Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2008-04-20T22:00:00+00:00


From the farms and from the city people went out that afternoon and found their sons and fathers and brothers dead on the field. Some carried home the bodies of their dead to wash them and mourn them and bury them. Others made pyres there where they fell, so that evening all the fields north of Laurentum were clustered with fires, and smoke dimmed the stars. All the woodsmen in Latium brought wood in from the forests, and next day a huge common pyre was built outside the city walls for men who lived too far to be carried home for burial. It burned all day. Grief hung as dark and heavy in the city as the smoke.

We were told that the Trojans were burning their dead on the shore of the river. Those who saw the ceremony said that young men ran round the pyre three times on foot, then horsemen galloped round it three times, while people wailed aloud and blew conch shells. Warriors threw the weapons they had taken from their enemies onto the fire that consumed their friends. The rite was not like ours and yet it was like enough, there was nothing alien in it.

The next days passed in a curious suspense and inactivity. We looked after wounded men in the Regia and in houses all over Laurentum; some healed, some died. No word came from the Trojans. Evidently they were waiting to hear what we would say to Aeneas' offer of single combat with Turnus and a restoration of the treaty. But my father sent no messengers to them. Like his people, he was uncertain what to do.

Drances had made sure that Aeneas' words to him were heard everywhere, and many people in the anger of their grief cried that this war was accursed. It was Turnus' fault; he had broken the truce Latinus made. If Turnus claimed the king's daughter, let him win her fighting the Trojan hand to hand, let one life pay for all. But there were as many who, fearing foreigners, said that the war was our salvation, that the Trojans and their allies had come to overrun the land, and Latinus could save Latium only by sending Turnus with our forces to destroy or drive out the invaders.

When Latinus at last called his counsellors, they came in that same division of mind. And they were met right away with bad news from Diomedes, the Greek who had founded a city in the south, whom we had sent to for troops. He refused. He politely told our envoys that we were fools to take on the Trojans. "We fought them for ten years," he said, "and though we beat them, how many of us ever came home? Our victory brought us shipwreck, death, exile. Aeneas is no ordinary man. He brings his gods with him. Keep the peace, keep your treaty with him, sheathe your swords!"

Amata and I were at that meeting, sitting far back in the shadows behind Latinus' throne, and veiled.



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