Preparations for the marriage of Ascanius and Salica went forward at the same time as my preparations to leave the king’s house of Alba Longa. I and my women left everything in readiness for the new queen, every grain bin filled, the chests of bedding and clothing full of clean, folded, fine-spun woollens and supple furs and fleeces, the sacred meal made ready, the altars dusted and the floors swept. There was not a moth, not a mouse among the stores, and every snowy lamb’s-wool rug on the floor was fresh. I had my pride. And also I wanted Salica to feel welcomed and at home. She was young, just eighteen, and though Ascanius would never mistreat her, I did not think he would be a good husband. He had no sexual interest in women and did not like them as companions. He was marrying because people think it strange if a king does not take a wife, and because he wanted an heir to prove his manhood, perhaps to bolster his unadmitted rivalry with Silvius.
I had spoken at once, of course, to Silvius about our departure, and we talked the matter over, for he was a thoughtful and intelligent child, and children have a wisdom of their own. I had thought he might volunteer to stay at Alba Longa, not wanting to quarrel with Ascanius, and because he saw obedience to his king and older brother as his duty. But he did not. He said, “Let Ascanius rule here and leave us free to rule Lavinium. I’m Latinus’ heir as well as Aeneas’. I want to live in the west and learn my lessons from my father’s friends. Ascanius doesn’t really want me here.” After a while he added with a regretful sigh, “But Atys says the horses here are a lot better than the horses in Lavinium.”
“Your father chose a colt for you, sired by his own stallion. I think that horse is there in the royal stables.”
He lit up at that.
“So you see Latium with two kings again?” I asked him.
“If need be,” he said, grave as a man of forty, and then, “I don’t want to be here without you!”
“And I won’t leave you here. So that’s settled.”
“Him and his sow and his thirty pigs,” said Silvius.
“When we’re in Lavinium, I will take you to the forest of Albunea,” I told him, with a deep swell of anticipated joy in my heart. “Where your grandfather Faunus may speak to you from the darkness of the oak groves in the night, as he spoke to your grandfather Latinus.”
“Tell me about Picus,” the boy said, and so I told him once again about the grandfather who became a woodpecker. He loved to hear the stories of his land and people here as well as he loved to hear the old Trojans tell over their war with the Greeks.
We were so content with our arrangement and imaginings that I persuaded myself Ascanius would see reason as I saw it. But when I went to him to ask formal leave to depart for Lavinium with my son, he was extremely angry and made no attempt to hide it.
“You may go,” he said. “Silvius stays here. As I gave you to know last month.”
There was nothing for it but supplication. “Son of my husband, king of Latium,” I said, and went down on my knees and took hold of his legs at the knees—"I who am daughter and wife and mother of kings ask you to honor my will in this. Aeneas left me Silvius to bring up, and I will obey his sacred charge. You lose nothing in letting your brother go with me. You gain our love and gratitude. Reign here and over us, with your wife, and your children to come—and may the powers that guard the wombs of women be favorable! Let Silvius live in his father’s house among his father’s old fellow-warriors, and grow to manhood there. Then he will be worthy to come to you and serve you, if fate wills and allows it.”
It is very difficult to stand while someone is clasping your knees and pleading eloquently at you from below. The clasp puts you off balance, and your position is acutely embarrassing, all too much as if you were allowing oral sex. Perhaps some people are gratified by receiving a supplication, but I always hated it, and hoped Ascanius might find it as unpleasant as I did. I bowed my head down after I spoke till my forehead was on his feet. He could move only by kicking me. He tried to shift his feet, but didn’t kick. We were in his council room, and ten or twelve of his friends and counsellors were watching and listening.
I should not have challenged him among other people. If I had sought him out alone he might have let me persuade him. But changing a command, giving way to a woman—he could not let himself be seen showing such weakness.
