Lavinia

by Le Guin, Ursula K.

  Hearing her begging, I blushed with shame till tears filled my own eyes. I felt the red blood color my face, my neck and breast and body. I could not move or speak.

  But Turnus looked over my mother's head straight at me, the bright unseeing stare that had frightened me the first time I ever saw him. He spoke to her, though he kept looking at me. "No tears now, mother, no ill omens, please. I'm not free to put off death. I've already sent a herald to the Trojan. Tomorrow morning there will be no battle. The treaty will be resworn. He and I alone will meet. Our blood will settle the war. And on that field Lavinia will find her husband."

  He smiled at me, a wide, fierce smile. He put Amata away from him, pushing her hands away. She cowered down sobbing.

  "The messenger has gone?" Latinus asked. His voice was dry.

  "He may be there by now," Turnus said proudly.

  Latinus moved his head once, the nod of acceptance. "Then go make yourself ready for your fight, my son," he said, with kindness, and stood up, dismissing the others. He turned around as they left, and I think he was about to tell me to look after my mother, but he asked, "Daughter, are you hurt?"

  I saw where he was looking: there was a great smear of half-dried blood all down my palla, which I had not seen in the twilit courtyard. "No. I've been with the wounded men, father."

  "Take some rest tonight, my dear. Tomorrow will be a long day, for some. Go, sleep well. Juturna, go with your brother. If you can persuade him out of this duel, do so. There is no need for it. We will restore the treaty and the peace."

  She hurried after Turnus. When the others had all left the room, Latinus went back to Amata, who was hunched down on the floor, her hands plucking and tugging at her hair. He knelt by her and spoke softly. I could not hear what he said. I could not bear to watch them. I went back out across the courtyard, and to my room.

  As I meet them in the courtyard of our house, Ascanius is saying something jokingly to his father, "You said it yourself—come to you for work, but not for luck!" Then he goes off to do whatever it is that Aeneas has asked him to do. And I ask Aeneas, "What did he mean?"

  "Oh, it's something I said to him when we couldn't get that arrowhead out of my leg. I said, 'You can learn a man's work from me, son, but if you want good luck, go to somebody else!' I was in a foul mood."

  "What arrowhead?"

  "The last morning of the war."

  I puzzled it over. "But Turnus didn't have a bow. He was using his sword."

  "Turnus?"

  "The wound in your leg—"

  "Turnus never wounded me," he says grimly. Then his face changes. "Oh. I see. I lied to you. To some extent. I lied to everybody, actually."

  "Explain, please."

  We sit down side by side on the bench under the laurel sapling. "Well, it was just after that augur, that Tolumnius, threw his lance to break the truce. I saw him do it. He killed a young Greek on the spot. Then of course they all went mad. I was trying to get our men together, out of it, keep them from fighting—Fighting there. At the altar! Where you were standing!"—His face goes dark again at the thought of it. "And in all the confusion, somebody got me in the leg with an arrow."

  "You don't know who?"

  "Nobody ever claimed the honor," he says with a bit of mockery. "Serestus and Ascanius helped me get out of the mess, back to our camp. Seeing the captain down is frightening to the men. I had to hop along leaning on my spear, bleeding like a sacrifice. So, old Iapyx did his best, pulled out the shaft, but he couldn't get the arrowhead out. It was barbed, you see. And everything was going to pieces, back there. So I said, tie it up, man, I can't stand around here all day, I have to find Turnus and finish this thing. I made Iapyx do it. Once he'd stuffed the hole with dittany and had it tied up tight, it didn't hurt. You don't notice that sort of thing much, in the thick of it. So I went back, looking for Turnus. And couldn't find him. I'll never understand it. What was he doing? I'd see him not too far off now and then, and then he'd disappear, like a swallow in an atrium—flit past, gone again. I'd go where he'd been and he wasn't there. I was running out of patience. And just then Messapus knocked off my helmet crest with a spear, and I lost my temper. So I called for an attack on the city." He looks down, frowning, at his hands clasped between his knees. "I am sorry about that. It was wrong."

