Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

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. We 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.”