“The boy will stay,” he said. He shifted around enough that I had to let go of his legs. I stayed kneeling some little while, silent. It was a deep and uncomfortable silence. His young courtiers were no friends of mine and most of them had no interest in Silvius, but most of them were Latins, and our people have a piety towards the bond of parent and child, as well as the habit of respect for the mother of a household. It was shocking to them to see me on my knees, more shocking to hear my stepson flatly refuse my plea.
I stood up and gathered my white palla round me, facing him. I put the corner of it up over my head, as in a sacred act. I said, “Our wills in this matter are different, king.” And I turned around and walked out of the council room. As I gained the corridor I heard the men’s voices break out in the room behind me, and as I went farther I could hear Ascanius’ voice, high and loud, trying to dominate them.
I had defeated him morally; but that really made no difference. He was still in control. I must get out of his control. There was no time to ponder further or prepare.
I sent Tita to bring Silvius in from the exercise field, and Maruna and Sicana and I gathered our women—sixteen of the twenty who had come with us here nine years ago, and the children some of them had borne here, and a few others who had attached themselves to me—and told them to leave as soon as they could, to take different ways down through the hills, a few in each group, keeping unseen as best they could, and make their way to Lavinium. I sent for two light carts to be brought out and a pair of mules to pull each; we loaded a few garments and things precious to us in them. I put Rosalba and her newborn baby in one, along with old Vestina, who was very frail now and living in a twilight of the mind. Silvius and Maruna and I rode in the other cart. Silvius stood up with the driver and ordered him to put the mules into a trot. We were off, down the steep white road, within an hour of my interview with Ascanius.
The short February day was ending when we drove into Lavinium. The little walled town with its citadel above the river looked very quiet and grey in the low light from the west. The narrow river reflected the sky like a shard of glass.
Some of my young women, running cross-country the way Silvia and I used to do, had got there before us. They had roused the few slaves who looked after the Regia, got the doors open and fires lit on the Vestal hearth and in the kitchen and royal apartment. But the widowed house was cold and dank and dusty. All the clean bedclothes and soft furs and fleeces were back there in Alba Longa, and all the fresh food too. The wheat and millet in the granaries was scant and stale. There was not room for all of us as we kept arriving, and several women had to seek the hospitality of families in the town. But as word went round among the townsfolk, they got up a real welcome for us, bringing us all kinds of food and drink and comforts. “Little queen,” they called me, the way they had when I was a child. “Little queen, have you come back to us then? Will you stay, will you stay in your own city? And the king, our little king, Aeneas Silvius, look how he’s grown!” By the time Achates arrived to bid me welcome, I could give him at least a good fire and a bowl of warm wine thickened with meal and honey.
Of all Aeneas’ old comrades I had missed Achates most; he was the kindest of them, the most brotherly. He had come up to Alba Longa often to visit with me, and I always rejoiced to see him and found him a wise counsellor. For all his loyalty to Ascanius, I felt that he was secretly on my side. It was a blow, therefore, when he said, “But Silvius cannot stay here if the king forbids it.”
“The king,” I said, “the king,” and then I paused. At last I asked, “Who am I, Achates?”
He looked at me, taken aback.
I said, “I am your king’s wife.�
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After a long time he said, “Widow.”
He was a brave man.
“And your king’s mother,” I said.
“My king to be.”
“You owe protection to your king to be.”
“Ascanius intends him no harm, Lavinia.”
“He intends no harm, but harm will come to Silvius there. He doesn’t belong there. It’s not his seat in the realm—this is. Ascanius will be busy with his new bride, and she with him. No one there will look after Silvius’ interest. Some of them are intriguers and no friends of his. I will not leave my young ram-lamb unguarded among strangers!”
The image made Achates cock his handsome grey head. “Better say you don’t want your wolf cub brought up in a barnyard,” he said. Then he clearly wished he hadn’t said anything so disrespectful to Ascanius, and frowned. “The boy’s older brother is his proper guardian,” he said stiffly. “I know it’s hard for you to part from him—”
“Do me justice, Achates! When the time comes to part from him, I’ll let him go! But the time has not come. He’s young. He needs to be with true friends and teachers—like you. His father and his grandfather left him in my charge, and I will not give that up to anyone else.”
