Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

As I spoke he looked up at me heavily from under his heavy grey-black eyebrows. He listened. When I had spoken, he thought for some while. At last he nodded once again.

“I will go today,” he said.

“May I come with you?”

Again he thought it over. “Yes,” he said. Then he looked up at me again with the shadow of a smile and said, “As we used to go together. Do you remember the first time? You were still a child…” But his face was melancholy. I saw that he looked very worn.

I kissed his hand, and said, “I’ll be ready to go as soon as you like, father.”

“Sacrifices,” he said. “This is… I will need… a lamb—two. Is there a white calf? Two lambs and a white calf—at least.”

“I’ll send to Tyrrhus’ Doro, he’s with the cows and calves in the long meadow pasture. I can see to the animals, father.”

“Good. Do that. There are some things I must see to here before we go—A black calf, better, Lavinia, if there is one. Black, in that place.”

That place, Albunea, that lies so close above the underworld that the shadows of the dead can come and go there easily. Black, in that place.

Lambing had been early that spring, and the lambs the shepherd led to me were quite large. The calf old Doro brought was small, a runt in fact, and he was not altogether black, but brownish on the legs and face; not a perfect sacrifice. My father frowned at him.

I said, “He is pious, father. See how he follows along? And he did his best to be black.”

Doro nodded solemnly. “He’s the blackest we’ve got, king,” he said.

So the king nodded, and we set off.

I wore the toga with the burnt corner, for it was the only sacred toga I had; year after year, my mother had put off making the red dye for a new one. Because we had to lead the animals, and perhaps because my father felt some unease or mistrust in the air, we were quite a troop. It was not as when he and I walked there long ago, he carrying the young lamb, or when I walked with Maruna. She came with me, indeed, but also there was Doro with the calf, and the shepherd’s boy with the lambs, and two slaves carrying the other offerings, and three of my father’s guards, the men who kept the doors of the Regia and went with him, armed, when he rode out visiting other towns or other kings. They were called his horse-riders, his knights, and they did each keep a horse in the royal stable; but this was a sacred journey, and we went afoot.

One after another we walked through the bright day into the evening. We came to the little Prati and followed it upstream, and I remembered the rocky ford of the river where I had seen blood in the water in my dream.

The knights and Maruna and the slaves stopped at the outskirts of the forest. The men would camp there. Maruna would go to the woodcutter’s house. Doro and the shepherd boy led the animals, and Latinus and I carried the other offerings on into the forest of Albunea.

By the time the sacrifice was completed it was night, the altar fire and torches giving the only light under the dark trees. Doro and the boy took the skinned carcasses back to their camp, where the men would have the first feast on the meat. My father reversed the torches. Their flames died in the earth. He stood before the altar, where the fire still fed on the fat of the sacrifice, his head shrouded, murmuring the words of worship and humble request. I sat on the fleece of one of the lambs, listening. I feared and longed to hear the grandfather’s voice speak, answering him, from those dark, silent trees.

But I had scarcely slept the night before, and the day had been long and strange. I was so tired I could not keep my eyes open. I saw the little leaping gold of the altar flame waver and blur. Then I was lying down, looking up into the branch-circled sky dense with stars as the sea beach is dense with sand, a pavement of white fire. And it too wavered and blurred.

I woke. The stars blazed, but other stars. The fire was dead. A small owl called from far on the right, hii-ii, and another answered from yet farther, ii, i.

He was there, the shadow. He stood between me and the altar. His tall form was vague in the grey starlight. On the far side of the altar, near the wall, I saw a glint of bronze, a motionless bulk on the ground: my father sleeping. The feel of the air was that of the hour before the beginning of dawn.

“The time when the dying die,” my poet said, very softly.

I sat up, trying to see him more clearly. I was frightened, distressed, and did not know why, and knew why. I whispered, “Are you dying?”

He nodded.

The nod of a head is such a small thing, it can mean so little, yet it is the gesture of assent that allows, that makes to be. The nod is the gesture of power, the yes. The numen, the presence of the sacred, is called by its name.

“I don’t have long,” he said.

“Oh, I wish—” But wishes were no use.

“Your father has heard Faunus speak,” he said, with a ghost of laughter in his ghost of voice.

“Then—”

“You will not marry Turnus. No fear of that.”

I stood up, facing him. Though he spoke so gently I was still frightened.

“What will happen?”

