Lavinia

by Le Guin, Ursula K.

  "Oh look, oh look," came Silvius' little whisper, "they're giving him a golden bowl!"

  My father watched the child with a half smile, but his eyes were sad. "Patience!" he said. "I need it as much as he does."

  It was the last time I saw my father. He took cold, walking out in his crop lands in the rain, and it went to his lungs; he died a few days later, the day after the Ides of January. I ordered horses and a few men to escort me and Maruna and Sicana to Laurentum. Ascanius, busy up on our border fighting the Marsi near Tibur, knew nothing of what had happened. I did not take Silvius with me, for he had had a cough and fever for some days, and the weather was bitter with icy rain. The great laurel stood in its winter darkness over the fountain in the courtyard of my old home. The War Gate still hung open, rusted on its unlucky hinges. All the people in Laurentum seemed old; there were no young faces or voices. I stayed only long enough to bury my father by the roadway into his city. I could not stay the nine days of mourning. I had to go back to my son in the city of my exile.

  Ascanius was sole king of Latium now. Not all the Latin farmers were happy about it, but they made no protest or resistance; the pressure on our borders was insistent, and they wanted a single leader during war. And war was our lot for years to come. The Volscians and the Hernici, hoping Latinus' death had weakened the kingdom, harassed the border farms and towns constantly. Before long Camers of Ardea, who had come to see Aeneas as an ally and almost a father, took offense at Ascanius' arrogance; he began letting his Rutulians make raids and forays into Latium, and rebuilt his alliance with the Volscians. And, though it did not yet bring any increase of fighting, the Etruscans of the great inland city Veii were sending groups of farm families to colonise the Seven Hills on the Tiber. They did not occupy the little Greek settlement, but simply moved in all around it, building on both sides of the river, where Janiculum had been and up on the hill they called the Palatine, clearing the forest along the riverbanks and pasturing their fine cattle all through the valleys. Many of the younger Greeks of Pallanteum moved to Diomedes' city in Arpi, others came to settle in Alba Longa. Latium had long laid claim to the region of the Seven Hills, and all the south side of the father river as far up as Nomentum. Ascanius was bitterly irked by this quiet takeover, but he remembered Latinus' warnings and didn't defy Etruria. The Veiian colonists offered excellent terms to us for salt from our salt beds at the river mouth, and showed no sign of wanting to expand further into our lands. They called the new settlement by their name for the river, Ruma.

  Aeneas' shield hung in the entryway of the high house of Alba Longa. Ascanius did not wear it when he went out to war, or the greaves and gilt cuirass, the helmet with its maimed red crest, and the long bronze sword. Once he said in my hearing that these forays by farmers, these squabbles with petty barbarian kingdoms, didn't deserve such mighty weapons but should be settled with hoes and mattocks. I think the armor was too heavy for him.

  I saw Silvius standing in front of the shield, looking up at it steadily. He was six or seven years old. I asked, "What do you see there, Silvius?"

  He did not answer for a while and then said, in a small voice as if from far away, "I'm watching all the people in the great round place."

  I stood with him and gazed. I saw the mother wolf, the burning ships, the man with the comet over his head, soldiers killing soldiers, men torturing men. I saw a splendid thing: great arches of white stone that strode down from the mountains across valleys to the city with its hills and temples. The city Rome.

  I was afraid of the shield, but the child was not; the power that had made it and dwelt in it was in his blood. He put out his hand to the golden cuirass, following the curves and decorations with palm and fingers, smiling.

  "You'll wear it one day," I said.

  He nodded. "When I know how," he said.

  Silvius had a good deal of strength, for a child. He was not boisterous, and rougher boys often mistook his quietness for meekness or timidity. If they presumed on it, they found out their mistake. He ignored verbal attacks, but he met physical bullying or threat with instant resistance and retaliation: hit, he hit back hard. He was competitive; he loved all sports and games, rode and hunted whenever he could, and was a diligent pupil of Ascanius' old teacher of swordplay, spear throwing, archery, and the other arts of battle. With boys and men he was serious, silent, and reserved. Only with me and my women and the little children of the women's side did he go off guard. The Silvius of the courtyard was merry, affectionate, mischievous, greedy for sweets, patient with babies, impatient with ritual duties, fond of jokes and silly riddles and nonsense rhymes. Everybody liked him. Even Ascanius liked him, half unwillingly.