I thought I could sway him, but I could not.
Nor would Aeneas’ other old companions, when I talked with them in the next days, approve my keeping Silvius from Ascanius’ court. I think they all thought that I was right, but could not admit it. The will of a widowed queen could not be openly allowed to overrule that of a reigning king. Ascanius had not treated them very well, he had left them to grow old away from the center of power, he ignored them except for the most formal recognition of their service; but they were Aeneas’ men and he was Aeneas’ son and his word was law. If Silvius had been older, they would have listened to him, for he was Aeneas’ son too and they loved him dearly; but as grown men they thought they should not be swayed by the will of a boy of eleven.
Meanwhile, we waited for word to come from Alba Longa. Daily I looked out from the walls dreading to see a mounted troop ride down the hill road, soldiers with orders to take Silvius back with them, or Ascanius himself coming down from the mountain to play the sky father with lightning and thunder of wrath.
However, the wedding festivities were going forward in Ardea and Alba, all those days, and I think Ascanius found it undignified to be squabbling with his stepmother while welcoming his bride. He simply ignored us. So we had all the end of March at peace there in Lavinium, and I cannot say how often I wept with both pain and joy at being there again, in my home, where I and my love had lived.
I had brought Aeneas’ armor and sword and shield in the cart—Sicana helped Silvius and me lift them down and carry them. Now they hung again in his own house, where they should hang.
And we waited to hear from the house of Ascanius.
In midmorning one day while I was at my loom starting a new piece, the girl Ursina came running in. “A troop of armed men on horseback, coming down the way from Alba, queen,” she said. “About a mile away now. One leads a riderless horse.”
For Silvius.
I had made a hundred plans for what to do when Ascanius sent for Silvius, but they fell to dust under the hooves of those horsemen. There was only one thing to do, and it was what I had done already—run. Run and hide.
“Send Silvius to me,” I told Ursina, a girl of fifteen or so, wild and tawny as a lioness, Maruna’s niece. She darted off. I went to my room and tied up a few things in an old palla, and when Silvius came panting in I told him we were going to the forest to escape from Ascanius’ men.
“I’ll get horses,” he said.
“No need, we’re not going far. And horses are hard to hide. Get your cloak and good shoes and meet me in the kitchen.”
I gathered up a cook pot and some food in another bundle, Silvius came, and we were off. Maruna met us in the doorway of the house. I said, “I hope he will not punish you!"—meaning all my women and the people of the house. “Tell the king’s men: the queen went with her son to the great oracle of the springs near Tibur to ask guidance of the oracle. That will keep them busy a little while.”
“But you…”
“You know where to look for me, Maruna. The woodcutter’s.”
She nodded. She was desperately worried for us and I was worried for her, but I could not hesitate. Silvius and I went down the street, slipped out through the postern gate of the town, and struck across the fields, across the last pagus, following the course of the Prati into the wooded foothills northwest under cover of the newleaved oaks. In time we came to the old path from Laurentum to Albunea, winding along under the hills.
Silvius wrinkled his nose. He could scent like a hound.
“Rotten eggs?” I asked. We had not spoken at all, hurrying along in fugitive silence.
He nodded.
“That’s the sulfur springs.”
“Are we going there?”
“Nearby.”
We came to the forester’s cottage where Maruna used to spend the night while the poet and I talked in the sacred grove. Trees had grown up and closed in on the high round hut, and I almost passed it without seeing it. The clearing and what had been the kitchen garden were rank with brambles and tall weeds. I called out. No one answered. I went to the door and saw the house was desolate. The woodcutter and his wife had gone elsewhere, or were dead.
Silvius was into the hut and all around it with a child’s quick curiosity. “This is a good place,” he said. He put down his bundle on the doorstep. I had noticed how unwieldy it was as he walked with it, and it went down with a thud and a clank. “What did you put in that?” I asked. He looked at me a bit askance, and opened up the bundle. He had brought his short bow, arrows, a hunting knife, and the short sword he used for battle practice.
