The Children of Jocasta

The flutes were playing a loud, clear song, regal and imperative. They had rehearsed for many days to prepare for the coronation. There was no longer any hope of ignoring it: I opened my door and almost stumbled over my sister, who had found a way to wear yellow which did not make her appear sallow. Her dress was paler than crocus, closer to the shade of ripening lemons. Only the sash was the crocus colour of my own dress, and I wondered how she had managed to change it. Her hair was woven into plaits which spiralled around her head, and she had rubbed perfumed oil on her limbs so they shone white, like an alabaster statue. She looked me up and down.

‘That’s a pretty dress,’ she said. ‘You look lovely, Isy. You’ll catch plenty of eyes, especially if you stand up and stop slouching.’ She noticed one of my uncle’s guards walking through the courtyard behind her. ‘Not that you would want to,’ she added, her eyes following him. ‘Your only desire is to be an ornament to your brothers and the royal house.’ And as she spoke, she winked at me. My uncle would be too busy today to listen to tales from an eavesdropping guard.

I put my arm through hers, and we walked through into the second courtyard, which was full of our brothers’ many advisers and associates, all scurrying around trying to look important as they went about the palace. There was an air of anxiety about these men each summer, when the kingship changed hands. Half of them worried they would lose whatever influence they had cultivated under Eteo when Polyn took over. The other half were hoping that was true, and that they might be able to grease their own way into a position of greater authority. It was this dynamic of constant unease which appealed to my uncle: if the king was permanent, Creon was sure the administrators would grow lazy and complacent.

We walked across to the gates on the far side of the square. The main courtyard was a clamour of noise and colour: every citizen of Thebes must have been there. The guards at the gates smiled and stood aside for us to pass. They held silver-tipped spears, having exchanged their usual weapons for ceremonial ones in honour of the occasion. A thick cloud of perfume surrounded us: it was being poured in offerings around the square. Thebes liked to honour all the gods on coronation day, so none would ever feel slighted and turn their immortal wrath against the city.

Ani and I were just in time. The doors to the throne room – a small, gilded corner of the public square, which was kept locked except for this day each year – had been opened. The room shone like a statue of Zeus himself, as the sun caught its chryselephantine adornment. My brothers, both sweating in their ceremonial robes – bright red and trimmed with so much golden embroidery that they were stiff, like wooden mannequins – were waiting for us. My uncle and Haem, similarly attired though with a little less pomp, were already seated to the right of the throne. Ani and I climbed the steps and took our seats on the opposite side of the altar which was placed directly before and below the throne. Finally, the flutes reached their high note, and were silenced. The ceremony could begin.

Muttering priests surrounded us: my uncle loved a religious ceremony. It was not enough to have a feast and a ceremonial handing-over of the crown. He wanted vows to Zeus and Apollo, followed by multiple sacrifices and offerings of wine. He enjoyed sitting in the sweltering heat hearing the prayers and nodding his solemn promises to guide the new king as he had guided the old one. Ani, I could see, was focusing most of her attention on Haem, who was studiously trying not to look at her. He must be hoping his father was unaware of their increasing closeness, though that seemed unlikely. My uncle might have been pious, but he wasn’t blind.

I was only half-listening to the priests. We had done this ten times before: we knew when we had to bow down before the majesty of Zeus and when we could stretch ourselves back up. We could have completed this ceremony while half-asleep, which was fortunate, given the heat. I was grateful to be in a simple linen dress – its belt kept loose to allow a little air onto my damp skin – rather than the formal garb the men were wearing.

Finally, the droning ended, and the priest reached his right hand into the pocket of his white robes. He was nearly finished. The crowd looked on, bored now of the excessive religiosity. They wanted more music, they wanted the meat to start cooking and the wine to start flowing, not just for the gods but for them too. And most of all, they wanted the games to begin. Although the chariot-races, the sprint and the wrestling were sacred to the gods, there would be many men who wanted to place bets on the outcome, discreetly enough to avoid the attention of Creon and his priests. An abundance of property would change hands before the sun set this evening. Bottles of oil, terracotta figurines, weapons and jewellery: no one could be certain who would take treasures home tonight.

The priest removed his hand from his pocket and held it aloft, as an acolyte brought the calf – too docile for this noisy occasion, as though he had been drugged with the leaves the priests were always chewing – to the space in front of the throne room. Perhaps they had stunned it with a quick blow to the head before bringing it outside. They would deny it – sacrificial offerings were supposed to have their wits about them when they went to the gods – but religious men are not always honest. The priest took the calf tenderly, holding its head by the nascent horns. As he brought his hand down to its neck, the sunlight reflected off his gleaming silver blade. And then everything became impossibly loud, as though every word and shuffling footstep were happening all at once, next to my ears.

Then my sister was holding me around the wrist, squeezing it tightly. Her nails jabbed into my arm and brought me out of the noise and back into my skin.

‘We’ll get you out of the sun in a moment, Isy. These endless prayers and offerings. It’s too much, almost blasphemous,’ she said.

I wanted to tell her that the heat wasn’t what was making sweat pour down my back, nor the dizziness threatening to knock me to the ground. It was the knife, and all the blood. Somewhere in this huge gathering was the man who had stabbed me. I could feel his eyes on the priest, assessing the efficiency of his blade, and the elegance with which he drew it across the neck of the beast, whose huge eyes gave no sign of the spurting horror beneath them, though his legs kicked frantically at the ground. Out there in the crowd was a man who had looked at me in the same way as we looked at the dying calf. A sacrifice for a greater good.

That was why I was shivering in bright sun.

