Carthage Read online

  ‘They don’t need to,’ he replied. ‘Touch a hair of them, and the Apollodorus is no more. Look at the catapults up there!’ I had wondered what they were, great frames of wood hanging high above us off the wall.

  Because of Trimalchio’s back, the helm, the mast and rigging, I couldn’t see the men jump on board.

  ‘Go forward, Trimalchio, and give them the gold,’ Bostar ordered.

  ‘But they’ll want to check the hold,’ he countered.

  ‘That’s fine. But I don’t want them to come back here.’

  ‘So what do I tell them is our cargo?’

  ‘Two passengers, civilians, with words only for private ears.’

  Trimalchio squared up to Bostar. His voice had lost its banter. ‘Look. It’s time you told me. Misleading these bailiffs is not a clever thing to do. I’ve known captains, good ones, crucified for doing so. So, tell me, Bostar of Chalcedon. It’s cost you enough. Why are you and Hanno here?’ He glanced behind him. ‘And you better make it quick.’

  ‘All right, Trimalchio,’ Bostar sighed. ‘We’re hear to see Mastanabal – in private.’

  Trimalchio whistled. ‘Mastanabal! The Sufet? You’re here to see him?’

  ‘You heard me, Trimalchio,’ Bostar said with an edge to his voice. ‘So what I ask you to tell these gentlemen is true: we have words for private ears.’

  ‘But––’

  ‘Trimalchio!’

  ‘I know, I know. You’re the boss. And for what you’re paying, I’d tell them you’re the Queen of Sheba, for all I care!’ Guffawing, he went on his way.

  ‘By the way, what are we paying, Bostar?’ I asked.

  ‘A large fortune,’ he replied with a smile, ‘but a small price.’ In those days I didn’t question this most Delphic of men.

  The bailiffs searched the hold, and departed satisfied, I supposed. A windlass cranked, pulled back the chains. Shadowy figures in the darkness moved on the mole. I thought I saw an arm gesture to come in. Back at the helm, Trimalchio shouted orders. With the starboard oars, we wheeled, and went in.

  I remember the sudden silence, the sense of being sure. I entered a long, straight track from which my life has never veered.

  Shutting out the brimming light, the wet walls of the black-stoned moles rose sheer above us, halfway up the mainmast. Our drum was still. The men neither sang, nor talked, nor jeered. Then, ‘Steer, Casso, you idiot!’ Trimalchio screamed back from the bow as our starboard oars scraped and clashed against one side and the walls threw back Trimalchio’s voice. To look ahead I leaned out so far that my head almost hit the wall. But at what I saw, I gasped.

  In front of us, light lifting off the water, shadows spreading only to disappear, I saw a vast, circular harbour. It seemed enormous, bigger than the whole of Capua. Only a few skiffs and dories, so early, were crossing there. In its middle, I saw coming closer another circle, but this time of land, an island of docks, each the size of our galley, of hewn stone, cavernous, exuding command.

  ‘It is – it is – stupendous,’ Bostar muttered beside me, ‘A labour of much love – and many lives too, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘You didn’t know?’ I asked, looking back at him. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked tired. He shook his head.

  ‘I had heard of the harbours of Carthage, but––’

  ‘Harbours, you say. Are there more?’

  ‘Yes, one. This is just the commercial harbour. The naval one is even larger, I was told. It’s up another guarded channel, with the same arrangement – a docking island – inside.’

  ‘You say “I was told.” Who told you?’

  ‘Africanus.’

  ‘He was here?’

  ‘Of course. After the battle of Zama, when your father––’

  ‘I know about Zama, Bostar.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry, Hanno.’ In a softer voice, he went on. ‘Yes, after Zama Africanus inspected the whole city’ – he didn’t, actually, as I learned much later. There were certain things that even he was not allowed to see – ‘as a prelude to discussing the treaty’s terms. He told me in great detail about what he saw. It had, he said, a terrible beauty.’

  ‘But this harbour – sorry, harbours. There simply can’t be any in the world so, so – secure!’

  ‘I would think you’re right. The uninvited just cannot get in, and won’t until boats learn to fly.’

