the city the previous evening, with her sitting before the prince on the bare back of his stallion. They rode out through a side gate, cut through the peasants' town, out past the fields, and on into the rolling orchards. The sky was clear from horizon to horizon. It was a screen of the darkest blue, alive with numberless stars. The land itself seemed endless, thrown out in ripples stretching deep into the heart of the continent. They sometimes passed campfires of field workers, or saw the signal fires of soldiers, but mostly the night was theirs alone.
Imilce chided her for the rash danger—not to mention the damage she might have done to her reputation and to the very union. They had only just become engaged, after all, and it was meant to be some time before they were wed. But Sophonisba laughed at both these points. As for the danger, when she said she rode alone with Masinissa, she meant “alone” in princely terms. A guard of fifty horsemen shadowed them.
As for reputation, nothing mattered to her mother more than the power of her familial connections; and nothing mattered to Gaia, Masinissa's father, more than the security of his kingdom. Everyone wanted them wed. So, she was sure, anything could be overlooked. And, anyway, there were stories that Didobal herself had been as mischievous as a jackal in her youth. She had a few secrets to pressure her with, things she had not even divulged to Imilce, sister though she was.
“Should I tell you what happened then?” Sophonisba asked. “Or need I find a different confidante?”
Imilce shut her lips in a tight line, keeping up the look of reproach for as long as she could. But her facade masked very different feelings. She was always amazed at how Sophonisba occupied and acted in the world. It was not just that she flouted tradition and decorum on occasion; it was the casual confidence with which she accomplished this. Imilce, staring at her, wished for a portion of this young woman's strength; with it perhaps she, too, would find a way to act boldly to answer the things that troubled her.
Eventually Sophonisba overcame the unanswered question and proceeded. Though he rode fast to impress her, and seemed to dash from feature to feature on the landscape at whim, he did have a destination in mind. They stopped at a strange structure set at the top of a gentle crest, with views of the country to either side. They dismounted and walked past a crumbling wall that squared a courtyard, no larger than a pen for a few horses. A tower rose from one corner, although it too was damaged at what must have been its midpoint. Blocks littered the ground.
“This is Balatur's watchtower,” Masinissa had said. “Many times I've come here and thought about my future, about the world I will shape and the woman who will stand beside me as I do.”
Sophonisba could tell she was supposed to be impressed, curious. So she showed neither sentiment. “Where is this Balatur?” she asked. “He should be chided for the state of this place.”
Masinissa said that Balatur no longer was. He had died many years ago. The tale went that he had been an officer of much repute. While on a campaign against a tribe to the south, he had met a princess of the dark people there. He fell in love with her so completely that his life as a mercenary for Carthage seemed of little value anymore. He believed that she loved him as well, and yet he would not desert the army. He returned to Carthage after the campaign, but he never forgot her. He thought of her always, day and night, and with such hunger that he felt a portion of flesh had been ripped from him. He came to believe that she had bewitched him and that his failure to forget her meant she wanted him just as much. Eventually, he had himself assigned to this watchtower. He sent word to her that if she would come and meet him here, they could be together. If she, too, pledged her love they could flee together and find a life elsewhere. He swore that he would be mercenary or beggar, fisherman or a carpenter: anything and anywhere, so long as he could be with her. From the tower he looked day and night to the south, waiting for a messenger from his princess. He did this for a full forty years. She never came; he died in waiting.
“Such is the tale of Balatur,” Masinissa had said, finishing his story with somber theatricality.
Sophonisba burst into laughter and admonished him to speak no more nonsense. “Of course she did not come to him,” she said. “What princess would abandon her people to join a man who wished to be a beggar? Such devotion is not at all attractive. Anyway, never was there born a Massylii that loved one single woman.”
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.
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.
