Lavinia

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Our people, my Latins of Lavinium, called Aeneas father. “Will that fence do, Father Aeneas?"—"Father, the barley’s in!"—They spoke to Latinus the same way, and young as I was, I was Mother Lavinia, for we use the words not only for our parents but for those who take responsibility for us. Often a soldier calls his captain his father, and rightly, too, if the captain looks after his men as he should. But Aeneas’ people used the word to him in a particularly affectionate way, caressingly, claiming him. The duty that had been laid on him to lead his people had isolated him as their leader; after his father’s death he had had to make the decisions alone, take responsibility alone; so this bond of affection meant a great deal to him. He tried to deserve it. He took his actual fatherhood with the same seriousness and deep pleasure. It was beautiful to see him walk with Silvius, shortening his stride to the child’s, ever careful of the child’s dignity.

  I knew he had greatly honored his own father. He never spoke of his mother and I do not know if he ever knew her. It was with some caution that I asked him about his own early childhood.

  “I don’t remember much,” he said. “I was with women, in the woods, on the mountain. A group of women living in the forest.”

  “Were they kind to you?”

  “Kind, careless. They let me run about… I’d get into trouble, and one of them would come and laugh and scoop me up. I was wild as a bear cub.”

  “Then your father came for you?”

  He nodded. “A lame man. In armor. I was afraid of him. I remember I tried to hide in the thickets. But the women knew my hiding places. They scooped me up again and handed me over to him.”

  “So after that you lived with him?”

  “And learned farming and manners and all that.”

  “When did you go to Troy?”

  “Priam had us come, sometimes. He never liked us.”

  “He gave you his daughter,” I said, surprised.

  “He didn’t exactly give her,” Aeneas answered, but he did not want to say any more about Creusa, and I did not press him. After a little while he said, “It’s a good place for a child, the woods. You don’t learn much about people, but you learn silence. Patience. And that there’s nothing much to fear in the wilderness—less than there is on a farm or in the city.”

  I thought of Albunea, that fearful place where I had never been afraid. I almost asked him to come there with me, but I did not. Though it was so nearby, I had not been there since our marriage. I wanted to go and yet it did not seem the time. I found I could not imagine being there with him. So I said nothing of it.

  The weather was so mild in late March that we went over to the coast, a walk of a couple of miles. I wanted Silvius to have a first sight of the ocean. Aeneas carried him perched on his shoulder most of the way. We were a large group winding through the dunes, slaves carrying picnic food, several families, a few extra young men as guards. Everybody, slave and free, children and grown, scattered out on the pale yellow beach as soon as we got there, wading, gathering shells, enjoying the sunlight. Aeneas and I wandered off from the others, leaving Silvius with a group of adoring women and Maruna to keep them from spoiling him. We walked a long way down the shore. I could seldom get out to walk as I used to these days, and it was a wonderful pleasure to step out barefoot on the sand, splashing through the small streams that ran down to the sea, keeping pace with my husband’s even, untiring stride. The sea made its emotionless lament to our right. Looking out over the low breakers to the wave glitter that dissolved in the mist of the horizon, I said, “How far you came! Across that sea—the other seas—years, miles.”

  “How far I came to come home,” he said.

  After a while I said, though until the moment I said it I had not been perfectly certain of it, “Aeneas, I’m carrying a child.”

  He walked on for a while, a smile slowly spreading over his face, then stopped, and stopped me by taking my hands, and took me in a close embrace. “A girl?” he said, as if I would know, and I rashly answered, “A girl.”

  “All I want you give me,” he said, hugging the breath nearly out of me, kissing my face and neck. “Dark one, dear one, wife, girl, queen, my Italian, my love.” There were some rocks running down from inland that would hide us from anyone coming down the shore, and we tugged each other towards them. In their shelter we made love, rather hastily and with a good deal of laughter at first because of sand where it was not wanted, but with a rising wild passion, so that at the height of it I felt that he had made me one with the sea and its tides and its deeps. When we came back to the world he lay there on the sand by me, and he was so beautiful I could not look away from him. I touched his breast and arms and face softly with my fingertips, and he lay half asleep in the sunlight, smiling.

