The Children of Jocasta

Jocasta had been in the palace for almost a month now, and the king had yet to return. She often woke in the night, disturbed sometimes by random noises of a large household but more often by the sense that someone was nearby, wishing her ill. She had no proof that this was so, but she knew it to be true. Her bedroom door had a lock, but no key. Or if there was a key, she did not have it. So many doors in the palace were locked to her, but not even in sleep could she close herself off from anyone who wanted to walk in. She had asked Teresa about the absent key, but Teresa had blinked slowly, and said she wasn’t sure she had ever seen it. It was at this moment, when Jocasta thought she would reach out and slap the woman right across the face, when she wondered if she might be pregnant. She didn’t know what made her think of it.

Oran still visited her every night. He took his duty seriously. And although she knew he didn’t need to, he tried to make her happy. He told her she was pretty and that he liked the way her hair – released from its daily plaits – flowed across the pillows, like seaweed on the lakeshore. He had tried never to hurt her, and if she expressed any pain, he stopped. But still she stared into the darkness when she wanted to fall asleep: this was the boy she had believed her only friend and ally in the palace, and he too chose to obey the king’s perverse whims.

Her days were less terrible than her nights, though the sleeplessness left her blurry and exhausted. She liked to walk around the agora with her slave girl and look at all the stalls and the people who came to buy. If she had married anyone else, this would have been her daily routine: carrying a basket to fill with fresh onions and lettuces, cheeses and bread. But she had no such responsibility. The palace was managed entirely by Teresa and their food was managed by the cooks. So Jocasta wandered the market aimlessly, stopping to look at whatever she pleased. She chose dresses in pale colours, knowing she would never have to worry about keeping them unmarked: whoever was in charge of the laundry was someone she would never meet. And if a dress was damaged, she could pick something else in a different shade, perhaps this time with serried lines of contrasting embroidery around the neckline and shoulders. The stall-holders soon recognized her, and kept aside their best cloth for her. Though she liked the market, she wished that the palace was not quite so high in the city. It meant there was only ever one road she could take, and that was down and into the bustling streets, when she would sometimes have preferred to go somewhere quiet. Not contained, tamed quiet: she had quite enough of that in the palace. But she would have liked to visit the lake or wander out past the city graveyard onto the hillsides, and hear the goats and sheep bleating as they grazed. She would have enjoyed walking around the hill beneath the back of the palace, but she had not yet found an exit from the palace into the wasteland outside the city walls. She wondered what would happen if she announced to Teresa that she wanted to visit her husband in the mountains. But she didn’t wonder for very long.

One morning she planned to go to the market as usual, but when she woke, she felt feverish. Her room was cool, but her hair was pressed damp against her scalp and the sheets were sticking to her back. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and realized she was also queasy. She refused breakfast, in the hope that the nausea would pass. She sat for a while in the shade, too uncomfortable for the bright sun. She ate only an apple for lunch, and noted Teresa’s beady pleasure in her sickness. Of course Teresa knew about Oran. Jocasta had no doubt that the whole thing had been the sly housekeeper’s idea.

Eventually, she decided that she would go out in spite of the shakiness which radiated from her belly to her feet. She summoned her slave and insisted they go to the market now, even though it was the hottest part of the day. The girl said nothing, but picked up her basket and followed her mistress through the courtyards. With every step, Jocasta knew she was making a terrible mistake. The sickness threatened to overwhelm her. But she could not lose face in front of this girl, in front of the palace. She put one brittle foot in front of the other, and wished that she had a parasol. She decided she would search for one among the stalls.

She didn’t recall seeing parasols in the market before, but then, she hadn’t been looking for one, and sometimes these things slipped past the eyes of the uninterested. Perhaps she had half a memory of a vendor of curved sunhats, made from elaborately woven straw. That might do. She took a different route through the square, hoping to notice them again. But although she wanted to give the stalls her full attention, she soon realized she needed to concentrate on her feet, kicking their way through the sandy dust beneath her sandals. She felt a small piece of grit wedge itself between her foot and her shoe, and the pain was as intense as if someone had driven a sharp metal blade into her heel. She grabbed at the foot, and fell heavily onto her knees. The maid stood behind her, useless.

A dark-haired man, greying at the temples, rushed out from behind piles of papyrus, and reached down to help her up.

‘Fetch me my stool,’ he cried, and another stall-holder brought the man’s folding wooden seat out into the aisle behind her.

‘Here,’ said the man, and lifted her onto the seat. ‘Try to take deep breaths. You—’ he barked at the slave girl. ‘Fetch water, now.’ The girl ran off.

‘Is she entirely hopeless?’ he asked Jocasta. ‘Or does she do what she’s asked?’

Jocasta thought for a moment. ‘She usually does what she’s asked,’ she replied. ‘Though she might have been quicker if we’d told her where to get the water from.’

