The Children of Jocasta

Jocasta had never been able to understand how time moved so much more quickly as the years progressed. Looking back at her earliest years in the palace, she remembered the leaden weight of time, crushing her beneath its crawling pace, the hours which stretched into days, the days which expanded to fill months. But once the children were born, whole seasons seemed to pass before she had even noticed they had begun. The apples fell from the small tree in the shady northern corner of the courtyard, and she would dimly wonder when the pink-edged white flowers had bloomed and how she had managed to miss them. As she tried to cling to days that slipped through her grasp, she sometimes wished for the terrible days of the past, which dragged themselves out in front of her like a waterless desert she was forced to cross before she might sleep and repeat the whole tortuous process again the next day.

And this year, she would have given a great deal to be able to postpone summer forever. If she could only stop time at the start of spring, when the days were beginning to grow warmer, but the real heat was still months away. Thebes had limped from a devastated autumn into an unusually cold winter, but no one complained as the sharp north wind whistled through the gaps around windows and doors. Instead, people wrapped up in layers of clothes and shared blankets during the long winter nights. They congratulated one another on tolerating the cold so hardily. Everyone knew the Reckoning thrived in the heat. It had only ever visited the city in the summer, like a malevolent migrating bird. In the winter, it curled up, disappeared, shed its power like an old skin. Everyone was brave when their predator was gone. And, people whispered excitedly as they huddled around stoves and tightened their woollen robes around their thickest tunics, if it was cold enough for long enough, perhaps the disease would be wiped out altogether.

The hope that the plague might be exterminated by the snow – which was still falling three months after the shortest day of the year – was one which even Jocasta fell prey to. But when she asked Sophon for his medical opinion, he shook his head. He did not believe the plague was gone; it was more likely that it was only biding its time, waiting to unfurl its wings in the warm summer days. So Jocasta watched the trees change, from black to white as the blossom covered their canopies; from white to crimson, as the new buds were revealed, tightly wrapped against the branches; and from crimson to green, as the leaves unfolded and the fruit began to grow. And with each arriving day, the weight of foreboding which she carried around with her increased.

Gradually, the rains eased off, and the days grew hotter, more cloudless. By the time the long grasses swaying on the hillside behind the palace had yellowed in the dry heat, the diagnosis was undeniable: the Reckoning had returned. Word spread through the city more quickly than the plague itself, and once again, people stood in the streets in the heat of the sun, and prayed to the gods that their children would be overlooked again this time. They hastened to the temples and begged Apollo, the Archer, to shoot his arrows elsewhere, at other cities, other districts, other families. They poured wine and sacrificed kid-goats and new-born calves in the hope that this bloodshed might be enough to sate the Archer’s greed. And then some withdrew, locked their doors and hoped that the strategy which had saved them last year would work a second time. Others were more angry than afraid because they knew no preventative measures could save them, not while the city harboured a king and queen who lived in a lawless, godless union. There was no point praying that the Reckoning would brush past your home and leave your family untouched. The city’s only hope lay in purging itself of the pollution it contained. Only then would the god cease his punishment.

Jocasta did not want to shut the palace gates again this year, if there was any way she could avoid it. She placated Oedipus by closing off the family courtyard first, and keeping the children and their nurse safe behind locked doors. She and Oedipus moved around the palace as usual, but visitors were never permitted to approach too closely. They didn’t approach each other too closely either. Eventually, though, Jocasta had no choice. A messenger from Sophon told her that the disease was more powerful this year: although he did not consider it to be more contagious, it was killing a larger proportion of those it infected. She wavered then about shutting the gates, but allowed herself a little more time to make the decision.

In the end, it wasn’t because of the plague that they had to shut the palace gates. It was because of the crowd.

It must have begun to form at night, because the gates were always closed at dusk. But one morning, the guards went to open up the main courtyard, yawning as they went because everyone struggled to sleep when the nights were so short and so hot. They found a small crowd pressed up against the gates, who began jeering and booing as soon as they caught sight of the men inside. Irritated by this rudeness, the guards responded with obstinacy, and left the gates locked. By the time Jocasta awoke, the watch commander had sent a message with one of the slave boys to say he was waiting to speak to her in the royal courtyard.