  We got up and walked out into the water, waist deep, hand in hand, till the cold struck through and the tug of the waves began to take us off our feet. “Let’s go on, let’s go on,” I said, but I was frightened, too. Aeneas suddenly swung me round, half carrying me back to the shore. Then we wandered back to the others. Silvius had fallen asleep under a little awning the women had made out of scarves. There was sand in his small, arched eyebrows, and his face in the pale radiance under the white cloths was very serious. I lay down by him and whispered his name to him, the name I called him secretly, “Aeneas Silvius, Aeneas Silvius.”

  I cannot tell any more of our happiness.

  Early in April Aeneas went down to Alba Longa overnight, and reported that all was well there. Late in April my father came to visit us for some days. May came. The day came that I was at the mouth of Tiber three years ago at dawn and saw the dark ships turn and come up the river one by one.

  That day Aeneas went, with Achates and our chief herdsman and four or five young men, looking for a small herd of our cattle that had escaped their pasture east of town, crossed the Numicus at the ford, and were thought to be wandering down towards Troia. These were our finest cows and heifers and we did not want them scattered or lost. The men found the herd and drove them back to the river. A group of men from Rutulia had stolen the cattle, or perhaps was following them to steal them. These men attacked Aeneas and the others while they were at the ford of the Numicus. They were armed with spears and staves. Several of Aeneas’ men had weapons, and though outnumbered, fought back fiercely, killing two of the outlaws at once. The Rutulians fell back and ran, all but a young man whom Aeneas had pinned down, his sword at the man’s throat. The young man begged, “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me!” Aeneas hesitated, then turned his sword aside and said, “Go on.” The young man struggled up and ran off. He stopped and picked up a spear another man had dropped. He turned and threw it. It hit Aeneas in the back and went through his chest. He fell to his knees and then facedown in the shallow water of the ford. He did not die at once, but he was dead when they carried him into Lavinium, into the Regia, into the courtyard, where I was looking through our new cloth, the winter’s weaving, that had been bleaching on the grass outside the walls. I had picked out a fine piece as a toga for him. Unaccustomed to wearing the toga, he often found it cumbersome. I was folding the light, soft, pure white cloth when I heard them calling out his name and mine.

  Go on, go. In our tongue it is a single sound, i.

  It is the last word Aeneas said. So in my mind it is spoken to me, said to me. I am the one to go, to go on. Go where?

  I do not know. I hear him say it, and I go. On, away. On the way. The way to go. When I stop I hear him say it, his voice, Go on.

  In Lavinium all that night they cried his name aloud, calling him father, lamenting in the streets.

  Achates, Serestus, Mnestheus gathered the men of Troy at first dawn and rode to Ardea, scouring the countryside on the way: they did not find the cattle thieves, but Camers of Ardea knew who they were and where to look for them. He rode with the Trojans. They rode the men down and killed them all. They were farmers’ sons from northern Rutulia, led by a couple of Etruscans who had come with Mezentius to Ardea, bitt
er, leaderless men living in exile.

  I had sent a rider on our best horse, Aeneas’ horse, to Ascanius in Alba Longa. Ascanius arrived in Lavinium on the second day, and late that day the Trojans came back. Our house that had been full of weeping women was full now of grim, armed men.

  I did not let them put armor on Aeneas. All that gear of bronze and gold and the great shield that held the fearful future should go to Ascanius and then to Silvius. I washed his body, noble and terrible in death, scar-seamed. I clothed him in the toga of our people, the fine white one I had chosen for him.

  When many die, as in plague or war, we burn the dead, but our older way is burial under earth. I ordered that Aeneas’ grave be beside the road above the ford of the Numicus. There he was carried, the torches flaring and smoking in the rainy wind of a May morning. Latinus spoke the ritual words. Men heaped up the river rocks into a great barrow over the grave. When all was done I stood and called his name aloud three times, Aeneas! Aeneas! Aeneas! And the other people called his name with me. Then in silence, carrying the dead torches upside down, we walked back to his city.

