So, of course, were they. It is only too likely that little Publius Vergilius Maro might have died at six or seven, ashes under a small gravestone in Mantua, before he was ever a poet; and with him would have died the hero’s glory, leaving a mere name among a thousand names of warriors, not even a myth on the Italian shore. We are all contingent. Resentment is foolish and ungenerous, and even anger is inadequate. I am a fleck of light on the surface of the sea, a glint of light from the evening star. I live in awe. If I never lived at all, yet I am a silent wing on the wind, a bodiless voice in the forest of Albunea. I speak, but all I can say is: Go, go on.
When i got home with maruna the next day, everybody on the women’s side tried to tell me simultaneously that Turnus had sent a messenger to my father, and that Queen Amata wanted to see me right away.
My habit of fear of my mother made me wince inwardly at that. Yet she had not screamed at me or humiliated me in the old way for a long time now. I was ashamed of my cowardice. As soon as I had washed the dirt of travel from my feet and changed my clothes, I went to her rooms. She sent her maids away and greeted me with real eagerness, kissing my forehead and taking my hands to draw me down to sit beside her. Such a show of love might have seemed false, affected, but Amata was not a schemer. She was far too much at the mercy of her feelings to play a part she did not feel. She was truly glad to see me, and her pleasure went to my heart. I had so longed for the approval, the kindness of my beautiful and unhappy mother that the least sign of it was irresistible to me. I sat down by her willingly.
She stroked my hair. Her hand trembled a little; she was very excited. Her great, dark eyes seemed full of light.
“King Turnus has sent a messenger, Lavinia.”
“So all the women said.”
“It is a formal request for your hand in marriage.”
She was watching me so eagerly and so closely, sitting so near, that I could do nothing but look down, speechless. I felt the blush rise to my skin, the wave of heat all over my body, and the sense of being trapped, helpless, exposed.
My shrinking silence did not surprise or displease her. She took my hand and held it while she talked. “It is an unusual proposal. King Turnus is a great-hearted man. He speaks not only for himself, but for other young kings and warriors who have come here courting you—Messapus, Aventinus, Ufens, and Clausus the Sabine. Turnus’ message is that to avoid dispute and bad blood among these powerful subjects and allies of Latium, the time has come for the king to choose your husband from among them, and so end their rivalry. All are agreed to accept Latinus’ choice. He will be sending for you soon to tell you his decision.”
I could do nothing but nod.
“It’s not an easy decision for your father to make,” Amata said, her voice growing less hurried and eager, warmer, now that the message had been given. “He’s devoted to you, he doesn’t want to let you go. But he’s been very worried about the rivalries Turnus speaks of. He’s lain awake nights, fearing that the young warriors will come to blows over you or try to force a choice upon him that will upset the kingdom. They’re like a box of tinder, those young men. One spark and they’ll be in arms. And your father is proud of the peace he has kept, and wishes with all his heart to keep it. He is an old man, past fighting. He needs, in fact, the heart and strength of a young man to defend him—a son-in-law. Which of them would you think best suited to that honor?”
I shook my head. My throat was dry, no words would come from it.
“He will ask you, Lavinia. You must be ready for that. He will not want to marry you to a man you dislike—you know that! But it is time for you to marry, and past time. We can’t change that. So you must choose. And it will truly be your choice. He would never go against your heart.”
“I know.”
She got up and moved about the room a little; she took one of the tiny pots of scent from her table and brought it over to dab the rose oil on my wrists.
“It is rather nice to have young men quarreling over one,” she said, with a smile. “I know! It seems such a pity to have to bring all that to an end… But it can’t last forever. And the impossible choice, when suddenly it must be made, usually makes itself. Among them all, all the young possibilities, there really is only one who is possible. Who is inevitable. Intended.”
She smiled again, radiantly. I thought, she is like a girl speaking of her betrothed.
I still said nothing, and she said after waiting a minute, “Well, my dear, you need not tell me your choice; but you will have to tell your father—or let him choose for you.”
I nodded.
“Do you wish us to choose for you?”
The eagerness was strong in her voice. I could not speak.
“Are you so frightened?” She spoke tenderly, and sitting down by me again held me close against her, as she had not done since I was six years old. I could not relax, but sat stiff in her encircling arms. “Oh, Lavinia, he will be kind to you, good to you. He is so fine—so handsome! There is nothing to be afraid of. And you can visit back here often with him. And I’ll be welcome to come visit you in Ardea—he said so to me more than once. Ardea was my home when I was a child. It is a beautiful city. You’ll see. It won’t be so different for you from being here. He’ll look after you as your father does. You’ll be so happy there. You have nothing to fear. I will go with you.”
I broke loose from her embrace, stood up; I had to get free. “Mother, I will talk with father when he sends for me,” I said, and hurried out of the room. There was a singing in my ears, and the burning flush had turned to a cold that ran in my bones.
As I hurried along the colonnade I saw a great commotion in the central courtyard, a lot of people all gathered around the laurel tree. I tried to get past unseen, but first Vestina and then Tita saw me, and crying, “Look, look, come look!” dragged me out towards the tree. Something was up in it, far in the branches, a fat dark animal—a huge sack of something, writhing—a cloud of smoke, dark heavy smoke, caught in the branches. From it came a humming, droning sound. Everybody was shouting, pointing. Bees, they shouted, bees swarming!
My father came across the court, grave, grey, and erect. He looked up at the great swarm that pulsed and sagged and reformed constantly at the summit of the tree. He glanced up at the clouds beginning to color with sunset.
“Are they our bees?” he asked.
Several voices said no. The swarm had flown in over the roofs of the city, “like a great smoke in the sky,” somebody said.
“Tell Castus,” Latinus said to the house slave with him. “They’re gathering for the night. He’ll be able to move them.” The boy darted off to fetch Castus, our beekeeper.
“It’s a sign, master, it’s a sign,” Maruna’s mother cried. “To the very crown of the tree that crowns Laurentum, they come! What is the omen?”
“What direction did they come from?”
“Southwest.”
There was a brief, waiting silence. My father spoke: “Strangers are coming from that quarter—by sea, perhaps. They will come to the king in his house.”
As father of the household, the city, and the state, Latinus was accustomed to read omens. He used no mysterious means and preparations, as the Etruscan soothsayers did. He looked at the omen, read its meaning, and spoke it unhesitating, with grave simplicity.
His people were satisfied. A good many of them stayed in the courtyard, chattering about the omen, brushing strayed, sluggish bees out of their hair, waiting to see Castus gather the swarm to take to our hives.