The man pursed his lips and glanced across at the stall-holder – a middle-aged woman with stringy nut-brown arms – and asked a wordless question. She produced a flask and poured water into a small wooden cup which she held out to the old man, who took it and brought it to Jocasta’s lips. He tipped it carefully towards her mouth, and she felt its coolness wash into her.

‘Thank you,’ she said, to him and the woman who had given her water away.

He looked at her, lips still pursed. ‘You’ll be well again shortly,’ he said. ‘But you need to rest. How far did you walk to get here?’

‘From inside.’ She waved at the palace behind them.

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you back there in a few minutes.’

She sat watching dully as he engaged the woman at the next stall to keep an eye on his papers and scrolls. He picked up an old leather bag which he swung over his shoulders, and offered her his arm. She smiled at the kindness, in spite of the sweat she could feel crawling over her scalp.

‘Thank you.’ She took his arm and they walked slowly back to the palace. They were entering the front gates when they almost walked into the slave girl, who was carrying a small kylix of water, most of which she had already spilled.

Teresa caught sight of them as Jocasta entered the third courtyard. She hurried over, frowning.

‘What’s going on?’ She pointed at the stall-holder. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Are you her mother?’ asked the man.

‘I – no.’ Teresa wasn’t used to being questioned, Jocasta saw. And certainly not by someone who wasn’t afraid of her.

‘She needs rest. She shouldn’t be on her feet, especially in the afternoon heat. Where can she lie down?’

Teresa was torn between telling him to leave, and wanting his help to move Jocasta into her room. Need won out, and she took Jocasta’s right arm while the man continued to support her left. Together they walked to her room, and led her to bed. The papyrus-seller reached behind her, rearranging her pillows with one efficient hand.

‘Take off her shoes,’ he told Teresa, who obeyed him in silence. He helped Jocasta to sit back on the bed, and placed more cushions beneath her legs.

‘I’ll check back on you tomorrow,’ said the bookseller, once he was satisfied. ‘Until then, don’t go further than you have to.’

‘Thank you,’ Jocasta said.

‘You’re comfortable?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘Good. Tomorrow, then.’ He strode off, walking far more quickly now. Teresa shot a baleful glance at Jocasta, and hastened after him.

By the time the king heard this story, on his return from the mountains, Jocasta had no doubt that it would have been Teresa’s idea to find a doctor to keep an eye on her. As her pregnancy became more visible, so did the king. But she never saw him alone, and he barely spoke to her, even when others were present. Every man in the palace would toast her and Laius, and wish health to his heir. ‘A son!’ Jocasta grew weary of hearing. She secretly wished for a daughter, just to serve them right. The king looked no more enthusiastic at the prospect of a son than she felt, though he never spoke about it to his wife. ‘So long as the child is healthy,’ he would announce to whoever asked, trying to avert the evil eye. ‘I wouldn’t mind at all being the father of a daughter.’

She almost preferred it when he ignored her, or went back to the mountains, because the alternative provoked a black-eyed, wrathful stare from Teresa, who resented any time he spent with his bride at all. Jocasta tried to puzzle it out, but could not: if the housekeeper was so devoted to Laius, who had no interest in Jocasta, why had Teresa not married him herself? She could have had children once: no one was born old. So why had she not done so, instead of embroiling Jocasta in the whole hateful deceit?

At least Jocasta had found Sophon, the man who ran the papyrus stall. He had been a doctor for several years, before deciding to indulge in his primary pleasure of reading and dealing in manuscripts. But he was happy to have one more patient: he began to visit Jocasta, checking up on her, answering her questions about the dizziness and the sickness. He brought herbs which quelled the latter and advised rest to battle the former. As the weeks dragged by, and her body felt more treacherous with each day, she asked him if he would be there when she gave birth.

‘Of course I will be nearby,’ he replied. ‘But you know a midwife will attend you. You need someone who has been through it herself.’ Jocasta asked Teresa if she would find someone, and the housekeeper nodded.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s all in hand.’

*

After seven months of persistent, sometimes crippling nausea, Jocasta was desperate to be rid of this parasitic child which persecuted her from within. She was not precisely sure when she had conceived it, but she knew it must be due some time in the next few weeks. She was terrified of what was to come. She was barely sixteen years old, slightly built, and afraid her body would soon be split in two by an infant who cared nothing for damaging her, but whose only determination was to be born. She wanted to ask Sophon the one question she could not: was it rational to hate a part of your own body? And what if it wanted you dead? For the last time in her life, she wondered if it was too late to send a message to her mother. But she could not bring herself to do so. News of her pregnancy must have spread across Thebes by now. And yet she had not heard a word from her family. She lay on her bed, propped up by cushions, wishing the whole thing was over. And then, of course, it was.