  In those early years of his reign, barely out of his own boyhood, Ascanius lived in the glare of his father's name, forever trying to find his own glory, always outshone. He was too adoring of Aeneas' memory to be able to resent him, but he was envious and resentful of any other power or popularity, particularly mine. He felt that he must outdo his father, striving to be a brighter sun, and here was I the moon, effortlessly shining with the sun's reflected light, effortlessly beloved by my people, because I was one of them, and because they had loved Aeneas. However modestly I lived, hidden like a captive in Ascanius' house, he perceived me as a constant threat to his dignity, and believed I undermined his decisions. Our people were increasingly unhappy with the endless warfare that kept young men in danger and left the farms for old men to plow—how could they be happy with it? But Ascanius blamed their protests and reluctance on me. I poisoned his councils, I whispered with the women, I turned the Latins against him. In vain I behaved as a Vestal, not a queen, doing nothing at all but look after the household and the altars: still I was at fault.

  It was a dull life, not a bitter one, but dusty, dust dry, with no spring of life in it except my beautiful, bright, thoughtful boy. He grew, and thrived, and gave me a vein at least of tenderness and hope.

  There came a March when we Latins struck out at last at the Volscians and Rutulians, driving their armies right down to the coast, taking Ardea and Antium and reducing them to beg for terms and accept our domination. Our men came back from that campaign in time for the April plowing, and were home all the summer. The harvest was good. In the knowledge of victory, Ascanius began to relax and show the benevolence that was his original nature. He invited me several times to feasts in his great hall, treating me with formal honor. A few times he even talked with me informally, very cautiously, but beginning to show a glimmer of trust. It was then that he told me a strange story, a prophecy I had not heard before. I will tell it as he told it.

  It was in the time when Turnus was gathering armies to drive the Trojans out. Aeneas was making ready to sail up the Tiber to ask help from Evander. In the morning of that day, Ascanius said, he and his father saw lying on the riverbank a great white wild sow with thirty white piglets suckling her. At once Aeneas called for a sacrifice, and at the altar he announced the portent: his new kingdom was to be founded in the place called White, that is Alba, and his heir would rule there for thirty years.

  Neither he nor my poet had spoken to me of this prophecy. I knew only that he had been bidden to build a new city in Italy and name it for his wife. I did not speak of that, since Ascanius cherished this portent of the sow as justifying his move to Alba Longa. It weighed strangely on my mind. I dreamed more than once thereafter of albino piglets who trotted by one after another endlessly, though their throats were cut and gaped open bleeding dark clots of blood, and of a huge white creature gasping and wallowing on the grass, who had been bled dry and yet was not dead and could not die.

  The next year was a peaceful one, but then the Sabines joined with the Aequians against our northeastern towns and farms, burning, looting, and taking slaves as far into our territory as Tibur and Fidenae. Two years went in fighting those peoples. Ascanius defeated them decisively in a long battle late in the year in the hills above the Anio. All the old Trojans fought with him there, Achates, Mnes
theus, Serestus, men who had fought before the walls of Troy when they were young. It was their last battle. The soldiers came home in the winter rain, lean and lank as old wolves, but victorious.

  Again Ascanius was genial and gracious in triumph. He summoned the Trojans from Lavinium to receive special honors in Alba Longa, and made sure that his younger captains treated them with respect. Though there had been little profit from this defensive war, whatever booty had been taken he shared out among all the men who had fought for Latium, and he sent lavish gifts to Gabii and Praeneste in thanks for their aid.

  Along at the time of the dark solstice he came back from a brief trip down to Ardea. He sent for me and said to me, "Mother, I know your heart has never been here in Alba Longa."

  "My heart is where my son is," I said.

  "And beside your husband's tomb, I think." He said it gently, and I nodded.