“War. The bees swarmed to the great tree. The king’s daugh ter ran through the house with blazing hair, scattering sparks and smoke. And war and glory followed her.”

“Why must there be war?”

“Oh, Lavinia, what a woman’s question that is! Because men are men.”

“Then Aeneas is coming to attack us?”

“Not at all. He comes in peace, to offer alliance to your father, and marry you, and settle down to bring up his family. He brings the gods of his household here. But he brings his sword too. And there will be war. Battles, sieges, slaughter, slave taking, town burning, rape. And men who rant and boast, and then kill sleeping men. And men who kill young boys. And the growing crops laid waste. All the wrong that men can do is done. Justice, mercy, does Mars care for them?”

His voice had grown stronger, not loud but curiously strident, so that I glanced at my father to see if he had heard; he slept on, unmoving. “I can tell you the war, Lavinia. Shall I?” He did not wait for my answer. “It begins with a boy killing a deer in the woods. There’s a good cause for war, as good as any other. First to die is young Almo—you know him. An arrow in his throat chokes off his speech and breath with blood. Next old Galaesus, who’s rich and used to being in control, tries to keep them from fighting, comes between them, and has his face smashed in for his pains. And then Turnus sees his chance, and war begins in earnest. No man will spare another man in this battle, though he beg for his life. Ilioneus kills Lucetius, Liger kills Emathion, Asilas kills Corynaeus, Caeneus kills Ortygius. Turnus kills Caeneus, and Itys, and Clonius, and Dioxippus, and Promolus, and Sagaris, and Idas. The blood foams from the pierced lung. The man killed while sleeping vomits blood and wine as he writhes dying. Ascanius shoots his steel-pointed arrow through Remulus’ head, and Turnus’ javelin pierces Antiphates’ throat and lodges in the lung till the steel grows warm, and his sword cleaves Pandarus’ skull between the temples so that the man falls to the ground in his brain-spattered armor, his head dangling in two halves from his neck. And when Aeneas joins the battle, his spear crashes through Maeon’s shield and breastplate, on through his body, to sever Alcanor’s arm from his shoulder. And Pallas drives his sword into Hisbo’s swollen chest, and sweeps Thymber’s head from his neck, and severs Larides’ hand that twitches and clutches with dying fingers at the sword. And Halaesus kills Ladon, and Pheres, and Demodocus, and lops off Strymonius’ hand raised against him, and strikes Thoas in the face with a stone, scattering fragments of skull mixed with blood and brains. And Turnus hurls his steel-tipped lance of oak through Pallas’ shield and breast, and the boy falls forward eating dirt with his bloody mouth. And Turnus puts his foot on the corpse and tears away Pallas’ golden sword belt, boasting of the plunder that will be his death. Then hearing of this, Aeneas rushes out again in blind rage against the enemy, and though Magus begs him for mercy, Aeneas bends the man’s head back and cuts his throat, and he kills Anxur, he kills Antaeus, he kills Lucas, he kills Numa, he kills tawny Camers, he kills Niphaeus, he kills Liger and Lucagus, and Turnus is saved from him only by the goddess who loves him and draws him away from the battle. But Mezentius the tyrant of Caere kills Habrus, he kills Latagus, striking him full in the mouth and face with a huge rock, he hamstrings Palmus and leaves him slowly writhing, he kills Evanthes and Mimas. Acron, dying from Mezentius’ spear cast, hammers the dark earth with his heels. Caedicus kills Alcathous, and Sacrator kills Hydaspes, and Rapo kills Parthenius and Orses, Messapus kills Clonius as he lies fallen from his horse, and Agis is killed by Valerus, Thronius is killed by Salius, and Salius by Aealces. They kill together and are killed together. Then pious Aeneas obeying the will of fate and the gods pierces Mezentius’ groin with his spear, and kills Mezentius’ son Lausus as he tries to protect his father, driving his sword through the young man’s body to the hilt: the point pierces the shield and the tunic his mother wove for him, blood fills his lungs and his life leaving his body flees sorrowing to the shadows. And Aeneas is sorry for the boy. But when Mezentius challenges him, he goes to meet him with a shout of joy, and though Mezentius rains darts on him, Aeneas kills his horse, then taunts the fallen man, and cuts his throat. And the next day he sends Pallas’ body to his father, King Evander, with four prisoners to be sacrificed alive on the grave. How do you like my poem now, Lavinia?”