Lavinia

by Le Guin, Ursula K.

  We all straggled up to the grassy level under the trees and set down burdens and drew breath for a while. Amata stood and talked to us, telling us that this was the festival of the Caprotinae as the Rutulians celebrated it in their hills—a festival of women, for women only. "We will set guards," she said. "If a man comes near us, he must be driven away. If he refuses to go, or if he tries to spy on us, it's death for him, worse than death! For if he spies on our mysteries that's the end of his manhood—he'll go back down the mountain a eunuch! Balina brought four sharp swords with her, and four strong women will keep watch day and night on the paths. And the powers of the hills and wilderness wait to curse the man who dares approach us. For Mars must stay below us here, Mars must keep down at the fields' edge and the forests' edge, standing on his boundaries. The heights and the wild forests are ours, ours alone, for our worship and our revels. And look, look, the sun rises! Greet the day, sisters! Sicana, open a wine jug, pass it around!"

  So the day began with drinking, and by noon some of the women were too drunk to dance; they laughed and screeched and vomited and fell over and slept where they fell. Amata taught us the dances and songs of her Caprotinae, and a sacred game in which the older women tried to catch the younger ones and whip them with fig branches, shouting out crude joking songs about men's penises and women's vulvas; and we held other ceremonies at altars we raised to Fauna of the wilderness, and the Juno of women, and Ceres who swells the seed in the womb of Earth to be born as the bread of life. Slaves were sent back down to the city to fetch more wine. During the day, groups of women began to straggle in, coming from other households in the city, drawn by curiosity about this new women's rite and by solidarity with their queen. I found myself in an odd position with these townswomen, who were all outraged for me and enraged at my father. They hung about me to commiserate, and pet me, and encourage me in my love and fidelity to Turnus of Ardea. Their indignation and kindness were real and touching, and yet as unreal as all the rest of this escape, this mistake.

  I played the part of the meek voiceless maiden all through this masquerade up in the hills. I could not bring myself to tell these sympathetic matrons that I had no love at all for Turnus and wanted only to obey my father and the oracle. To do so would be to betray my mother, and to turn her rage against me. I was a coward. I felt false, frightened, incredulous, scornful, and alone.

  My mother had brought none of my women up here to the hills, only her women; and for all her wild gaiety and seeming abandon, she never let me out of her sight. I was very glad when I saw, among the last group of newcomers, Maruna. She had put on my best palla, for that was the rule, the servant to dress as mistress and the mistress as servant. I winked at her to let her know I'd seen her, and seen my best palla, too, but we kept our distance and did not speak. Slight and quiet, Maruna had a gift of going unnoticed, very useful to a slave. She kept with the group she'd come with and did as all the others did, and I think my mother never noticed her.

  During the evening Amata began to drink—she had only tasted and pretended, till then—and by nightfall she was not drunk, but mellowed, less hectic, and enjoying the escapade far more than she had pretended to till then. Her laugh came from deep in her belly. I had never heard her laugh like that. It made her seem strange, another woman, a woman she might have been. I felt an aching pang of grief for her.

  "Lavinia," she called me, and when I came to her, picking my way among the women sprawled about in the grass amid the little flickering oil lamps and the low boughs of the great fig trees, "Lavinia, I sent for him, last night, before we left. I sent a messenger on horseback. He should be here tomorrow. Your wedding night, my darling!"

  I knew who he was, and what she meant; it was all part of the craziness, the unreality, but in her game I had to play the game. "How will he know where to come?"

  "The women will tell him. They're looking out for him, they'll catch him before he ever gets into the city. He should be here by this time tomorrow."

  "But men are not allowed here among us," I said.

  "Oh, this one is," my mother said, in that deep melting laughing voice.

  She pulled at my hand to make me sit down beside her. She leaned close to me and whispered in my ear, "There will be such a wedding night here in the hills! And then to Ardea. Home to Ardea! It's all planned. All planned!"

