Then I would lie awake and my mind would gnaw and gnaw at the puzzle I could not solve. The poet had told me that Aeneas would rule for three summers and three winters. Was the summer we married the first of the three summers? I thought that because it was half gone before he came to rule in Lavinium, the count of three summers and three winters should begin with the winter of that year, and the summer that lay before us now would be his third—his third and last. But at least he would have till the summer—through the summer—he would not die this spring!
But why must he die? Perhaps the poet had not meant that at all. The poet had not said he would die, only that his reign would be three years. Perhaps he would give up the kingship, give it to Ascanius, and live on, a long life, a happy life, the life he deserved. Why had I not thought of that before?
The idea filled my mind and dazzled me so I could sleep no more; and in the morning when he woke I could scarcely keep myself from bursting out to him, “Give your kingdom to your son, Aeneas!”
I had sense enough not to do that, but in a day or two I did ask, trying to speak lightly, if he had ever thought of laying his rule aside and living as an ordinary man.
He looked at me quickly, a flash of his dark eyes. “That choice wasn’t offered me,” he said. “Priam’s nephew, Anchises’ son.”
“But now you’re in a land where your fathers are less important than your sons, perhaps.”
“If I grant that,” he said after considering it, “what then? I was sent here to be king. Hector came from his grave, Creusa rose from her death, to tell me what I had to do. I was to take my people to the western land, and rule. And marry there, and have a son… You can’t say I don’t do my duty, Lavinia.” He had spoken somberly at first, but he ended with a half-suppressed smile.
“No one would ever say that of you! But you have done it—you carried out the prophecy—you fulfilled your destiny—hard as it was, voyaging over sea, the storms, and shipwrecks, and losing friends, and having to fight a war when you finally got here—And you have reigned, and founded your dynasty. Do you never think of saying: Now I’ve done that, now let me stand aside—let me rest a while, now I’ve come to harbor?”
He gazed at me for some time, a direct, mild, thoughtful gaze. He was thinking why I said what I had said, and finding no answer. “Silvius is still rather short to stand aside for,” he said finally.
It made me laugh. I was very tense. “Yes, he is. But Ascanius—”
“You want Ascanius to rule Lavinium?” He was surprised into sternness for a moment, then his expression changed, became tender; he thought he knew why I was asking him to step down. “Lavinia, dear wife, you mustn’t fear for me so much. It’s less dangerous to be the king than to be a common soldier. Anyway, the day of our death isn’t in our hands. There is no safe place. You know that.”
“Yes, I know that.”
He came to hold and comfort me, and I held him close.
“Truly,” he asked, “you’d give up being queen, to spare me the trouble of being king?” I had not in fact actually thought about that aspect of my plan. He went on, “Who would take your place? We’d have to get Ascanius married off.” He was teasing me, by now. He knew that the idea of handing over my people and my Penates to a strange woman would be dreadful to me. I was distressed and ashamed, feeling I had been caught in a lying trick, a stupid ruse. I could not speak, but blushed the way I do, turning red all over. He saw and felt that and kissed me, gently at first, but with arousing passion. We were in the small courtyard of our house, no one about. “Come on, come!” he said, and still red as fire I followed him into our bedroom, where the conversation took a different form.
But after that day I was never able to put the poet’s words wholly out of mind. They were always in my thoughts, underneath my thoughts, like the dark streams that run underground. There must be some way in which the words did not mean that Aeneas was to die after three summers and winters as king in Latium, but meant only that his rule would end. Maybe he would conquer a neighboring country and rule as king of the Volscians or the Hernici. Maybe he would take me and Silvius back to his own country, and rebuild the beautiful city of Ilium that Achates and Serestus told me about, with its walls and towers and high citadel, and rule there as king of Troy. Maybe he would not die, only be very ill, weakened by illness, so that Ascanius must come and take on the active role of kingship for him, and be called king—but Aeneas would live on with me in Lavinium, and have joy in his son and in his life—he would live, he would not die. So my mind ran from possibility to possibility like a hare dodging hounds, while the three old women, the Fates, spun out the measured thread of what was to be.