  ‘Has anyone ever forced them?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. The only way would be from within the city. Anyway, it’s thanks to Africanus that they’re still here.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Many Romans, our friend Cato especially, wanted them filled in, destroyed. But Africanus proposed a compromise to the Senate, and won.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘That the Carthaginians keep their harbours, but lose their war galleys. Three hundred of them came out the way that we’ve come in. Out at sea, they were set on fire, and sunk. But what Africanus called this wonder of the world lives on. Anyway, enough for now. Look. We’re about to dock.’

  Letter preserved in the archives of Rome

  To Lucius Valerius Flaccus, leader of the Senate, Marcus Porcius Cato, Censor, sends greetings. Chide me as your conscience commands. Mine is clear. As for mercy, have you forgotten Cannae, and those who fell there? What clemency has ever come from Carthage? Ours is a great endeavour, in which I only seek to serve the Senate and People of Rome.

  For that cause, I have more good news. You will remember my expressing to you my interest in Bostar of Chalcedon, for so long secretary – if not more – to Scipio Africanus. When, as my man Tancinus reported to you personally, Bostar unearthed a bastard son of Hannibal, I was even more concerned. Might this boy become, I wondered, a focus for fresh Carthaginian ferment? So when Bostar took this boy Hanno from Capua and his mother, a freed slave called Apurnia, my worry grew.

  It took some time to find them. But they will worry Rome no more. They had gone to Macedonia – why, I do not know – where they burned to death in a fire. A domestic accident. I am closing my files. Meanwhile, I am due at the end of this month a report from our agents in Carthage. I will of course inform you if anything seems amiss. I am anxious to learn that the Carthaginians are not building warships, something which, as you know, the treaty after the last war forbids expressly. Though why I call it a treaty, I do not know. With Africanus dead, I can speak freely. I say now and will say again in public that this treaty was the capitulation of cowards like Curtius. I am looking forward to his impeachment. I do not share your sympathy. He is losing only the rank of senator, not his life. He will be freer to pursue his other interests soon. Think of that as a kindness to him.

  Finally, I wonder if I might ask of you a small service. The matter is delicate, which is why I am writing this in my own hand. I do not seek the distinctions of the great families of Rome like yours. No Cato can claim to have been there when Horatius held the bridge. My fathers were simple farmers, and I serve Rome humbly, as I can. But now I hold the office of Censor, one of the greatest of the state. Yet I seal my letters in simple wax, for I have no signet to use. I am of a mind to apply to the Pontifex Maximus to matriculate a coat of arms. Nothing hubristic, of course. A plough, perhaps a vine, to remind those Catos yet unborn of whence they came. Would our colleagues in the Senate, do you think, regard this as a matter of good taste, or bad?

  Letter found among Cato’s papers and preserved in the

  archives of Rome

  From Lucius Valerius Flaccus, leader of the Senate, to Marcus Porcius Cato, Censor, greetings. Has it ever occurred to you that, within reason, we need Carthage? Respect for her – though not, I accept, fear of her – will maintain our will, our discipline, our identity as the Republic expands. As for the treaty, I supported it at the time and still do. I agree, nonetheless, that we should monitor its terms. But not through spying. With each payment of the indemnity we imposed, the Carthaginians have to swear that they are abiding by the treaty. Trust their
Sufet, Mastanabal. I do. He is a shrewd man.

  As for Curtius, I will do my duty as father of the house, but no more. As for the matter of your arms, every aristocratic family, however old now, was once new. Some of the reverend fathers will snigger at you, no doubt; others will agree. Which of these you regard as more important and so what you do is, of course, entirely up to you.

  Note on a wax tablet, preserved in the archives of Rome

  Labienus to Curtius. Word spreads as fast among the Gauls as a rumour in Rome’s Forum. Five times now have I been presented with Scipio Africanus’ ‘son’. I was not taken in. What am I looking for? I will know when – and if – I see him. The village of Agreti was destroyed entirely by Hannibal. Those of its people that survived are scattered to the winds. Your pass is no use here. Africanus’ money is. I will persevere.

  From Hanno’s memoir

  We were standing in the dock, the Apollodorus alongside. Bostar stretched and yawned. My eyes were wide. High above me, in storage bays suspended from the side walls, were oars and masts and prows and planks – enough to make another Apollodorus there and then.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about you, Hanno, but I’m hungry,’ Bostar said. ‘Let’s go and see if we can find some breakfast, and then somewhere to stay.’