  On the ninth day after his death, Latinus performed the sacrifice of kings, killing the beautiful stallion he had given Aeneas by the tomb of rocks. The horse was buried by the tomb.

  On that day also he named Ascanius king of Latium, to share the rule with him as Aeneas had. It was necessary that Latinus lend this succession all the weight of his authority, and that I too demand that my people recognise Ascanius as king: for they did not want him. He had antagonised them from the beginning. It was he who shot Silvia’s deer. They never forgot that. He had been arrogant, quarrelsome, aloof, seeming much more a foreigner than his father. My people in Lavinium wanted Latinus to rule them, wanted me there in the Regia, bringing up Silvius, their little one, their prince, their king to be. They stood sullen, with tear-streaked faces, while Latinus proclaimed Ascanius king.

  In the days of mourning Ascanius had for the first time appealed to me for support; he found I could give it to him, and he came to me to weep. During the ceremonies he looked and acted what he was, a boy overwhelmed by grief, dismayed, distressed, terrified by the responsibility he must bear. Accepting the kingship and making his vows to the people and the land, he spoke in a barely audible voice, trembling. At one point I had to say to him softly, “King of the Latins, hold up your head!” He obeyed.

  I do not know what the strength was that carried me through that time. I suppose I am one of my people, made of oak. Oaks don’t bend, though they can break. And I had known what was coming. I had lived with Aeneas’ death a long time, from the time I first saw his face, high on the ship’s prow, dark in the twilight of morning, gazing up the river in prayer and eager hope. Three years, the poet had said. Three years to the day it was. The three old women who spin and cut the thread had measured exactly, to the inch, nothing to spare. No gift of summer days.

  In that first year of Aeneas’ death his captains and old companions, particularly Achates, were my mainstay. Though my dear Maruna, the women of the household, and friends such as Illivia gave me most generous, loving sympathy and support, I wanted most of all to be with Aeneas’ friends, because it was a little like being with him. It was the tone of the male voice, the way they moved, what they talked about, even the Trojan accent, that comforted me. Among them he did not seem so far from me.

  Achates had loved him—I will say this, though my heart resists—as much as I loved him, and for years longer. I am sure Achates came very near suicide that summer. He blamed himself for the incident at the ford: he should have insisted they wear cuirasses, he should have been closer to Aeneas during the fighting, he should not have let Aeneas release the young man, should have followed the young man and kept an eye on him, should have seen the weapon lying on the ground—everything that he could blame himself for, he did.

  It was Achates who had first told me, when they brought Aeneas home, what happened at the ford. Now I found that by letting him tell it over, he could talk out some of his shame and rage, and strange as it may seem I wanted to hear it again, to hear it told over and over, till I could see it as if I had been there, as if I were Achates, as if I had knelt by Aeneas, had pulled the terrible blade out of his back, and held him in my arms, and watched his blood color the shallow water that ran among the rocks. “He was not dead. He held on to me, but I don’t think he saw me,” Achates said. “He was looking up at the sky. When we picked him up to lay him on the litter, he closed his eyes. He never spoke.” He never spoke, but he was not dead, then. So long as Achates told me the story, Aeneas was not dead.

  Ascanius, almost distraught with his new responsibilities, was at first jealous of my being with the Trojan captains: they were his men, not mine, he needed them for advice and to do his bidding, and they had no business loitering around the Regia with women. He ordered Achates to go up to Alba Longa and govern there. Achates accepted his order without a word, but I was afraid for him. I went privately to my stepson and asked him to send Mnestheus or Serestus, who knew the settlement better and would have no objection to leaving Lavinium. “Let Achates stay here, at least till next year,” I said. “He goes daily to Aeneas’ tomb. Let his grief heal. He has no heart to go to Alba Longa.”

  “You want him here with you?” Ascanius asked, drily.

