Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

“I wouldn’t have come here if I could have stayed in Lavinium,” I said at last, trying to keep my voice from pitiable quavering.

“I know, daughter. It was best that I not interfere.”

I nodded agreement.

“But if the time comes that you must, that you know it right to go—then take your gods and your child and go! Will you?”

“I will.”

I thought he was telling me to come to him, but he said, “Tarchon of Caere would take you in, and treat you with honor.”

“Oh—surely it won’t come to that!” I said, staring at him, shocked and startled.

“I don’t know what it will come to. If he learns a few lessons of war and draws in his horns, all may yet be well.” He was Ascanius. “I tried again last night to tell him to leave Evander and Pallanteum alone. The old man is dying. The Etruscans will move in when he dies and take over the Seven Hills. In peace. No reason why they should not. Except his impatience. Oh, I was a fool as a young man, but never fool enough to take on Etruria! The best allies we could have. How can I make him see it?”

“You can’t, father.”

“Oh look, oh look,” came Silvius’ little whisper, “they’re giving him a golden bowl!”

My father watched the child with a half smile, but his eyes were sad. “Patience!” he said. “I need it as much as he does.”

It was the last time I saw my father. He took cold, walking out in his crop lands in the rain, and it went to his lungs; he died a few days later, the day after the Ides of January. I ordered horses and a few men to escort me and Maruna and Sicana to Laurentum. Ascanius, busy up on our border fighting the Marsi near Tibur, knew nothing of what had happened. I did not take Silvius with me, for he had had a cough and fever for some days, and the weather was bitter with icy rain. The great laurel stood in its winter darkness over the fountain in the courtyard of my old home. The War Gate still hung open, rusted on its unlucky hinges. All the people in Laurentum seemed old; there were no young faces or voices. I stayed only long enough to bury my father by the roadway into his city. I could not stay the nine days of mourning. I had to go back to my son in the city of my exile.

Ascanius was sole king of Latium now. Not all the Latin farmers were happy about it, but they made no protest or resistance; the pressure on our borders was insistent, and they wanted a single leader during war. And war was our lot for years to come. The Volscians and the Hernici, hoping Latinus’ death had weakened the kingdom, harassed the border farms and towns constantly. Before long Camers of Ardea, who had come to see Aeneas as an ally and almost a father, took offense at Ascanius’ arrogance; he began letting his Rutulians make raids and forays into Latium, and rebuilt his alliance with the Volscians. And, though it did not yet bring any increase of fighting, the Etruscans of the great inland city Veii were sending groups of farm families to colonise the Seven Hills on the Tiber. They did not occupy the little Greek settlement, but simply moved in all around it, building on both sides of the river, where Janiculum had been and up on the hill they called the Palatine, clearing the forest along the riverbanks and pasturing their fine cattle all through the valleys. Many of the younger Greeks of Pallanteum moved to Diomedes’ city in Arpi, others came to settle in Alba Longa. Latium had long laid claim to the region of the Seven Hills, and all the south side of the father river as far up as Nomentum. Ascanius was bitterly irked by this quiet takeover, but he remembered Latinus’ warnings and didn’t defy Etruria. The Veiian colonists offered excellent terms to us for salt from our salt beds at the river mouth, and showed no sign of wanting to expand further into our lands. They called the new settlement by their name for the river, Ruma.

Aeneas’ shield hung in the entryway of the high house of Alba Longa. Ascanius did not wear it when he went out to war, or the greaves and gilt cuirass, the helmet with its maimed red crest, and the long bronze sword. Once he said in my hearing that these forays by farmers, these squabbles with petty barbarian kingdoms, didn’t deserve such mighty weapons but should be settled with hoes and mattocks. I think the armor was too heavy for him.

I saw Silvius standing in front of the shield, looking up at it steadily. He was six or seven years old. I asked, “What do you see there, Silvius?”

He did not answer for a while and then said, in a small voice as if from far away, “I’m watching all the people in the great round place.”

I stood with him and gazed. I saw the mother wolf, the burning ships, the man with the comet over his head, soldiers killing soldiers, men torturing men. I saw a splendid thing: great arches of white stone that strode down from the mountains across valleys to the city with its hills and temples. The city Rome.

I was afraid of the shield, but the child was not; the power that had made it and dwelt in it was in his blood. He put out his hand to the golden cuirass, following the curves and decorations with palm and fingers, smiling.

“You’ll wear it one day,” I said.

He nodded. “When I know how,” he said.

Silvius had a good deal of strength, for a child. He was not boisterous, and rougher boys often mistook his quietness for meekness or timidity. If they presumed on it, they found out their mistake. He ignored verbal attacks, but he met physical bullying or threat with instant resistance and retaliation: hit, he hit back hard. He was competitive; he loved all sports and games, rode and hunted whenever he could, and was a diligent pupil of Ascanius’ old teacher of swordplay, spear throwing, archery, and the other arts of battle. With boys and men he was serious, silent, and reserved. Only with me and my women and the little children of the women’s side did he go off guard. The Silvius of the courtyard was merry, affectionate, mischievous, greedy for sweets, patient with babies, impatient with ritual duties, fond of jokes and silly riddles and nonsense rhymes. Everybody liked him. Even Ascanius liked him, half unwillingly.

In those early years of his reign, barely out of his own boyhood, Ascanius lived in the glare of his father’s name, forever trying to find his own glory, always outshone. He was too adoring of Aeneas’ memory to be able to resent him, but he was envious and resentful of any other power or popularity, particularly mine. He felt that he must outdo his father, striving to be a brighter sun, and here was I the moon, effortlessly shining with the sun’s reflected light, effortlessly beloved by my people, because I was one of them, and because they had loved Aeneas. However modestly I lived, hidden like a captive in Ascanius’ house, he perceived me as a constant threat to his dignity, and believed I undermined his decisions. Our people were increasingly unhappy with the endless warfare that kept young men in danger and left the farms for old men to plow—how could they be happy with it? But Ascanius blamed their protests and reluctance on me. I poisoned his councils, I whispered with the women, I turned the Latins against him. In vain I behaved as a Vestal, not a queen, doing nothing at all but look after the household and the altars: still I was at fault.

It was a dull life, not a bitter one, but dusty, dust dry, with no spring of life in it except my beautiful, bright, thoughtful boy. He grew, and thrived, and gave me a vein at least of tenderness and hope.

There came a March when we Latins struck out at last at the Volscians and Rutulians, driving their armies right down to the coast, taking Ardea and Antium and reducing them to beg for terms and accept our domination. Our men came back from that campaign in time for the April plowing, and were home all the summer. The harvest was good. In the knowledge of victory, Ascanius began to relax and show the benevolence that was his original nature. He invited me several times to feasts in his great hall, treating me with formal honor. A few times he even talked with me informally, very cautiously, but beginning to show a glimmer of trust. It was then that he told me a strange story, a prophecy I had not heard before. I will tell it as he told it.