Lavinia

by Le Guin, Ursula K.

  I said, "I want to know about Aeneas. After he left Africa, after he looked back over the water and saw her funeral fire burning ... where did he go then?"

  The poet kept his dejected posture for a while. He shook his head a little. He said hoarsely, "Sicily." He looked around, shrugging his shoulders slowly to get the cramp out.

  "He'd already been there, hadn't he?"

  "He went back to celebrate the Parentalia for his father. While he was in Africa with Dido, a year had passed since Anchises died."

  "How did he celebrate?"

  "Properly. With ceremony and sacrifice, and then with games and competitions and a feast." His voice had grown stronger. The music was coming back into it. "Aeneas has a very just sense of what's appropriate. And he knew his men needed heartening. Seven years wandering and here they were back where they'd been a year ago. So he gave them games. What he forgot was the women."

  "That hardly seems surprising."

  "Very well, my cynic. But Aeneas is not a forgetful man. He thinks about all his people. A lot of women had entrusted themselves to him in the escape from Troy. He'd tried to make the long voyaging bearable to them. But when he announced that they were setting off yet again to seek the promised land, it was too much. Juno got into them, she goaded them. They rebelled. They went down to the shore and set fire to the ships."

  "What do you mean, Juno got into them?"

  "She hated Aeneas. She was always against him." He saw that I was puzzled.

  I pondered this. A woman has her Juno, just as a man has his Genius; they are names for the sacred power, the divine spark we each of us have in us. My Juno can't "get into" me, it is already my deepest self. The poet was speaking of Juno as if it were a person, a woman, with likes and dislikes: a jealous woman.

  The world is sacred, of course, it is full of gods, numina, great powers and presences. We give some of them names—Mars of the fields and the war, Vesta the fire, Ceres the grain, Mother Tellus the earth, the Penates of the storehouse. The rivers, the springs. And in the storm cloud and the light is the great power called the father god. But they aren't people. They don't love and hate, they aren't for or against. They accept the worship due them, which augments their power, through which we live.

  I was entirely puzzled. I finally asked, "Why does this Juno person hate Aeneas?"

  "Because she hates his mother, Venus."

  "Aeneas' mother is a star?"

  "No; a goddess."

  I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus."

  He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we," he said. "But Venus also became more ... With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite ... There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..."

  It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy. I said at last, "Why would anyone hate her?"

  "Jealousy," he said.

  "A sacred power jealous of another?" I could not understand it. Is a river jealous of another river, is earth jealous of the sky?

  "A man in my poem asks, 'Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god?' "

  He looked at me. I said nothing.

  "Great Homer of Greece says the god lights the fire. Young Lavinia of Italy says the fire is the god. This is Italian ground, Latin ground. You and Lucretius have it right. Offer praise, ask for blessing, and pay no attention to the foreign myths. They're only literature ... So, never mind about Juno. The Trojan women were furious at not having been consulted, and determined to stay in Sicily. And so they set fire to the ships."

  That I could understand well enough. I listened.

  "The whole fleet would have burned if a rain squall hadn't come up and drowned the fires. They lost four ships. The women ran, of course, took to the hills ... But Aeneas never even thought of punishing them. He realised he'd pushed them too far. He called a council and let them all choose freely: stay in Sicily, or sail with Aeneas. Old people and many women, a lot of mothers with young children, chose to stay. Others chose to keep on looking for the promised land. So, after the nine days of the festival were done, and another day for the tears of parting, they sailed."

  "This way? To Latium?"

  The poet nodded. "But first he put in at Cumae."

  I knew there is an entrance to the underworld there. "To go down? Why?"

  "A vision: his father Anchises told him to come find him, across the dark river. And having always obeyed his father and the fates, Aeneas went to Cumae, and found the guide, and the way down."

  "And he saw the marsh where the babies lie crying," I said. "And his friend who was murdered so cruelly that even his ghost was not healed. And Queen Dido, who turned away and wouldn't speak. But he didn't look for his wife Creusa."

  "No," the poet said humbly.

  "It doesn't matter. I think there is no rejoining, there," I said. "Shadow cannot touch shadow. I think the long night is for sleeping."

  "Daughter of Latinus, foremother of Lucretius! You promise me what I most desire."

  "Sleep?"

  "Sleep."

  "But your poem—"

  "Well, my poem will look after itself, no doubt, if I let it."

  We both sat in silence. It was quite dark. The wind was down. Nothing stirred.

  "Has he left Cumae, by now?"

  "I think so," the poet said.

  We spoke very low, almost in whispers.

  "He'll stop at Circeii, to bury his nurse Caieta, who begged to come with him; but she's old and ill, and she dies in the ship. He puts ashore to bury her. That will delay him some days."

  A chill of fear had come into me. Too much was coming to me, too soon. I wanted the poet to tell me what was coming, and I didn't want it. I said, "I don't know when I can come back here."

  "Nor do I, Lavinia."

  He looked across the dark air at me and I could tell that he was smiling.

  "Oh my dear," he said, still very softly. "My unfinished, my incomplete, my unfulfilled. Child I never had. Come back once more."

