The Children of Jocasta

Jocasta looked up at the sky. How had the sun moved so quickly? Sophon and Creon were somewhere in the city, carrying out her orders. She had asked them both to return to the palace before nightfall. Before the gates were closed for the duration of the Reckoning. Sophon had said nothing, only squeezed her arm as he left, smiling. She knew he would not be back until the sickness had passed through the city. The stubborn old man would be treating everyone he could, relying on his immunity to the disease, disregarding his age and increasing frailty. But her brother would return, bringing his family with him. If she could just keep them all safe, it would be something to cling to, while her city was battered by the vicious storm.

When the two men left this morning, Oedipus had wandered back to the family courtyard alone. When she returned there herself, she found him working in the garden, even though the midday sun was punishing. His grey tunic was wet, and his hair had furrows running through it, where he had pushed it back from his face with damp hands. He looked so beautiful that she paused to admire him. Her husband was twenty-seven years old, and to her eyes, he looked the same as when he arrived ten years ago. His eyes still glittered with flecks of gold, his unmarked skin still shone like ripe apricots. His muscles had retained every defined curve. Unable to avoid the comparison, she looked down at her own body and wished for the thousandth time that carrying each of her children had not left its traces on her. She had aged so much more than her husband, though ten years was a larger proportion of his life than of hers.

Every morning Jocasta woke up wishing that time might flow backwards at night, just for her, so she could stay where she was, a summer or two past forty until he caught up with her. She never complained of the backache she had when Ismene wanted to be picked up and carried. She never mentioned the soreness she felt in her hips and knees when she bent down to pick up a discarded wooden toy. She knew Oedipus would sympathize, would offer to rub her aching muscles, but she couldn’t bear for him to think of her as old enough to have painful joints. She knew what scorn she had felt for Laius, who always had some niggling injury. So she ignored the discomfort, in the hope that it would disappear. But it never did: it simply moved to a different sinew or bone, to torment her anew.

‘You have slaves to do the gardening for you,’ she smiled, as she walked over to him. The children were too hot even to quarrel, and were drowsing under the colonnade.

He looked up from the plants he was cutting back.

‘They’re dying back a bit from the heat, but don’t worry. The roots are healthy.’

‘I’m glad,’ she said.

‘I’ll go and talk to the night-watchmen after we’ve eaten,’ he said. ‘They need to know what’s going on, so they can drum up some extra men.’

‘People aren’t going to storm the gates,’ she protested. But she knew there was no point.

‘It’s best that we’re prepared,’ he told her. ‘My parents told terrible stories about the last time. They used to frighten me with them when I was a child, tell me to hurry up to bed because the rats were coming. That’s what they called the plague orphans, in Corinth.’

‘We don’t need to close the palace because your parents terrified you with bedtime stories,’ she said.

‘Your doctor told you to close the palace,’ he reminded her. ‘What’s your brother doing?’

‘He’s organizing men to guard the wells and prepare to bury the dead,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back here before it gets dark.’

‘Are you sure they should stay here?’ Oedipus asked. ‘Eurydice, Haemon: they’re definitely not ill?’

‘Would it matter if they were?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Of course it would. My darling, I don’t want to see you go through the pain of losing your brother or your sister-in-law or your nephew. But you must know,’ he took her shoulders and shook her gently, so she raised her eyes to meet his, ‘I would see them all die before my eyes, rather than let them anywhere near you or the children. You know that.’

And she nodded, wondering how he could make a declaration of love sound so much like a threat.

Jocasta had tried everything to distract Oedipus from the setting sun, but as she looked across at him from the divan where she was pretending to sleep, she saw him glance up in irritation: he was finding it hard to see as the evening drew in.

She stood up and walked behind him, reached around her husband, draping her hands on his chest. ‘Have you finished with your plants for today?’ she asked.

‘I’m just thinking about all the things we need to do,’ he said.

‘There’s nothing to do.’ She feigned a languidness she didn’t feel, but she had done all she could for her city. At dawn tomorrow, criers would walk through the streets announcing that Thebes would close her gates, for as long as was necessary. Any travellers needed to leave immediately, or they would be locked in regardless. When the weather broke, she would consider allowing the gates to be opened for people to leave, although there would be no admittance to the city for two months, at least. The plague had come in from the Outlying; she could not take further risks.