‘Highness,’ said the watch commander, bowing low. ‘There is a crowd of people outside, and they are angry. I have said that the gates must be left closed until I countermand the order.’

‘Do you know why the crowd is so angry?’ she asked. His expression told her too much. ‘Why today, in particular?’ she clarified. He thought for a moment.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But if you want my advice?’ He paused to check that she did, and she nodded. ‘Don’t open the gates,’ he said. ‘They’re troublemakers.’

‘Is that your professional opinion?’ she asked him, trying to smile.

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘And what do you think they’ll do if they can’t come in and petition their queen?’ she asked.

‘Give up,’ he said. ‘And go home. Some of them are drunk, madam, and that makes men behave in foolish ways. One idiot says they should march up to the palace and air their grievances, as though they couldn’t do that during daylight hours. They arrive in the night like criminals, hammering on the gates as though they had any right to enter. They’re nothing more than a noisy rabble, desperate to cause a nuisance. Give them the satisfaction and it’ll only mean they resort to such behaviour more quickly next time.’

Jocasta nodded. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I’ll be guided by you. Leave the gates closed today and we’ll open them again tomorrow.’

But when the guards looked out from their gatehouse the next morning, the crowd had doubled.

Jocasta did not want to disregard the advice of the watch commander. But, at the same time, she had lived for years feeling besieged in her own home. She refused to do so again. When she asked Oedipus for his opinion, he seemed unconcerned. Leave things till tomorrow, he yawned. We’re all safe inside. So she took the advice of her guards, and left the palace closed for another day.

But on the third morning, the crowd had thickened again, and she decided she must speak to them, to find out what they wanted and why they wouldn’t leave. She no longer agreed with the watch commander, that they would go home when they were bored. She found Oedipus idling in the courtyard, and asked him if he would come with her.

‘Why? Do you think they want to see me?’ he asked, his eyes half-closed against the sun.

‘I don’t know what they want,’ she said, and the anxiety in her voice forced him to look up.

‘You’re afraid,’ he said. She nodded. ‘Afraid of people outside the gates?’ he asked. She nodded again.

‘The watch commander says there must be a hundred of them,’ she said. ‘More even.’

‘You have the palace guards on your side,’ he reminded her.

‘Please,’ she said, and reached out her hand to him.

Oedipus stood up and walked across the square hand-in-hand with his wife. ‘I don’t know what you think I’ll be able to say that you can’t,’ he said, as they crossed into the second courtyard. Jocasta stopped when they reached the colonnade which connected it to the main square. She looked at Oedipus to be sure that he had heard it too: a buzzing sound from the front of the palace, indicative of far more than a hundred people. She nodded to the guards who walked out ahead of her. There was a slew of abusive shouts from outside the gates, but the guards did not react. They had always been so loyal to her, Jocasta thought, and she could feel tears prickling her eyes. She breathed through her mouth, hoping to control herself. She reached for her husband’s hand, and he squeezed hers. But she didn’t know if he was taking comfort or offering it. ‘Wait for me here,’ she said. ‘I should talk to them alone, I think.’

‘Are you sure?’ he said. She nodded, and walked through the archway and into the public square.

The wall of sound was deafening. Jeering, baying, screaming at her. She couldn’t even make out the words, almost any of them. She heard one high-pitched voice, screaming ‘Whore’, which carried over the melee. Jocasta walked slowly, calmly to a point in front of the locked gates, which people were thumping and kicking as they shouted. The gates barely moved in their sockets, and she took comfort in that. Her home was solid, even in the face of all these people. She did not speak, but simply stood waiting for them to stop. How had her city turned against her so entirely? Was this why Laius was so keen to travel? Did he know that Thebes turned on you, in the end? For the first time in her life, she wished she could ask her first husband a question. Gradually, the crowd subsided to a low malevolence.