  "So Turnus didn't wound you? You were already wounded when you fought him?"

  He nods, rueful at having deceived me, or at having been caught at it. "As soon as I got back to camp, afterwards, Iapyx got the point out—it practically jumped out, then." He looks at his tough brown thigh and pokes the dent, a hand's breadth above the right knee, deep and red among other, older dents and scars. "Healed up amazingly fast," he says, as if this excused everything.

  "Why did you let me think it was Turnus that wounded you?"

  "I don't know. I suppose a lie extends itself, somehow. I had to pretend it didn't amount to anything, you know, while the fighting was going on. As I said, it worries the men. We were so outnumbered, it was always chancy. And I had to find Turnus and fight him to end the whole thing—it was the only way. So, then, afterwards, when I could admit that I'd been hit—in fact as you remember I was pretty lame for a while—it didn't seem important how it had happened. I didn't know you thought it was Turnus who did it. It doesn't really matter, does it?"

  He asks this not boyishly, seeking excuse, but gravely, to find out if it does matter very much to me. I have to think about it a while.

  "No," I say. And I lean down and kiss the scarred dent in his thigh. He puts his arms around me and lifts me up against him. His hands under my loose gown are large, warm, rough-skinned, and strong. He smells of salt and incense.

  I did sleep, that last night of the war, slept soundly, deeply, so that my waking was slow. At first it seemed to me that there was something I must do for my mother, but I could not think what it was. Then I came a little farther out of sleep and thought that there was to be a ritual and I should help my father with it. Then I woke, and saw my small window just showing the first beginning of light in the sky, and a hundred images of bloody wounds and dying men I had seen yesterday went through my mind in a rush, and with them the poet's voice chanting, and then came the knowledge that today we would either renew the treaty of peace, or the fighting would be in the city itself and my people defeated, destroyed.

  I got up and put on my old red-edged toga with the scorched corner and ran to my father's apartment to wake him; but he was up and about already. He did not question my presence or my intention to go with him. Together with Drances and a couple of older men we got the ritual implements together, and I brought out the bowl of salted meal to the stable yard, where the animals were to be selected from herds brought in from farms overrun by the fighting. By the time we had picked them, it was time to lead them out to the sacrifice.

  Soldiers on guard opened the city gates for us, hailing the king with a clash of weapons on shields. They made to shut the gates behind us, but Latinus said, "Let the gates of our city stand open!" He strode ahead of us, holding up his oak scepter like a lance, the wide purple-red edge of his toga showing bright in the dawn. Our army was drawn up all in order, facing outward from the walls and the earthwork that had been built up outside the ditch. Across a narrow space of farmland, trampled to dust now, the Trojans and Greeks and Etruscans were just forming up their ranks. A space between the armies had been lustrated, marked out as sacred, and an earthen altar set up in the center. Old men from the city were busy piling up firewood in the hearth they had made beside it.

  Latinus strode directly to the altar. He held out his hands, palm up. Young Caesus, our salt boy, was ready with a fresh-cut piece of turf and put it square on the king's hands. Latinus set it on the altar. Just as he did so, the sun shot its first ray over the eastern hills, and Aeneas came forward between the armies and stood across the altar from the king of Latium. Everything happened as if it had been planned and rehearsed a hundred times, everything happened as it should and m
ust.

  With Aeneas came his son, Ascanius, standing behind him, and Turnus came to stand behind Latinus at the altar. Aeneas wore the magnificent armor and carried the shield I came to know later. The crest of his helmet was a red plume that looked like the flaming cloud of a volcano. Turnus was as splendid in gold-washed bronze, with a plume that towered up white and streamed in the wind of morning. His sister stood near him in her grey veils. My father had pulled up the corner of his toga over his head, as I had done.

  The walls and roofs of Laurentum, when I looked back and up at my city, were dark with people—women, men, children. They were all silent, and the men of the two armies were silent.

