Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

I had spoken at once, of course, to Silvius about our departure, and we talked the matter over, for he was a thoughtful and intelligent child, and children have a wisdom of their own. I had thought he might volunteer to stay at Alba Longa, not wanting to quarrel with Ascanius, and because he saw obedience to his king and older brother as his duty. But he did not. He said, “Let Ascanius rule here and leave us free to rule Lavinium. I’m Latinus’ heir as well as Aeneas’. I want to live in the west and learn my lessons from my father’s friends. Ascanius doesn’t really want me here.” After a while he added with a regretful sigh, “But Atys says the horses here are a lot better than the horses in Lavinium.”

“Your father chose a colt for you, sired by his own stallion. I think that horse is there in the royal stables.”

He lit up at that.

“So you see Latium with two kings again?” I asked him.

“If need be,” he said, grave as a man of forty, and then, “I don’t want to be here without you!”

“And I won’t leave you here. So that’s settled.”

“Him and his sow and his thirty pigs,” said Silvius.

“When we’re in Lavinium, I will take you to the forest of Albunea,” I told him, with a deep swell of anticipated joy in my heart. “Where your grandfather Faunus may speak to you from the darkness of the oak groves in the night, as he spoke to your grandfather Latinus.”

“Tell me about Picus,” the boy said, and so I told him once again about the grandfather who became a woodpecker. He loved to hear the stories of his land and people here as well as he loved to hear the old Trojans tell over their war with the Greeks.

We were so content with our arrangement and imaginings that I persuaded myself Ascanius would see reason as I saw it. But when I went to him to ask formal leave to depart for Lavinium with my son, he was extremely angry and made no attempt to hide it.

“You may go,” he said. “Silvius stays here. As I gave you to know last month.”

There was nothing for it but supplication. “Son of my husband, king of Latium,” I said, and went down on my knees and took hold of his legs at the knees—"I who am daughter and wife and mother of kings ask you to honor my will in this. Aeneas left me Silvius to bring up, and I will obey his sacred charge. You lose nothing in letting your brother go with me. You gain our love and gratitude. Reign here and over us, with your wife, and your children to come—and may the powers that guard the wombs of women be favorable! Let Silvius live in his father’s house among his father’s old fellow-warriors, and grow to manhood there. Then he will be worthy to come to you and serve you, if fate wills and allows it.”

It is very difficult to stand while someone is clasping your knees and pleading eloquently at you from below. The clasp puts you off balance, and your position is acutely embarrassing, all too much as if you were allowing oral sex. Perhaps some people are gratified by receiving a supplication, but I always hated it, and hoped Ascanius might find it as unpleasant as I did. I bowed my head down after I spoke till my forehead was on his feet. He could move only by kicking me. He tried to shift his feet, but didn’t kick. We were in his council room, and ten or twelve of his friends and counsellors were watching and listening.

I should not have challenged him among other people. If I had sought him out alone he might have let me persuade him. But changing a command, giving way to a woman—he could not let himself be seen showing such weakness.

“The boy will stay,” he said. He shifted around enough that I had to let go of his legs. I stayed kneeling some little while, silent. It was a deep and uncomfortable silence. His young courtiers were no friends of mine and most of them had no interest in Silvius, but most of them were Latins, and our people have a piety towards the bond of parent and child, as well as the habit of respect for the mother of a household. It was shocking to them to see me on my knees, more shocking to hear my stepson flatly refuse my plea.

I stood up and gathered my white palla round me, facing him. I put the corner of it up over my head, as in a sacred act. I said, “Our wills in this matter are different, king.” And I turned around and walked out of the council room. As I gained the corridor I heard the men’s voices break out in the room behind me, and as I went farther I could hear Ascanius’ voice, high and loud, trying to dominate them.

I had defeated him morally; but that really made no difference. He was still in control. I must get out of his control. There was no time to ponder further or prepare.

I sent Tita to bring Silvius in from the exercise field, and Maruna and Sicana and I gathered our women—sixteen of the twenty who had come with us here nine years ago, and the children some of them had borne here, and a few others who had attached themselves to me—and told them to leave as soon as they could, to take different ways down through the hills, a few in each group, keeping unseen as best they could, and make their way to Lavinium. I sent for two light carts to be brought out and a pair of mules to pull each; we loaded a few garments and things precious to us in them. I put Rosalba and her newborn baby in one, along with old Vestina, who was very frail now and living in a twilight of the mind. Silvius and Maruna and I rode in the other cart. Silvius stood up with the driver and ordered him to put the mules into a trot. We were off, down the steep white road, within an hour of my interview with Ascanius.

The short February day was ending when we drove into Lavinium. The little walled town with its citadel above the river looked very quiet and grey in the low light from the west. The narrow river reflected the sky like a shard of glass.

Some of my young women, running cross-country the way Silvia and I used to do, had got there before us. They had roused the few slaves who looked after the Regia, got the doors open and fires lit on the Vestal hearth and in the kitchen and royal apartment. But the widowed house was cold and dank and dusty. All the clean bedclothes and soft furs and fleeces were back there in Alba Longa, and all the fresh food too. The wheat and millet in the granaries was scant and stale. There was not room for all of us as we kept arriving, and several women had to seek the hospitality of families in the town. But as word went round among the townsfolk, they got up a real welcome for us, bringing us all kinds of food and drink and comforts. “Little queen,” they called me, the way they had when I was a child. “Little queen, have you come back to us then? Will you stay, will you stay in your own city? And the king, our little king, Aeneas Silvius, look how he’s grown!” By the time Achates arrived to bid me welcome, I could give him at least a good fire and a bowl of warm wine thickened with meal and honey.

Of all Aeneas’ old comrades I had missed Achates most; he was the kindest of them, the most brotherly. He had come up to Alba Longa often to visit with me, and I always rejoiced to see him and found him a wise counsellor. For all his loyalty to Ascanius, I felt that he was secretly on my side. It was a blow, therefore, when he said, “But Silvius cannot stay here if the king forbids it.”

“The king,” I said, “the king,” and then I paused. At last I asked, “Who am I, Achates?”

He looked at me, taken aback.

I said, “I am your king’s wife.”

After a long time he said, “Widow.”

He was a brave man.

“And your king’s mother,” I said.

“My king to be.”

“You owe protection to your king to be.”

“Ascanius intends him no harm, Lavinia.”

“He intends no harm, but harm will come to Silvius there. He doesn’t belong there. It’s not his seat in the realm—this is. Ascanius will be busy with his new bride, and she with him. No one there will look after Silvius’ interest. Some of them are intriguers and no friends of his. I will not leave my young ram-lamb unguarded among strangers!”