“My brother,” Sapanibal said, “I trust I am not disturbing you.”
Hannibal looked up from the chart. Seeing her, his face went through a quick transformation. At first he met her with the stern visage of a general. This faded almost to the half-grin of a brother, and fast behind this came the honest, tired expression with which he addressed few people in the world.
“Many things disturb me, sister, but you are a welcome visitor.”
“I come, actually, as an emissary of your beloved. She is worried about you. Thinks you're sure to catch a consumptive illness with this winter training.”
Hannibal smiled and shook his head. “She is afraid for me now, while I'm simply practicing for war? You women are strange. Happy to send me off into battle, but fearful that a cold might fell me.”
“Small things are sometimes the death of great men. I do not think Imilce is alone in fearing that you tax yourself.”
“Tax myself?” Hannibal asked. “If only you knew, sister. To see this coming war into being requires an unending vigilance. This is just the calm; come and see the makings of the storm.” He waved her closer to the table. “For all its art, this map is a crude thing, filled with empty spaces, dotted with deaths yet to be written. You know my plans?”
“No one has invited me to council,” Sapanibal said. “The things I've heard I dismiss as speculation only.”
Hannibal doubted her knowledge was so limited, but he said, “A land attack. Since the Romans destroyed our navy during our last war, they've believed themselves safe in their own land. The physical barriers have always seemed insurmountable. An army cannot swim the sea. Nor can an army climb the heights of mountains like the Alps and Pyrenees. So the Romans believe, at least. Our spies report they think they'll fight this war on their own terms. They expect me to entrench here in Iberia and wait to defend myself. On this they are mistaken.”
He paused for a moment and studied the map. Sapanibal, dryly, asked, “Has the commander changed the map of the world to suit him?”
“The map can remain as it is,” Hannibal said. “We will march along the Mediterranean coast this spring, cross the Pyrenees in early summer and the Rhône at midsummer, and traverse the Alps before the autumn. This will be a long and difficult march, but I do not accept that it is impossible. It only means that we will be the first. Think of the things Alexander achieved by again and again attempting the unimaginable. What do you think of this?”
Sapanibal laughed. “Hannibal asks a woman's advice on matters of war?”
Hannibal watched her and did not answer but awaited hers. She was the eldest of Hamilcar's offspring and though she was a woman she was easily Hannibal's equal in wisdom: they both knew it. She had made sure he knew it from his earliest memories of her. There was a time, in fact, when she was his physical superior. Her strong, long-legged form had thrown his often during the wrestling matches of their youth. A twelve-year-old girl, in the quick bloom of early womanhood, is in no way inferior to her nine-year-old brother. Hannibal had never forgotten this. It hung behind all discourse between them. So yes, he would ask a woman's advice, and he knew she would give it.
“Your plan is the best possible one,” she said. “Father would be proud. And what of the rest of us? What fates have you assigned your siblings?”
Hannibal stepped back from the desk and rolled his shoulders for a moment, as if his day's training had just caught up with him. He sat down on a nearby stool and rotated his head to ease some tension in his vertebrae. The bones made an audible crack, but judging by the commander's grimace this provided no relief.
“Everyone has a part to play,” he said, “though I've yet to settle everyone's role exactly. I will do so soon. But for your part, I ask—”
“I will escort your wife to Carthage,” Sapanibal said, “and introduce her to our mother and Sophonisba and bring her more fully into our country's ways.” After a short pause she added, “If that is your wish, brother.”
“You have learned no fondness for my wife, have you?”
“What has that to do with it?” Sapanibal asked, with her usual flat frankness. She stood and circled her brother and pushed his hand from his neck with her palm. She stood a moment with her fingers on the firm wings of his shoulder muscles, then she squeezed and released, squeezed and released. “I respect her,” she said. “That is what matters. I understand the value of your union with her here in Iberia. She is beloved of her people, and this is a good thing for Carthage. And, too, brother, I acknowledge your passion for her.”
Sapanibal pressed her thumbs into Hannibal's back with a force that surprised him, as if the two digits were formed on gnarled tree roots. He almost turned around to check, but her hands held him.
“If the marriage had been mine to arrange,” she continued, “I might have found you an equally useful, yet somewhat more homely bride. A man should value the bond with his wife and honor her accordingly, but a commander should not mix duty with ardor. Better to respect your wife and stick your penis in some pretty camp follower.”
Again Hannibal almost turned, for it seemed to him that his sister was speaking with doubled significance about her own marriage. But she stopped any movement with an admonishing click of her tongue.
“Do you truly mean that?” Hannibal asked. “Father was not so with Mother. . . .”
“Yes, but her strength equaled his. You are a man, Hannibal. You can have no idea of the sacrifices required of women. Mother was the foundation from which Hamilcar Barca launched himself at the world. But she was never, never a source of weakness to him. This is something you cannot know, but believe your older sister.”
“So you think my wife is not such a foundation?”
“I've never said a sour word against Imilce. I'm just voicing my thoughts on a subject, and on the virtues of our mother. Of any wife of yours . . . She should be handled strictly, so as to cause the least distraction.”
Hannibal heard this with pursed lips, a frown tugging at one corner but not completely allowed. It faded with a few moments of silence. “Sister, we should have spoken more often. Your counsel is wise where I am shortsighted. It would have been good for us to debate the matters of life more fully.”
“Why do you say ‘should' and ‘would'? Are we not at council now? You speak as if we've no future before us.”
Just then, both siblings caught movement at the mouth of the corridor. Imilce stepped in. She met the two with her gaze, cleared her throat, and placed a hand upon her delicate collarbones.
Hannibal placed a hand on his sister's fingers. She withdrew them. As he rose and approached his wife he said, softly and—though his eyes were on Imilce—to Sapanibal alone, “We've a war before us. Beyond that very little is certain.”
How the child escaped his governess's care none could say, but he was a lively boy, recently emboldened by his mastery of two-legged travel, and such children have their own, secret devices. He progressed unnoticed through several long corridors, through a room set off with a long dining table under which he walked, out onto a balcony into the winter afternoon, and then back into the warmth by another entrance. He stepped flat-footed, bowed at the legs, his fat feet slapping against the smooth stones, chubby legs rotating from the hips so that his cloth-bound behind served as the pivot from which he wiggled himself forward. He pushed through a curtain partition and into a room filled with male voices. These drew him, for among them was the timbre and cadence that he recognized as his father's. It was only there, standing at the edge of the room, looking shyly toward the table and the large men around it, that he was recognized.