Lavinia

by Le Guin, Ursula K.

  He looked at me hopefully, but I would not return his gaze.

  "She tells me all the praises he sings of you. She believes he's so determined to have you that if I give you to one of the others, he'll rebel, despite this agreement they made. She may be right. He's an ambitious, self-confident fellow. But he has reason to be. Your mother has encouraged him. In fact, if you picked one of the others, she might rebel." He tried to make it a joke, but it was not a joke, and I could see misery in his eyes. "She has your welfare and the good of our kingdom very much at heart," he said.

  I had no argument, no answer.

  "Give me five days, father," I said. My voice came out hoarse and weak.

  "And then you will tell me your choice?"

  "Yes."

  He took me in his big arms then, and kissed my forehead. I felt the warmth of his body and smelled the familiar smell of him, harsh, dear, and comforting as the smell of the earth on the hills of summer. "You are the light of my eyes, daughter," he murmured. That made me cry. I kissed his hand and ran back to the women's side in tears. Everybody was in the courtyard in the twilight, watching Castus talk the swarm together into a great humming dark globe over the fountain, shadowy, swaying, shrinking together always closer and smaller as he talked his spells and made his net ready to capture the bees.

  THE FIVE DAYS SEEMED VERY LONG TO ME. I KEPT TO MYSELF as well as I could. Once I got away and ran to Tyrrhus' farm. Silvia was in the dairy; I coaxed her to come away with me. I wanted to talk to her about the choice I had to make, which of course she knew about; it was common knowledge. Very little in a king's house can be a secret. And everyone knew that her brother Almo had not even been included in the list of suitors Turnus offered to my father. When I came to her, she hoped I might ask her to reassure Almo, to tell him that he was my choice and should ask the king directly for my hand. The family had let their hopes run high, thinking my friendship with Silvia raised her brother's status to equality with mine, as indeed it did among us young people: but not among the kings and queens, the mortal powers of our state.

  When Silvia understood that I had refused to choose any of the suitors, she began to press Almo's case. When I shook my head and said, "No, Silvia, I can't choose him," she wanted to know why. Had I not always shown him a kindness that had led him to love me? was he not good enough for me? and so on.

  I said, "I love him better than any of the others, but I do not want him as my husband. And if I did, if I chose him, it would be the same as killing him. Turnus would be after him like a hawk on a mouse."

  It was a stupid comparison, and Silvia took it ill. "Even if your father refused to protect my brother, I think our household has a few good warriors of its own," she said stiffly.

  "Oh, Silvia, I'm the mouse—the mouse in the field when they cut the hay and lay the ground all bare—everybody watching me, nowhere to go. I run about and run about in my mind and can't find anywhere to hide. Everywhere I look there's Turnus, with his blue eyes, and his smile, and my—" I stopped myself. "And my mother trusts him," I said.

  "You don't?" she asked curiously.

  "No. He has no piety. He looks only at himself."

  "Why shouldn't he? He's rich, he's handsome, he's a king." Her irony was not entirely ill-natured, but she had no sympathy for me. She was hurt for Almo, and would not let me off easily.

  I think she knew I was frightened, but would not ask me what I was afraid of, so I could not speak to her as I longed to.

  All the same, we parted friends. She knew well enough that Almo had been in over his head, and that indeed he would have put himself and his family in mortal danger by winning a woman King Turnus wanted. She gave me a long hug and a kiss when we parted, and said, "Oh, I'm sorry all this came up. I wish there weren't any men in the world. I wish we could go down to the river together the way we did last spring!"

  "Maybe we will," I said, but my heart was low. I kissed her, and so we parted. I went back through the fields trying not to cry. I was near tears or in tears half the time, and sick of it. There was nobody in the world whom I could talk to, or who could understand me, but the poet. Maruna might have understood, indeed perhaps she did, but I could not talk about my mother to her. To ask slaves to speak or hear dishonor of their master is unjust, it puts them at risk. There are always talebearers, toadies, among household slaves, how could it be otherwise? No room in a king's house is without an ear at the door. I knew I had Maruna's sympathy, and that was much help to me; but, since I could not protect her, I could not confide in her.