  I stepped forward with the bowl of salted meal. My father took up some in his hands and sprinkled the sacrifices with it, a young white boar and a two-year-old sheep with very fine white wool. Aeneas came forward and took up meal in his cupped hands from the bowl I held out to him. It was the first time I was ever close to him. He was a big man, all bone and muscle, tanned dark, his face seamed and weathered, worn and fine. He was the man I knew and had known since the poet spoke his name in the glade of Albunea. I looked up at his face, and he looked down at mine. I saw him recognise me.

  He turned away to sprinkle the meal over the animals. I gave my father the little ritual knife I carry, and he carefully cut some hair from the forehead of the pig and the sheep. He gave me back the knife. I held it out to Aeneas. He took it and cut a bristle or two and a curl of wool and gave the knife back to me. Then they both stepped to the hearth and dropped the offerings into the fire. Caesus brought the wine jug and the old silver cups on a tray. He poured the cups full and gave one to each king. First Latinus, then Aeneas poured out the libation over the green grass on the altar. My father spoke the ritual words in a low chanting voice, invoking the powers of the earth, the hour, and the place. Aeneas stood gravely listening.

  In all this time there was hardly a sound from all the people gathered there. A baby's wail up on a rooftop in the city; a clink of bronze as a soldier shifted his stance; birds singing far off in the trees of the city streets; and the broad, sweet silence of the brightening sky over all.

  My father's prayer was done. He stepped back a little. Aeneas drew his sword. The hiss of bronze on hardened leather was loud.

  He held the sword up over the altar and said, "Let the sun be witness to what I say, and this land also, to which I have come through much suffering. Let Mars who rules the war, let the springs and rivers of this earth and the sky above it and the sea that washes it, bear witness. If Turnus is the victor, my people will withdraw to Evander's city in defeat, and my son will leave this land, and never return to it in war. But if I am, as I may be, given the victory, I will not make the Italians my subjects, nor claim rule over your land. Let both our peoples, unconquered, pledge eternal treaty. With me come my gods. Latinus, my father-in-law, will keep his sword and his rule. My people will raise up a city. And Lavinia will give it her name."

  He looked directly at me as he said that, not smiling, but with a brightness in his face and eyes. I looked back at him and nodded once, very slightly.

  He lowered and sheathed his sword. My father stepped forward to face him and held up his heavy oaken staff over the altar. "By the same powers I swear, Aeneas, by earth, sea, stars, the lord of lightning, and two-faced Janus, and the shadows under earth. I touch the altar. I swear by this fire and the powers that stand between us: Never shall this peace and truth be broken, whatever may come. Never shall my will be changed, not until this staff, the ancient scepter of the lords of Latium, bear branch and leaf!"

  He nodded to the men who held the animals. They brought them forward, with the long sacrificial knives, and Latinus cut the sheep's throat while Aeneas cut the boar's, each with one quick experienced stroke. And at that the people, soldiers standing by and citizens up on the walls, broke the silence with a long, soft, quavering aaahhh of release, relief, fulfillment.

  Now an Etruscan haruspex came forward to look at the entrails of the sacrifice, a matter the Etruscans consider very important; and the animals had to be cut up and the meat spitted and cooked over the fire. This all took a good deal of time. Aeneas and Ascanius stood back from the altar, keeping silent, as did my father; but Turnus began to talk with his sister and with a Rutulian chief, Camers, who stood beside her. Despite his gilded armor and gorgeous plume, Turnus looked pale again, and tired, as if he had not slept; he kept gazing around at his men with a grieving, pleading face. And the Rutulians began to gather around him. Camers talked to them not loudly but earnestly, and they listened, looking grim. The augur Tolumnius moved about among them, also talking. The haruspex took forever poking about in the livers and hearts and kidneys, the attendants put too much meat on the fire at once and nearly put it out so that it had to be rebuilt to burn high, the murmur and mutter of talking grew louder through the ranks of the Italians. The sacred moment was lost, past. The sun was getting higher, the day was beginning to be hot.

