I joined her and Juturna at the back of the council room. My father sat on his throne with its curved crossed legs; he did not look like the shaky old man I had last seen, but sat erect and stately in his red-edged toga, listening to Turnus. Drances was there, and Verus and several of the other guards and knights, but only a few of the king’s council. Most people were caring for their wounded or mourning their dead, or were out helping fortify the walls for siege.
Turnus was still in battle gear, though in fact he had not fought that day. He was dusty, and his face was strained and pale. He was not strutting now. He looked young, anxious, handsomer than ever. Amata and Juturna both stood watching him with yearning eyes. He was giving a report of the conditions of the allied army to Latinus, not trying to disguise that his ambush had failed, or deny that the Volscians had broken and run, nearly bringing the Etruscans after them into the city. But he praised Messapus and Tolumnius and the Latin troops, and the citizens too, for rallying at the city gate and holding firm.
“Tomorrow,” my father said, “you and your men will be with them. And Aeneas and his men will be with the Etruscans.”
“Yes,” Turnus said. There was a pause. He shifted his position, stood with his legs a little farther apart, his head back. “I do not hang back. There is no delay in me,” he said rather strangely, his voice growing louder. “If people say the treaty was broken, if the Trojans think so, I give them the lie. Repeat the rites, King Latinus, renew the terms of the agreement, tomorrow morning, before all the people! I swear to you here and now, I will by myself clear our people of the taint of cowardice. This Trojan, this man who ran away from his conquered city, let him meet me, let him meet me alone, in fair fight. Let all Latium be on the city walls to see it. Either my sword will take all shame from us, and take Lavinia from him, or he will rule a defeated people and have her as his wife.”
He glanced at us three women standing behind the throne as he finished speaking, but his eyes did not meet mine.
Latinus answered him with a slow, thoughtful firmness. On the eve of defeat, confidence had returned into him, as it had into me. “Turnus, no one questions your courage. It is so great, in fact, that it obliges me to move slowly, to hold back. Consider: your father gave you a noble kingdom, you’re rich and have the goodwill of your neighbors. You know that I am your friend, your kinsman by marriage. And there are many girls of good family, unmarried, in Latium. Weigh all that in the balance! For whatever happens, I cannot give you my daughter. It is forbidden. It cannot be done. My wish to make the bond strong between us, my wife’s pleading, my own weakness led me to do wrong. I broke the pledge. I let it be thought that the promised wife could be taken from the man she was pledged to. Wrongly, I let this war begin. Let it end, now, before a final defeat. Why have I changed back and forth like this, hiding from the inevitable? If I was and am willing to take the Trojans as allies while you’re alive, why should I wait for your death to do so? Consenting to this duel, I betray you to your death. Let it not be so. Let my old friend, your father Daunus, see you come home alive!”
“My sword can draw blood too,” Turnus said; he had been pale, but was now red-faced, his blue eyes glittering. “You needn’t try to protect me, Father Latinus. The story is that some power hides this Aeneas from his enemies in battle. But here, on our ground, the powers are with me. I will defeat him!”
At this Amata started forward, ran to Turnus and took his arms, half clinging to him, half kneeling as a suppliant. Her black hair was loose and she was in tears, her voice high and shaking. “Turnus, if you ever loved me—you are our only hope—the only savior, the honor of this disgraced house. All our power is in your hands. Don’t throw it away! Don’t throw away your life! What happens to you happens to me! I will not be a slave to foreigners! I have no one but you! If you die, I die!”
Hearing her begging, I blushed with shame till tears filled my own eyes. I felt the red blood color my face, my neck and breast and body. I could not move or speak.
But Turnus looked over my mother’s head straight at me, the bright unseeing stare that had frightened me the first time I ever saw him. He spoke to her, though he kept looking at me. “No tears now, mother, no ill omens, please. I’m not free to put off death. I’ve already sent a herald to the Trojan. Tomorrow morning there will be no battle. The treaty will be resworn. He and I alone will meet. Our blood will settle the war. And on that field Lavinia will find her husband.”
He smiled at me, a wide, fierce smile. He put Amata away from him, pushing her hands away. She cowered down sobbing.
“The messenger has gone?” Latinus asked. His voice was dry.
“He may be there by now,” Turnus said proudly.
Latinus moved his head once, the nod of acceptance. “Then go make yourself ready for your fight, my son,” he said, with kindness, and stood up, dismissing the others. He turned around as they left, and I think he was about to tell me to look after my mother, but he asked, “Daughter, are you hurt?”
I saw where he was looking: there was a great smear of half-dried blood all down my palla, which I had not seen in the twilit courtyard. “No. I’ve been with the wounded men, father.”
“Take some rest tonight, my dear. Tomorrow will be a long day, for some. Go, sleep well. Juturna, go with your brother. If you can persuade him out of this duel, do so. There is no need for it. We will restore the treaty and the peace.”
She hurried after Turnus. When the others had all left the room, Latinus went back to Amata, who was hunched down on the floor, her hands plucking and tugging at her hair. He knelt by her and spoke softly. I could not hear what he said. I could not bear to watch them. I went back out across the courtyard, and to my room.
As I meet them in the courtyard of our house, Ascanius is saying something jokingly to his father, “You said it yourself—come to you for work, but not for luck!” Then he goes off to do whatever it is that Aeneas has asked him to do. And I ask Aeneas, “What did he mean?”
“Oh, it’s something I said to him when we couldn’t get that arrowhead out of my leg. I said, ‘You can learn a man’s work from me, son, but if you want good luck, go to somebody else!’ I was in a foul mood.”
“What arrowhead?”
“The last morning of the war.”
I puzzled it over. “But Turnus didn’t have a bow. He was using his sword.”
“Turnus?”
“The wound in your leg—”
“Turnus never wounded me,” he says grimly. Then his face changes. “Oh. I see. I lied to you. To some extent. I lied to everybody, actually.”
“Explain, please.”
We sit down side by side on the bench under the laurel sapling. “Well, it was just after that augur, that Tolumnius, threw his lance to break the truce. I saw him do it. He killed a young Greek on the spot. Then of course they all went mad. I was trying to get our men together, out of it, keep them from fighting—Fighting there. At the altar! Where you were standing!"—His face goes dark again at the thought of it. “And in all the confusion, somebody got me in the leg with an arrow.”
“You don’t know who?”
“Nobody ever claimed the honor,” he says with a bit of mockery. “Serestus and Ascanius helped me get out of the mess, back to our camp. Seeing the captain down is frightening to the men. I had to hop along leaning on my spear, bleeding like a sacrifice. So, old Iapyx did his best, pulled out the shaft, but he couldn’t get the arrowhead out. It was barbed, you see. And everything was going to pieces, back there. So I said, tie it up, man, I can’t stand around here all day, I have to find Turnus and finish this thing. I made Iapyx do it. Once he’d stuffed the hole with dittany and had it tied up tight, it didn’t hurt. You don’t notice that sort of thing much, in the thick of it. So I went back, looking for Turnus. And couldn’t find him. I’ll never understand it. What was he doing? I’d see him not too far off now and then, and then he’d disappear, like a swallow in an atrium—flit past, gone again. I’d go where he’d been and he wasn’t there. I was running out of patience. And just then Messapus knocked off my helmet crest with a spear, and I lost my temper. So I called for an attack on the city.” He looks down, frowning, at his hands clasped between his knees. “I am sorry about that. It was wrong.”