  Most of the other women and girls simply wondered why I didn't jump at Turnus' offer. Old Vestina sang his praises daily, always to a chorus of sighs and giggles.

  And my mother's affectionate pressure and persuasion in favor of Turnus continued, until four days had passed, and I must make my choice the next day. Then her exasperation with me burst out all at once in a fit of fury like those of years ago. She came into my room just after I had lain down to sleep. She was in her sleeping gown, carrying a tiny oil lamp, its flame no larger than a caper bud; she was there suddenly, looming tall and bulky in the loose white gown, her black hair loose round her white face. "I don't know what game you're playing, or how far you think you can lead your father by the nose, Lavinia," she said in a low, harsh voice, "but I tell you now, you will marry Turnus and be queen of Ardea. You don't have to cower and whine about it. If you don't like Turnus, don't worry, he may not like you all that much either, it's a political marriage not a rape. There's one thing a girl is good for, and that's to be married well, and you're no different or better than any other girl. So do your duty, as I did mine. If you ruin this chance I'll never forgive you. I'll never forgive you." It was not what she said so much as how she said it that terrified me: she stood very close to the bed, and every moment I felt that she was about to strike me, to claw me with her nails as she had done long ago. Her voice shook and hissed and her breath came hard.

  "Say you will marry Turnus," she said. "Say you will!"

  I said nothing. I could not.

  A strange noise came from her, a kind of shrieking groan, and she turned and ran out of the room.

  After a while I got up, for there was no sleep in that bed, and crept out into the courtyard. No one else was awake. I sat on the wooden bench under the laurel tree and watched the slow sliding of stars over the roofs of the Regia. The chill of the night seemed to come into my mind and make it cool and clear. I saw that I must marry Turnus: it was inevitable. To accept another suitor would be to bring civil war into the kingdom. His agreement with the others meant nothing. Turnus had to compete, to win, to be master; he would never let another man have a woman he had claimed. Mar riage was my duty and my destiny. My mother was right, even if she spoke in her own interest not in mine.

  In the morning I would tell my father I was ready for him to accept Turnus as my husband.

  The great Bears stood high over the father river, over Etruria. The leaves of the laurel whispered in the mild flow of the night wind. I thought of those three strange nights in Albunea, where the faint stink of the sulfur pools always hung in the dark air and I sat talking with a shadow, a dying man who had not yet been born and who knew my past and my future and my soul, who knew who it was that I should marry, the true hero. But here, now, in the couryard of my house, all that seemed distant, blurred and obscure, a false dream that had nothing to do with waking life. I would not think about it again. I would never go back to Albunea.

  For a moment I heard the voice, the voice like no other, in my memory. When the poet first came, when he first stood there in the altar place, he had said that Faunus spoke from the trees of Albunea to King Latinus, telling him not to marry his daughter to a man of Latium. Then, seeing me startled and troubled by that, he said, "I think it has not happened yet. Faunus has not spoken to Latinus. Perhaps it never will happen." And he said that perhaps he had imagined it, that it was a dream within a dream.

  And I had imagined it. It had not happened.
It would not happen. False dreams, visions, follies.

  The roofs were standing hard black against the paling eastern sky when I went in and lay down for a little while.

  It was a day of worship, and I was up before the sun. I put on the red-edged toga I wore as a child and still wore for the rites, and went to wake my father, calling with the ritual words at his door: "Do you wake, king? Waken!" And soon he came out, also in his red-edged robe, the loose corner pulled up over his head for worship, and we went to the altar in the atrium.