  ‘Even a bath, perhaps, and a change of clothes,’ I added. ‘Oh, and what about our baggage, Bostar, and all those chests?’

  ‘We’ll leave it all on the Apollodorus until we know where we’re staying.’ Then, looking up, Bostar shouted, ‘Trimalchio, we’ll be back in two hours!’

  The shipmaster leaned over the gunnel above us, a biscuit in his mouth, crumbs on his beard. ‘So, had enough biscuit, have we?’ he teased. ‘That’s fine by me. We’ll stay put, as agreed, until evening. Then, believe you me, by Neptune we’ll be getting out of here.’

  ‘You don’t feel safe, Trimalchio?’ I asked.

  ‘Safe? Son, I’m a sailor. I don’t like holes. But I’ll keep to our bargain. And, Bostar, as you asked there’ll be no shore leave for the men. See you in two hours. And if you’re not back?’

  ‘We will be, Trimalchio,’ Bostar said. ‘We will be. Come on, Hanno.’

  ‘I don’t have my money pouch,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he replied laughing and tugging his belt, ‘I’ve got mine. Anyway, they won’t want your Roman denarii here.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that,’ Trimalchio shouted after us. ‘This is Carthage. They’ll take anybody’s money here.’

  I followed Bostar down the dock and round, up some steps to a walkway above. The studs on the soles of our sandals ringing on the flags, we followed the island’s curve, the rounded wall that girt the dock until–– I stopped, and gasped again. I gasped a good deal that day.

  In front of us, a bridge of stone soared in a single arch across the intervening water to a wide gateway. But it was the wall around, above, beyond the gate that took my breath away. It stretched as far as I could see. From the water’s edge it rose up to serried battlements in blocks of blackened, calloused, yet dressed rock each far bigger than me. The wall towered. It seemed to be without end. By comparison the walls of Capua, the only ones I knew, were those a child might make of sand, sitting by the sea; or those the tiny pygmy people might build, those who live, as it is said, beyond the heat of the Hesperides.

  ‘Hanno! Hanno!’ Looking back from halfway across the bridge, Bostar broke my reverie. ‘Come on!’

  The gateway was cavernous, its mouth opening as a maw. Its open gates were thicker than a cloak’s length, their outside sheeted in shimmering bronze. I thought: ‘No guards.’ But then: ‘They do not need them here.’ For ten strides, twelve, fifteen we passed under Carthage’s wall, walking on marble flags. When that opened out at last, we paused, eyes straining at the light.

  Bordered with houses, three storeys high, some built of a honeyed stone, others painted white, their doors and shutters still mostly closed and irradiating a brilliant, cerulean blue, a wide street ran up an incline before us. Perhaps fifty yards along, I saw a crossroads. Beyond that, more streets, more houses, and the morning’s first cart trundling towards us, drawn by an ox with red and yellow braiding on its horns. I sensed the city stirring. I smelt smoke, and heard cows lowing to be milked. ‘Bostar?’ I asked quietly, awed, ‘which way do we go?’ He was looking up at something.

  ‘Away from here!’ he shouted. ‘Quick!’

  I looked up too, and as I jumped forwards I saw the face and hairy torso of a man emptying a chamber pot. He uttered some curse at us as the urine and faeces splashed into the gutter near where we had been.

  ‘Well,’ Bostar said, smiling. ‘That was close. Now, where were we? Which way to go?’ He winked at me, and tapped his nose. He sniffed, and sniffed again, and smiled. ‘When in doubt,’ he said, ‘follow your nose.’

  That is how we found the market. We followed the smell of baking bread through streets that narrowed into lanes and soon filled with people, pressing on their way. A few looked at us with mild curiosity, nothing more. I remember a young girl, ten or so, who stopped her game of hopscotch to stare. We were then forced to stand beside her as another cart pushed by. She had a fine, hooked nose, large, oval, long-lashed black eyes, a long scar right across her cheek from her left ear to her chin. She had on a simple woollen smock with blue braiding, and wore a necklace of amazonite, blue faience and carnelian. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t seen you before.’

  ‘We are strangers,’ I replied. ‘We’ve just arrived.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and stared at me, blinking, open-mouthed. ‘Come on, Fetopa!’ another girl called out. ‘It’s your turn!’ She grimaced at me, two dimples forming in her cheeks, one above the scar, then turned and resumed her game. We walked on – until I saw them.

