Polybius stared. ‘Zeus above. I recognize that backside. That’s old Hannibal, isn’t it? I last saw him at the triumph of your father Aemilius Paullus.’
Scipio nodded. ‘Our friend from the academy in Rome. The last surviving prisoner of the war against his namesake.’
Polybius narrowed his eyes. ‘Was this your idea?’
‘You know what they say about elephants. When they’re ready to die, they go to the same graveyard. Well, this is Hannibal’s home, and it is about to become a graveyard. It was an act of compassion.’
‘Compassion?’ Polybius scoffed. ‘I don’t think the old centurion taught anything about that.’
Scipio grunted. ‘Well, if Hasdrubal taunts us, I can taunt him back. There could be nothing more humiliating for him than to see the last survivor of the glorious Hannibal’s elephant corps hobble through the ruins of Carthage, to collapse and die on the steps of their temple.’
Polybius cast Scipio a wry look. ‘That’s more like it.’
‘Do you remember at the academy in Rome, how Petraeus punished Ennius once by making him sleep in the dung in the elephant’s stable?’
‘For a week. He’s never got rid of the smell.’
‘The centurion has been much on my mind lately, on this of all days. I wish he could have seen us here.’
‘He was a hard taskmaster, but a true Roman,’ Polybius said.
‘He is with my adoptive grandfather now, in Elysium.’
‘He knew he could never be here. His time was another war, with your grandfather against Hannibal. And he died an honourable death.’
‘Fighting an enemy from within,’ Scipio muttered.
‘He died for the honour of your grandfather. For the honour of Rome.’
‘He will be avenged.’
Fabius stared at the elephant, suddenly remembering the scene all those years before of the old senator Cato following that swishing tail through the Forum during the triumph of Aemilius Paullus, an act of warning about Carthage that had stunned the crowd to silence; Cato had gone now to the fields of Elysium, but the legacy of his warning lived on in the irascible beast now about to lumber its final steps through a city it had last seen more than seventy years before, when Hannibal had mustered his elephant corps for their extraordinary but ill-fated campaign through Spain and over the Alps towards Rome.
Fabius guessed the thoughts that would be running through Scipio’s mind. The centurion had made them into professional army officers, the first in Rome’s history. Since the Celtiberian War their success in battle had led to more wars, to more conquests; they had not had to return to Rome to endure the tedious succession of civic offices that had been the lot of their fathers and grandfathers. And the men under them, the legionaries, were no longer just civilian levies recruited for one campaign and disbanded when it was over. Those here before the walls of Carthage included men Scipio had fought alongside five, even ten years before: battle-hardened, gnarled, tough. Scipio had seen to that. If the Senate in Rome would not create a professional army, Scipio would do it for them. And he knew that those who had tried to bring Scipio’s grandfather down, those who had ordered the death of the centurion, were driven not just by envy. They feared the power of the army, and the rise of a new breed of generals. Above all, they feared the name Scipio Africanus, now born again.
Fabius remembered the inscription on the elder Scipio’s tomb at Liternum, more than a hundred miles south of Rome near the Bay of Naples, the tomb of a man who had been forced into exile and lived his final years in bitterness. Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habebis. Ungrateful fatherland, you will not even have my bones. Fabius watched Scipio’s knuckles turn white as he gripped the railing. The centurion Petraeus was not the only one who would be avenged. And there was something else, something that Scipio never spoke of. Fabius could see the amulet on Scipio’s chest, a little carved eagle on a leather thong, soaked and hardened with the sweat and blood of war. He remembered who had given it to him all those years ago, and he swallowed hard. To become who he was now, consul, general, he had been forced to sacrifice a love that would have destroyed his military career. He had sworn that he would play the game, do what was needed to rise to the top, and then throw off the shackles that had caused him such anguish. He would not go back to Rome as his grandfather had done. This day would be his vengeance; after this he would no longer be enslaved to Rome. He would become Rome.
19
That night, Fabius had stayed up with Scipio and Polybius on the foredeck of the ship, drinking wine and leaning back against the raking artemon mast that extended out over the bows. The sea was flat and shimmering in the starlight, the wind having died down during the evening, leaving only a residual swell that lapped against the side of the ship. Hardly a sound came from the fleet anchored in the darkness around them, and Carthage seemed as quiet as a tomb. Fabius remembered the same silence in the night before Pydna, of two armies sleeping before battle. The men were marshalling their strength for the day to come, but also dreaming of themselves in the arms of loved ones, embracing their children and telling them that they would always watch over them, from this world or the next, as if their souls had left the machinery of war to return to their homes for a few precious hours before the day of battle dawned.
It was a moonless night and the heavens shone brilliantly, a thousand pinpricks that reflected like an undulating carpet of light on the water. Arched high above them in vivid folds of light and colour was the Via Lacteal, the Milky Way, its centre the constellation Sagittarius, the stars outlining the shape of the centaur drawing his bow towards the eastern horizon. Scipio took a deep drink from the wine flagon and passed it to Polybius, who took a mouthful and then passed it back. ‘I remember you teaching me about the Pythagoreans,’ Scipio said, gesturing with the flagon at the sky. ‘About how they think the universe is ruled by divine numbers, and by music. About how for them the number seven is sacred, representing the seven celestial orbits of the sun, the moon and the five planets, and the seven gates of the senses: the mouth, the nostrils, the ears, the eyes.’ He passed the flagon to Fabius. ‘What do you think, Fabius? What does a centurion think when he contemplates the stars?’
Fabius drank deeply, and stared up. ‘I’m not a philosopher, but I can count. If each one of those pinpricks is a star or a planet, then there are many more than seven celestial orbits.’
Scipio smiled at him. ‘You sound like Polybius.’
‘When I was a boy in your household Polybius taught me about astronomy, as well as the world map of Eratosthenes. He said that we needed to know the shape of the world if we were to conquer it, and to know the vastness of the heavens to keep us in our place.’
Polybius looked at the sky. ‘I also told you that the Stoics believe the cycle of the universe will last as long as it takes the stars to resume their original place in the heavens, and then all will be consumed by fire and fall into chaos, and it will begin again. And because everything is in a state of movement, there can be no fixed measure of distance, nor likewise of time.’
Scipio raised his arms in mock frustration. ‘My dear Polybius, I sometimes forget that you are a Greek, and therefore have a weakness for sophistry. I will fix our measure on the walls ahead, and I will not have you saying that an anchored ship and those walls are in constant movement in relation to one another, as Ennius will then be unable to aim his weapons with accuracy.’