‘Thebans,’ Jocasta said, refusing to shout. There was a sudden cacophony of hushing, as those who couldn’t quite hear tried to silence those who were too far away to hear at all. ‘You are gathered outside my gates and you are angry. I know the Reckoning has returned to our city. Perhaps you think I don’t care. But I assure you, I am doing all I can.’

‘Liar,’ screamed someone, and it was repeated with approval. Jocasta felt the colour suffusing her cheeks.

‘You may shout if you wish,’ she said. ‘But it will not change the facts. Doctors are working across the city: I have arranged it.’

‘Lies,’ shrieked another voice, but this one was quickly hushed.

‘You may ask them,’ Jocasta continued. ‘They will tell you that I have paid them in advance to see any patient who needs their help. They will treat you and your loved ones, expecting no payment from you. Ask them. They have no reason to lie.’ There was a shuffling among the crowd.

‘Where has it come from then?’ shouted one woman. Jocasta looked across at her: a small, shabbily dressed girl with matted brown hair straggling to her shoulders and a baby balanced on one hip. The girl wore a brown tunic with its many holes patched in a pale grey fabric, clumsily made stitching holding each repair in place. The majority of this crowd wasn’t vicious, Jocasta decided. Just scared. And she knew what it meant to be scared.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, looking directly at the girl who had asked her the question. ‘The doctors don’t know either. But if you go back to your homes, and try to stay indoors for a few days, that will help to control the spread of it. Thebes will be rid of it more quickly if you heed my advice.’

‘Is that why you’ve shut your gates?’ sneered a man wearing a battered straw hat to protect him against the sun.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It isn’t safe for large numbers of people to congregate at the moment. That’s why I’m asking you to go home. The disease thrives in conditions like this: hot weather, lots of people crowded together. I have closed the gates to try and keep us all safe.’ The sneering man spat on the ground and Jocasta stiffened. ‘The disease may well travel through bodily fluids,’ she added, and had the spiteful satisfaction of seeing the people standing closest to him shudder away. ‘I will order my gates to be reopened when it’s safe again,’ she said.

‘It will never be safe,’ a woman screamed. ‘We’re being punished.’ The crowd surged forward and smashed into the gates again. Jocasta watched one man’s head crack into an iron strut, and an angry red weal flowered on his forehead. Those at the front were in danger of being crushed.

‘Punished?’ she asked. ‘For what?’

‘For you,’ someone yelled. ‘For your relationship with him.’

Jocasta had almost forgotten Oedipus was listening in the shadows, though the crowd couldn’t know he was there. ‘Oedipus is my husband,’ she said. ‘Why would you think that deserves punishment?’

‘He’s your son,’ came a voice from the middle of the crowd and across almost eleven years. Jocasta couldn’t place it: was it her mother? It couldn’t be: her mother had died years earlier. She looked hard at the direction the voice had come from, but she recognized no one in the sea of sun-browned faces and spittle-flecked teeth. ‘My sons are in the palace,’ she said. ‘They are just ten and eight years old. Your accusation is a vicious slander.’

‘Not those sons,’ replied the voice. ‘Your first son. You know the one I mean.’

‘Who is that?’ Jocasta said. ‘I can’t see you.’

The crowd separated to reveal an ancient woman whose spine had curved so completely that she was bent almost double. She leaned on a wooden stick disfigured by teeth-marks, as though she had been attacked many times by dogs. She wore ragged clothes so filthy that they could have been any colour before they were covered in grease and dirt. Her face was like a walnut, dark and wrinkled.

‘Your first son,’ the old woman repeated. Jocasta shook her head, trying to shake off the sensation that she was watching a conjuring trick. The voice of someone she knew, coming from a face she had never seen. The woman had almost no teeth, Jocasta noticed, just a few blackened stumps. A dirty stole covered the woman’s head, and a few thin strands of white hair protruded from beneath it. ‘You remember,’ the woman said.

