As the sounds of the man's steps faded in the hallway Hasdrubal closed his eyes and exhaled a long breath. He heard Bayala approaching him. He opened his eyes. She circled him for a moment, looking at him coyly, the tip of her tongue peeking out from the grip of her front teeth. Her gray eyes squinted with the mischievous look she always fixed on him as an amorous invitation. Even though he felt his sex stir, he fixed his gaze on the far side of the room. He was in no humor for such distractions. She must have sensed this, for she surprised him when she spoke.
“Noba is right.”
“He may be,” Hasdrubal said, “but I did not ask your opinion.”
“No, you did not. If you tell me to hold my tongue, I will, but there is no reason you should not speak with me about such things. He is a good man. You and your brothers are fortunate. You instill loyalty in those close to you. Few men achieve this as easily as Barcas.”
Hasdrubal would not look at her. “What do you know of it? A woman's mind is poison to reasoned thought.”
“In some countries women rule over men.”
“This is not such a country.”
Bayala creased her thin lips as if pressing this reality between them. Then she released it without comment. “Anyway, you are needed here in Iberia. I hear things, too, husband. Women talk as much as men and often of the same matters. Many tribes await the smallest excuse to leave you. Even my father may prove fickle. He would abandon you without a thought if Fortune deserts you. To get his power he killed his older brother, you know. Some say he had a stew made of his innards and had all the family eat of him, so that they all shared in his crime. I was not yet born, but I do not doubt this story.”
A visual image of Andobales' bulk appeared in Hasdrubal's mind, the boarlike shape of his body, the jutting stretch of his jaw and nose. Hasdrubal did not like thinking about him, nor remembering that the object of so much of his desire sprang from him. But neither did it seem right for a daughter to tell disparaging tales of her creator.
“So you are now a woman who speaks against her father?” he asked. “I wonder what you will say of me behind my back?”
“Nothing that I would not say on my knees before you, husband.”
Bayala slid a hand across his abdomen. Her fingers found a crease in the material and slipped through to caress his flesh. “You must stay here and protect your empire,” she said. “You must protect your wife. I never feel safe out of your sight. Anyway, do you want so badly to leave me? Do I fail to give you pleasure?”
He almost said that there was more to life than the pursuit of pleasure, but the words died in him: first, because he wondered why she should feel endangered, and second, because he felt filled to overflowing with desire and doubted his assertion. Bayala did not seem to mind his silence. She pressed her body against his. He felt the soft weight of her breast held against his bicep. As she slid around toward his chest her breast swayed free. Something in the momentary, passing sensation of this sucked the air out of him.
“Do you like me, husband?” she asked.
Finally looking down at her—at the confident mirth in her eyes, the imperfect lines of her face, and the thin stretch of her lips—Hasdrubal knew that he liked her very much. More than he wished to tell her. He wondered whether any other Barca had ever felt such a weakness for a woman. A voice within him whispered that if he were not careful such emotion would be the death of him.
Imilce disliked sending Hannibal a letter written in another's hand, but she could not yet write with the grace she wished for. She had no choice but to speak her love aloud and watch it made manifest by the subtle fingers of a scribe a few years her junior. He never looked up at her, but kept his head inches above his work. She was thankful for this and spoke slowly so that he would have no need to interrupt her.
She began, “Hannibal, husband, beloved both of Baal and Imilce . . . I write you in longing and pride. I do not know where this will find you or what hardship you may be suffering at the moment you read this. I do not know, husband, if you will ever read this. But still I write in hope. The news here is that you have struck several blows at Rome, just as you said you would. This was met with great excitement, although not everyone in Carthage wishes you success. I will not put names in writing, but I now understand that beside each councillor singing your praises is another who grumbles that you are leading the nation to ruin. I would not have thought it possible for any to feel this way, but the people of Carthage surprise me in many ways.
“This city of your birth is beautiful, rich beyond my imaginings. And—for me, at least—it is stifling, confining, like a tomb. I do not wish you to think me ungrateful. Your mother and sisters have been very kind to me, but I am nothing here without you. None here save Sapanibal have seen me at your side. None see me as I would be seen. They are kind enough, but they make me feel like a jeweled necklace sitting in a box, without the neck for which it was crafted. Are you still convinced that I should not come to you in Italy? I would happily do so, especially now as you are winning fame for us all. . . .
“Have you got all that?” she asked the scribe.
Without looking up, he nodded that he did. He mumbled, “Fame for us all,” as he finished writing.
Imilce picked up a date and tested the flesh of it against her teeth. She had seen Carthaginian women do this often, and—both consciously and not—she had adopted some of their mannerisms. On her young sister-in-law's recommendation, she had taken to wearing Carthaginian clothing. The garments were beautiful in their own right, but she never failed to be impressed by the effect they produced when combined with the voluptuous grace of African women. Didobal epitomized this and bore it with remarkable effect: her dark skin further enriched by the bright reds and oranges of her garments, by patterns and pictures stained into the cloth. Certainly, Carthaginian men looked kindly on her, but what did they matter? It was a women's world in which she found herself, and here she felt shockingly immature. Thinking of her mother-in-law, Imilce felt like an adolescent wrapped in adult garments, like a stick figure but not a true woman at all. Oh, she so very badly wished she could dig her fingernails into her husband's muscled back, direct his sex inside her, and know once more that he was real and that she was truly valued and that her future was assured. It was unfortunate that she had not become pregnant again. . . . But such thoughts were not for this scribe's ears. She tossed the date back into its bowl and carried on with another line of thought.
“I will tell you something now that struck me deeply,” she resumed, “though I do not know what you will think of it. This afternoon I took the midday meal with your youngest sister, Sophonisba. I am sure you have not the slightest memory of her. She is just thirteen, but her beauty is blooming daily. Her eyes are so black and large, framed by eyelashes that seem to stroke the air itself with sensuality, as if each lash were a feather in an Egyptian dancer's fingers. How she can convey all this by simply blinking is beyond me, but the effect is quite real. It is frightening, really, how devastating she can be with that adolescent glare of hers. Grown men, soldiers and fathers and grandfathers even . . . They all crumble before her. Either that or they simper and flirt with her. She is barely more than a girl, but already the wolves are baying in the night.
“It is Sophonisba's mind that truly surprised me, however. She is a young woman of strong opinions. She is well informed and readily capable of discoursing on all manner of subject. She knows the details of the campaign, and she wishes she might herself take part. She looked at me with all seriousness and said, ‘Had I been born a man I would avenge the wrongs done us by Rome.' She asked, ‘Do you not think that our women have bravery beyond that even of our men?'
“I answered her that if she was anything to go by, then that was undoubtedly true. But she would not be so easily flattered. She was looking for something more, but she was unsure of how to say it at first. I referred to her mother, and her mother's mother, and to all those who have bravely sent their men off to war and waited long years for their return. I did not mention myself, of course, but in listening to myself speak I did feel a certain pride at being as composed as I am in your long absence. Sophonisba did not dispute any of this, but she seemed saddened by it. She wished there were other ways to demonstrate her valor. She said, ‘Imilce, I am not like most girls. I do not pray for childish things. I pray that I will somehow serve Carthage in a way that would honor the Barcas.'
“Can you imagine this? From a girl who should be dreaming simply of some foreign prince to wed . . .”
Imilce, for the first since beginning her letter, sat down on the intricate reclining chair in her sitting room. It was a piece of furniture she still did not care for. Despite its elegant shape and its tiny zebra-skinned cushion, it was an instrument of discomfort. If she had been confident of her position she would have replaced it by now. She sat silent for a moment, pressing her back into the perfectly straight length of mahogany, listening to the scribe's
