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 facade 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?”
“No,” Imilce answered.
A ripple of disappointment passed over the girl's face. “Well . . . You will in years to come. I might have him as a husband, but not without knowing something of real men, men of action. Masinissa is handsome, but he is as yet a boy. So, tell me. Talk. I will hold my tongue while you do.”
Though the girl did hold her tongue, Imilce began slowly. She wanted to convey how much Sophonisba had just done for her, how she was awash in relief and affection. How only this girl among all those whom Imilce had so far met had spoken to her with an open face. But she had not been asked this, so instead she cleared her throat, sipped the palm wine, and answered all of Sophonisba's questions as completely as she could. Though she carried on bleeding, silently, secretly, she knew she could bear this world a little longer.
When he first heard about the Roman legions' arrival in northern Iberia, Hanno desperately wished that he possessed his eldest brother's brilliance, or Mago's intelligence, or Hasdrubal's boldness. But he also remembered that he had left them all months before, with farewells given through gritted teeth. The last time he spoke with Hannibal, the words between them had boiled almost to violence. It was the nearest Hanno had come since they were adolescents to lashing out physically at his brother. There had been a time when they often fought each other to the ground and came away bruised and bloody. But as they both became more adept at warcraft they seemed to recognize a tendril of threat that they dared not touch. Still, when Hannibal ordered him to stay south of the Pyrenees Hanno suffered through a few moments of wanting to swing for his brother's head with something heavy and sharp. It was not just the order. It was the timing as well, the evening he received it, and the host of things it suggested his brother knew of and thought about him.
He had begun the night drinking the local wine with Mago, Bostar, Adherbal, and Silenus. Adherbal spoke of a correspondence he had received from Archimedes, the Syracusan mathematician, detailing theories he thought applicable to military defenses. Silenus remarked that he had once dined with Archimedes—raw oysters, if he remembered correctly, eaten on a patio abutting the sea rocks, from which they watched boys pull their meal directly out of the water. A short while later, Silenus interrupted Bostar mid-sentence. The secretary had just mentioned the suggestion that new coins be struck bearing Hannibal's likeness on one side, with words naming him conqueror of Italy on the obverse. Silenus found this premature.
“One cannot count a victory accomplished in advance,” he said. “Consider the Aetolians just a few years ago.
