She was taken into the city by one of Jexami’s carriage-men, and dropped at one of the big gates in the landward wall. By now she had learned her way around Carthage, a little. The city within the wall was a neat grid of streets. The building stock was constructed of the local sandstone, and brilliant-white paintwork was common, so that when the sun pushed through the thickening clouds the air seemed to fill with light. The city’s complicated history had left its mark too. Alongside the temples to Carthage’s ancient gods there were mosques and muezzin towers, relics of the days of Arabic conquest, and more recent churches to Jesus, symbols of Hatti influence, squat buildings whose faces were carved with representations of crossed palm leaves. Mostly, however, the lower city was crammed with residential properties, apartments heaped up three and four storeys high, and shops, workshops, taverns and inns open to the street. The people swarmed everywhere, vendors calling, children running, imposing men and women carrying scrolls and slates. She saw no signs of the dispossessed who had washed up against the external walls, but still the city was crowded. She imagined everybody with a place in the city bringing in relatives from the dying countryside, until there was no room left.

Walking through this noisy, off-putting chaos, she never got lost, for her destination was the Byrsa, the tall hill that dominated the centre of the town, topped with its mighty statue of Hannibal of Latium, the city’s greatest hero, a sight you could see from anywhere in the lower city. She fixed on the statue and headed that way.

At the foot of the Byrsa the street pattern changed. From here, broad avenues ran radially up to the peak of the citadel mound, with lateral crossways between them. She set off to climb a steeply sloping street, lined to either side with apartment blocks that could be several storeys high. She passed an open miller’s store where grain was ground on a turning wheel, and a jeweller’s where the craftsman laboured on fine pieces in full view of passers-by, and a temple, a fine building with a courtyard where two tremendous statues of men, or perhaps gods, loomed over an altar. At the temple she paused, breathing hard, and looked back over flat rooftops of the lower city. The steep road running down from this point was well maintained and clean, she saw. Vases and jars stood on many roofs, there to catch the rain, she imagined, in a city eager for every drop. From up here at least there was no sign of plague or famine. This was an intact, well-run, functioning city. Perhaps the storm which was engulfing the whole world had yet to break here. But it would break, she thought, remembering all she had seen on her journey. It would break.