Lavinia

by Le Guin, Ursula K.

  "I think you are here," I said, "only your body is not. But I see you. I talk with you. Tell me who the Trojans are."

  "No no no. I must not. They are yet to come. Do what's right to do and what follows will be what should follow." He laughed. "Tell me, have you any suitors, Lavinia, 'ripe now for a man, of full age for marriage'?"

  "Yes."

  "What are their names?"

  "Clausus the Sabine, Almo Tyrrhus' son, Ufens of Nersae, Aventinus, Turnus of Rutulia."

  "And you favor none of them?"

  "I favor none of them."

  "Why is that?"

  "Why should I? Where can a man take me that is better than my father's house? What do I want with a lesser king? Why should I serve Lares that are not my family's Lares, the Penates of some other woman's storerooms, the fire of a foreign hearth? Why, why is a girl brought up at home to be a woman in exile the rest of her life?"

  "Hah," he said, not a laugh this time but a long outbreath. "I don't know, Lavinia. I don't know. But listen. If a man came—if a man came to marry you who was a man among a thousand—a warrior, a hero, a handsome man—"

  "Turnus is all that."

  "Has he piety?"

  The word brought me up short, but I had no doubt of my answer. "No," I said.

  "Well. If a man came who was heroic and also responsible, and just, and faithful, a man who had lost much, and suffered much, and made a good many mistakes and paid for them all—a man who saw his city betrayed and burned, and saved his father and his son from the burning, a man who went down alive into the underworld and returned, a man who learned piety the hard way ... Might you favor such a man?"

  "I would certainly pay attention to him," I said.

  "It would be wise to do so."

  A silence fell between us, companionable.

  I said at last, "Have you seen, when the young men have archery contests, sometimes they catch a dove, and put a cord round her foot, and shinny up a high pole and tie her to the top, leaving just enough cord so she thinks she can fly? And then she is the target of their arrows."

  "I have seen that."

  "If I were an archer I'd break the cord with my arrow."

  "That too I have seen. But another man shot the dove as she flew free."

  After a while I said, "Perhaps it's just as well that women don't learn to shoot arrows."

  "Camilla did. You know of her?"

  "A woman archer?"

  "A woman warrior, beautiful, invincible. From Volscia."

  I shook my head. All I knew of the Volscians was what my father said: savage fighters, faithless allies.

  "Well," the wraith said, "I suppose I did invent her. But I liked her."

  "Invent her?"

  "I am a poet, Lavinia." I liked the sound of the word, but he saw I did not know it. "A vates," he said. I knew that word of course: foreteller, soothsayer. It went with his being part Etruscan, and with the knowledge he seemed to have of what had not happened yet. But I didn't see what it had to do with this woman warrior, who sounded like a mere story to me.

  "Would you tell me more about the man who is coming?"

  He pondered a little. Even though we were talking with such ease and openness, in perfect trust, as if we were both shadows, harmless and invulnerable, with all eternity before us, still, he was a man who thought before he spoke.

  "Yes," he said, "I can do that. What do you want to know?"

  "Why is he coming here?"

  "That, I think, I should not tell you now. Time will tell. But I think it would not be wrong for me to tell you where he is coming from."

  "I am listening." I got more comfortable on the fleeces.

  "O Lavinia," he said, "you are worth ten Camillas. And I never saw it. Well, never mind. Did you ever hear of Troy?"

  "Yes. It's a little town south of here, near Ardea."

  "Ah—not that Troia. This one was a great city. Far east of here, east of the Middle Sea, east of the isles of Greece, on the shore of Asia. There was a pretty prince of Troy named Paris. He and a Greek queen ran off together. Her husband called the other kings of Greece together, and they went to Troy, a great army in a thousand beaked ships, to get the woman back. Helen, her name was."

  "What did they want her back for?"

  "Her husband's honor demanded it."

  "I should think his honor demanded that he divorce her and find himself a decent wife."

  "Lavinia, these people were Greeks. Not Ro—not Italians."

  "King Evander's a Greek. I wonder if he'd chase after a cheating wife."