  She kept me by her all night. I had to sleep close to her and the group of women she was drinking and gambling with, in the light of their lamps fixed on low branches. I slept only in snatches all night long, waking up always with a start, my mind racing. I kept telling myself not to worry, all I had to do was go along with whatever my mother wanted until her game played itself out, as it must, in confusion and disillusion and retreat. But she had sent for Turnus—what if he came? What if she handed me over to him in a mock wedding, a real rape? What if he took me off to Ardea? There would be nothing, nothing I could do. At the thought my body went stiff, my hands clenched, and I hid my face in my arms. I had to get away from here. I had to find a way to escape. But even if I could creep away, I could not find my way through the forest in the dark: the guards were watching the path we had come by, and it was a long way through wild, broken hills. The best I could hope for was to get far enough away to hide for the rest of the night and then follow a stream down to the lowlands. But my mother's women were all around me, still awake, the tiny lamps still flickering. And beyond them, the guards.

  The same series of thoughts—the effort to reassure myself, the shock of thinking Turnus might come, the attempt to imagine a way to escape—repeated itself in my head, round and round, again and again, all night. Sometimes I slept and had snatches of dreams of my poet, not in the altar place of Albunea but here in the wild hills; he seemed to be nearby, near one of the oil lamps, but he was deformed, shrunken into a stump of shadow, mumbling words I could not understand. Then I would wake to the endless repetition of the same thoughts.

  I got up at the first hint of light. Seeing Amata asleep at last among her women, I slipped away towards the dell we had been using as a place to piss, and for a moment I thought I could simply walk on—but just past the dell, Gaia was standing on guard, leaning on a naked sword as if it were a cane. She greeted me loudly, with a stupid smile. She was a sweeper, not quite right in her wits; she was devoted to my mother, as were many of these women. If Amata had told her not to let me pass, she would not let me pass. Amata was not a particularly kind mistress, she showed little affection, but she was not stingy, not cruel, and did not play favorites: that was more than enough to win loyalty. And her grief for her lost sons gave her a kind of sanctity among the women of her household. "The poor queen," I had heard them say a thousand times, and it never seemed strange to me that they still pitied her. They were right. She was an unhappy woman.

  Many of us slept late and got up staggering. Food and drink had nearly given out, and groups went down to Laurentum to bring stores from their own storehouses and from the Regia. There was a good deal of coming and going, but I could not slip away or join a group going down to the city, as I hoped, for if Amata was not with me, tall Sicana and dour Lina always were, keeping watch.

  I and some slave girls were the only young women here; the city matrons had left their virgin daughters safe at home. But women with babies at the breast had of course brought their nurslings, and I passed much of the day relieving tired mothers by rocking fretful babies. It saved me from having to talk with half-drunken adults. And the babies were a relief from the falseness, the insanity of what we were doing. They were solid, real, and needy. They were too young to imagine anything. Looking after them was a comfort to me, for which of course I was overpraised and flattered—look how kind the king's daughter is to the slave's child. Look how kind the slave's child is to the king's daughter, I thought, as a sweet, languid little girl smiled up at me, falling asleep in my arms.

  Amata organised dances and whipping games in the afternoon, but they lacked the wild spontaneity of the first day.
Everyone knew by now that Amata was expecting Turnus to arrive, and that she meant to marry me to him. Many women were uneasy with the idea of his coming, feeling, I think, like heifers who'd jumped the fence and found themselves in the bull's pasture. And the notion of a marriage so far from the doorway of the house and the Penates and Lares of the family and the city was puzzling and shocking to us all. How could you get married in the wilderness, where none of the domestic powers could help you, and the local powers and spirits had no care for human matters and might well be malevolent? Though Amata continued to talk of a wedding, the others dealt with it by speaking of it as a betrothal. That was something they could look forward to as plausible. So they kept their expectation high all afternoon and evening. When night came and Turnus had not, Amata began to drink again and urge us all to drink. The dances and songs soon broke up into aimless, foolish noisiness. Yet through it all my mother kept me close beside her, with Lina and Sicana; and the guards with swords did not drink, but spelled each other on duty all night long, waiting out of sight, down the path.

