Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

After a long time I managed to answer him, “That might depend on how it ends.”

“With the triumph of the glorious hero over his enemy, of course. He will kill Turnus, lying wounded and helpless, just as he killed Mezentius.”

“Who is the hero?”

“You know who the hero is.”

“He kills like a butcher. Why is he a hero?”

“Because he does what he has to do.”

“Why does he have to kill a helpless man?”

“Because that is how empires are founded. Or so I hope Augustus will understand it. But I do not think he will.”

He turned away from me and neither of us spoke. I had begun to cry while he sang his hideous chant of slaughter, and my face was still wet. When the poet spoke again, his voice had softened. “But that’s not where it ends for you, Lavinia.”

I took a step towards him, for I could no longer see his face. “Tell me, then.”

“Not with the end of his reign, after only three summers and three winters. You may think all is over at the bloody ford of the Numicus, but it is not there it ends, nor at Lavinium, nor Alba Longa. Not with your death, or your son’s. Not with the Kings, not with the Consuls, the fall of Carthage, the conquest of Gaul. Not even with the murder of Julius, or Augustus’ godhead. The great age returns… maybe… I thought so once. But be of good heart, my daughter, my young grandmother! The gods of Troy are coming to a good house, your house of Latium. And you will marry the son of Spring, the son of the evening star.”

I had hated him while he told that tale of slaughter, but I was losing him, now, already, moment by moment, and I loved him, yearning to him. “Wait—Only tell me—your poem, my poem, did you finish it?”

He seemed to nod, but I could hardly see him, a tall shadow in shadows.

“Don’t go yet—”

“I must go, my glory. I am gone. I join the crowd, return to darkness.”

I cried out his name, went forward, reaching out my arms to hold him, to keep him from death, but it was like holding a breath of the night wind. Nothing was there.

I sat on the fleece, my arms around my knees, the toga with the burnt corner wrapped around me for warmth, till the sky was light above the altar place. I went then to my father and said, “Do you wake, king? Waken!” He sat up. We had brought a little drinking water, for there is none near there; I gave him the flask, and he drank a swallow and rubbed a handful of water on his face.

“You heard the grandfather speak,” I said.

Looking up at me as if still not fully awake, he said, “The voice among the trees.”

I waited.

He looked off into the dark trees and said in the low, level voice of prayer, but clearly: “‘Do not let the daughter of Latium marry a man of Latium. Let her marry the stranger that comes, that even now is coming. And the kingdom of her sons will be far greater than the kingdom of Latium.’”

He looked up at me again. I nodded. “I understand. I will obey.”

My father got up, stiff and ponderous; he was not used to sleeping out, on hard ground, these days. He rubbed his thighs and stretched his arms painfully. “I am old, daughter,” he said. “And now I have to face those young fellows with this refusal.” He shook his head, hunched up his shoulders. “If only my sons had lived. I am too old, Lavinia!”

It was not like him to say that. I did not know what to say to him; I was too young to feel anything but surprised, uncomprehending pity, and I did not want to pity my father the king.

He went off into the woods to piss, and when he came back he was holding himself a little straighter. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’ll take no insolence from them. I can still protect my daughter and my house and city.” We gathered up the little we had brought, and as we did so, he said, “I could wish your mother hadn’t set her mind on your marrying Turnus. But I can see, because he’s her nephew, it seems to her like getting one of her sons back. Well. Come along, my dear.” He set off, walking heavily, and I followed.

When we came to where the men had camped, they were just waking. The sky was bright behind the eastern hills and all the birds in the world were singing. There was a little brook there, and my father and I both knelt on the bank to wash our hands and faces. As the knights joined us, I heard my father telling them what the oracle had said. That surprised me again. I had assumed he would announce it formally at home, perhaps summoning the suitors to explain to them that their request had been denied by the powers and the ancestors. To talk about it openly now was to ensure that it would be common knowledge in Laurentum as soon as we got back, and throughout all Latium within a day or two. I could not think why my father had done this, unless he thought he could not face my mother with the news himself, and wanted her to hear it from me, or from hearsay among the women.

But she came to meet us, almost running across the courtyard, flushed and beautiful in her excitement. “I know! I dreamed of you there,” she cried. “I am so glad!”

We both stopped, staring like cattle, no doubt. She took my hands and kissed me. “I am so happy about it!”

“About—?”

“Oh! The bridal bed! In Ardea! I saw it all in my dream!”

After a blank pause my father said, loudly and awkwardly, “The oracle forbids Lavinia to marry a man of Latium. She must wait for a foreign suitor.”

“No. That’s not what it said at all. I saw it. I heard it!”

“Amata, calm yourself,” he said. “We will speak of this in private. Lavinia—call the women—take your mother with you—” And he strode off to his rooms.

My mother started to run after him, then stopped, bewildered, and said to me, “What is wrong with him?”

“Nothing, mother. Come with me.” I tried to go on to the women’s side, but she protested, and only when her women Sicana and Lina came to urge her to come with them did she fall silent, the happy brightness dying out of her face, and follow me.

The news was all over the house and town at once, of course. The king’s daughter is not to marry Turnus, or Messapus, or any of them, she’s got to wait for a foreigner to come marry her. That’s what the bees meant, that’s why her hair caught fire yet didn’t burn. War! War! Who’ll fight? Who’s the foreigner coming? And what will King Turnus have to say to him?

And what will I have to say to him, I wondered, as everybody chattered on.

Amata seemed stunned. She did not tell us what the dream was that she had taken to be a true dream and that the oracle had so cruelly belied. She did not join in the general talk, did not speak to me at all. We kept away from each other. It was easy enough, we had kept apart for twelve years.

By nightfall I was sick of the chatter and commotion and wanted only to be free of the women, away from the house, outdoors, alone, where I could think. My mother was at her loom. I went and asked her permission to go get salt at the river mouth next day.

“Ask the king,” she said, not looking away from her work.

So I went to him. He pondered a minute. “I suppose it’s safe,” he said.

“Why would it not be safe?” I said, amazed. Our possession of the salt beds was one of our great strengths as a nation, and we guarded them accordingly. Nobody had tried to raid them for decades.

“I’ll send Gaius with you. And take a couple of your women.”

“What do we want Gaius for? I’ll have Pico with the donkey, to carry the salt back.”

“Gaius will go with you. Go by the west path. Be back before dark.”

“I can’t, father. We have to dig the salt.”

He frowned. “You can do that and be back in a day easily!”

“I hoped to spend the night there, father. By Tiber.”