  "Lavinia daughter of the king, will you let me tell my tale?"

  "I'm sorry. I won't talk."

  "Then I will tell you the story of the fall of Troy, as Aeneas told it to the queen of Carthage," he said. And he sat up straighter, there on the dark ground, a shadow among shadows, and began to sing.

  It wasn't singing like the shepherds' songs, or rowers' choruses, or the hymns at Ambarvalia and Compitalia, or the songs women sing all day at spinning and weaving and pounding and chopping and cleaning and sweeping. There was no tune to it. Its words were all the music of it, its words were its drumbeat, clack of the loom, tread of feet, oarstroke, heartbeat, waves breaking on the beach at Troy away across the world.

  I cannot say here all he sang, about the great horse, and the snakes that came out of the sea, and the fall of the city. I will tell only what I have most thought about in the tale.

  When the Greeks came out of the horse and let their army into the city, Aeneas the Trojan warrior fought against them in the streets. He fought in a kind of madness, furious, mindless, until he saw the king's high house afire. Then his mind cleared: he thought of his own house and people, and ran there. That house was some way from the center of the city, and it was still quiet there.

  As he went through the streets he saw great powers made visible, moving in the darkness, the powers that willed Troy to burn.

  When he got home, he tried to get his people to leave the house, escape the city, save themselves; but his father Anchises wouldn't go. Anchises was crippled, could hardly walk. He said he would die in his own house. But the house people wouldn't leave him there, wouldn't go without him. Aeneas was about to give up, rush back into the madness and get himself killed in the street fighting. His wife Creusa stopped him, and told him he had no right to do that. It was his duty and hers to try to save their people. She had their little son Ascanius with her. And as she spoke, someone said, "Look!"—and they saw that the boy's hair had caught fire—a gold flame leaped up over his head. They put it out, but old Anchises, who could read omens, said it was a good omen. Then they saw a shooting star run across the sky and fall into the forest up on the mountain over the city, Mount Ida. Anchises said they should follow that star. So Aeneas told all the house people to scatter out and run, get out of the city any way they could, and told them where to meet: at a mound with an old altar of the Grain Mother, outside the city gate under Mount Ida. Then Anchises carried the household gods in a big clay pot, and Aeneas carried crippled Anchises on his back; he took little Ascanius' hand, and Creusa followed him; and so they set off through the dark streets.

  But Anchises saw soldiers down a side street and shouted to Aeneas to run. Aeneas obeyed, turned aside, running blindly in the dark, and lost his way. Finally he recognised a street and made his way, still carrying his father and holding the little boy's hand, to the gate, and came out to the altar where all his people were waiting for him. Only then he realised his wife wasn't with them. She'd been behind him when he turned and ran, and he never looked back to see if she was with him. No one had seen her.

  So he went back into the city alone. He ran to their house, thinking she might have gone there. The whole house was burning, full of flame. He ran through the city shouting, "Creusa! Creusa!"—past the ruined buildings, and the fires, and the soldiers killing and looting. And then he saw her. She stood in front of him in the dark street. But she was taller than herself. And she said, "I wil
l not go with you, nor will I be the slave of any Greek. The Earth Mother keeps me here. And you must go a long way for a long time, you must go, my sweet husband, until at last you come to the Western Land. There you will be a king and have a queen. No tears for me, but let your love guard our son!" And he tried to speak to her, and to take her in his arms—three times he tried, but it was like putting his arms around the wind, around a dream. She was gone into the shadow.

  So he went back to the altar mound, where a great crowd of people had gathered now, fleeing the city, joining his house people. No Greeks had followed them out of the city, yet. He took his father up on his back again, and led them all up into the hills, where the shooting star had fallen. It was almost morning.

  I remember that as the poet's voice died away, a first bird piped up, thin and far off, though there was no light yet in the sky, and no voice answered. Here, too, it was almost morning. I looked where the shadow of the poet had been and there was nothing. I lay down in the fleeces and slept till the sun's light, piercing and flashing through the dark trunks and thickets of the forest, woke me.