‘What do you mean, there’s nothing to do?’ Oedipus tugged her wrists, pulling her hands away from him. ‘I want to be sure the children are safe. How long do you think the illness takes to show itself? We need a quarantine period for anyone who left the palace today or yesterday. They can’t come near you or me or the children until they have proved themselves healthy.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Jocasta murmured into his ear, knowing this was her best chance of diverting his attention from the sinking sun. She felt him squirm a little from the tickling sensation of her breath in his ear, and gently kissed the lobe. He took a deep breath, but then moved away, saying, ‘That’ll have to wait, my queen.’

‘No,’ she said, as he turned to face her. ‘Nothing has to wait.’

‘The gates need to be closed,’ he said, gently unhooking her fingers from his arms. ‘I’m going to order the men to do it now.’

‘They know when to shut the gates.’ She tried to laugh. ‘They do it every night.’

‘But tonight is different, lover. Tonight they need to be locked and barred. No one in, no one out. They need to understand that there are to be no exceptions.’

Jocasta loathed arguing with her husband. They hardly ever raised voices against each other. He was impetuous and could be quick-tempered, but she rarely allowed things to escalate into a full-scale disagreement.

‘I’m not sure Creon’s back yet,’ she said. ‘They need to wait for him.’

Oedipus reached down and cupped her chin in his hand. He had beautiful hands with long, slender fingers like a musician. He rarely played the lyre these days, but she loved to watch him when he did. He shook his head gently. ‘They can’t. We need to lock up, whether your brother is here or not.’

‘He’s only away because he’s doing the job I asked him to do,’ she cried. ‘You can’t punish him for that.’

‘He should have sent Eurydice and Haemon up here before he left,’ Oedipus said. ‘I wonder why he didn’t.’

‘Because he thought he’d be back in time,’ she said. ‘Please.’

‘Are you really begging me to allow your brother into our home?’ he asked, wrenching his hand away from her face so quickly that she felt her head lurch on her neck, and winced from the pain. ‘When he’s been all over the city today? Do you think that’s wise? When he might bring in the plague and infect you, or me, or our children?’

‘He’s my only brother,’ she said, tears falling from her eyes. Oedipus had never planned to wait for Creon, she realized. She hated crying in front of her husband; she knew it made her look old. She turned her face away from him.

‘He should have come back sooner,’ Oedipus said, and stalked off to the front of the palace. Jocasta listened to the pebbles crunch beneath his anger, until he was too far away for her to hear. She sat on the edge of the divan and heard the distant grate of iron on stone. The gates were closed. Then a loud thud, which took her a moment to place. It was the sound of the thick bars of black pine – rarely used – sliding home across the inside of the gates. She strained to hear the sound of Haemon, squealing with excitement because he and his parents were spending the night at the palace and he had just found out. But the sound didn’t come. They hadn’t arrived in time. She felt a stabbing pain in her left temple, and knew it would soon be followed by a similar pain on the other side. She walked over to the fountain and dipped her hands in the water, then drew small circles around her throbbing brow. Sometimes the coolness eased the pain, but not tonight.

*

A month later, they reopened the palace gates. The plague had danced through the city this time. It did not annihilate everything it touched, and was – according to those who remembered its first incarnation – less ruinous this time. Many Thebans had boarded up their windows and stayed inside for the duration – darting outside to collect water in the darkest portion of the night – and most of them had survived.

Of those who were infected, many more lived than died. This Reckoning was more predictable than before: it picked off the very young, the very old, the sickly and the weak. But it did not cull the healthy with the same careless vigour it had shown before. Once again, it fed on the lower reaches of the city. But it was not catastrophic, only terrible, so the city did not descend into anarchy, as Jocasta had feared might happen, with their queen locked behind the palace gates. There was anger that the water supply was guarded for the duration of the sickness, but none of the guards was lynched, as had looked likely at one point. The citizens did not like their queen withdrawing from her city when it was in crisis, but most were honest enough to admit that they would have done the same themselves, if they had been able.