  Coming down the lane towards us, cutting through the crowds, bells ringing, high burdens on their backs, were three great beasts alongside each other, wet-nosed, long-necked, their tongues hanging, their mouths drooling, their eyes already thick with languid flies. They were creatures of a fable, or a dream, and I shrank back, sudden sweat stirring in my groin, against the wall of a house, reaching forward to grab the cloak of Bostar before me. He turned.

  ‘What is it, Hanno?’ He saw, perhaps he smelled my fright, and smiled. ‘Of course. You haven’t seen them before!’

  ‘Them! Them!’ I jabbered. ‘What’ll we do?’ Turning, I tugged at him.

  He was before me, firm hands on my upper arms. Bostar, my guardian and friend. ‘Camels, Hanno! They are animals of Africa, called camels. Camels! Say it! Think of them as horses. You have nothing to fear!’ He glanced round. ‘Quick! Against the wall – again!’

  They passed by, stinking. Pissing as it passed, one of them splashed me on the shins with its urine which plashed off the cobbles, and I can still remember its fetid breath before that. I have never trusted camels since. Massinissa swears by them. Massinissa? I will come to him.

  Such was my first impression of Carthage; the familiar, the foreign, the bizarre. The walls, the streets, the houses gave the vessel form; inside it seethed and boiled. The people seemed to come from all the corners of the earth. Large and little, fat and thin, old and young, there were some as black as ebony, as brown as earth; aureate like melons; yellow like corn; as white as alabaster, as sallow as an olive skin. Their hair was of all the colours, some I had not seen before, auburn, red, and blonde. From Capua I was used to togas, tunics and smocks, all in a narrow range of shades of white and brown. As the lane opened out into a huge marketplace, the different colours and styles of clothing defied my senses. I saw a lithe black woman, with naked, small, pert breasts, and golden bracelets on her arms, leading a puma on a leash. There were musicians, jesters, hustlers, traders, men squatting in groups and chewing what I came to know as betel that some call areganut, and others chunam, and all this swelled into one cacophony of sound as people haggled over hessian sacks of nutmeg, raisins, onions, garlic and megarian or thin, ti
n trays of galbanum, stacte, costum, nard and myrrh.

  Each carrying two long, swaying planks of sawn timber across their shoulders, calling out ‘Make way!’, some porters pushed past us, wearing only linen around their loins, sweat sheening even so early on their chests and arms. In a black, hooded cape of heavy wool–– [Here the account breaks off. Having been stained by something, blood, perhaps, or it could be wine, the next four pages are illegible.]

  Letter from Cato’s papers, preserved in the archives

  of Rome

  To Marcus Porcius Cato, Censor, Sempronia sends greetings. We have your letter of the Kalends of June, saying that once again affairs of state prevent you from coming home from Rome. That is a shame. Our son Faustus is thriving, and of course he will be three soon. You say that you will see more of him when he is older, and you can teach him history, and Greek, so he can read the poems of Homer and come to understand a golden age before degeneracy gripped the Greeks. I think, my husband, that Faustus needs you now. You could teach him of your love – for him, for us, for Rome.

  But I know better than to remonstrate with you. Your duties are many, your burden hard. I only want to say that you do not have to prove yourself to me. Have you forgotten how, in the years after we married, we lived and worked together for the land; rising together at dawn and working with the slaves in the fields, eating what they ate, drinking their sour wine; walking home together in the evening to wash, and eat again, talk, sleep, make love? For both of us, I know, those were halcyon years. You were a farmer then. What, I wonder, are you now?

  From Bostar’s journal

  The waiting is hard enough for me. I do not know how Hanno is taking it. I do not ask. He does not tell. Here in this small house we have rented, two streets south of the temple of Eschmoun, we both work in the mornings – he at his Punic, me at my letters, journal and designs. Two of my teeth are aching. I must find a dentist today. I am sure it is the sweetness of the food here, much of it enriched by the juice of, they say, some cane. I must learn more about it. Meanwhile, we have certainly had time to appreciate and digest many different types of fish. Our cook prepares little else. When I have time, I will compose a piscatology of Carthage. Its waters contain many fish I have not seen before.