Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

It was in the time when Turnus was gathering armies to drive the Trojans out. Aeneas was making ready to sail up the Tiber to ask help from Evander. In the morning of that day, Ascanius said, he and his father saw lying on the riverbank a great white wild sow with thirty white piglets suckling her. At once Aeneas called for a sacrifice, and at the altar he announced the portent: his new kingdom was to be founded in the place called White, that is Alba, and his heir would rule there for thirty years.

Neither he nor my poet had spoken to me of this prophecy. I knew only that he had been bidden to build a new city in Italy and name it for his wife. I did not speak of that, since Ascanius cherished this portent of the sow as justifying his move to Alba Longa. It weighed strangely on my mind. I dreamed more than once thereafter of albino piglets who trotted by one after another endlessly, though their throats were cut and gaped open bleeding dark clots of blood, and of a huge white creature gasping and wallowing on the grass, who had been bled dry and yet was not dead and could not die.

The next year was a peaceful one, but then the Sabines joined with the Aequians against our northeastern towns and farms, burning, looting, and taking slaves as far into our territory as Tibur and Fidenae. Two years went in fighting those peoples. Ascanius defeated them decisively in a long battle late in the year in the hills above the Anio. All the old Trojans fought with him there, Achates, Mnestheus, Serestus, men who had fought before the walls of Troy when they were young. It was their last battle. The soldiers came home in the winter rain, lean and lank as old wolves, but victorious.

Again Ascanius was genial and gracious in triumph. He summoned the Trojans from Lavinium to receive special honors in Alba Longa, and made sure that his younger captains treated them with respect. Though there had been little profit from this defensive war, whatever booty had been taken he shared out among all the men who had fought for Latium, and he sent lavish gifts to Gabii and Praeneste in thanks for their aid.

Along at the time of the dark solstice he came back from a brief trip down to Ardea. He sent for me and said to me, “Mother, I know your heart has never been here in Alba Longa.”

“My heart is where my son is,” I said.

“And beside your husband’s tomb, I think.” He said it gently, and I nodded.

“You have ruled my household with grace and wisdom, and many here will grieve for your going, if you go. But I say to you now, if you wish to go, you may. I have asked for the hand of Camers’ sister Salica, and she will come here as my bride in April. If you were here to show her the ways of the house and teach her the skills of housekeeping in which you are so outstanding, you would have our undying gratitude. But if you feel that it may not be wise to have two queens under one roof, or simply if you wish to return to Lavinium, which is your home beyond all question, built for you by my father, I wish you to feel free to make whatever choice you please.”

The pompous awkwardness and the good intent were very like Ascanius. I was sorting out his words, and a glow of hope was just beginning to rise in me and warm my whole soul, when he went on, “And I’ll keep Silvius here, of course, for his training. It’s time I was a better brother to him—I who stand in a father’s place to him.”

“No,” I said.

He stared.

“If you are bringing a wife here, it’s right that I go. She should rule here. I’ll go back to Lavinium willingly, gratefully. But not without Silvius.”

He was puzzled, displeased; he had thought his offer entirely reasonable and generous.

“The boy is eleven, is he not?”

“Yes.”

“It’s time he was brought up among men.”

“I do not leave my son. He is my charge from Aeneas.”

“You cannot be his mother and his father.”

“I can. I am. Ascanius, do not ask this of me. You will not part me from Silvius. I am grateful for your brotherly care for him. Have no fear, in Lavinium he’ll be brought up in all the ways and arts of men by his father’s companions and your Latin captains there. I think you know I haven’t coddled him. Is he unskilled for his age, or lazy, or cowardly? Is he in any way unworthy of his father?”

He stared again. I was the she-wolf on the shield now. He saw my teeth.

He said at last, “This is unseemly.”

“That I should refuse to give up my son?”

“He will be here with me. A few miles from Lavinium!”

“Where he is, I am.”

He turned away, baffled, repeating, “This is most unseemly.”

Few people, I suppose, had openly opposed his will since he became king of Latium. He had forgotten that there was still a queen.

I stood silent. He said at last, “We will speak of this again.” And as he left the room, he said hastily, almost shrewishly, “Consider your position. You cannot have your way in all things.”

He could not bear contradiction; he did not have the strength that allows opposition. He could be generous only when his will prevailed. I saw even then that he would be immovable. I had justified his suspicions. He knew now that he had been right to suspect me all along, all the years I had done his bidding, served his household, bowed my head and held my tongue. I was a woman, therefore never to be trusted, never obeyed. I must be disregarded, or defeated.

When I went to my rooms in the women’s quarters that evening my head felt as if it were fuller of thoughts than my skull could hold, yet I could think only of the one thing. Ascanius had ruled my life for nearly ten years. I had done his will not my own, and he had taken that for granted, as if I were a slave. Now he meant, without malice but without need or reason, to take from me the use and purpose of my life. He was not the man to bring up my son, Aeneas’ son. My father had said so, and I knew it was so.

“Is there something wrong?” Maruna asked me when we were out in the urinals together, and I said, “The king’s sending me back to Lavinium.”

Maruna’s face lighted up.

“He means to keep Silvius here.”

She was silent.

“I won’t go without him,” I said. After a moment, going to the basin to wash, I said, “And I won’t stay here. Enough is enough!”

She came to stand by me, and I called to the girl, “Maia, come bring us fresh water, child!” The ten-year-old came with a pitcher and poured cool water over our hands, while her little sister ran in with towels. They were Sicana’s granddaughters, not pretty children but very bright. “You’ll come back with us to Lavinium, you two,” I said to them, and they made big eyes, wondering what I meant.

“I will go,” I repeated to Maruna, drying my hands. It helped calm me to say it aloud. “And with Silvius. Maruna, am I like my mother?”

As usual she paused before she answered. “In many ways,” she said at last.

“Because I know how she went mad. I know I could go mad as she did. Tell me if you see me going mad. Promise you will.”

“I will.”

“I have my father in me too. I think if I knew the madness was taking me over, I could stop it. But not if I lost Silvius.”

She nodded.

I did indeed understand something of how my mother’s mind worked in her frenzy: the ceaseless whirl of ideas, plans, schemes, the terrible irritation with anything that turned thought from its obsession and with anyone who did not understand it, and the curious sense of waiting in ambush. I remembered two pale gold eyes that shone of their own light. I was the she-wolf in the cave, standing stiff-legged, silent, in darkness, ready.

Preparations for the marriage of Ascanius and Salica went forward at the same time as my preparations to leave the king’s house of Alba Longa. I and my women left everything in readiness for the new queen, every grain bin filled, the chests of bedding and clothing full of clean, folded, fine-spun woollens and supple furs and fleeces, the sacred meal made ready, the altars dusted and the floors swept. There was not a moth, not a mouse among the stores, and every snowy lamb’s-wool rug on the floor was fresh. I had my pride. And also I wanted Salica to feel welcomed and at home. She was young, just eighteen, and though Ascanius would never mistreat her, I did not think he would be a good husband. He had no sexual interest in women and did not like them as companions. He was marrying because people think it strange if a king does not take a wife, and because he wanted an heir to prove his manhood, perhaps to bolster his unadmitted rivalry with Silvius.