“For wolves,” he said.
“Ah,” I said. “Well, dear son, I think maybe we are the wolves.”
He thought it over and the idea clearly pleased him. He nodded.
“Come and sit down a bit,” I said, sitting on the doorstep and pushing the weapons aside to make room. A shaft of sunlight struck through the gloom of the pines and oaks all around and made it warm there. Silvius sat down next to me. I looked at his thin brown boy legs and the shoes that were too heavy for his feet. He leaned his head against me. “They don’t want to kill us, do they, mother?” he asked, not with terror but for reassurance.
“No. They want to part us. I am certain in my heart that it’s wrong for me to let you go. But there’s no way I can keep Ascanius from taking you to Alba, except by hiding you so he can’t.”
He thought for a long time and said, “I could go live on a farm somewhere off in the country and pretend to be a farm boy.”
“You might. It would put the farmer’s family at risk, though.”
He nodded shortly, ashamed of not having seen that.
I was ashamed too of involving him in any deceit. I said, “Listen. I lied about going to the great oracle at Tibur. But I do want to consult the oracle. Ours, my father’s, my forefathers’ oracle, here, at Albunea. Maybe it will tell us what to do. I don’t know if it will speak to a woman, but it might speak to you. Grandson of Latinus, of Faunus, of Picus, of Saturn…” I stroked his hard, slight shoulder, still sweaty from our quick walk. “Son of Aeneas.” I kissed him.
He kissed me back. “I won’t leave you,” he said. “Never.”
“Oh, never and forever aren’t for mortals, love. But we won’t be parted till I know it’s right that we part.”
“That’s never, then,” he said.
A bird sang out sweet from the dark trees, a long trill brimming with the lovely ignorant happiness of spring. “Is this where we’re going to stay?”
“Tonight, at least.”
“Good. You brought fire, didn’t you?”
I showed him the little clay fire pot I had filled from Vesta of the Regia and brought in a wicker sling. “Lay a fire on the hearth a
nd say the prayers,” I told him. I swept out the hut while he did so, and we kindled the hearth fire together.
“Your father grew up in the woods on a great mountain, Ida, did you know that?” I asked him. Of course he knew it, but he wanted to hear it again, and listened intently while I repeated to him the little that Aeneas had told me of his childhood. Then he went off with his bow and arrows to see if there were any unwary rabbits or quail about. I went on cleaning out the hut, and made us beds of young pine boughs I tore from saplings. There was no rubbish in the hut, only the tiny leavings of spiders and woodmice, and some fallen thatch. Poor people have little to leave. There was half a broken earthenware bowl on a shelf; it had been kept, it was of use. I put in it the handful of salt I had brought from home and set it on the shelf that would serve as our table.
Silvius shot nothing, but had planned where to lay snares for quail in the morning, and brought four crayfish he had hand-caught in a streamlet. We garnished our millet porridge with crayfish. I wished only that I had been able to carry water from home, for the water of the streams all around the sulfur springs is vile to the taste.
We slept rolled up in our cloaks. I slept long and well. At Albunea, even outside the grove as we were here, I was always spared from fear. Or rather I felt fear but it was entirely different from the sharp dread of losing Silvius, and from the endless alarms and anxieties of living; it was the fear we call religion, an accepting awe. It was the terror we feel when we look up at the sky on a clear night and see the white fires of all the stars of the eternal universe. That fear goes deep. But worship and sleep and silence are part of it.
Silvius was away all next day exploring the forest heights above the springs. I did not worry about him; he was a sensible boy; there were no boars or bears this near the farmlands, and here in inner Latium no enemies were near. Along in the afternoon, Ursina appeared at the edge of the clearing, quick and silent as a mountain lion. “Aunt Maruna sent me,” she whispered. She brought a jug of good water, a bag of dried fava beans, and a packet of dried figs and raisins—Tita had put that in for Silvius, having great sympathy for his love of sweets.
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