Jocasta felt the world shift, as though she had lost her footing and was falling sideways towards the ground. But she remained on her feet.

‘You,’ she said. ‘My first child was stillborn. You would know that. You were there.’

Teresa’s face split into a toxic smile. ‘He wasn’t stillborn,’ she said. ‘I just told you that, because I couldn’t let you keep him. I couldn’t keep my sons, so why should you be any different?’

‘What?’ Jocasta said. ‘What are you saying to me?’ The crowd was split between those who could hear her conversation with Teresa and those who had begun to peel away, persuaded by Jocasta’s advice to go home. But a few people were moving closer, keen to hear what the old woman knew.

‘King Laius revered the gods,’ Teresa said. How she relished her audience, this once-powerful old woman who had become invisible. Her voice was growing louder, clearer with each syllable. ‘He attended the Oracle, and consulted with the priests. They told him that he would one day be killed by his own son.’

‘Oracles do not always speak the truth,’ Jocasta said, her voice cracking on the final word. ‘They’re just words, interpreted by people like you, to say what you want them to say. They predict nothing, guarantee nothing. Laius died from a fall, after being injured by one of the Sphinx: he wasn’t murdered by anyone.’

‘You didn’t always feel that way, my dear,’ said Teresa, her blackened bottom tooth catching her top lip.

Jocasta felt the shame shroud her in heat. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I used to believe every word that came to me from the Oracle, when I was lonely and afraid. Now I know better, because no poisonous old woman is trying to distort everything which happens for her own cruel purposes. Now I understand that Oracles give messages we aren’t supposed to understand: the gods do not offer their wisdom in predictions, like soothsayers or magicians. I believed you to be long dead, but here you are, still trying to upset me by making up lies about my dead child. I would have thought that was beneath even you.’

She nodded to the guards, who had been standing by the main gates, in case Jocasta needed them.

The watch commander nodded back. They would arrest the old woman immediately. He murmured to his colleagues, and twenty men soon stood ready.

‘They’re not lies, not now,’ Teresa said. ‘Everything I’m saying is true.’

The crowd looked between the two women, the queen and the crone, unsure who to believe.

‘You have always lied to me. But my son died,’ Jocasta said. ‘Arrest her.’

The crowd retreated from the gates, not wanting to miss what happened next, but not wanting to be caught up in the arrests either. Thebes had always been a martial city under the old king. They had little choice: the first visit from the Reckoning had made Hellas a lawless country for many years. But under the queen, the city had lost some of its hardness. She had kept the guards from exercising too much power. Nonetheless, when faced with a troop of heavily armed men, the citizens were nervous and they began to dissipate.

Teresa shrieked as the men carried her off, spears pointed outwards so no one could interfere with their progress.

‘Horrible lying old witch,’ Jocasta said, to no one. And she walked towards the gates to watch Teresa disappear from view. Only a few people remained outside now, including the shabby girl who had spoken before, whose baby was now crawling on the ground behind her.

The girl looked at her in disgust. ‘So you say. But what’s your explanation for the plague, then? You tell us the beggar-woman’s lying, but why are the gods punishing our city, if it’s not because we harbour criminals in you and your husband-son? Why?’

Jocasta looked at the girl who was sweating in the heat, blotches on her neck and shoulders. She felt only pity. The child was not yet twenty, and afraid for her baby.

‘I can’t answer that,’ she said. ‘No one knows where the plague came from all those years ago, and no one knows now. It is not unique to our city. It is happening across Hellas.’

‘It’s easy for you to say that,’ the girl replied. ‘Safe in your palace, knowing you’ll live to see your children grow up.’ And with that, she spat at Jocasta, the saliva landing thick and warm on the queen’s cheek, dribbling down onto her upper lip. It was so unexpected that Jocasta flinched as if she had been slapped. She raised her hand to her mouth and wiped away the phlegm with her sleeve. The watch commander raised a hand, but she shook her head and walked away from the gates, back into the palace. What would it achieve, arresting a frightened girl?