Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

When I went up on our roof to look out over the walls and saw the mob of men drifting across the fields like a dark cloud shot through with the gleam of spear points, swift and almost silent, terror gripped me. It was war again, it was Mars coming again to break down the doors, blood and death and ruin, the end of everything. I held Silvius close to my breast, crouching so that we were sheltered by the roof-parapet, and moaned like a hurt dog. I had lost the courage of virginity. I was a cowering, weak-kneed woman like the rest of them, fearful for my child and my man. Fortunately Maruna was not. Just as when we had thought Laurentum was to stand siege, she began to speak to me about supplies, water, wood for the cookfires, and so brought me out of my fit of cowardice. I went down with her and said the morning prayers, and then saw to what was to be done.

The attackers never got into the city: our men poured out of the gate to meet them, Aeneas and his old captains at their head, the Trojans and the young athletes armed with sword and shield, spear or lance, and the householders brandishing hoes, mattocks, scythes, and sickles. The two mobs met face to face on the outer wall of the encircling earthworks, where they fought savagely but briefly. Several young archers up on the gate tower shot at the attackers as they scattered, turned, and fled. Most of our men gave chase, some of them stopping to catch a horse from the herds kept in the near paddocks, but Aeneas brought his Trojans and all the young men he could back into the city. I was waiting in front of the house as he came up the street with his troops and turned to talk to them. “How’s that for a lively start to the day?” he said, in his voice that that you could hear through all other voices, even when he spoke quietly, and they all laughed and cheered. “I think they’ve had their lesson,” he went on. “We’re in a good position to practice restraint. The less men they lose, the less revenge they’ll need to take. The whole thing can be quickly forgotten. Who was leading them? Did anyone see?”

“Camers,” several Latin voices answered, “young Camers of Ardea.”

“Well, they won’t be apt to follow him again soon. Were they all Rutulians?” He could not yet tell peoples and tribes one from another as we natives could, but even if he had identified the attackers he might have asked for information; he knew that people like to be asked, like to be the ones who know.

“Volscians, there was a whole crowd of Volscians,” the Latins called, with various descriptions of Volscian character and anatomy—"them with horses’ arses on their hats,” one man shouted. The townsmen were excited, elated with their sudden, easy victory. Small wounds were exhibited proudly. Householders and young men came back with trophies of enemies they had chased down and killed or forced to surrender—breastplates, swords, helmets. Lavinium was a noisy city all that day and night, and a lot of green wine was drunk. Aeneas was genial with the boastful revellers, keeping open house at the Regia for them till very late. “It’s brought them together,” he said to me as we stood apart from the crowd, near the women’s side, before I went to bed. “My people and yours. They’re all Lavinians now. Since this had to happen, it happened fortunately.”

“But is it going to go on and on?” I asked him, stupidly. “Will it happen again and again?” The awful fear I had felt that morning had never left me, it was like a thin narrow coldness in my bones.

He looked at me with the eyes that had seen his city burn, that had seen the world of the dead. He held me gently. “Yes,” he said. “But I will keep as much of it from happening as I can, Lavinia.”

He was able to stave off most of it, for a while. The rout of the would-be besiegers sent a clear message that Lavinium could defend itself, and he followed up on that with energetic efforts to strengthen our alliances with the Sabines, with Caere and other cities of Etruria, and with King Evander in Pallanteum.

Evander, still sunk in grief for his son, held Aeneas responsible for not protecting the boy in battle; his welcome to our visit was reluctant. I had not been there since my visit with my father when Pallas and I were children. It was very sad to see the little settlement grown poorer, the houses settling into the mud of the riverbank, the women and children looking thin and weary. I looked around in wonder, for this was the place where my poet had said the great city of our descendants was to be. Among the thickets up on those rough hills were to stand the shining palaces and altars pictured on the shield; great crowds, great rulers were to walk on marble pavement, here, between the thatched huts and the wolf’s deserted cave, where a few lean cattle wandered seeking forage.

Aeneas was in a heavy mood that night when we were alone in the room given us in Evander’s low, dark house. Evander’s sorrowful rancor was hard for him to bear. Seeking some way to cheer him, and with my head full of those images, I said, “You said I have a gift for knowing where to build a city.” For he had often praised my choice of the site of Lavinium.

“Yes, you do.”

“Well, this is the best site of all.”

He looked at me from under his brows, waiting.

“I saw it in… call it a dream.” I had never come so close before to speaking of the poet to him, and felt I was treading on a dangerous edge, but I went on, cautiously. “The city on your shield, the great city—”

He nodded.

“It will be here. Just here—and up on those hills, the Seven Hills. I think it will be called by one of the father river’s sacred names. The Etruscans say Ruma, we say Roma. It will be the greatest city in the world.” I looked over at the baby, who was sound asleep in his travel basket. “Full of little Silviuses,” I said. “Thousands of them!”

After a moment he smiled. “Lucky town,” he said. “You saw this?”

“On your shield, mostly.”

“You know how to read it,” he said thoughtfully. “I never have.”

“Guesses, dreams.”

He stood over the baby’s basket, brooding, and presently reached down and stroked the soft wispy hair with the back of his forefinger. “You’ll carry it,” he whispered to the baby.

“Let it not be in battle,” I said.

“Wherever he must… Come then, my dear. We’ll sleep in the great city tonight.”

Evander’s alliance was grudging and he had not much assistance to offer us, but word of our friendship with the Greeks of Pallanteum reached the Greeks at Arpi, a much larger and wealthier colony in the southeast, ruled by a man Aeneas had known long ago and far away: Diomedes, a Greek captain at the siege of Troy. There was little cause for love between them. Achates told me why—Aeneas himself never talked about the war with the Greeks. In combat, in the last year of the siege, Diomedes had killed Aeneas’ charioteer, and while Aeneas stood over the body to save it from the Greek looters, Diomedes brought him down with the throw of a great stone, hitting him in the hip joint, bringing him to his knees. Diomedes’ sword was raised for the death stroke, when Aeneas threw dust up into his eyes and got away—an escape so unexpected it was uncanny, and added a good deal to Aeneas’ reputation as a fighter. Diomedes, furious, went looking for him through the battle. When he finally found him, lamed, he rushed at him to kill him, but the great fighter Hector came to Aeneas’ defense, bringing the whole Trojan line back into battle around him.

Achates told me this story when we were discussing the Greeks and their colonies. I told him in turn how Diomedes had refused to join Turnus’ alliance, warning Turnus to beware of Aeneas, for he was under the protection of great powers. Achates nodded and said, “A wise man, Diomedes. Wiser than he was, anyhow. He used to be a great brawler. He’d take on god or man… I wouldn’t mind seeing him again, after all these years.”