“So Turnus didn’t wound you? You were already wounded when you fought him?”
He nods, rueful at having deceived me, or at having been caught at it. “As soon as I got back to camp, afterwards, Iapyx got the point out—it practically jumped out, then.” He looks at his tough brown thigh and pokes the dent, a hand’s breadth above the right knee, deep and red among other, older dents and scars. “Healed up amazingly fast,” he says, as if this excused everything.
“Why did you let me think it was Turnus that wounded you?”
“I don’t know. I suppose a lie extends itself, somehow. I had to pretend it didn’t amount to anything, you know, while the fighting was going on. As I said, it worries the men. We were so outnumbered, it was always chancy. And I had to find Turnus and fight him to end the whole thing—it was the only way. So, then, afterwards, when I could admit that I’d been hit—in fact as you remember I was pretty lame for a while—it didn’t seem important how it had happened. I didn’t know you thought it was Turnus who did it. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
He asks this not boyishly, seeking excuse, but gravely, to find out if it does matter very much to me. I have to think about it a while.
“No,” I say. And I lean down and kiss the scarred dent in his thigh. He puts his arms around me and lifts me up against him. His hands under my loose gown are large, warm, rough-skinned, and strong. He smells of salt and incense.
I did sleep, that last night of the war, slept soundly, deeply, so that my waking was slow. At first it seemed to me that there was something I must do for my mother, but I could not think what it was. Then I came a little farther out of sleep and thought that there was to be a ritual and I should help my father with it. Then I woke, and saw my small window just showing the first beginning of light in the sky, and a hundred images of bloody wounds and dying men I had seen yesterday went through my mind in a rush, and with them the poet’s voice chanting, and then came the knowledge that today we would either renew the treaty of peace, or the fighting would be in the city itself and my people defeated, destroyed.
I got up and put on my old red-edged toga with the scorched corner and ran to my father’s apartment to wake him; but he was up and about already. He did not question my presence or my intention to go with him. Together with Drances and a couple of older men we got the ritual implements together, and I brought out the bowl of salted meal to the stable yard, where the animals were to be selected from herds brought in from farms overrun by the fighting. By the time we had picked them, it was time to lead them out to the sacrifice.
Soldiers on guard opened the city gates for us, hailing the king with a clash of weapons on shields. They made to shut the gates behind us, but Latinus said, “Let the gates of our city stand open!” He strode ahead of us, holding up his oak scepter like a lance, the wide purple-red edge of his toga showing bright in the dawn. Our army was drawn up all in order, facing outward from the walls and the earthwork that had been built up outside the ditch. Across a narrow space of farmland, trampled to dust now, the Trojans and Greeks and Etruscans were just forming up their ranks. A space between the armies had been lustrated, marked out as sacred, and an earthen altar set up in the center. Old men from the city were busy piling up firewood in the hearth they had made beside it.
Latinus strode directly to the altar. He held out his hands, palm up. Young Caesus, our salt boy, was ready with a fresh-cut piece of turf and put it square on the king’s hands. Latinus set it on the altar. Just as he did so, the sun shot its first ray over the eastern hills, and Aeneas came forward between the armies and stood across the altar from the king of Latium. Everything happened as if it had been planned and rehearsed a hundred times, everything happened as it should and must.
With Aeneas came his son, Ascanius, standing behind him, and Turnus came to stand behind Latinus at the altar. Aeneas wore the magnificent armor and carried the shield I came to know later. The crest of his helmet was a red plume that looked like the flaming cloud of a volcano. Turnus was as splendid in gold-washed bronze, with a plume that towered up white and streamed in the wind of morning. His sister stood near him in her grey veils. My father had pulled up the corner of his toga over his head, as I had done.
The walls and roofs of Laurentum, when I looked back and up at my city, were dark with people—women, men, children. They were all silent, and the men of the two armies were silent.
I stepped forward with the bowl of salted meal. My father took up some in his hands and sprinkled the sacrifices with it, a young white boar and a two-year-old sheep with very fine white wool. Aeneas came forward and took up meal in his cupped hands from the bowl I held out to him. It was the first time I was ever close to him. He was a big man, all bone and muscle, tanned dark, his face seamed and weathered, worn and fine. He was the man I knew and had known since the poet spoke his name in the glade of Albunea. I looked up at his face, and he looked down at mine. I saw him recognise me.
He turned away to sprinkle the meal over the animals. I gave my father the little ritual knife I carry, and he carefully cut some hair from the forehead of the pig and the sheep. He gave me back the knife. I held it out to Aeneas. He took it and cut a bristle or two and a curl of wool and gave the knife back to me. Then they both stepped to the hearth and dropped the offerings into the fire. Caesus brought the wine jug and the old silver cups on a tray. He poured the cups full and gave one to each king. First Latinus, then Aeneas poured out the libation over the green grass on the altar. My father spoke the ritual words in a low chanting voice, invoking the powers of the earth, the hour, and the place. Aeneas stood gravely listening.
In all this time there was hardly a sound from all the people gathered there. A baby’s wail up on a rooftop in the city; a clink of bronze as a soldier shifted his stance; birds singing far off in the trees of the city streets; and the broad, sweet silence of the brightening sky over all.
My father’s prayer was done. He stepped back a little. Aeneas drew his sword. The hiss of bronze on hardened leather was loud.
He held the sword up over the altar and said, “Let the sun be witness to what I say, and this land also, to which I have come through much suffering. Let Mars who rules the war, let the springs and rivers of this earth and the sky above it and the sea that washes it, bear witness. If Turnus is the victor, my people will withdraw to Evander’s city in defeat, and my son will leave this land, and never return to it in war. But if I am, as I may be, given the victory, I will not make the Italians my subjects, nor claim rule over your land. Let both our peoples, unconquered, pledge eternal treaty. With me come my gods. Latinus, my father-in-law, will keep his sword and his rule. My people will raise up a city. And Lavinia will give it her name.”