Jocasta sent her criers through the city, proclaiming the end of the Reckoning and asking her citizens to continue their vigilance against the symptoms of the disease in future. On the day the palace and city gates were reopened, she hoped her brother would appear, but he did not. She knew he must be angry with her. She had asked the guards – discreetly, when Oedipus was busy elsewhere, playing with the children in the garden, as the heat had finally broken – whether her brother had arrived at the palace on the night the gates were closed. They had arrived much too late, she had discovered. Long after sunset: Creon and Eurydice, the latter carrying Haemon on one hip, his legs swinging as they walked. Creon held a torch in the thickening night, to light their way across the uneven stones and old vegetables left rotting in the market square.

Creon had carried out every task Jocasta had entrusted to him. He had travelled across the city, speaking to her men directly. He had warned Eurydice that she would need to pack their essentials while he was away, but when he returned he found she had ignored him, saying she preferred to stay in her own home, no matter what was coming.

A bitter argument had followed and he had hurled clothes and valuables into two large cloth bags as quickly as he could. But Eurydice refused to leave the house. What about looters, she asked. What if people broke into their home and moved themselves in? How could they prove it was theirs? Eurydice was more afraid of losing her home than her life, Creon told her. But by the time he dragged her and Haemon from the house, darkness had fallen. They walked in silence the short distance up the hill to the palace. Even Haemon – usually so talkative – was quiet. He knew his parents were angry with one another, and was fearful of making things worse. When the family reached the palace gates, the guards, who had known him for more than ten years, refused him entry. The gates were barred, one of them shouted from inside the courtyard. No exceptions.

Creon was unlike his brother-in-law in almost every regard, not least in the way they each expressed anger. While Oedipus radiated his annoyance, conveying to anyone who could see him that he was displeased, Creon was contained. He did not attempt to reason with the men, but simply turned around to take his family home. Only his closest friends could have deduced his feelings.

‘Where are we going? Why aren’t we going in?’ asked Haem.

‘I told you. I said they didn’t want us there,’ Eurydice hissed. ‘Everyone can see it besides you: your sister doesn’t care a jot for anyone but herself and her husband.’

Creon was too weary to argue with his wife. He walked back to his house, and unbolted the doors. He used his torch to light a smoky candle, then extinguished the larger flame with a handful of sand.

‘I’ll get food and more water tomorrow,’ he said. He took his son’s hand, and half-carried him to bed, the candlelight flickering on the walls.

His wife sat alone in the darkness until he returned.

‘We were too late,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

‘We’re their family,’ she said. ‘That should be all.’

He nodded. ‘I thought they would let us in. We should have left earlier. If Jocasta had been there . . .’

‘If Jocasta wasn’t there, it was because she didn’t want to be,’ Eurydice snapped. ‘She knew you were coming back tonight. She hides behind Oedipus, you know that. She won’t criticize him or disagree with him, even when it means throwing us to the wolves.’

Creon smiled. ‘I’m not sure we should add wolves to the list of things we need to protect ourselves against,’ he said. But Eurydice wouldn’t take the cue and ally herself with her husband against the world.

‘You always take her side,’ she said. ‘Always. She uses you, and then she ignores you when it suits her. You’re the only person who can’t see it.’

Creon turned away from his wife and went to bed. The next morning, he rose to find she had not come to bed herself. When he walked into their living space, he was surprised to find it empty. He looked around for a sign from his wife, something to indicate where she might have gone.

Eurydice had been taught her letters by her father long ago, but she rarely used them. So it was several moments before Creon noticed the wax tablet on the table. It belonged to Haemon, who used it in his lessons at the palace. Sophon must have let him bring it home to practise scratching onto the wax without pushing through and damaging the wood beneath. It was a challenge for a childish hand. Even when he saw the tablet, he didn’t notice the writing at first, assuming the ill-formed letters must be Haemon’s. Only when he had looked everywhere else and found no hint of Eurydice’s whereabouts did he look at the tablet more closely.

‘I have a headache and the thirst,’ she had written. ‘Look after him.’