“Age got him, not the gods.”
Ascanius lost his fear. At first he had hated the storm. Such fearful Pegasus hooves! Such a wind from the beating wings! But then his father had given him coins for Charon, the ferryman. When a hero says to his son, “Don’t be afraid,” well, you trust him even while spitting salt from your mouth, and endure the wind and the waves. And now they were safe if battered on the shore.
He looked at a pink, sandy expanse ablaze with sun. Sea-wrack surrounded them; holothurians, wrenched from the ocean floor; broken oars; configurations of coral like tiny, broken trays. The tide retreated behind them like a deserting host and left them forsaken in an alien land.
“Well,” said Aeneas. “Hera had done her worst—with Poseidon’s help. Divided us from our fleet. But failed to sink us. I guess my mother is keeping a watchful eye.” Slender and golden he looked in his loin cloth (Achilles had bulged with muscles, so it was said; Ajax was built like an ape). Armor was useless to men in a small and crowded ship. Nonetheless, he looked like a prince of Dardania joined to Troy, and the gold seemed to flow from his body and not the recovered sun.
Ascanius, like his father, believed implicitly in the gods; even a grandmother goddess, Aphrodite. But he had heard of her fickle ways and he did not trust in her help. (She seemed to spend inordinate time in trysts.) Trustful Aeneas, men said. Overtrustful, at times? Practicality fell to his son.
He whispered a consolation to the ship. “We’ll bind your wounds, old Bear. You brought us through!” Then to his father, “We don’t have a sail anymore. And Poseidon cracked our prow when he drove us onto the beach. Also, there may be Harpies in the place.” Harpies were far more murderous than a storm, the obverse of “parent” or “friend”. In the Strophades, those islets like shark teeth jutting from the sea, they had already fought the black-feathered, screeching women and almost lost their ships.
Aeneas shrugged. “Monsters perhaps. Giants or pygmies. Harpies, no. Not in Africa.” It was only the threat of a second and second-rate wife (after the first-rate first) which seemed to panic him. In fact, he had placed the women aboard the other ships. But Ascanius had his plans. Three, when his mother died in the fall of Troy, he had grown to a sturdy ten. It was time for another mother, however well he had loved the soft Creusa (he remembered little more than the softness of her voice, her scent of violets, and her parting words, “Grow up, Little Bear. Your father will need your love.”) More important, his father was lonely; he had grieved for seven years and he needed a woman in spite of himself (especially since he refused to couch with the women along their route and withstood the advances of the Trojan ladies aboard his other ships.)
Sometimes parents require a lot of care.
“And we lost the figurehead at the prow and the tail at the stern. One of her eyes is missing, too. At least, she squints.” Trojan ships, which combined both sexes just as they combined both male and female timbers, were built to resemble Hydras, Scyllas, lions, bears, and other dangerous creatures to terrorize a foe. The Gallant Bear had lost her gallantry. At best, she/he could frighten a squid.
“Well, it wasn’t much of a tail. More like a nub.”
“That’s not the point. A nub to a bear means as much as a long, snaky rump to a crocodile.” Ascanius was being neither childish nor whimsical. Every Greek or Trojan knew that a ship, built from the lordly timbers of a forest, retained its life and, while remembering its home, exulted in its freedom and assumed the characteristics of the beast for which it was named.
“Yes, we have work to do.” Aeneas was scanning the deck to see if the storm had hurt any men. (He had doubtless already made a count.) No, twenty crewmen, wet, bedraggled, but none of them harmed beyond a cut or a bruise. He always placed his men above his ship and even his mission, to found a second Troy, though founding a city was a command from the gods, who had supported Troy against the Greeks.
“A white sow and thirty piglets will show you the spot…” Thus, an oracle in Epirus had directed him.
“All right, Achates?”
“Tolerable, Aeneas. What about you?”
“A bruise or two, no more.”
Achates was a red-haired, freckled Trojan among a race of blondes (his father had owned a slave from the north). He had the look of a humorous child, which made him the butt of endless jokes and demanded a sharp tongue to defend his pride. He was, however, the kindest of men, next to Aeneas who loved him. Ascanius also loved him for being his father’s friend.
“All right. Nisus, Euryalus…?”
“Already dry from the sun.”
“Little Bear, we need some help. Provisions. I have heard of a Tyrian colony in these parts.”
“Carthage,” Ascanius said. Whatever the seamen said, he remembered word for word, including some words which would shock a whore (that was his favorite term. His father spoke of Helen as a “courtesan”: the sailors called her a “whore”). “They say that the queen is very beautiful—and a widow, of course. I expect she’s good in the couch.”
“What we need is a generous queen, however plain. Beautiful women tend to be vain and selfish. Look at Helen.”
“I was still a bit young to take a good look.” (Three, in fact. He remembered a roseate mist inseparable from a mirror shaped like a swan.) “But what about Mother?”
“Ah,” said Aeneas. “She was the rare exception, and her beauty was in her heart as well as her face.” Aeneas had wanted to be a wandering bard, but princes were trained to fight and rule. Nevertheless, he sang as sweetly as Orpheus, and he won a bride who loved him for his lyre, instead of his sword. (Ascanius saw that his father had saved the lyre from the storm; he was pleased; it would cheer him until they found the queen.)
“Papa?”
“Yes, Little Bear?”
“Will we meet again in Elysium? You and mother and I?”
“I have no doubt of it.” It was not a lie which adults tell children; Aeneas never lied; it was the truth which sustained him in what he called his remembering times.
“It’s a very long wait, however. Couldn’t you ravish a maiden along the way? If you won’t take another wife—”
“My crew has been talking again, Little Bear. Such matters are not for your ears.”
“But I love their talk! It’s so—salty. I take it they do such things without a second thought, and so could you. When maidens are spoils of war, they expect as much. They rather enjoy themselves, I am told.” Ascanius paused. “Or you could make do with Achates. After all, Achilles had Patroclus. Of course he ravished the ladies, too. The point is, he never couched alone.” Ascanius thought that to couch meant to share your covers for warmth and conversation.
“It’s time to explore.” (Aeneas hid a smile; no, he attempted to hide. Ascanius knew him like an open scroll.)
It was hard to raise a father without any help or advice. He loved the man. Grandmother, how he loved the man! He would have died for him, in the storm or a Harpy’s claws. Still, Aeneas was difficult. Not that he beat his men or neglected his son. At times he ought to beat the lazier men (though never neglect his son). Aeneas, hero of Troy, needed protection from his innocence. He would rather forgive an enemy than slit his throat. Achilles had fought for glory; Agamemnon for power. Aeneas had fought for his wife and son (and a kindly if lustful king, and a queen who had been a splendor of motherhood). If a virgin offered herself, he gave her a gift and sent her home to her family. After seven years, he could not forget Creusa, the bride of his youth.
“Yes,” said Ascanius. “We shall certainly have to find the beautiful widow Dido.”
At least the coast seemed lush and hospitable (if you ignored the stark inland peaks, which might have been Harpy-haunted from their look). Wild orange trees wafted their fragrance from white, diminutive