The winter was mild but long. January was all rain and mud. A portent occurred in Laurentum: the doors of the War Gate, which my mother had opened and I and Maruna and the men of the city had closed, three years ago, swung open of themselves. People came to Janus’ altar in the morning of the Kalends of February and found the gates hanging ajar. The bolts of the iron hasps that held in place the great locking beam had rusted through, so that the hasps gave way and let the beam drop. The hinges also were rusted and askew, so that the gates could not be closed. Latinus was gravely troubled by the omen. He did not think it right to interfere, to repair the hinges and the hasps, until the meaning of the event became clear. No one knew why they had been made of iron, the unlucky metal, never used in sacred places. He had his smiths make new hasps and bolts and hinges of bronze, but he did not mend or close the War Gate yet.
Troubling news was coming in from east and south of the Alban Hills. Farmers and villagers along the border reported ambushes, barn burning, cattle thieving, and harassment, carried on by both sides, Latin and Rutulian. And young Camers of Ardea, who had led the inept attack on our city two years before, sent to us to complain that his city was being threatened and its farms and pastures constantly raided, by men from Alba Longa.
I watched Aeneas master his bitter, disappointed anger. He was like a man mounted on a powerful horse that fights the reins and plunges, nose to feet, and kicks, twisting its body, and finally is brought to stand white with sweat, shaking, ready to obey.
My heart felt as if it was being squeezed in a fist of fear; but now that the time had come, my empty imaginings of escape all died away and left me to face what there was no escaping. When he said, “I must go down to Ardea,” I made no protest and tried to show no undue fear. He went fully armed and with a strong escort. He was not taking any unnecessary risks, only necessary ones. I kissed him good-bye and held up Silvius for his kiss, and smiled, and bade him come home soon.
“I will come home soon,” he said. “With Ascanius.”
My best friends among Aeneas’ friends, Achates and Serestus, had ridden away with him; I was left with my women. They were of great comfort to me. They helped me keep everything in the household and the city running on as it should. Serestus’ wife Illivia had just had a baby, and we could forget our worries playing with him. My father sent a man down daily to ask if we had news and if we needed advice or help. He did not come himself, for he had been troubled with a cough all winter, and the weather was foul, with hard rains and the ways deep in mud. Nor did I go to him, for I was needed in my city.
Those were nine long, dark days and nights.
At evening of the day after the Ides of February, a troop of wet men on wet horses tramped up out of the rainy dusk to the city gate. The guardsmen cried out, “The king! King Aeneas comes!” He rode in, his sword on his hip and the great shield on his shoulder. Behind him rode Ascanius, unarmed; then Aeneas’ men, all armed.
My relief and joy at seeing him, embracing him, was so great it set all else aside. I felt that night that to have known such fulfillment was to be, in some part of my being, forever safe from absolute despair, from the ruin of the soul. Joy my shield.
I do not know if that is true, but I would not deny it, even later, even now.
Everything was bustle at first, getting baths and
food for the tired men. Aeneas had time to tell me that he had patched up a month’s truce with Camers and brought Ascanius back “to talk about what went wrong.” Serestus and Mnestheus were left in charge of Alba Longa and the restive borderlands.
Ascanius had indeed caused most of the trouble, by claiming as Latin ground certain winter pastures used by the Rutulians, and putting settlers in a stream valley the Rutulians considered their summer pasture, and sending his soldiers to harass any Rutulians who crossed the border. Since the border was a vague one in many places, and traditionally porous, these were sure means of rousing bad feeling. Camers’ attempts to protect Rutulian farmers by sending out armed men had resulted in some bloody skirmishes and much menacing talk from Ascanius about leveling the walls of Ardea, to which Camers responded by threatening to annex Velitrae and obliterate Alba Longa.