The ceremony was finally over. Polyn had sworn to protect Thebes for the duration of the year to come, and Creon had lifted the crown from Eteo’s head and placed it on Polyn’s. The crowd cheered wildly, more because this was the end of the formal ceremony than because my oldest brother was more favoured than the other. The mass of people poured out into the market square, which was unrecognizable today. Every stall had been folded down flat, and wheeled into tight-packed rows by the city walls. Fresh sand had been swept into a racetrack which was marked out with round white stones. There were wooden benches on every side of the course for the spectators quick enough to reach them. Palace guards stood at either end of a raised bier with individual wooden seats placed in a neat row upon it. This was where Creon, Ani and I would be sitting. On the other side of the square, workmen had erected a temporary palaestra, where the wrestling would take place later in the day.

The aristoi were already preparing themselves in the palaestra. They had stripped naked, and were covering themselves in oil and the red dust that keeps their skin from burning in the harsh sunlight. The sprint would be the first competition today, and Eteo was running as always. The crowd was humming with excitement. The priests were still attending the remains of the sacrifice inside the palace courtyard, and spectators were taking advantage of their absence to mutter their bets. By the time the eight competitors lined up at the starting rope, people were jostling one another for the best view of the finish line.

At the crucial moment, the two slaves who held the starting rope dropped it to the ground. The youths sprang over it, and pelted down the track for one complete circuit. The dust sprayed up so high it was impossible to tell which boy was which: all of them were dark-haired from the oil which they had slicked over their bodies before wiping their hands through their curls to keep their hair out of their eyes. All were red-skinned. Only when they cornered the furthest bend and began to sprint back towards us could I see it was Eteo ahead of the others, running with all his might. He took a long, loping stride which looked almost effortless. I saw how hard he was pumping his arms: he was determined to win. There was a boy on his heels, but my brother ran so easily, it must have crushed his rivals. The second boy was frantically trying to keep up, his arms and legs splaying in every direction, as though he were frightening the birds from the crops before the harvest.

The other boys clustered behind them, running as a pack. The one at the front of their group was a friend of Polyn’s, I thought. He usually ran a faster race than this: he and Eteo had been competing in the sprint since they were both children. Perhaps he was holding something in reserve for the final straight, hoping Eteo and his rival would tire each other out and he could race past them and take the crown. Eteo had done exactly that to the boy last year, and he was surely hoping to take his revenge now. But he had misjudged the race and it would cost him the victory: Eteo was extending his lead, and showing no sign of slowing down, or even struggling to maintain his pace. The boy just behind him, to his left, looked like he was about to pull back. His face was almost as red as his dust-coated limbs.

But as they turned the last corner, the boy in second place suddenly tripped and fell forward, his arms tangling themselves in Eteo’s legs for just long enough to knock my brother off balance. Eteo was too graceful an athlete to fall, but he lost momentum as he was forced to extend his arms to stay on his feet.

‘I thought we’d have to wait for the chariot-race to see this sort of thing,’ shouted one man, laughing. The charioteers often fell from their cars when their horses clattered into one another on the tight bend of the racetrack.

Eteo saw his chance was gone, as the loss of speed had allowed his rival to spurt past on his way to claim the victory. So confident was the boy of his win that he took an almost comical zigzag route to the finish line, laughing and raising cheers from the spectators. Meanwhile, Eteo stopped to offer his comrade a hand up. The crowd cheered this kindness almost as loudly as they cheered the winner. The royal prince would cross the finish line in last place, but his honour would be intact. My clever, kind brother.

The boy couldn’t lift himself at first: Eteo’s arm was too slippery with oil for him to get a good grip. Seeing him struggle, my brother reached out two hands and heaved the boy upright. But when the boy stood, his left leg buckled immediately. He grabbed at it, crying out in pain. Mingling with the orange sand beneath his feet and the red dust on his body was the unmistakeable crimson of blood, dripping from the boy’s foot onto the sand beneath him. Eteo reached down and picked up a sharp iron spike, which must have been hidden beneath the surface of the sand. All the boys ran barefoot, so whoever placed it there knew he would injure one of them.

A gasp went up from the spectators, followed by a groan when my uncle declared that the race result would not stand. No one would receive the crown of olive leaves. The winner began to protest, but seeing the anger of the crowd as their bets were nulled, he sensibly decided to accept things without making more fuss. The slaves who had set up the track were summoned before my uncle, who ordered them to stand in a line, remove their shoes and walk across every finger-width of the course.

The limping boy was helped off the course by Eteo, and Creon signalled to the charioteers that they would compete as soon as the course had been checked. The atmosphere improved as the spectators realized their pleasure was merely postponed rather than cancelled. The charioteers checked their horses’ hooves, and readied themselves to race, each one tying himself to his car with leather straps. But it was hard to concentrate on their preparations when the injured boy was trying to clean his wounded foot, and bind it closed. The gash was huge, right across the sole, so it would tear open again whenever he took a step. Eteo summoned one of his guards and sent him away: a short time later he returned with a stick which the boy could use as a crutch. But the bandages still reddened as the day wore on.

The crowd were so involved in their next series of bets that they had already lost interest in the injury and how it might have occurred. Had one of the boys laid a trap for his rivals? Was it an attempt to hurt Eteo? Everyone knew he was quick: he was likely to be at the front of the sprinting group. I tried to dismiss the thought of sabotage.

But what else could it have been? The slaves found four more sharpened iron spikes wedged into the sand at different points on the course. It was pure luck that none of the other boys had been injured. Or perhaps the boy who won the race had known which parts of the track to avoid. Perhaps they had all known.