  Next day a good many women slipped away quietly, and some groups that went down to bring food and drink did not come back. I thought it likely they had lost heart for trudging back and forth, but Amata said their men had locked them up, threatening to beat them if they ran off to the hills again. She ranted about what would happen to those men if they tried to come up here. All our women she sent to the Regia came back, laden with wine and bread: no one had hindered them from raiding the storerooms, and they were told the king had given orders that the women performing religious rites up in the hills were not to be disturbed. But they said also that people were talking about some kind of quarrel with a hunting party of the strangers, in the forest, between Laurentum and the river.

  As the day wore on, many of us felt light-headed from little food and much wine and the strangeness of irresponsibility. There was a good deal of weeping, crazy laughter, shouting, quarreling.

  As I sat with Tulia's year-old boy, who was teething, trying to soothe him with a lullaby, Maruna appeared beside me for a moment. "Tonight?" she murmured, and I nodded, not looking at her; she whispered, "Owl," and was gone again.

  "Doro, doro, dormiu" I sang to the baby, "papa has a ring for you," and wondered what Maruna meant. All I could do was wait and find out.

  "You like babies, don't you," my mother said to me, standing above me in her soiled, ragged slave's tunic. Her legs were white and shapely, with fine, soft, black hair on the shins and calves. She looked down at the child in my arms. Her face contorted as if she had toothache.

  "He'll breed you," she said. "You can count on that. He's not like the old eunuch. He'll breed sons who live."

  She spoke clearly, with detachment. She was drunk the way I'd seen men at feasts be drunk, day-and-night drunk, drunk to the bone. I did not reply, but went on with the lullaby in an undertone, for the baby was beginning to relax at last. I did not want to look up at my mother. I knew her anger was gathering to burst out again. I knew she knew Turnus was not going to come. I was very much afraid of her.

  'Doro, doro, dormiu" she sang, mocking. "What a ewe lamb, what a eunuch's daughter you are, Lavinia! All milk and meekness. All obedience to your dear papa who makes up oracles to suit himself. Don't think you're going to have it your way this time. I go where you go. You come with me, my girl. You come with me to Ardea tomorrow."

  I bowed my head and said nothing. The child felt the tension in my arms and began to whimper again.

  "Shut the brat up," Amata said, turning away. "Sicana! Where's the jug?"

  It was an endless evening. After Tulia took her baby off, I dozed, sitting with my back against a great old fig tree. My head ached, my muscles were tight, my mind dull, blank. The sun set in clouds behind the endless trees of the forest, and the night came on very dark. Most women fell asleep early; only Amata's group of gamblers stayed up, still drinking, till even they wore out. My mother came and lay down next to me. "Asleep already, little ewe lamb?" she said. She set down a small oil lamp near her head. "Sleep well. Tomorrow we're off to Ardea. Sleep well. Sleep well." She bunched up the corner of her palla under her head for a pillow, laid her arm over me, not in an embrace, and lay silent. I felt the weight and warmth of her arm, of her body against mine. I lay looking into the darkness, watching the shadows from the small lamp flame move among leaves and branches. After a long time and very slowly I moved out from under the warm, heavy arm that lay across me. My mother sighed, snored once loudly, did not move. I lay watching the shadows die. I was asleep, but awake too, for I heard an owl's thin quavering cry, nearby, to my left: iii, i, i.

  Without thought or pause I stood up softly and stepped among the sleeping women in that direction. No lamps burned now, but the clouds had thinned and summer starlight was grey on the grass. The owl called softly from farther away, and I followed. I saw Gaia slumped asleep under a tree like a lump of darkness, her sword standing by her, its point stuck in the ground.

  I came away from the fig trees, crossed a tiny side stream where I slipped and stumbled, clambered up to a place where trees massed thicker and darker. Maruna was there. I knew her though I could barely see her. She took my hand and we went on together.

