Latinus had seen me, and said, “Daughter, come.”
I followed him to his rooms. He stopped in the anteroom and stood by the small table there, facing me. The evening light was bright in the doorway.
“Has your mother spoken to you, Lavinia?”
“Yes.”
“So you know that your suitors have agreed to ask me to choose your husband from among them.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” he said with a forced smile, “will you tell me which one you wish me to choose?”
“No.”
I did not speak insolently, but the refusal took him aback. He studied me a minute. “But there is one of them you prefer.”
“No, father.”
“Not Turnus?”
I shook my head.
“Your mother has told me that you love Turnus.”
“No.”
Again he was surprised, but he was patient with me. He said gently, “Are you quite certain, my dear? Your mother has told me that you’ve been in love with him since he first came courting you. And she warned me you’d be timid about admitting it. Such timidity is right and proper in a virgin girl. We need say nothing more about it. All you need do is indicate that you will be content if I accept him for you.”
“No!”
Now he was puzzled and uneasy. “If not Turnus, then which of the others?”
“None.”
“You want me to refuse them all?”
“Can you, father?”
Looking grim, he took a turn round the room; he hunched his broad, muscular shoulders, rubbed his hand over his chin. He had not shaved yet, and the grey bristles stood out on his jaw. He stopped again facing me. “Yes, I can,” he said. “I am still king of Latium. Why do you ask that?”
“I know that Turnus’ offer contained a threat.”
“It can be taken so. You need not concern yourself with that. What do you want, what do you intend, Lavinia? You’re eighteen. You cannot go on indefinitely as a maiden at home.”
“I would rather be a Vestal than marry any of those men.”
We call a woman a Vestal who chooses not to marry or is never chosen, who stays with her father’s family and keeps the hearth fire alight.
He sighed, looking down at his big, scarred hand on the table. I think he had to resist the temptation of that idea, that hope to keep me with him. He finally said, “If I were not king—if I had other daughters—if your brothers had lived—you might have that choice. As it is, as my only child, you are bound to marry, Lavinia. You carry my power in you, our family’s power, and we can’t pretend you don’t.”
“One more year.”
“It will be the same choice in a year.”
I had no answer to that.
“Turnus is the best of them, daughter. Messapus will always be under Turnus’ thumb. Aventinus is a fine lad, with his lion-skin coat, but he hasn’t much sense. You can’t live your life up in Ufens’ mountains, and I won’t send you off among those shifty Sabines. Turnus is the pick of the lot. He’s probably the best man in Latium. He’s running his kingdom well; he’s feared as a fighter; he’s rich. And good-looking. I know all the women think so. And he’s a relation. Your mother tells me he’s wildly in love with you.”
He looked at me hopefully, but I would not return his gaze.
“She tells me all the praises he sings of you. She believes he’s so determined to have you that if I give you to one of the others, he’ll rebel, despite this agreement they made. She may be right. He’s an ambitious, self-confident fellow. But he has reason to be. Your mother has encouraged him. In fact, if you picked one of the others, she might rebel.” He tried to make it a joke, but it was not a joke, and I could see misery in his eyes. “She has your welfare and the good of our kingdom very much at heart,” he said.
I had no argument, no answer.
“Give me five days, father,” I said. My voice came out hoarse and weak.
“And then you will tell me your choice?”
“Yes.”
He took me in his big arms then, and kissed my forehead. I felt the warmth of his body and smelled the familiar smell of him, harsh, dear, and comforting as the smell of the earth on the hills of summer. “You are the light of my eyes, daughter,” he murmured. That made me cry. I kissed his hand and ran back to the women’s side in tears. Everybody was in the courtyard in the twilight, watching Castus talk the swarm together into a great humming dark globe over the fountain, shadowy, swaying, shrinking together always closer and smaller as he talked his spells and made his net ready to capture the bees.
THE FIVE DAYS SEEMED VERY LONG TO ME. I KEPT TO MYSELF as well as I could. Once I got away and ran to Tyrrhus’ farm. Silvia was in the dairy; I coaxed her to come away with me. I wanted to talk to her about the choice I had to make, which of course she knew about; it was common knowledge. Very little in a king’s house can be a secret. And everyone knew that her brother Almo had not even been included in the list of suitors Turnus offered to my father. When I came to her, she hoped I might ask her to reassure Almo, to tell him that he was my choice and should ask the king directly for my hand. The family had let their hopes run high, thinking my friendship with Silvia raised her brother’s status to equality with mine, as indeed it did among us young people: but not among the kings and queens, the mortal powers of our state.
When Silvia understood that I had refused to choose any of the suitors, she began to press Almo’s case. When I shook my head and said, “No, Silvia, I can’t choose him,” she wanted to know why. Had I not always shown him a kindness that had led him to love me? was he not good enough for me? and so on.
I said, “I love him better than any of the others, but I do not want him as my husband. And if I did, if I chose him, it would be the same as killing him. Turnus would be after him like a hawk on a mouse.”
It was a stupid comparison, and Silvia took it ill. “Even if your father refused to protect my brother, I think our household has a few good warriors of its own,” she said stiffly.
“Oh, Silvia, I’m the mouse—the mouse in the field when they cut the hay and lay the ground all bare—everybody watching me, nowhere to go. I run about and run about in my mind and can’t find anywhere to hide. Everywhere I look there’s Turnus, with his blue eyes, and his smile, and my—” I stopped myself. “And my mother trusts him,” I said.
“You don’t?” she asked curiously.
“No. He has no piety. He looks only at himself.”
“Why shouldn’t he? He’s rich, he’s handsome, he’s a king.” Her irony was not entirely ill-natured, but she had no sympathy for me. She was hurt for Almo, and would not let me off easily.
I think she knew I was frightened, but would not ask me what I was afraid of, so I could not speak to her as I longed to.
All the same, we parted friends. She knew well enough that Almo had been in over his head, and that indeed he would have put himself and his family in mortal danger by winning a woman King Turnus wanted. She gave me a long hug and a kiss when we parted, and said, “Oh, I’m sorry all this came up. I wish there weren’t any men in the world. I wish we could go down to the river together the way we did last spring!”
“Maybe we will,” I said, but my heart was low. I kissed her, and so we parted. I went back through the fields trying not to cry. I was near tears or in tears half the time, and sick of it. There was nobody in the world whom I could talk to, or who could understand me, but the poet. Maruna might have understood, indeed perhaps she did, but I could not talk about my mother to her. To ask slaves to speak or hear dishonor of their master is unjust, it puts them at risk. There are always talebearers, toadies, among household slaves, how could it be otherwise? No room in a king’s house is without an ear at the door. I knew I had Maruna’s sympathy, and that was much help to me; but, since I could not protect her, I could not confide in her.