  People looked up and pointed to a faint clamor in the sky. A great flight of swans was coming from the river, heading south past us and the city, flying lazily, left to right. The Greek and Trojan troops followed the birds' flight as we Italians and Etruscans did. And so all saw the sudden eagle, arrow-fast from the east, seize the lead swan in its talons in a shower of feathers and shoot on in a wide curve over us, heavily carrying its prey. Then, most strangely, the whole flight of swans turned as one, flying low and fast, the shadows of their wings passing over us, chasing and driving and harrying the eagle, crowding it till it dropped the dead swan and flew up and off over the western hills. A hesitant cheer went up from some of the watchers, but most were silent, wondering at the meaning of the sign.

  Into that silence Tolumnius shouted out, "An omen! An omen! Rutulians, Latins, obey the omen! Attack the attacker! Close ranks, defend your rightful king!" And as the men around him shouted and shook their fists in the gesture of Mars, Tolumnius heaved back his six-foot spear and threw it straight into the ranks facing him across the sacred ground.

  A man bent forward over the shaft making a strange noise like a cough or laugh, clear to hear in the last moment of the silence.

  Then the world was filled with the enormous bewildering roar of men shouting, drawing weapons and clashing shields. Men rushed past me, this direction and that, shouldering me unseeing. I could see nothing I knew any more except the altar. I pressed up close to it. My father was there with the boy Caesus, trying to take up the sacred dishes, his hands shaking. "Help me, Lavinia," he said, and I took and carried what I could. Keeping close together we struggled away from the altar through the confusion of running men and plunging horses towards the city gate. Caesus was not with me, and I stopped and looked back for him. I saw an Etruscan in splendid armor trip and fall backward, sprawling head and shoulders right across the altar. Another man leapt at him and struck down at his exposed throat with a massive blade-headed spear, and the Etruscan's blood spouted up over men crowding in to tear the armor and weapons off him. Some Rutulians had pulled long burning sticks out of the sacrificial fire and were using them as weapons, shoving them in men's faces, so there was a stink of burning hair. Beyond them, for an instant, I saw Aeneas, taller than the others, his hand up, calling out in a great dark voice. Then somebody shoved me so that I nearly fell, and the boy Caesus, his face distorted with tears and terror, was tugging at my robe. I hurried on after my father. The gates of the city stood open above us. My father's guards had gathered around us, and they brought us in.

  The confusion in the streets was almost as bad as outside the walls. People were shouting that the Trojans had broken the peace and treacherously attacked the king at the altar. Many old men and boys, even slaves, rushed out to join the battle; the king's guards kept the great gate open for them and for the wounded to take refuge. Women stood up on the walls screaming insults and throwing down clay bricks and whatever they had to throw at men fighting at the ditch and rampart. Other people rallie
d to the streets between the great gate and the Regia to protect their king if the enemy broke into the city. Others were feverishly burying their treasures in their garden or trying to wall up their doors and windows so they could hide inside their house.

  I followed the king directly to his council room, where Drances and others who had escaped the fighting gathered. Drances was gibbering with terror and talked only about where we should hide. My father was shaken, out of breath, and grey in the face, but he sat on his throne and began to consult with Verus and the others and give orders for the defense of the city and the house. Seeing myself unneeded there, I ran to the women's side, where there was nothing but dismay and rumor and wailing. My mother was in her apart ment, but she came out to meet me. She spoke to me with savage contempt: "So! that's how your great Trojan keeps a treaty!"

  "He swore peace," I said.

  "He attacked your father across the altar!"

  "He did not. He pledged peace with him. He asked to fight Turnus hand to hand. He swore if he lost they'd leave, and if he won, Latinus would still be king of Latium. And father swore to that oath. But Juturna and the Rutulians didn't want that, and Tolumnius called an omen and threw the spear that broke the truce. I was there. That is what happened."

  "It is not true," she said, but she knew it was. After what I had seen I had no fear to spare for her. I heard my voice ring out stronger than hers, I felt taller than her as I stood facing her.

  "If Turnus had come forward to fight Aeneas, there'd be no war now, the city would be safe," I said, for my heart was hot with anger. "He betrayed us."