Achates told me about the meeting with Camers. He praised Aeneas’ peacemaking skill, which as he described it consisted in saying almost nothing. Camers had wanted to come round, but could not admit it. His failed attack had left him sore, chastened, ready to let well enough alone; but Ascanius had been making boasts and threats which he would not endure. Aeneas listened patiently to a long list of offenses, without either apologising for them or justifying them, before he could even suggest a truce. Achates said he had been so patient and so firm that Camers, who was not much older than Ascanius, ended up talking to him, the man who had killed Camers’ father in the battle before Laurentum, as to a father.
So the truce was made, and made in good faith, though both Achates and Aeneas thought that Camers would have a problem controlling the rough farmers of his borderlands. Aeneas’ problem, evidently, was how to control his son.
Although Ascanius had been brought back in apparent disgrace, nothing was said of it that night: he was made welcome at the impromptu feast we set out for the homecomers. He showed neither shame nor defiance, but behaved much as usual. He had been very well trained in manners, and they stood him in good stead at a time like this. He must have been puzzling over the question of what Aeneas was finally going to say or do. So was I. But the evening went off cheerily enough, and father and son embraced as they used to at parting for the night.
And the question continued unanswered. Aeneas had done what he had said he’d do: deprive Ascanius of command and bring him back to Lavinium. And that was all. He said nothing. He was not a man to waste words. He did, and let be. He spoke when he had to.
Ascanius stewed quite a while, fretted, sulked, and once or twice tried to bring the situation to a head. Aeneas evaded his attempts. The nearest he would come to discussing Ascanius’ position was through a kind of running conversation they had about virtue. Manly virtue, that is, in the original sense of the word—manliness itself, manhood. Ascanius said one day, with his youthful pompousness, that the only true proof of manhood was in battle: true virtue was skill in fighting, courage to fight, will to win, and victory. Aeneas said, “Victory?”
“What’s the use of skill and courage if you’re dead?”
“Hector had no virtue?”
“Of course he did. He won all his battles, till the last one.”
“We all do,” Aeneas remarked.
That was a little beyond Ascanius, perhaps, and the subject was dropped; but Aeneas brought it up again soon, at dinner one day.
“So a man can prove his manhood only in war,” he said meditatively.
“A certain kind of manhood,” Achates suggested. “Surely wisdom is as much a virtue as battle prowess?”
“But perhaps one that isn’t limited to men,” I said.
I will say here that the Trojans had not been used to including women in conversation, nor were any Greeks I ever met. For men and women to sit together at table and speak as equals was our Latin custom, which I think we may have learned from the Etruscans. As queen, I could have my way in such matters. Some of the rougher Trojans needed a lesson in respect, in table manners, which they got both from Aeneas and from me. But others like Achates and Serestus took to this as to our other customs without any trouble. When I invited them to the Regia, their wives came with them and sat with us above the salt, and often I invited the women to come when their husbands were away.
“Indeed. Women can gain wisdom,” Ascanius announced, with his irritating, touching pomposity. “But not true virtue.”
“But what is piety?” Aeneas asked.
That brought a thoughtful silence.
“Obedience to the will of the powers of earth and sky?” I said at last, making my statement a question, as women so often do.
“The effort to fulfill one’s destiny,” Achates said.
“Doing right,” said Illivia, Serestus’ wife, a calm, forceful woman from Tusculum, who had become one of my dearest friends.
“What is right in battle, in war?” Aeneas asked.
“Skill, courage, strength,” Ascanius answered promptly. “In war, virtue is piety. Fighting to win!”
“So victory makes right?”
“Yes,” Ascanius said, and several of the men nodded vigorously; but the older Trojans, some of them, did not. Nor did the women.
“I cannot make it out,” Aeneas said in his quiet voice. “I thought what a man knew he ought to do was what he must do. But what if they’re not the same? Then, to win a victory is to be defeated. To uphold order is to cause disorder, ruin, death. Virtue and piety destroy each other. I cannot make it out.”
Even Ascanius had no answer for that.