  A number of the house people were with us, among them my mother, who did not usually attend the common rituals. She stood quite close behind me as I scattered the salsamola on the altar. I had the sense that she intended to be close to me, to keep me under her eyes, within reach, all that day, till she got what she wanted. The warmth, the pressure of her body so close behind me was palpable, and I wanted to escape it. I moved closer to my father as he held a little pitch-dipped stick in Vesta's fire and lifted it to light the altar torches, murmuring the sacred words. I do not know if the pitch scattered, or a wind blew in, or a hand moved, but I suddenly saw a strangeness all around me, a flickering movement of brightness. There were voices crying, screaming—"Lavinia, Lavinia! her hair's on fire—she's burning—" I put up my hands to my head and felt a queer soft movement in the air about it. Sparks danced and leapt around me, and I smelled smoke. As I turned I saw through a yellowish, dim cloud my mother standing there not an arm's length from me. She stared with wild eyes at something above my head. I turned and ran from her, ran through the people, through the atrium, out to the courtyard. Flame and yellow smoke followed me, sparks scattered from me, people screamed, I heard my father call my name. I ran to the fountain pool under the laurel and threw myself down, my face in the water, my hair in the water.

  My father was there kneeling by me, lifting me up. "Lavinia, little one, daughter, my daughter," he whispered. "Are you hurt, are you hurt, let me see."

  I was very bewildered, but I saw amazement dawning through the horror in his face. He passed his hand over my dripping head, down my lank wet hair.

  "Can it be you took no harm?"

  "What was it, father? There was a fire—"

  "A fire above your head. Leaping, blazing. I thought it was your hair—I thought the torch had caught it—Are you not hurt? not burned?"

  I put my own hand on my head; I was dizzy, but my scalp and hair felt as usual, only sopping wet. Nothing was burned but the corner of my toga which I had worn pulled up over my head at the altar. All that corner of the white, red-bordered wool was scorched black.

  The whole household was gathered around us by now, filling the courtyard, shouting and crying and asking and answering. My mother stood by the trunk of the laurel, her face fixed, blank. My father looked up at her and said, "She took no harm, Amata. She is all right!"

  She answered something, I don't know what. Maruna's mother pressed forward; she knelt beside us and touched my head and cheeks gently, a license allowed her as a healer. She looked then at my father and said sternly, imperiously, "An omen, king. Speak the omen!"

  And he obeyed the slave. He stood up. He looked down at me, and up into the great tree, and spoke. "War," he said.

  All the people fell silent at his voice.

  "War," he said again, and then, as if struggling with the words, or as if the words pushed themselves from his throat and mouth without his will: "Bright fame, bright glory will crown Lavinia. But she brings her people war."

  Gradually everything and everyone got quieted down. People scattered out, talking all the way, to their morning work. Vestina took me off to dry my hair and weep and fuss over me, while the red-bordered toga with the blackened, burnt corner passed from hand to hand among the marveling women.

  The rite that had been interrupted must be begun again and carried out. That was so much on my mind that at last I broke free from the women to go assist my father; but he sent me back at once to the women's quarters, telling me to send Maruna to help him. I should rest, he said, and come to him later.

  I was glad of it, for I found myself shaky and light-headed. "I think I need to eat something," I said when I came back to the women's side, and Vestina cried, "Of course, of course, poor lamb!" and sent girls off to fetch curds and honey and spelt porridge, all of which I ate, and felt better.

  My mother had been in the room with us all along, but did not join the chatter. She sat at her great loom. I was a good spinning-woman, I made as strong and even a thread as any, but I was slow and clumsy at the loom. Amata was by far the best of our weavers, working fast, with a steady rhythm and utter concentration; when she was weaving she was aware of nothing else, and her face looked rapt and calm. The very fine woolen thread I had been spinning all this spring was for the piece she was working on now, a full breadth of the finest white fabric, the kind you can gather yards of into your hand and pass through a finger ring. Today, as the women at last began talking about something besides the mysterious flame of fire, and how the yellow smoke had swirled behind me when I ran, and how sparks flew all through the house yet nothing caught fire from them, and so on, and on, my mother turned round from the loom and beckoned to me. I went to her.

  "Do you know what it is I'm making, Lavinia?" she asked with the strangest smile, a wide, blind smile that was almost coy.

  As soon as she asked me the question I knew the answer. But I said, "A summer palla."

  "Your wedding gown. You'll wear it when you marry. See how fine it is!"

  "Your weaving's always beautiful, mother."