  "I will."

  I am not the feminine voice you may have expected. Resentment is not what drives me to write my story. Anger, in part, perhaps. But not an easy anger. I long for justice, but I do not know what justice is. It is hard to be betrayed. It is harder to know you made betrayal inevitable.

  Who was my true love, then, the hero or the poet? I don't mean which of them loved me more; neither of them loved me long. Just sufficiently. Enough. My question is which of them did I more truly love? And I cannot answer it. One was my husband, the beautiful man whose flesh my flesh enclosed to make my son in me, the author of my womanhood, my pride, my glory; the other was a shadow, a whisper in shadows, a virgin's dream or vision, yet the author of all my being. How can I choose? I lost them both so soon. I knew them only a little better than they knew me. And I remember, always, that I am contingent.

  So, of course, were they. It is only too likely that little Publius Vergilius Maro might have died at six or seven, ashes under a small gravestone in Mantua, before he was ever a poet; and with him would have died the hero's glory, leaving a mere name among a thousand names of warriors, not even a myth on the Italian shore. We are all contingent. Resentment is foolish and ungenerous, and even anger is inadequate. I am a fleck of light on the surface of the sea, a glint of light from the evening star. I live in awe. If I never lived at all, yet I am a silent wing on th
e wind, a bodiless voice in the forest of Albunea. I speak, but all I can say is: Go, go on.

  ***

  When i got home with maruna the next day, everybody on the women's side tried to tell me simultaneously that Turnus had sent a messenger to my father, and that Queen Amata wanted to see me right away.

  My habit of fear of my mother made me wince inwardly at that. Yet she had not screamed at me or humiliated me in the old way for a long time now. I was ashamed of my cowardice. As soon as I had washed the dirt of travel from my feet and changed my clothes, I went to her rooms. She sent her maids away and greeted me with real eagerness, kissing my forehead and taking my hands to draw me down to sit beside her. Such a show of love might have seemed false, affected, but Amata was not a schemer. She was far too much at the mercy of her feelings to play a part she did not feel. She was truly glad to see me, and her pleasure went to my heart. I had so longed for the approval, the kindness of my beautiful and unhappy mother that the least sign of it was irresistible to me. I sat down by her willingly.

  She stroked my hair. Her hand trembled a little; she was very excited. Her great, dark eyes seemed full of light.

  "King Turnus has sent a messenger, Lavinia."

  "So all the women said."

  "It is a formal request for your hand in marriage."

  She was watching me so eagerly and so closely, sitting so near, that I could do nothing but look down, speechless. I felt the blush rise to my skin, the wave of heat all over my body, and the sense of being trapped, helpless, exposed.

  My shrinking silence did not surprise or displease her. She took my hand and held it while she talked. "It is an unusual proposal. King Turnus is a great-hearted man. He speaks not only for himself, but for other young kings and warriors who have come here courting you—Messapus, Aventinus, Ufens, and Clausus the Sabine. Turnus' message is that to avoid dispute and bad blood among these powerful subjects and allies of Latium, the time has come for the king to choose your husband from among them, and so end their rivalry. All are agreed to accept Latinus' choice. He will be sending for you soon to tell you his decision."

  I could do nothing but nod.

  "It's not an easy decision for your father to make," Amata said, her voice growing less hurried and eager, warmer, now that the message had been given. "He's devoted to you, he doesn't want to let you go. But he's been very worried about the rivalries Turnus speaks of. He's lain awake nights, fearing that the young warriors will come to blows over you or try to force a choice upon him that will upset the kingdom. They're like a box of tinder, those young men. One spark and they'll be in arms. And your father is proud of the peace he has kept, and wishes with all his heart to keep it. He is an old man, past fighting. He needs, in fact, the heart and strength of a young man to defend him—a son-in-law. Which of them would you think best suited to that honor?"

  I shook my head. My throat was dry, no words would come from it.

  "He will ask you, Lavinia. You must be ready for that. He will not want to marry you to a man you dislike—you know that! But it is time for you to marry, and past time. We can't change that. So you must choose. And it will truly be your choice. He would never go against your heart."

  "I know."

  She got up and moved about the room a little; she took one of the tiny pots of scent from her table and brought it over to dab the rose oil on my wrists.

  "It is rather nice to have young men quarreling over one," she said, with a smile. "I know! It seems such a pity to have to bring all that to an end ... But it can't last forever. And the impossible choice, when suddenly it must be made, usually makes itself. Among them all, all the young possibilities, there really is only one who is possible. Who is inevitable. Intended."

  She smiled again, radiantly. I thought, she is like a girl speaking of her betrothed.

  I still said nothing, and she said after waiting a minute, "Well, my dear, you need not tell me your choice; but you will have to tell your father—or let him choose for you."

  I nodded.

  "Do you wish us to choose for you?"

  The eagerness was strong in her voice. I could not speak.

