“There is a man,” she said.
“Is there? And do you love him truly?”
“I've never told him so,” Sapanibal said, “but perhaps I do. He fills me with fear, but it's not only fear . . .”
“Such is the one cruelty of Tanit,” Imilce said. “She binds together love and loss so that one always lies beneath the skin of the other. But you must tell him. Go to him at the first opportunity. We have so little, Sapanibal. All around us things come and go. People live and die. We kill each other for petty things. We make such a great noise across the world, and why? Who is ever happy because of any of this? Who? Have you ever been happy?”
One of the sailors shouted that he had spotted Carthage. The two women rose and looked out over the water.
“There were times when I thought I was,” Sapanibal said, “but those were delusions.”
Sapanibal felt the other woman's thin fingers grip her wrist. “No! No, those moments were the truth. It's all the confusion we make that's the delusion. I know this for sure. I asked Hannibal to bring me the world. I wanted to be queen over all that I could, but that was the fancy of a child. If he delivered the world to me now, I would hand it back. I would ask, At what cost, this? What I want most now is to make new memories like the old ones that I cherish. Like birthing Little Hammer and putting him to my breast the first time. Like lying cradled in the hollow of my husband's back. Hannibal once fed me grapes by putting them first into his mouth so that I took them from his lips to mine. That was truth. Sister . . . why do you cry?”
Sapanibal shook her head fiercely, and then swiped at the tears with her fingers. “The salt water stings my eyes. That's all.” And a moment later—as she found herself thinking of Imago Messano and the best route from the harbor up to his villa—she said, “Please continue, Imilce. Tell me more of what you've found to be truth.”
For several days after arriving in Cirta, Masinissa felt near to bursting with bliss. He had solved the two great problems of his life: his enemy was defeated; his love his to possess. And not only had Syphax been crushed; he was virtually forgotten. That first afternoon in the courtyard, Sophonisba had dropped to her knees and looked up at him from behind the amazing beauty that was her face. Tears hung at the rims of both her eyes. Her lips glistened from the moisture of her tongue. Two maroon swipes of color flushed across her cheeks. She swore to him that she had never stopped being true to him. She said she loved him and only him, and would love only him her entire life. Each time Syphax touched her, she had cursed the fact that she had skin. Each time he pushed inside her, she felt pain and revulsion instead of pleasure and love. She asked the gods to change her from a woman into some other creature. She said she would rather be a vulture, a frog, or a crocodile or a scorpion. She said that each night she would break a vase of Grecian clay and hold the jagged shards to her skin and pray for the power to sink them home and cut her face to shreds. She wanted him to know—no matter what fate held for her—that she had only ever wanted to be his wife. That was why it saddened her so to know that instead she would be ravaged by Roman soldiers. In a few days they would shove her onto a ship and sail her into slavery. They would take everything that she had wanted to give him and twist it into torturous retribution.
By all the gods, she was a revelation. The fascination he had felt for her in his youth was simply boyish infatuation compared with the ardor that gripped him as he looked down on her. And she spoke the truth! Clearly, she spoke the truth, both about her feelings for him and about the danger she now faced. And as this was so . . . Well, he could not let it be so. He did not have to. He was the king of all Numidia. Nothing that he wished to see done was impossible.
He lifted her to her feet and before the magistrates of the city, before even the eyes of the former king, with the hasty blessings of Syphax' own priests, as his army continued to pour in through the gates, without asking her views, in the space of a few moments . . . he married her. And then began his bliss. For the next few days, he barely left their private chambers at all. He made love to and with her again and again on the bed that had once been Syphax'. She laughed at him as they took pleasure in each other, and this was sweeter still. When her body was close to his, he wanted to possess every inch of her being. He could not stop his hands moving all over her, his fingers kneading, feeling the smoothness of her skin, the weight and contours of her. He wanted to consume her, to bury his face in the cleft between her breasts and cry with a joy so complete it felt akin to pain.
The weight of doubt so long on him lifted. He had his throne, his wife, his world. With Publius recalled to Rome, he could get on with carving his name across Africa. Maybe, he even ventured to think, Carthage would sue for peace. He could make overtures of friendship to them once more. Perhaps he had been wrong. Things done can sometimes be undone. . . . Sophonisba said it herself. When Hannibal returned, Carthage would again see reason. Perhaps Masinissa would find them an ally still. Their old friendship was worth more than this new dalliance with Rome. Sophonisba made things seem amazingly clear.
So he thought for a few precious days. Then Publius arrived, fresh from overseeing the aftermath of the fiery massacre, already having squelched several other Libyan towns and taken their leaders prisoner.
From the first glimpse of him striding into the room—strong-arming his guard to the side—Masinissa felt the substance behind the façade of his world crumbling. Publius yelled at him in Greek, cursed him, and asked him the same questions over and over again. It was so shocking an entrance that Masinissa could only stare at him, openmouthed, trying to make sense of his words and yet yearning not to. The Roman asked: Was he mad? A fool? Had he lost his reason? Publius repeated these questions until they became accusations. Did he really think he could wed her? It was pure madness. Sophonisba was a prisoner of Rome, as a member of the Barca family and as Syphax' wife. That's who she was, and that's why she would have to be sent to Rome. Had he forgotten that they were at war?
“I let you take the city as a gift,” Publius said, “so that you might know I was true to my word, but do you believe you can play me for a fool? Why would you do this?”
“What do you mean, why?” Masinissa asked.
“Why would you do this?”
“Have you never loved? Ask me why I breathe; the reason is the same.”
“Are you bewitched?” Publius asked.
Masinissa stuttered that he might be. He stared into the other man's eyes and nodded. Maybe he had been bewitched. But it did not matter: They were married already. Sophonisba was his wife, and no harm could come to her now. He had slipped into speaking Massylii, but the consul brought him back to Greek.
“Foolish boy,” Publius said. His anger seemed to fade. “My foolish boy. You thought this would save her? Listen, let us sit down and speak like brothers. Speak plainly to me and I will do the same to you.”
What passed between the two men after that, Masinissa would only remember in a fragmented jumble that could not possibly have comprised an entire day, but did, apparently—spanned all the hours from the sun's rising to its setting. Publius asked him about Sophonisba and listened as the Numidian told him everything. He went all the way back to the first time he saw her. He told him about the time they had ridden out from Carthage under the cover of night. He had told her all the things that could be and she had laughed at him. So cruel she sometimes was. But she had also brought him to ecstasy with a single touch of her fingers. And cruelty was a useful trait. She would make a fine queen. She was a woman—not a girl—who made anything possible.