  "You'll wear it when you marry, when you marry him," she said, almost as if it were the refrain of a song, and she turned back to the loom and took up the shuttle. And as she wove she whispered that half song under her breath, "You'll wear it when you marry, when you marry him."

  About midday I went alone to my father's rooms. As I crossed the courtyard I paused under the laurel tree and asked the powers of the tree and the spring, the Lar of the household and my dear Penates, to be with me and help me. All I had thought and seen so clearly last night, sitting there on the bench under the stars, all I had so firmly and reasonably resolved, was gone, burnt away in a puff of heatless flame, a coil of yellow smoke. I knew what I must say, but I wanted help in saying it.

  My father embraced me and tried to make certain once again that I was quite unhurt, unburnt, unshaken.

  "I am well, father," I said. "I was terribly hungry, though. I ate everything they brought from the kitchen." That reassured him, as I knew it would. "Now may I speak to you about my suitors?"

  He sat down on the chest against the wall and gave one grave nod.

  "I said I would ask you today to give me to one of them."

  A nod.

  "But because of what happened this morning—the omen—I ask you not to ask me my choice, but instead to go to Albunea, and ask the powers there. Whatever they tell you, I will obey."

  As I spoke he looked up at me heavily from under his heavy grey-black eyebrows. He listened. When I had spoken, he thought for some while. At last he nodded once again.

  "I will go today," he said.

  "May I come with you?"

  Again he thought it over. "Yes," he said. Then he looked up at me again with the shadow of a smile and said, "As we used to go together. Do you remember the first time? You were still a child..." But his face was melancholy. I saw that he looked very worn.

  I kissed his hand, and said, "I'll be ready to go as soon as you like, father."

  "Sacrifices," he said. "This is ... I will need ... a lamb—two. Is there a white calf? Two lambs and a white calf—at least."

  "I'll send to Tyrrhus' Doro, he's with the cows and calves in the long meadow pasture. I can see to the animals, father."

  "Good. Do that. There are some things I must see to here before we go—A black calf, better, Lavinia, if there is one. Black, in that place."

  That place, Albunea, that lies so close above the underworld that the sha
dows of the dead can come and go there easily. Black, in that place.

  Lambing had been early that spring, and the lambs the shepherd led to me were quite large. The calf old Doro brought was small, a runt in fact, and he was not altogether black, but brownish on the legs and face; not a perfect sacrifice. My father frowned at him.

  I said, "He is pious, father. See how he follows along? And he did his best to be black."

  Doro nodded solemnly. "He's the blackest we've got, king," he said.

  So the king nodded, and we set off.

  I wore the toga with the burnt corner, for it was the only sacred toga I had; year after year, my mother had put off making the red dye for a new one. Because we had to lead the animals, and perhaps because my father felt some unease or mistrust in the air, we were quite a troop. It was not as when he and I walked there long ago, he carrying the young lamb, or when I walked with Maruna. She came with me, indeed, but also there was Doro with the calf, and the shepherd's boy with the lambs, and two slaves carrying the other offerings, and three of my father's guards, the men who kept the doors of the Regia and went with him, armed, when he rode out visiting other towns or other kings. They were called his horse-riders, his knights, and they did each keep a horse in the royal stable; but this was a sacred journey, and we went afoot.

  One after another we walked through the bright day into the evening. We came to the little Prati and followed it upstream, and I remembered the rocky ford of the river where I had seen blood in the water in my dream.

  The knights and Maruna and the slaves stopped at the outskirts of the forest. The men would camp there. Maruna would go to the woodcutter's house. Doro and the shepherd boy led the animals, and Latinus and I carried the other offerings on into the forest of Albunea.

  By the time the sacrifice was completed it was night, the altar fire and torches giving the only light under the dark trees. Doro and the boy took the skinned carcasses back to their camp, where the men would have the first feast on the meat. My father reversed the torches. Their flames died in the earth. He stood before the altar, where the fire still fed on the fat of the sacrifice, his head shrouded, murmuring the words of worship and humble request. I sat on the fleece of one of the lambs, listening. I feared and longed to hear the grandfather's voice speak, answering him, from those dark, silent trees.