Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

Silvia came to keep me company sometimes at the Regia, but we both preferred to be at her place. In summer I ran out there almost every day. Tita, a slave a couple of years older than I, came with me as the guardian my status of virgin princess required, but as soon as we got there Tita joined her friends among the farm women, and Silvia and I ran off to climb trees or dam the creek or play with the kittens or catch polliwogs and roam the woods and hills, as free as the sparrows.

My mother would have kept me home. “What kind of company is it she chooses to keep? Cowherds!” But my father, born a king, ignored her snobbery. “Let the child run about and get strong. They’re good people,” he said. Indeed Tyrrhus was a trusty, competent man, ruling his pastures as firmly as my father ruled his realm. He had an explosive temper but was just with his people; he kept every feast day generously, with observance and sacrifice to the local spirits and sacred places. He had fought beside my father in the old wars long ago, and still had a bit of the warrior about him. But he was soft as warm butter when it came to his daughter. Her mother had died soon after her birth, and she had no sisters. She grew up the darling of her father and brothers and all the house people. She was in many ways more a princess than I. She didn’t have to spend hours a day spinning or weaving, and had no ceremonial duties. The old cooks ran the kitchen for her, the old slaves kept the household for her, the girls swept the hearth and fed the fire for her; she had all the time in the world to run free on the hills and play with her pet animals.

Silvia had a wonderful way with creatures. In the evening, the little owls would come to her quavering call, hu-u-u, hi-i-i, and alight a moment on her outstretched hand. She tamed a fox cub; when it grew to a vixen she let it go free, but it brought its cubs round yearly for us to see, letting them gambol in the twilight on the grass under the oaks. She reared a fawn her brothers took on a hunt, the hounds having pulled down its mother. Silvia was ten or eleven when they brought the little thing in. She nursed it tenderly, and it grew into a magnificent stag as tame as any dog. He trotted off to the woods every morning, but was always back at supper time; they let him come into the dining room and eat from their trenchers. Silvia adored her Cervulus. She washed him and combed him, and decked his splendid antlers with vines in autumn and flower wreaths in spring. Male deer can be dangerous, but the stag was docile and mild, far too trusting for his own good. Silvia fastened a broad white linen band round his neck as a sign, and all the hunters of the forests of Latium knew Silvia’s Cervulus. Even the hounds knew him and seldom started him, having been scolded and beaten for doing so.

It was a wonderful thing to be out on the hills and see a great stag come walking calmly from the forest, balancing his crown of horns. He would kneel and put his nose in Silvia’s hand, and folding his tall delicate legs under him, sit there between us while she stroked his neck. He smelled sweet and strong and gamy. His eyes were large, dark, and quiet; so were Silvia’s eyes. That is what it was like in the age of Saturn, my poet said, the golden time of the first days when there was no fear in the world. Silvia seemed a daughter of that age. To sit with her on the sunlit slopes or run with her on the forest trails she knew so well was the delight of my life. There was no one in all that country of our girlhood who wished us any harm. Our pagans, the folk of the plowlands, greeted us from their fields or the doorstep of their round huts. The surly bee-keeper saved a comb of honey for us, the dairy women had a sip of cream for us, the cowboys showed off for us, riding bull calves or vaulting an old cow’s horns, and the old shepherd Ino showed us how to make piping flutes of oat straw.

Sometimes in summer as the long day drew toward evening and we knew we should be starting home to the farm, we’d both lie facedown on the hillside and push our faces right into the harsh dry grass and the hard clodded dirt, breathing in the infinitely complex smell, hay-sweet and soil-bitter, of the warm summer earth, our earth. Then we were both Saturn’s children. We leapt up and ran down the hill, ran home—race you to the cattle ford!

When I was fifteen years old, King Turnus came on a visit of state to my father. He was my cousin, my mother’s nephew; his father Daunus, ailing, had given him the crown of Rutulia the year before, and we’d heard of the splendors of the ceremonies of his coronation at Ardea, the nearest city south of Latium. The Rutulians had been close allies of ours since Latinus married Daunus’ sister Amata, but young Turnus showed signs of wanting to go his own way. When the Etruscans of Caere drove out their tyrant Mezentius, a savage man who held nothing sacred, Turnus took him in. Now all Etruria was angry with Turnus for receiving and sheltering the tyrant, who had abused his power so cruelly that even the Lares and the Penates of his household had forsaken him. That ill feeling was a matter of concern to us, since Caere was just across the river. The Etruscan cities were powerful and it behooved us to keep on good terms with them if we could.

My father discussed these matters with me as we walked to the sacred forest of Albunea. It lay east of Laurentum, under the hills, a day’s walk. We had gone there together several times; I served as his acolyte in the rites there as he praised and propitiated our ancestors and the powers of the woods and springs. In those solitary walks he talked to me as to his heir. Though I couldn’t inherit his crown, he saw no reason why I should remain ignorant of matters of policy and government. After all, I’d almost certainly be queen of some kingdom. Perhaps, indeed, of Rutulia.

He didn’t talk about that possibility, but the women did. Vestina was certain of it the moment she heard of King Turnus’ visit: “He’s coming for our Lavinia! He’s coming courting!”

My mother looked sharply at Vestina across the big basket of raw wool we were all pulling. Pulling wool, drawing apart the blobs and hunks of a washed fleece to separate the fibers so they can be carded, was always my favorite housework; it’s easy and perfectly mindless, and the clean fleece smells sweet, and your hands get soft from the oil in the wool, and the blobs and hunks end up as a huge, pale, airy, hairy, lovely cloud towering out of the basket.

“Now that’s enough of that,” my mother said. “Only peasants talk about marriage for a girl her age.”

“They say he’s the most beautiful man in Italy,” said Tita.

“And he rides a stallion nobody else can ride,” said Picula.

“And his hair is golden,” said Vestina.

“He has a sister, Juturna, as beautiful as he is, but she’s vowed never to leave the river, they say,” said Sabella.

“What a gabble of geese you are!” my mother said.

“You must have known him as a child, queen?” Sicana, my mother’s favorite woman, asked.

“Yes, he was a fine little boy,” Amata said. “Very fond of his own way.” She smiled a little, as she often did when she spoke of her childhood home.

I went up to the watchtower in the southeast corner of the house, above the royal apartments, from which one could see down into the streets and over the city walls and gate. I saw the visitors arrive at the gate and come up the Via Regia, all mounted, with shining breastplates and nodding crests. Then I ran down to the atrium and stood with the house people while my father welcomed Turnus. I got a good look at him, his men, and his high plumed helmet. He was splendidly handsome, well-made and muscular, with curly red-brown hair, dark-blue eyes, and a proud stance. If there was any physical flaw in him, it was that he was rather short for his strong build and deep chest, so that his walk seemed a bit strutting. His voice was deep and clear.