  "You have ruled my household with grace and wisdom, and many here will grieve for your going, if you go. But I say to you now, if you wish to go, you may. I have asked for the hand of Camers' sister Salica, and she will come here as my bride in April. If you were here to show her the ways of the house and teach her the skills of housekeeping in which you are so outstanding, you would have our undying gratitude. But if you feel that it may not be wise to have two queens under one roof, or simply if you wish to return to Lavinium, which is your home beyond all question, built for you by my father, I wish you to feel free to make whatever choice you please."

  The pompous awkwardness and the good intent were very like Ascanius. I was sorting out his words, and a glow of hope was just beginning to rise in me and warm my whole soul, when he went on, "And I'll keep Silvius here, of course, for his training. It's time I was a better brother to him—I who stand in a father's place to him."

  "No," I said.

  He stared.

  "If you are bringing a wife here, it's right that I go. She should rule here. I'll go back to Lavinium willingly, gratefully. But not without Silvius."

  He was puzzled, displeased; he had thought his offer entirely reasonable and generous.

  "The boy is eleven, is he not?"

  "Yes."

  "It's time he was brought up among men."

  "I do not leave my son. He is my charge from Aeneas."

  "You cannot be his mother and his father."

  "I can. I am. Ascanius, do not ask this of me. You will not part me from Silvius. I am grateful for your brotherly care for him. Have no fear, in Lavinium he'll be brought up in all the ways and arts of men by his father's companions and your Latin captains there. I think you know I haven't coddled him. Is he unskilled for his age, or lazy, or cowardly? Is he in any way unworthy of his father?"

  He stared again. I was the she-wolf on the shield now. He saw my teeth.

  He said at last, "This is unseemly."

  "That I should refuse to give up my son?"

  "He will be here with me. A few miles from Lavinium!"

  "Where he is, I am."

  He turned away, baffled, repeating, "This is most unseemly."

  Few people, I suppose, had openly opposed his will since he became king of Latium. He had forgotten that there was still a queen.

  I stood silent. He said at last, "We will speak of this again." And as he left the room, he said hastily, almost shrewishly, "Consider your position. You cannot have your way in all things."

  He could not bear contradiction; he did not have the strength that allows opposition. He could be generous only when his will prevailed. I saw even then that he would be immovable. I had justified his suspicions. He knew now that he had been right to suspect me all along, all the years I had done his bidding, served his household, bowed my head and held my tongue. I was a woman, therefore never to be trusted, never obeyed. I must be disregarded, or defeated.

  When I went to my rooms in the women's quarters that evening my head felt as if it were fuller of thoughts than my skull could hold, yet I could think only of the one thing. Ascanius had ruled my life for nearly ten years. I had done his will not my own, and he had taken that for granted, as if I were a slave. Now he meant, without malice but without need or reason, to take from me the use and purpose of my life. He was not the man to bring up my son, Aeneas' son. My father had said so, and I knew it was so.

  "Is there something wrong?" Maruna asked me when we were out in the urinals together, and I said, "The king's sending me back to Lavinium."

  Maruna's face lighted up.

  "He means to keep Silvius here."

  She was silent.

  "I won't go without him," I said. After a moment, going to the basin to wash, I said, "And I won't stay here. Enough is enough!"

  She came to stand by me, and I called to the girl, "Maia, come bring us fresh water, child!" The ten-year-old came with a pitcher and poured cool water over our hands, while her little sister ran in with towels. They were Sicana's granddaughters, not pretty children but very bright. "You'll come back with us to Lavinium, you two," I said to them, and they made big eyes, wondering what I meant.

  "I will go," I repeated to Maruna, drying my hands. It helped calm me to say it aloud. "And with Silvius. Maruna, am I like my mother?"

  As usual she paused before she answered. "In many ways," she said at last.

  "Because I know how she went mad. I know I could go mad as she did. Tell me if you see me going mad. Promise you will."

  "I will."

  "I have my father in me too. I think if I knew the madness was taking me over, I could stop it. But not if I lost Silvius."

  She nodded.

  I did indeed understand something of how my mother's mind worked in her frenzy: the ceaseless whirl of ideas, plans, schemes, the terrible irritation with anything that turned thought from its obsession and with anyone who did not understand it, and the curious sense of waiting in ambush. I remembered two pale gold eyes that shone of their own light. I was the she-wolf in the cave, standing stiff-legged, silent, in darkness, ready.

  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.