The pain was indescribable, and more than once she found herself pledging every possible offering to the divine Eileithyia if it would abate. When she understood that it would not stop until the baby was out or she was dead, she screamed into the uncaring air that she would give anything, everything she had if the goddess would ease her pain. She reflected, between the worst pains of contraction, that this particular goddess – a daughter of a vengeful mother – should be her ally, above all others. But still the child of Hera did not come to her assistance.

She asked and asked for Sophon, but no one could find him, or even guess at where he might have gone. Jocasta was so upset that one of the palace guards brought in the woman who looked after the stall next to Sophon’s. She said he had received a message from home yesterday which required an immediate response, and he had yet to return. Looking over at Jocasta – who was red-faced and gasping for air, her hands clawing at the sheets she was lying on – she asked if she might be excused, and ran from the room. A dead mother was a bad omen. So in the end, it was just Jocasta and Teresa, as the housekeeper must have always intended it would be.

Teresa was solicitous, pushing Jocasta’s hair out of her eyes and behind her ears, murmuring that all would be well. Jocasta soon lost track of time: she wasn’t sure if she had been struggling for hours or days, and Teresa would not tell her. Shutters were drawn across the windows and she found herself dozing in the half-light, waking up anguished and confused. In the whole awful process, it never once occurred to her that anything could be worse than the pain. And then eventually, after time had slowed or perhaps stopped, after she had pushed and struggled and panted and wept, she made one final impossible effort and heard Teresa exhale loudly as the pain receded a little.

‘Is it a boy?’ Jocasta asked. In a single moment, she found she no longer hated the parasite which was trying to kill her. She had a baby, and she wanted nothing more than to hold it in her arms and keep it safe. She had survived the birth. She had lived to be a mother.

Teresa replied that yes, it was indeed a boy, and Jocasta was so happy that she didn’t notice Teresa’s expression or hear the warning tone in her voice. Jocasta knew Teresa had little time for her. But she had never seen a look of pity on the woman’s face until now.

‘Give him to me,’ Jocasta begged. There was something purple in the woman’s hands, like offal at a sacrifice. Where was her son? And why didn’t he make a sound? Babies cried, didn’t they?

Teresa turned away from her, and walked out of the room.

‘Give him to me,’ she shouted, though her lungs ached and her throat was scratched raw. She tried to get up and follow Teresa, grab her baby and hold him tight. But her legs wouldn’t support her, and she simply lay there for what felt like forever. When Teresa returned, she was holding nothing. She looked at Jocasta and shook her head.

‘He wouldn’t have let you keep a boy, even if the child had survived. Do you understand?’

Jocasta shook her head, wordless.

‘The king cannot have a son, only a daughter. There is a prophecy which said he would be killed by his son. He won’t allow that to happen. So I couldn’t allow it to happen either.’

Jocasta thought she must be hallucinating from the exhaustion. A prophecy? Was Teresa mad? It was one thing to pay reverence to the gods who controlled the affairs of men, but another thing entirely to believe that they gave out messages for the future. To their priests and most devout followers, perhaps, but to ordinary men? Even to kings? It was almost blasphemous to suggest it.

The rational part of her mind, if she could have reached it, knew that after the Reckoning, plenty of people had sought meaning in messages from the gods. They had preferred to see it not as a disaster, but as a warning, or something foretold. People wanted priests and fortune-tellers, entrail-readers and diviners to prove that they had seen it coming. Most of all, the survivors wanted to believe that they had been saved because of something, or perhaps for something. Blind chance was too frightening for anyone; who could feel safe if their survival was simply down to luck? And who could grieve for the crushing losses they had experienced, if none of it held any meaning?

‘The king believes in prophecies?’ She was clutching at sense.

‘Devoutly,’ Teresa nodded. ‘He refused to have a child, for years. Eventually, he was persuaded that he could have a daughter, because the prophecy said he would be killed by his son. I hoped you would have a girl, you see. Because I could only have sons and I couldn’t leave a third one on the hillside to die.’ Jocasta gazed at her, wondering if she was hearing the housekeeper’s dulled tones correctly. Had Teresa borne healthy sons and then exposed them on the mountain to avoid a prophecy? The woman must be quite mad.

‘I want to see my baby,’ said Jocasta.

‘He didn’t survive.’ Teresa looked at the floor. ‘He was too small, and the cord was wrapped around his neck. He went too long without air. It happens often.’

‘I need to see him.’

‘It wouldn’t help,’ Teresa said quietly. ‘Your doctor will be back tomorrow or the next day. He’ll say the same thing. There is nothing to be gained by holding a dead baby, and wishing life into it. Believe me.’

And with this, she walked out. Jocasta was too bloody and exhausted even to cry.