  Before long she murmured, "I think we've lost the path."

  We had; but we got along for half a mile or so downhill before we came into a stream gully so overhung with trees and overgrown with thickets that we could go no farther in the dark. We waited there some hours, curled up together for warmth, dozing, till the wind came up as it will do sometimes an hour before the dawn, clearing off the clouds, and the moon gave us enough light to go on. We struck a downhill path, and took it; it soon opened into a woodcutter's drag, down which we could run. And we ran.

  By the time it was light we were out of the high hills, coming into pastures. I knew the country from my rambles with Silvia, knew where we were, and could head straight for the city. We came to the southern gate in the bright early morning. It was shut and there were men guarding it.

  I went with maruna to my father's rooms, and at his door I said aloud, "Do you wake, king? Waken!" He came out, heavy-eyed, lumbering, huddling his bedclothes about him, and took me in his arms without a word.

  When he released me he said, "Where is your mother?"

  "At the fig-tree spring."

  "She didn't come with you?"

  "I escaped from her," I said.

  He looked uncomprehending, confused. His grey hair was tufted and matted with sleep. "Escaped?"

  "I didn't want to be there!" I said in anguish, and then, trying to speak calmly, though I could not, "Father, she said she'd sent for Turnus. To betroth me, marry me to him—I don't know. I was afraid he'd come. She kept me guarded. I couldn't get away. I couldn't have got away without Maruna."

  "Sent for Turnus?"

  It was more than the stupidity of arousal from sleep. He did not understand, he would not understand that his wife had tried to betray him. Feeling that I had already betrayed her, I could not say anything.

  "I must get your mother and the other women out of the woods," he said at last. "There's been trouble. Fighting. It could be dangerous for them up there. Is she—will she come back today? What is it she's doing there?"

  "Women's rites. Dances her people have." I tried to get my mind to think about what really mattered. "If you send to tell her that there's been fighting, that the women there are in danger, I think she'll come back. But send women messengers, father. Men can't approach. Some of her women are armed."

  "But this is madness," my father said.

  I was tired, strained, worn out by all the folly and anxiety of the past days and nights. I stared at him. I said, "She's been mad for thirteen years!"

  When the poet sang me the fall of Troy, his story told of the king's daughter Cassandra, who foresaw what would happen and tried to prevent the Trojans from letting the great horse into the city, but no one would listen to her: it was a curse laid on her, to see the
truth and say it and not be heard. It is a curse laid on women more often than on men. Men want the truth to be theirs, their discovery and property. My father did not hear me.

  "Wait," he said, and turned away to his room. I waited.

  Maruna slipped away and brought a pitcher of water from the well in the courtyard, and I gratefully drank every drop of it—except a little that I poured out to the Penates first, and a little that I used to wet the corner of my garment and try to clean my face. I was all dirt and dried sweat. The coarse old tunic was tattered and filthy after our night run, and my best palla that Maruna wore was completely ruined. Maruna and I were mourning over the great snags and tears in it when my father came back, dressed. He looked at us with dull puzzlement. "You must go get cleaned up, Lavinia," he said.

  "I'd like to, father. But please, what is the trouble, who is fighting?"

  "The Trojans were hunting. I told them they could hunt the forests between Venticula and Laurentum. They have to have food." He stopped.

  I asked at last, "Did some of our hunters try to stop them?"

  "They shot the deer. The stag." His face was stricken as he said it. I could not think what he meant. Why should hunters not shoot a stag?

  He said, "Silvia's deer."

  "Cervulus," Maruna whispered.

  "The creature ran home—to Tyrrhus' farm—bleeding, with the arrow in its flank—crying like a child, they said. And Silvia screamed as if it had been her child shot. They couldn't comfort her. Her brothers and the old man swore they'd punish the hunter. But it was the king's son who shot the deer."

  "Ascanius," I said.

  It begins with a boy who shoots a deer.

  The waves lapped one over another on the shore where the tide was rising.