  I have noticed that some men whose sexual interest is in men not women believe that all women are insatiably lustful of men. I don’t know whether this is a reflection of their own desires, or fear, or mere jealousy, but it fosters a good deal of contempt and misunderstanding. Ascanius tended to look at women that way, and his ardent wish to keep Aeneas’ memory unsullied led him to suspect me with every man. I knew that already. It outraged my honor and disposed me to feel some contempt in return for Ascanius, but neither anger nor scorn would do me any good. I said, “I wish I could keep all Aeneas’ friends, and his elder son, here with me. But I’ve been afraid Achates may take his own life in his grief. I beg you to let him stay here with you, at least through the winter, and send someone else to Alba Longa.”

  “I wish I could go myself,” Ascanius said.

  He strode up and down the room we were in; he did not look much like his father, but sometimes he moved like him.

  “I meant it as an honor for Achates,” he said. “The chief city of Latium is going to be Alba Longa, not Lavinium. The situation is infinitely better—higher, better land—and central to where our power will be when I finally get real control over Rutulia. I thought Achates would take it as an honor. But if he is as broken as you think, I’ll send Mnestheus and Atys. So, you need not kneel, mother.” For I had been ready to go down in the formal posture of supplication, holding his knees. I knew he would not have held out against that. He was not a hard young man, but kindly by nature, and easily swayed, though rigid about hierarchy, formalities, anything that supported his uncertain self-esteem.

  And it was not easy for him to keep up that self-esteem here in Lavinium, where the people endlessly mourned Aeneas, honored old Latinus, loved me as daughter and widow of their kings, and resented him. Trying to emulate Aeneas’ authority, he was harsh in manner and often arbitrary in judgment. It was a difficult year for him, even though the harvest was superb and all Latium remained peaceful, with little of the raiding and boundary jumping we had all feared might follow the death of a king at the hands of outlaws.

  The winter was a dark one, with long, cold rain, snow up on the hills and even on the piedmont farmlands. I learned at last to weave well, that winter, for if I had no work to keep my hands and mind occupied I could do nothing but hide in my room and weep. I feared for the first time that I had my mother’s weakness, her madness. At night I went into dark places in my mind. I went down underground among shadows and could not find the way up and out. In my room in the darkness I heard babies weeping underfoot. I dared not take a step lest I step on a baby.

  I have not told this all in order as it happened. It is still hard to speak of. A month af
ter Aeneas’ death I lost the fetus that might have been my daughter. Only my women knew that I had been pregnant and that the pregnancy miscarried. Only my women and Aeneas knew. I went with Maruna in the dark before dawn and we buried the tiny scrap of life that had not lived, deep under the great stones of Aeneas’ grave.

  Ascanius went often to Alba Longa, and in the second summer after Aeneas’ death, not long after he celebrated the Parentalia for his father with all due ritual, he moved there. Trouble had flared up on our borders; he wanted to govern from Alba, a more defensible position. He took with him the Penates of Troy, and Silvius and me. He left Mnestheus and Serestus in charge of Lavinium. Achates chose to stay there, as did most of the older Trojans. The men who followed Ascanius were his particular friends and intimates among the young Trojans, such as Atys who had been his childhood sweetheart, and the group of young Latins who formed his guard and captained his forays. Many of these men were still unmarried; if they had wives they brought them and their household along to settle in Alba. I was allowed to bring twenty women as my retinue. As Ascanius had no wife, we were given all the woman’s side of the Regia, a much bigger and finer house than the small one Aeneas had built in Lavinium. Ascanius’ high house was imposing, and the site of it was more than imposing. It was like living in the sky. From the walls and roofs of the citadel you looked right down on the great lake and across it to the eastern wall of the crater. Farther down the mountain the young vineyards were thriving, as Ascanius had predicted, and the town that sprawled out below the citadel was thriving too, full of activity, building, the coming and going of armed men.

  I felt exposed there, always; there were too many great ashen slopes, too much sky, no shade. The water of the lake did not move, did not speak, like the waters I knew, but lay silent, blue, hard. I felt isolated there. I felt useless.