  "Are you so frightened?" She spoke tenderly, and sitting down by me again held me close against her, as she had not done since I was six years old. I could not relax, but sat stiff in her encircling arms. "Oh, Lavinia, he will be kind to you, good to you. He is so fine—so handsome! There is nothing to be afraid of. And you can visit back here often with him. And I'll be welcome to come visit you in Ardea—he said so to me more than once. Ardea was my home when I was a child. It is a beautiful city. You'll see. It won't be so different for you from being here. He'll look after you as your father does. You'll be so happy there. You have nothing to fear. I will go with you."

  I broke loose from her embrace, stood up; I had to get free. "Mother, I will talk with father when he sends for me," I said, and hurried out of the room. There was a singing in my ears, and the burning flush had turned to a cold that ran in my bones.

  As I hurried along the colonnade I saw a great commotion in the central courtyard, a lot of people all gathered around the laurel tree. I tried to get past unseen, but first Vestina and then Tita saw me, and crying, "Look, look, come look!" dragged me out towards the tree. Something was up in it, far in the branches, a fat dark animal—a huge sack of something, writhing—a cloud of smoke, dark heavy smoke, caught in the branches. From it came a humming, droning sound. Everybody was shouting, pointing. Bees, they shouted, bees swarming!

  My father came across the court, grave, grey, and erect. He looked up at the great swarm that pulsed and sagged and reformed constantly at the summit of the tree. He glanced up at the clouds beginning to color with sunset.

  "Are they our bees?" he asked.

  Several voices said no. The swarm had flown in over the roofs of the city, "like a great smoke in the sky," somebody said.

  "Tell Castus," Latinus said to the house slave with him. "They're gathering for the night. He'll be able to move them." The boy darted off to fetch Castus, our beekeeper.

  "It's a sign, master, it's a sign," Maruna's mother cried. "To the very crown of the tree that crowns Laurentum, they come! What is the omen?"

  "What direction did they come from?"

  "Southwest."

  There was a brief, waiting silence. My father spoke: "Strangers are coming from that quarter—by sea, perhaps. They will come to the king in his house."

  As father of the household, the city, and the state, Latinus was accustomed to read omens. He used no mysterious means and preparations, as the Etruscan soothsayers did. He looked at the omen, read its meaning, and spoke it unhesitating, with grave simplicity.

  His people were satisfied. A good many of them stayed in the courtyard, chattering about the omen, brushing strayed, sluggish bees out of their hair, waiting to see Castus gather the swarm to take to our hives.

  Latinus had seen me, and said, "Daughter, come."

  I followed him to his rooms. He stopped in the anteroom and stood by the small table there, facing me. The evening light was bright in the doorway.

  "Has your mother spoken to you, Lavinia?"

  "Yes."

  "So you know that your suitors have agreed to ask me to choose your husband from among them."

  "Yes."

  "Well," he said with a forced smile, "will you tell me which one you wish me to choose?"

  "No."

  I did not speak insolently, but the refusal took him aback. He studied me a minute. "But there is one of them you prefer."

  "No, father."

  "Not Turnus?"

  I shook my head.

  "Your mother has told me that you love Turnus."

  "No."

  Again he was surprised, but he was patient with me. He said gently, "Are you quite certain, my dear? Your mother has told me that you've been in love with him since he first came courting you. And she warned me you'd be timid about admitting it. Such timidity is right and proper in a virgin girl. W
e need say nothing more about it. All you need do is indicate that you will be content if I accept him for you."

  "No!"

  Now he was puzzled and uneasy. "If not Turnus, then which of the others?"

  "None."

  "You want me to refuse them all?"

  "Can you, father?"

  Looking grim, he took a turn round the room; he hunched his broad, muscular shoulders, rubbed his hand over his chin. He had not shaved yet, and the grey bristles stood out on his jaw. He stopped again facing me. "Yes, I can," he said. "I am still king of Latium. Why do you ask that?"

  "I know that Turnus' offer contained a threat."

  "It can be taken so. You need not concern yourself with that. What do you want, what do you intend, Lavinia? You're eighteen. You cannot go on indefinitely as a maiden at home."

  "I would rather be a Vestal than marry any of those men."

  We call a woman a Vestal who chooses not to marry or is never chosen, who stays with her father's family and keeps the hearth fire alight.

  He sighed, looking down at his big, scarred hand on the table. I think he had to resist the temptation of that idea, that hope to keep me with him. He finally said, "If I were not king—if I had other daughters—if your brothers had lived—you might have that choice. As it is, as my only child, you are bound to marry, Lavinia. You carry my power in you, our family's power, and we can't pretend you don't."

  "One more year."

  "It will be the same choice in a year."

  I had no answer to that.

  "Turnus is the best of them, daughter. Messapus will always be under Turnus' thumb. Aventinus is a fine lad, with his lion-skin coat, but he hasn't much sense. You can't live your life up in Ufens' mountains, and I won't send you off among those shifty Sabines. Turnus is the pick of the lot. He's probably the best man in Latium. He's running his kingdom well; he's feared as a fighter; he's rich. And good-looking. I know all the women think so. And he's a relation. Your mother tells me he's wildly in love with you."