Most of the other women and girls simply wondered why I didn’t jump at Turnus’ offer. Old Vestina sang his praises daily, always to a chorus of sighs and giggles.
And my mother’s affectionate pressure and persuasion in favor of Turnus continued, until four days had passed, and I must make my choice the next day. Then her exasperation with me burst out all at once in a fit of fury like those of years ago. She came into my room just after I had lain down to sleep. She was in her sleeping gown, carrying a tiny oil lamp, its flame no larger than a caper bud; she was there suddenly, looming tall and bulky in the loose white gown, her black hair loose round her white face. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, or how far you think you can lead your father by the nose, Lavinia,” she said in a low, harsh voice, “but I tell you now, you will marry Turnus and be queen of Ardea. You don’t have to cower and whine about it. If you don’t like Turnus, don’t worry, he may not like you all that much either, it’s a political marriage not a rape. There’s one thing a girl is good for, and that’s to be married well, and you’re no different or better than any other girl. So do your duty, as I did mine. If you ruin this chance I’ll never forgive you. I’ll never forgive you.” It was not what she said so much as how she said it that terrified me: she stood very close to the bed, and every moment I felt that she was about to strike me, to claw me with her nails as she had done long ago. Her voice shook and hissed and her breath came hard.
“Say you will marry Turnus,” she said. “Say you will!”
I said nothing. I could not.
A strange noise came from her, a kind of shrieking groan, and she turned and ran out of the room.
After a while I got up, for there was no sleep in that bed, and crept out into the courtyard. No one else was awake. I sat on the wooden bench under the laurel tree and watched the slow sliding of stars over the roofs of the Regia. The chill of the night seemed to come into my mind and make it cool and clear. I saw that I must marry Turnus: it was inevitable. To accept another suitor would be to bring civil war into the kingdom. His agreement with the others meant nothing. Turnus had to compete, to win, to be master; he would never let another man have a woman he had claimed. Mar riage was my duty and my destiny. My mother was right, even if she spoke in her own interest not in mine.
In the morning I would tell my father I was ready for him to accept Turnus as my husband.
The great Bears stood high over the father river, over Etruria. The leaves of the laurel whispered in the mild flow of the night wind. I thought of those three strange nights in Albunea, where the faint stink of the sulfur pools always hung in the dark air and I sat talking with a shadow, a dying man who had not yet been born and who knew my past and my future and my soul, who knew who it was that I should marry, the true hero. But here, now, in the couryard of my house, all that seemed distant, blurred and obscure, a false dream that had nothing to do with waking life. I would not think about it again. I would never go back to Albunea.
For a moment I heard the voice, the voice like no other, in my memory. When the poet first came, when he first stood there in the altar place, he had said that Faunus spoke from the trees of Albunea to King Latinus, telling him not to marry his daughter to a man of Latium. Then, seeing me startled and troubled by that, he said, “I think it has not happened yet. Faunus has not spoken to Latinus. Perhaps it never will happen.” And he said that perhaps he had imagined it, that it was a dream within a dream.
And I had imagined it. It had not happened. It would not happen. False dreams, visions, follies.
The roofs were standing hard black against the paling eastern sky when I went in and lay down for a little while.
It was a day of worship, and I was up before the sun. I put on the red-edged toga I wore as a child and still wore for the rites, and went to wake my father, calling with the ritual words at his door: “Do you wake, king? Waken!” And soon he came out, also in his red-edged robe, the loose corner pulled up over his head for worship, and we went to the altar in the atrium.
A number of the house people were with us, among them my mother, who did not usually attend the common rituals. She stood quite close behind me as I scattered the salsamola on the altar. I had the sense that she intended to be close to me, to keep me under her eyes, within reach, all that day, till she got what she wanted. The warmth, the pressure of her body so close behind me was palpable, and I wanted to escape it. I moved closer to my father as he held a little pitch-dipped stick in Vesta’s fire and lifted it to light the altar torches, murmuring the sacred words. I do not know if the pitch scattered, or a wind blew in, or a hand moved, but I suddenly saw a strangeness all around me, a flickering movement of brightness. There were voices crying, screaming—"Lavinia, Lavinia! her hair’s on fire—she’s burning—” I put up my hands to my head and felt a queer soft movement in the air about it. Sparks danced and leapt around me, and I smelled smoke. As I turned I saw through a yellowish, dim cloud my mother standing there not an arm’s length from me. She stared with wild eyes at something above my head. I turned and ran from her, ran through the people, through the atrium, out to the courtyard. Flame and yellow smoke followed me, sparks scattered from me, people screamed, I heard my father call my name. I ran to the fountain pool under the laurel and threw myself down, my face in the water, my hair in the water.
My father was there kneeling by me, lifting me up. “Lavinia, little one, daughter, my daughter,” he whispered. “Are you hurt, are you hurt, let me see.”
I was very bewildered, but I saw amazement dawning through the horror in his face. He passed his hand over my dripping head, down my lank wet hair.
“Can it be you took no harm?”
“What was it, father? There was a fire—”
“A fire above your head. Leaping, blazing. I thought it was your hair—I thought the torch had caught it—Are you not hurt? not burned?”
I put my own hand on my head; I was dizzy, but my scalp and hair felt as usual, only sopping wet. Nothing was burned but the corner of my toga which I had worn pulled up over my head at the altar. All that corner of the white, red-bordered wool was scorched black.
The whole household was gathered around us by now, filling the courtyard, shouting and crying and asking and answering. My mother stood by the trunk of the laurel, her face fixed, blank. My father looked up at her and said, “She took no harm, Amata. She is all right!”
She answered something, I don’t know what. Maruna’s mother pressed forward; she knelt beside us and touched my head and cheeks gently, a license allowed her as a healer. She looked then at my father and said sternly, imperiously, “An omen, king. Speak the omen!”
And he obeyed the slave. He stood up. He looked down at me, and up into the great tree, and spoke. “War,” he said.
All the people fell silent at his voice.
“War,” he said again, and then, as if struggling with the words, or as if the words pushed themselves from his throat and mouth without his wilclass="underline" “Bright fame, bright glory will crown Lavinia. But she brings her people war.”
Gradually everything and everyone got quieted down. People scattered out, talking all the way, to their morning work. Vestina took me off to dry my hair and weep and fuss over me, while the red-bordered toga with the blackened, burnt corner passed from hand to hand among the marveling women.
The rite that had been interrupted must be begun again and carried out. That was so much on my mind that at last I broke free from the women to go assist my father; but he sent me back at once to the women’s quarters, telling me to send Maruna to help him. I should rest, he said, and come to him later.