Pride of Carthage

Aradna had many gifts to thank the goddesses for. She had escaped war. Scenes of death haunted her dreams, but they were no longer the fabric of every waking moment. She had found her way to the island she had known only by name, and on landing she discovered the remnants of her father's family, an uncle who barely remembered his brother, several cousins, and a sister-in-law who—magically—welcomed her without question. Boys from the village laughed at the strange accent she spoke Greek with, but clearly they liked her company. They helped her build a hut of stone and clay, with a wood-framed roof of clay tiles. In a pen beside it she raised Persian fowl. She helped her reclaimed family harvest their olives and tend their pistachio trees and repair fishing nets for the village fleet. She helped an old man from the town raise edible dormice. This particularly gave her joy, for the squirrel-like creatures were shy and quiet, with trembling noses and bulbous black eyes and fur so soft she marveled. True, they all eventually went into pots to fatten and were sold live at the weekly market, but still it was a gift to watch them born, to hold them in hairless infancy and see them grow. Nobody hungered to rob or rape her. Her small fortune was hardly even necessary, and yet was a comfort buried deep beneath the earth floor of her dwelling. She set her donkey loose to roam the nearby hills, though the creature never wandered far from her. Was this not happiness?

Not quite. That was why every day since her arrival Aradna had climbed up to the old ruin at its summit. The first few times, she followed a goat trail part of the way, but she soon found this course too circuitous for her liking. By the late autumn she had carved her own path straight up a gully, out of which she rose so abruptly that she scrambled for a time on all fours, and then onto a ridge that took her the rest of the way. Considering the distances she had covered during her life as a camp follower this hike was a small exercise that hardly even broke a sweat on her, no matter how hot the day. The goats watched her with skepticism, standing big-bellied and recalcitrant, flicking their ears as if to comment on her disregard for protocol. She sometimes told them what she thought of them, but in fact she enjoyed the company of peaceful beings and she knew that her compulsion to gain the hill daily did actually verge on absurd.

Once into the labyrinth of aged white walls she found a certain peace. The ruin had once been the rambling estate of an Athenian exiled to the island for reasons of political intrigue. It had been abandoned many years ago, although just why Aradna never learned. As no single flat space existed to serve as the base of the house, it meandered through several terraced levels, stone walls blending in and out of the vegetation, as if the designer had bent to nature's plans and constructed the buildings not to offend it. In this regard it was strangely modest, despite its size and wonderful placement.

Aradna's destination was always the same. She climbed to the very peak of the island, which was a lumpy rise within the estate's crumbling walls. There, beneath the ancient olive trees, with the grainy soil crackling beneath her sandals, she would turn and take in the panoramic, circular view of the sea as it stretched out in all directions. On a clear day, of which there were many, she believed she could see everything that floated within a day's sail. And it was for just this that she came, day after day. She waited through the slow dying of autumn and even through the winter, when ship traffic slowed. She would just sit on the blustery heights and watch the hand of the wind drag its fingertips across the waves. She would think of the first time she saw the soldier, naked and aroused, falling from midair down to the sandy riverbank near the Picene coast. She would marvel at how they had met again and again in the chaos of a war-torn country. She would recall bathing his naked body beside a great battlefield and think of his strange claims that he conversed with a slain Saguntine girl. She would remember that he had a gentle mouth. For a few moments she would feel ashamed that she had parted with him angrily, calling him a fool for journeying back to Africa with his commander. But she did not chastise herself too much. He was a fool. There was no disputing that.

But he also had a destiny that she knew would not be decided on a battlefield. That was why she climbed here every day, because she would eventually see the sails of the ship bearing him home. One way or another, Imco Vaca would find her again. She was sure of this. Of course he would. It was only with this possibility that any of her life made any sense. So she chose to believe it.