  I was ravenously hungry, a wolf. I went straight to the woodcutter's cottage, where Maruna was waiting for me. It was the old kind of house, one tall round room of stakes with a roof of boughs, all thatched with straw. The woodcutter was already gone to his work in the woods. I asked his wife for food. She had nothing but a scrape of spelt porridge and a cup of sour goat's milk, which she was frightened to offer me because she thought such poor stuff would insult me and I'd be angry with her. I gobbled it up. Having nothing to give her, I kissed her. I thanked her for feeding the she-wolf. She laughed in bewilderment.

  "I ate everything you have, what will you eat?" I asked, and she said comfortably, "Oh, he always brings a rabbit or some birds."

  "Perhaps I'll wait," I said, but my joke bewildered her again. No doubt she thought we always ate meat at the king's house.

  So I set off with Maruna. There was a great joy in me that morning. Maruna saw it and asked, "Was it a good night there?"

  "Yes. I saw my kingdom," I said. I did not know myself what I meant. "And I saw a great city fall, all burning. And a man came out of it with a man on his back. And he is coming here."

  She listened, believed me, asked nothing.

  I could say that, I could talk that way to Maruna, my slave and sister, but not to anyone else.

  All the way home I puzzled how I could win my way back to Albunea, soon, as soon as possible, and stay there more than one night. For I was quite certain that the poet would come back, but equally certain that he could not come back for long. His time with me was limited. He was on his way down to the shadow land, and it would not be a long journey for him.

  I turned aside from our path and walked to the little river Prati, running shallow and bright on its stones. I was thirsty, and knelt to drink above the ford there, marked with the hooves of cattle. When I looked up from drinking, the ford made me think of the place I had stood in my dream six years before and seen the blood in the water, on the river Numicus. A dread and awe came into me. I stood, and opened my meal bag, and scattered salsamola on the stones.

  I looked up at Maruna standing patiently on the riverbank, a tall girl my age, with a long, dark, soft Etruscan face. Tying up the meal bag I said, "Maruna, I need to go back to Albunea, soon. And maybe stay more than one night."

  She pondered for half a mile homeward before she said, "Not while King Turnus is here."

  "No."

  "But when he leaves ... Will the king ask why you want to go?"

  "Probably. And you can't lie about sacred things."

  "You can be silent, though," said Maruna.

  "I am the king's daughter," I said, thinking how the poet had called me that. "I will do as I will do, and the king will nod his head." I laughed out loud, and then I said, "Look, look, Maruna! There's Silvia's deer! What's he doing so far from home?"

  The big stag was walking on an open hillside just above a field where the new crops were coming up green. His white linen neckpiece was torn and dingy, but his antlers were splendid in their new velvet.

  Maruna pointed a little way ahead of the stag: a slender doe was drifting along, nibbling a grass stem here and there, ignoring her follower entirely. "That's what he's doing so far from home."

  "Mating season or not. Just like Turnus," I said, and laughed again. Nothing could keep my heart down that morning.

  So with that courage in me I went to my father as soon as I got home, and greeted him, and said, "Father, when our guest has gone, may I go to Albunea again? Maruna will go with me, and anyone else you wish, if you think I need to be guarded. I wish to sleep there alone, more than one night."

  Latinus looked at me, a long look, affectionate, distant, judging. He was about to ask me a question, and then he did not. "I begrudge every night you are not under my roof, daughter. How much longer will I have you? But I trust you. Go to the sacred place when you will, stay as you must, return when you can."

  "I will," I said, and thanked him, and he kissed my forehead. Then, because fathers must be stern, he said, "I expect you to be at the banquet tonight. And no sulking, no green swoons."

  "Then keep the African creature from me."

  "I will," he said, and I saw perfectly well that he was thinking he wished he could keep the man who brought the African creature from me too; but he said nothing.

