Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

He looked at me hopefully, but I would not return his gaze.

“She tells me all the praises he sings of you. She believes he’s so determined to have you that if I give you to one of the others, he’ll rebel, despite this agreement they made. She may be right. He’s an ambitious, self-confident fellow. But he has reason to be. Your mother has encouraged him. In fact, if you picked one of the others, she might rebel.” He tried to make it a joke, but it was not a joke, and I could see misery in his eyes. “She has your welfare and the good of our kingdom very much at heart,” he said.

I had no argument, no answer.

“Give me five days, father,” I said. My voice came out hoarse and weak.

“And then you will tell me your choice?”

“Yes.”

He took me in his big arms then, and kissed my forehead. I felt the warmth of his body and smelled the familiar smell of him, harsh, dear, and comforting as the smell of the earth on the hills of summer. “You are the light of my eyes, daughter,” he murmured. That made me cry. I kissed his hand and ran back to the women’s side in tears. Everybody was in the courtyard in the twilight, watching Castus talk the swarm together into a great humming dark globe over the fountain, shadowy, swaying, shrinking together always closer and smaller as he talked his spells and made his net ready to capture the bees.

THE FIVE DAYS SEEMED VERY LONG TO ME. I KEPT TO MYSELF as well as I could. Once I got away and ran to Tyrrhus’ farm. Silvia was in the dairy; I coaxed her to come away with me. I wanted to talk to her about the choice I had to make, which of course she knew about; it was common knowledge. Very little in a king’s house can be a secret. And everyone knew that her brother Almo had not even been included in the list of suitors Turnus offered to my father. When I came to her, she hoped I might ask her to reassure Almo, to tell him that he was my choice and should ask the king directly for my hand. The family had let their hopes run high, thinking my friendship with Silvia raised her brother’s status to equality with mine, as indeed it did among us young people: but not among the kings and queens, the mortal powers of our state.

When Silvia understood that I had refused to choose any of the suitors, she began to press Almo’s case. When I shook my head and said, “No, Silvia, I can’t choose him,” she wanted to know why. Had I not always shown him a kindness that had led him to love me? was he not good enough for me? and so on.

I said, “I love him better than any of the others, but I do not want him as my husband. And if I did, if I chose him, it would be the same as killing him. Turnus would be after him like a hawk on a mouse.”

It was a stupid comparison, and Silvia took it ill. “Even if your father refused to protect my brother, I think our household has a few good warriors of its own,” she said stiffly.

“Oh, Silvia, I’m the mouse—the mouse in the field when they cut the hay and lay the ground all bare—everybody watching me, nowhere to go. I run about and run about in my mind and can’t find anywhere to hide. Everywhere I look there’s Turnus, with his blue eyes, and his smile, and my—” I stopped myself. “And my mother trusts him,” I said.

“You don’t?” she asked curiously.

“No. He has no piety. He looks only at himself.”

“Why shouldn’t he? He’s rich, he’s handsome, he’s a king.” Her irony was not entirely ill-natured, but she had no sympathy for me. She was hurt for Almo, and would not let me off easily.

I think she knew I was frightened, but would not ask me what I was afraid of, so I could not speak to her as I longed to.

All the same, we parted friends. She knew well enough that Almo had been in over his head, and that indeed he would have put himself and his family in mortal danger by winning a woman King Turnus wanted. She gave me a long hug and a kiss when we parted, and said, “Oh, I’m sorry all this came up. I wish there weren’t any men in the world. I wish we could go down to the river together the way we did last spring!”

“Maybe we will,” I said, but my heart was low. I kissed her, and so we parted. I went back through the fields trying not to cry. I was near tears or in tears half the time, and sick of it. There was nobody in the world whom I could talk to, or who could understand me, but the poet. Maruna might have understood, indeed perhaps she did, but I could not talk about my mother to her. To ask slaves to speak or hear dishonor of their master is unjust, it puts them at risk. There are always talebearers, toadies, among household slaves, how could it be otherwise? No room in a king’s house is without an ear at the door. I knew I had Maruna’s sympathy, and that was much help to me; but, since I could not protect her, I could not confide in her.

Most of the other women and girls simply wondered why I didn’t jump at Turnus’ offer. Old Vestina sang his praises daily, always to a chorus of sighs and giggles.

And my mother’s affectionate pressure and persuasion in favor of Turnus continued, until four days had passed, and I must make my choice the next day. Then her exasperation with me burst out all at once in a fit of fury like those of years ago. She came into my room just after I had lain down to sleep. She was in her sleeping gown, carrying a tiny oil lamp, its flame no larger than a caper bud; she was there suddenly, looming tall and bulky in the loose white gown, her black hair loose round her white face. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, or how far you think you can lead your father by the nose, Lavinia,” she said in a low, harsh voice, “but I tell you now, you will marry Turnus and be queen of Ardea. You don’t have to cower and whine about it. If you don’t like Turnus, don’t worry, he may not like you all that much either, it’s a political marriage not a rape. There’s one thing a girl is good for, and that’s to be married well, and you’re no different or better than any other girl. So do your duty, as I did mine. If you ruin this chance I’ll never forgive you. I’ll never forgive you.” It was not what she said so much as how she said it that terrified me: she stood very close to the bed, and every moment I felt that she was about to strike me, to claw me with her nails as she had done long ago. Her voice shook and hissed and her breath came hard.

“Say you will marry Turnus,” she said. “Say you will!”

I said nothing. I could not.

A strange noise came from her, a kind of shrieking groan, and she turned and ran out of the room.

After a while I got up, for there was no sleep in that bed, and crept out into the courtyard. No one else was awake. I sat on the wooden bench under the laurel tree and watched the slow sliding of stars over the roofs of the Regia. The chill of the night seemed to come into my mind and make it cool and clear. I saw that I must marry Turnus: it was inevitable. To accept another suitor would be to bring civil war into the kingdom. His agreement with the others meant nothing. Turnus had to compete, to win, to be master; he would never let another man have a woman he had claimed. Mar riage was my duty and my destiny. My mother was right, even if she spoke in her own interest not in mine.

In the morning I would tell my father I was ready for him to accept Turnus as my husband.

The great Bears stood high over the father river, over Etruria. The leaves of the laurel whispered in the mild flow of the night wind. I thought of those three strange nights in Albunea, where the faint stink of the sulfur pools always hung in the dark air and I sat talking with a shadow, a dying man who had not yet been born and who knew my past and my future and my soul, who knew who it was that I should marry, the true hero. But here, now, in the couryard of my house, all that seemed distant, blurred and obscure, a false dream that had nothing to do with waking life. I would not think about it again. I would never go back to Albunea.