I doubt if anyone there knew what was on Aeneas’ mind, when he said that to obey one’s fate might be to disobey one’s conscience. Only I could know how the death of Turnus weighed on his soul. I know Achates thought he was speaking of the Greek victory over Troy in a war which, though they might be justified in waging it, brought almost as much ruin on the Greeks as on the Trojans. Perhaps he was.
At any rate, he did not let Ascanius’ definition of manhood as battle courage rest. He returned to the discussion next day. We had no visitors, and the three of us had gathered around the hearth after the day’s work was done, I with my distaff, Aeneas with a little whetstone and my small ritual knife, which had grown dull. He drew it lightly and patiently across the stone. “If a man believes his virtue can be proved only in war,” he said to Ascanius, “then he sees time spent on anything else as wasted. Farming, if he’s a farmer—government, if he’s a ruler—worship, the acts of religion—all inferior to prowess in war.”
“Yes, just so!” Ascanius said, pleased, thinking he had convinced his father.
“I would not trust that man to farm, or govern, or serve the powers that rule us,” Aeneas said. “Because whatever he was doing, he’d seek to make war.”
Ascanius got the drift now, and recoiled uneasily. “Not necessarily—,” he began.
“Necessarily,” Aeneas said, with grim finality. “I spent my life among such men, Ascanius. I proved my virtue among them.”
“Yes, you did, father! You were the best, the best among them all!” There were tears in Ascanius’ eyes and his voice trembled.
“Except for Hector,” Aeneas said. “And on the other side, Achilles, the great hero, and Diomedes, who both defeated me. I would probably have lost to Odysseus, big Ajax, maybe Agamemnon. I think I could have beaten Menelaus. And what if I had? Would I be a better man for it? Would my virtue be greater than it is? Am I who I am because I killed men? Am I Aeneas because I killed Turnus?”
He was leaning forward; the firelight gleamed in his eyes; he did not raise his voice but spoke with terrible intensity. Ascanius cowered back from him, catching his breath.
“If you are to rule Latium after me, and pass it to your brother Silvius, I want to know that you’ll learn how to govern, not merely make war, that you’ll learn to ask the powers of earth and sky for guidance for yourself and your people, that you’ll learn to seek your manhood on a greater field than the battlefield. Tell me that you will learn those things, Ascanius.”
�
�I will, father,” the young man said, in tears.
“Much depended on me,” Aeneas said, more gently. “Much will depend on you. In the end, I did ill. You have begun ill, but I count on you to do well in the end. So, give me your hand on it, son.”
Ascanius put out his hand, and Aeneas drew him into an embrace; they clung hard to each other.
I sat with my distaff, my face turned to the fire. I could not weep.
A few days later, just before the March Kalends, Aeneas sent Ascanius back to the Alban Hills. He said nothing about honoring the truce with Camers; there was no use saying more; he could only hope. He looked a little grim, those early days of March, when the Leapers were in the streets shaking the sacred spears and singing Mars, Mavors, macte esto! But Serestus and Mnestheus came back from Alba Longa reporting that everything was quiet and that Ascanius seemed resolved to keep it so.
It was a warm spring, after the wet winter. Everything was early to bloom and bear. The walnut trees in the forests were beautiful in their quick flowering. Barley and millet came up tall, with heavy heads, and the grass was as thick and tender in the meadows and on the hillsides as I ever saw it. Our flocks and herds had a good increase, and Aeneas was particularly pleased with the crop of new foals in our stables. He had bred a very fine mare to the stallion Latinus gave him, and the bright chestnut colt she bore was his pride. “He’ll be Silvius’ horse,” he said. And he introduced the boy child and the horse child quite solemnly. He let Silvius lead the mare about and see how the colt followed her, and finally set him up on her back for a ride. Silvius was transfixed with terror and delight, clutching the mare’s mane with one hand and his father’s hand with the other, and making a soft noise, “oo! oo!” like a pigeon as they paraded round the stable yard. After that every morning he would ask his father, timidly, “Wide?” And Aeneas would go with him to the stables for his ride.
Lavinia Page 21