  So I endured the rest of Turnus' visit, meek and maidenly, even saying a word or two at table now and then. Turnus in fact paid very little attention to me. He did not need to. It was my father he must persuade. My mother, of course, was already wooed and won. The tricky bit for Turnus was to encourage her to adore him without offending my father, and to seek my father's conversation and approval without letting her feel neglected. Turnus was a fierce, impetuous man, used to getting his way, not used to watching his tongue. He kept up his cautious courtesies pretty well, but sometimes I knew he was as desperate to get the banquet over as I was. It gave me a fellow feeling with him. As a cousin, I liked Turnus.

  The animal from Africa had bitten my mother painfully, and then disappeared. Later on it was found that one of the hounds had got it, eaten its entrails, and left the rest lying by the house wall, where a pregnant weaving woman saw it, thought it was the corpse of a baby, went shrieking into labor, and bore a dead child. That was a creature of ill omen if ever I saw one.

  I came again to the altar in Albunea in the evening of the Kalends of May. We had started late from home. By the time I had hung up the basket of food I brought with me on a tree branch to keep it from vermin, and blessed the altar place, and laid out the fleeces to sleep on, it was getting dark. Again I wished for a fire, for the cheer of it, but I had left the fire pot with Maruna. I sat and listened and watched the light die. The trees gathered and grew stronger in the dark. One owl called, from the right, far off. None answered.

  In the great silence my heart went down, and farther down. What a fool I was to have come here. What did I remember of my last night here? I had had a dream about a man who was dying somewhere else, in some other time. Nothing to do with me. And for that I had come back here, with my silly basket of food.

  I lay down. I was tired, and quite soon was asleep.

  I woke in the black starless dark and looked past the altar. He was there.

  "Poet," I said.

  He said, "Lavinia."

  A light rain was pattering on the ground and on the leaves of the forest. It ceased and began again and ceased.

  He came where he had sat before, not far from me, and sat on the ground again, his arms round his knees.

  "Are you cold?" he asked.

  "No. Are you?"

  "Yes."

  I wanted to offer him fleeces to keep off the rain, but I knew it was no good.

  "The ship is coming into harbor," he said. His voice was gentle and humorous, charged with passion yet quietly flowing, even when he was not singing his poem. That is what his song was call
ed, he had told me, the first night, an epic poem. "We've passed through the arms of the harbor, where Pompey had his blockade of ships. I can feel how the rise and fall of the waves has diminished. I hated that swelling and sinking when I was out at sea, but I miss it now. We'll be ashore soon, no waves at all. Only a hot, flat bed, and sweat and aching, and more fever and less fever ... What an escape some kind god has given me! To be here, in the dark, in the rain, to be cold, shivering—are you shivering, Lavinia?"

  "No. I'm fine. I wish—" I didn't know what to say. "I wish you were well," I said.

  "I'm well enough. I'm very well. I have been granted what few poets are granted. Maybe it's because I haven't finished the poem. So I can still live in it. Even while I die I can live in it. And you, you can live in it, be here—be here to talk to me, even if I can't write. Tell me ... Tell me, daughter of King Latinus, how goes it in Latium?"

  "The spring was early. Calving and lambing went well. The spelt and barley are tall for the season. Everything is well with the Penates of my house, except the salt is getting low. I'll have to go down to the salt beds at the mouth of the father river soon, and bring dirty salt back, and clean it and leach it and bake it and soak it and dry it and pound it and all the rest you have to do to make it right."

  "How did you learn to do all that?"

  "From the old women."

  "Not from your mother?"

  "My mother is from Ardea. They don't have salt beds nearby, down there. They trade for their salt with houses like ours. That's why our women know how to make it. We trade it. But the sacred salt, for the salsamola, I have to make that myself. From beginning to end."

  "What would you rather do?"

  "Talk with you," I said.

  "What do you want to talk about?"

  "The Trojans."

  "What do you want to know about the Trojans?"

  I had trouble getting started, but then it came out: "When Troy was burning ... His wife Creusa—they were in the streets, trying to escape—He had the child, she was behind him. They got separated. The Greek soldiers killed her. And then she came to him, taller than life, there in the darkness and the burning, and told him he must go on, get out, save his people. And he tried to hold her, three times, but she was only air and shadow."