Barca returned coldly. He had grown no fonder of the Greek than when they first met. Silenus was silent enough as he prepared his writing utensils, but once readied he looked about the group and immediately found a jumping-off point in some quadrant of the conversation. He said, “Which puts me in the mind of the story of Titus Manlius and his son. Has anyone heard of this?”
He addressed his question to the room rather than to anyone in particular and it might have passed unnoticed, except that Bomilcar threw up his hands. “He speaks! Our resident historian and Roman expert! Silenus, if you were as productive in bed as you are in producing tales you would have created your own nation by now.”
“You may have something there,” Silenus said, “but for better or worse the gods have not so endowed me. I pleasure in bed like any man, but of issue . . . As yet I am the father only of tales. This one I am assured is true, however. You might find it instructive of the Roman character.”
Before Hanno could find the words to discourage him, Mago did the opposite.
“We await patiently,” he said.
“The consul Titus Manlius,” Silenus began, “once gave orders to his entire legion that they were not that day to engage the enemy.”
“What enemy?” Hasdrubal asked.
“Not relevant to the story,” Silenus said. “It was a clear enough order and easily obeyed, one would think. But Titus had an impetuous son with other—”
Silenus cut off his words at the entry of the commander. All rose to greet him, but Hannibal squelched any formality with a gesture. He must have had his hair trimmed that very afternoon, for it was shorter than it had been the day before, cut close around the ears and with a straight line across the base of the neck. His face was fresh, and clean-shaven save for his chin beard, which had only been snipped for shape, not shortened. He sat down heavily and took the scrolls handed to him by an assistant. While he stretched them out across the low table, he nodded that the Greek could carry on.
“Titus Manlius had a son,” Silenus resumed, “a brave youth who that very day had an encounter with the enemy. The latter had called the young Titus out to single combat and Titus could not restrain himself. The two did battle and young Titus came away the victor. He slew a distinguished opponent,” Silenus said, “robbed the enemy of a leader, and . . .”
“Disobeyed his father,” Bostar said.
“Exactly. Manlius summoned the young man and called for an assembly to be sounded. Once all were in attendance he gave a speech, the words of which escape me in exact—”
“No!” Bomilcar said. “Surely you were there and can quote him word for word.”
Silenus let this sit and looked sadly around at the company, his eyes alone conveying a humorous disdain for the large Carthaginian. “As I understand it, he spoke of the need for discipline. His son's actions were in contradiction to his order, and his order was a stitch in the fabric that held Roman arms together. If the young Titus was allowed to snap this thread, then the cloak of Roman arms might well fray and come apart at the seams.”
“Sounds like a quote to me,” Hasdrubal said. Bomilcar seconded the notion.
“The consul summoned a lictor,” Silenus continued, “and had his son grappled and bound to a stake and beheaded before the view of all the company, without any further debate. Such is the nature of Roman discipline and the lengths they'll go to in ensuring it, whether justly or not.”
Monomachus said that whether the punishment was just was not the issue. He was sure, on the other hand, that it had proved effective in keeping discipline thereafter. “That, surely, is the point Silenus is making.”
Bostar said, “You all assume too much of the fatherly bond. Perhaps the old man had no love for his issue. Perhaps he was glad to be rid of him.”
“No father can help but love his son,” Hannibal said, absently, only through his words showing that he was listening at all.
“So you would not have acted as Manlius did?” Silenus asked.
“My son wouldn't have disobeyed me. Just as I never disobeyed my father.”
“But if by chance . . .”
Hannibal finally looked up from his charts. “That's not a decision I would have to face. If it's impossible for me, it deserves no comment from me. Silenus, you are needed here as a scribe and chronicler, not as a storyteller. Keep notes of what passes now. The things we will speak of today are known in part to all of you. But I will state
