He looked directly at me as he said that, not smiling, but with a brightness in his face and eyes. I looked back at him and nodded once, very slightly.
He lowered and sheathed his sword. My father stepped forward to face him and held up his heavy oaken staff over the altar. “By the same powers I swear, Aeneas, by earth, sea, stars, the lord of lightning, and two-faced Janus, and the shadows under earth. I touch the altar. I swear by this fire and the powers that stand between us: Never shall this peace and truth be broken, whatever may come. Never shall my will be changed, not until this staff, the ancient scepter of the lords of Latium, bear branch and leaf!”
He nodded to the men who held the animals. They brought them forward, with the long sacrificial knives, and Latinus cut the sheep’s throat while Aeneas cut the boar’s, each with one quick experienced stroke. And at that the people, soldiers standing by and citizens up on the walls, broke the silence with a long, soft, quavering aaahhh of release, relief, fulfillment.
Now an Etruscan haruspex came forward to look at the entrails of the sacrifice, a matter the Etruscans consider very important; and the animals had to be cut up and the meat spitted and cooked over the fire. This all took a good deal of time. Aeneas and Ascanius stood back from the altar, keeping silent, as did my father; but Turnus began to talk with his sister and with a Rutulian chief, Camers, who stood beside her. Despite his gilded armor and gorgeous plume, Turnus looked pale again, and tired, as if he had not slept; he kept gazing around at his men with a grieving, pleading face. And the Rutulians began to gather around him. Camers talked to them not loudly but earnestly, and they listened, looking grim. The augur Tolumnius moved about among them, also talking. The haruspex took forever poking about in the livers and hearts and kidneys, the attendants put too much meat on the fire at once and nearly put it out so that it had to be rebuilt to burn high, the murmur and mutter of talking grew louder through the ranks of the Italians. The sacred moment was lost, past. The sun was getting higher, the day was beginning to be hot.
People looked up and pointed to a faint clamor in the sky. A great flight of swans was coming from the river, heading south past us and the city, flying lazily, left to right. The Greek and Trojan troops followed the birds’ flight as we Italians and Etruscans did. And so all saw the sudden eagle, arrow-fast from the east, seize the lead swan in its talons in a shower of feathers and shoot on in a wide curve over us, heavily carrying its prey. Then, most strangely, the whole flight of swans turned as one, flying low and fast, the shadows of their wings passing over us, chasing and driving and harrying the eagle, crowding it till it dropped the dead swan and flew up and off over the western hills. A hesitant cheer went up from some of the watchers, but most were silent, wondering at the meaning of the sign.
Into that silence Tolumnius shouted out, “An omen! An omen! Rutulians, Latins, obey the omen! Attack the attacker! Close ranks, defend your rightful king!” And as the men around him shouted and shook their fists in the gesture of Mars, Tolumnius heaved back his six-foot spear and threw it straight into the ranks facing him across the sacred ground.
A man bent forward over the shaft making a strange noise like a cough or laugh, clear to hear in the last moment of the silence.
Then the world was filled with the enormous bewildering roar of men shouting, drawing weapons and clashing shields. Men rushed past me, this direction and that, shouldering me unseeing. I could see nothing I knew any more except the altar. I pressed up close to it. My father was there with the boy Caesus, trying to take up the sacred dishes, his hands shaking. “Help me, Lavinia,” he said, and I took and carried what I could. Keeping close together we struggled away from the altar through the confusion of running men and plunging horses towards the city gate. Caesus was not with me, and I stopped and looked back for him. I saw an Etruscan in splendid armor trip and fall backward, sprawling head and shoulders right across the altar. Another man leapt at him and struck down at his exposed throat with a massive blade-headed spear, and the Etruscan’s blood spouted up over men crowding in to tear the armor and weapons off him. Some Rutulians had pulled long burning sticks out of the sacrificial fire and were using them as weapons, shoving them in men’s faces, so there was a stink of burning hair. Beyond them, for an instant, I saw Aeneas, taller than the others, his hand up, calling out in a great dark voice. Then somebody shoved me so that I nearly fell, and the boy Caesus, his face distorted with tears and terror, was tugging at my robe. I hurried on after my father. The gates of the city stood open above us. My father’s guards had gathered around us, and they brought us in.
The confusion in the streets was almost as bad as outside the walls. People were shouting that the Trojans had broken the peace and treacherously attacked the king at the altar. Many old men and boys, even slaves, rushed out to join the battle; the king’s guards kept the great gate open for them and for the wounded to take refuge. Women stood up on the walls screaming insults and throwing down clay bricks and whatever they had to throw at men fighting at the ditch and rampart. Other people rallied to the streets between the great gate and the Regia to protect their king if the enemy broke into the city. Others were feverishly burying their treasures in their garden or trying to wall up their doors and windows so they could hide inside their house.
I followed the king directly to his council room, where Drances and others who had escaped the fighting gathered. Drances was gibbering with terror and talked only about where we should hide. My father was shaken, out of breath, and grey in the face, but he sat on his throne and began to consult with Verus and the others and give orders for the defense of the city and the house. Seeing myself unneeded there, I ran to the women’s side, where there was nothing but dismay and rumor and wailing. My mother was in her apart ment, but she came out to meet me. She spoke to me with savage contempt: “So! that’s how your great Trojan keeps a treaty!”
“He swore peace,” I said.
“He attacked your father across the altar!”
“He did not. He pledged peace with him. He asked to fight Turnus hand to hand. He swore if he lost they’d leave, and if he won, Latinus would still be king of Latium. And father swore to that oath. But Juturna and the Rutulians didn’t want that, and Tolumnius called an omen and threw the spear that broke the truce. I was there. That is what happened.”
“It is not true,” she said, but she knew it was. After what I had seen I had no fear to spare for her. I heard my voice ring out stronger than hers, I felt taller than her as I stood facing her.
“If Turnus had come forward to fight Aeneas, there’d be no war now, the city would be safe,” I said, for my heart was hot with anger. “He betrayed us.”
“Turnus would never,” she began, and then, her voice shaking, she said, “It was for you, it was for you.”
“Turnus doesn’t care a stick for me or you either,” I said. I heard myself speak with the sneering stridency I had so often heard in my mother’s voice. I thought of the clarity of the sky above the altar between the armies as the two kings swore the treaty. A great swell of shame and passion ran all through my body. I knelt down before my mother and took the hem of her white palla. I said, “Mother, forgive me. Let us have peace between us!”
“Never, he would never,” she said. She looked around as if bewildered. “Is it my fault?” she cried. She turned away, pulling her gown out of my hand, and hurried back into her own apartment and closed the door behind her.
I crouched there weeping for a while. Tears that had been pent up in me through these terrible days poured out. Then they were done, and I put back the hair from my forehead and wiped my face with the edge of my palla and stood up, looking at the women who were watching me in awe and concern and confusion.