Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

I cannot tell any more of our happiness.

Early in April Aeneas went down to Alba Longa overnight, and reported that all was well there. Late in April my father came to visit us for some days. May came. The day came that I was at the mouth of Tiber three years ago at dawn and saw the dark ships turn and come up the river one by one.

That day Aeneas went, with Achates and our chief herdsman and four or five young men, looking for a small herd of our cattle that had escaped their pasture east of town, crossed the Numicus at the ford, and were thought to be wandering down towards Troia. These were our finest cows and heifers and we did not want them scattered or lost. The men found the herd and drove them back to the river. A group of men from Rutulia had stolen the cattle, or perhaps was following them to steal them. These men attacked Aeneas and the others while they were at the ford of the Numicus. They were armed with spears and staves. Several of Aeneas’ men had weapons, and though outnumbered, fought back fiercely, killing two of the outlaws at once. The Rutulians fell back and ran, all but a young man whom Aeneas had pinned down, his sword at the man’s throat. The young man begged, “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me!” Aeneas hesitated, then turned his sword aside and said, “Go on.” The young man struggled up and ran off. He stopped and picked up a spear another man had dropped. He turned and threw it. It hit Aeneas in the back and went through his chest. He fell to his knees and then facedown in the shallow water of the ford. He did not die at once, but he was dead when they carried him into Lavinium, into the Regia, into the courtyard, where I was looking through our new cloth, the winter’s weaving, that had been bleaching on the grass outside the walls. I had picked out a fine piece as a toga for him. Unaccustomed to wearing the toga, he often found it cumbersome. I was folding the light, soft, pure white cloth when I heard them calling out his name and mine.

Go on, go. In our tongue it is a single sound, i.

It is the last word Aeneas said. So in my mind it is spoken to me, said to me. I am the one to go, to go on. Go where?

I do not know. I hear him say it, and I go. On, away. On the way. The way to go. When I stop I hear him say it, his voice, Go on.

In Lavinium all that night they cried his name aloud, calling him father, lamenting in the streets.

Achates, Serestus, Mnestheus gathered the men of Troy at first dawn and rode to Ardea, scouring the countryside on the way: they did not find the cattle thieves, but Camers of Ardea knew who they were and where to look for them. He rode with the Trojans. They rode the men down and killed them all. They were farmers’ sons from northern Rutulia, led by a couple of Etruscans who had come with Mezentius to Ardea, bitter, leaderless men living in exile.

I had sent a rider on our best horse, Aeneas’ horse, to Ascanius in Alba Longa. Ascanius arrived in Lavinium on the second day, and late that day the Trojans came back. Our house that had been full of weeping women was full now of grim, armed men.

I did not let them put armor on Aeneas. All that gear of bronze and gold and the great shield that held the fearful future should go to Ascanius and then to Silvius. I washed his body, noble and terrible in death, scar-seamed. I clothed him in the toga of our people, the fine white one I had chosen for him.

When many die, as in plague or war, we burn the dead, but our older way is burial under earth. I ordered that Aeneas’ grave be beside the road above the ford of the Numicus. There he was carried, the torches flaring and smoking in the rainy wind of a May morning. Latinus spoke the ritual words. Men heaped up the river rocks into a great barrow over the grave. When all was done I stood and called his name aloud three times, Aeneas! Aeneas! Aeneas! And the other people called his name with me. Then in silence, carrying the dead torches upside down, we walked back to his city.

On the ninth day after his death, Latinus performed the sacrifice of kings, killing the beautiful stallion he had given Aeneas by the tomb of rocks. The horse was buried by the tomb.

On that day also he named Ascanius king of Latium, to share the rule with him as Aeneas had. It was necessary that Latinus lend this succession all the weight of his authority, and that I too demand that my people recognise Ascanius as king: for they did not want him. He had antagonised them from the beginning. It was he who shot Silvia’s deer. They never forgot that. He had been arrogant, quarrelsome, aloof, seeming much more a foreigner than his father. My people in Lavinium wanted Latinus to rule them, wanted me there in the Regia, bringing up Silvius, their little one, their prince, their king to be. They stood sullen, with tear-streaked faces, while Latinus proclaimed Ascanius king.

In the days of mourning Ascanius had for the first time appealed to me for support; he found I could give it to him, and he came to me to weep. During the ceremonies he looked and acted what he was, a boy overwhelmed by grief, dismayed, distressed, terrified by the responsibility he must bear. Accepting the kingship and making his vows to the people and the land, he spoke in a barely audible voice, trembling. At one point I had to say to him softly, “King of the Latins, hold up your head!” He obeyed.

I do not know what the strength was that carried me through that time. I suppose I am one of my people, made of oak. Oaks don’t bend, though they can break. And I had known what was coming. I had lived with Aeneas’ death a long time, from the time I first saw his face, high on the ship’s prow, dark in the twilight of morning, gazing up the river in prayer and eager hope. Three years, the poet had said. Three years to the day it was. The three old women who spin and cut the thread had measured exactly, to the inch, nothing to spare. No gift of summer days.

In that first year of Aeneas’ death his captains and old companions, particularly Achates, were my mainstay. Though my dear Maruna, the women of the household, and friends such as Illivia gave me most generous, loving sympathy and support, I wanted most of all to be with Aeneas’ friends, because it was a little like being with him. It was the tone of the male voice, the way they moved, what they talked about, even the Trojan accent, that comforted me. Among them he did not seem so far from me.

Achates had loved him—I will say this, though my heart resists—as much as I loved him, and for years longer. I am sure Achates came very near suicide that summer. He blamed himself for the incident at the ford: he should have insisted they wear cuirasses, he should have been closer to Aeneas during the fighting, he should not have let Aeneas release the young man, should have followed the young man and kept an eye on him, should have seen the weapon lying on the ground—everything that he could blame himself for, he did.

It was Achates who had first told me, when they brought Aeneas home, what happened at the ford. Now I found that by letting him tell it over, he could talk out some of his shame and rage, and strange as it may seem I wanted to hear it again, to hear it told over and over, till I could see it as if I had been there, as if I were Achates, as if I had knelt by Aeneas, had pulled the terrible blade out of his back, and held him in my arms, and watched his blood color the shallow water that ran among the rocks. “He was not dead. He held on to me, but I don’t think he saw me,” Achates said. “He was looking up at the sky. When we picked him up to lay him on the litter, he closed his eyes. He never spoke.” He never spoke, but he was not dead, then. So long as Achates told me the story, Aeneas was not dead.

Ascanius, almost distraught with his new responsibilities, was at first jealous of my being with the Trojan captains: they were his men, not mine, he needed them for advice and to do his bidding, and they had no business loitering around the Regia with women. He ordered Achates to go up to Alba Longa and govern there. Achates accepted his order without a word, but I was afraid for him. I went privately to my stepson and asked him to send Mnestheus or Serestus, who knew the settlement better and would have no objection to leaving Lavinium. “Let Achates stay here, at least till next year,” I said. “He goes daily to Aeneas’ tomb. Let his grief heal. He has no heart to go to Alba Longa.”