The Children of Jocasta

I now felt uncomfortable only when I reached upwards, though I still couldn’t twist my body: if someone called my name, I would feel a stiffness under my ribs as I tried to turn. Even moving my neck pulled out echoes of leftover pain below. But the stitches were gone, leaving me with a puckered red triangle beneath my ribcage. I stood in the sunlight beneath the high windows of my bedroom, and raised my arms to shoulder height. Ani ran her fingers across the scar, and said doubtfully that it would probably fade over time, and that no one but me would ever see it anyway. I didn’t tell her that I liked it: I was drawn to its symmetry and the way it marked me out as someone who didn’t die when they were supposed to. It was like the tattoos of an Amazon warrior, the mark of the victor. But I was alone in perceiving it that way. Only when the stitches were gone did everyone stop behaving as though I were a breakable object. I saw myself as bronze while my family viewed me as a delicate piece of terracotta which had already broken once and been carefully glued back together. It was hard to feel like myself again until everyone stopped treating me like someone else.

I had begun to think about composing my history, and decided it would be best to begin the story with what was happening now. In a few days, Eteo would be giving up the kingship to Polyn. It was a huge occasion every year, when Thebes gave thanks to her ruling family for providing the city with not one, but two kings. Thebes, Sophon says, is an anxious city: she always fears for her future. It is the only place I’ve ever lived, so I don’t know if things are different in other cities. And it seemed reasonable to me to fear for the future of Thebes, but that was because her kings were also my brothers, so my fate was woven into the city’s well-being.

The dual kingship was my history as well as my future. My mother was queen of Thebes for many years. When she had two sons, and then two daughters, everyone has always said the city gave a sigh of relief. The ruling family was in place for another generation. It was only when I came to think about this for my history that I realized it was strange that Polyn had not yet married. He was almost twenty; it was more than time. He and my uncle must be considering potential brides. Perhaps they were waiting until Polyn was king again to give the city a royal wedding she would enjoy: a formal ceremony with a grand sacrifice, a feast and songs through the night and into the next day. And then Eteo would marry the following year, and he would never be here again, splashing in the fountain with me in the warm summer evenings. He would be with someone else, a stranger I might not even like. And then there were further consequences to us having dual kings: whose son would take precedence? Polyn’s, because he was older? Or Eteo’s if he was king when his son was born?

I had set myself the task of writing about the past, but it seemed I could only think about the future.

Eteo had asked us all to stay inside the palace grounds until my attacker was caught. Polyn scoffed at the idea that he should modify his behaviour for any reason. Ani went wherever Haem was, wherever they could meet in private. So although we were all supposed to be in the same place, the family quarters were deserted except for the increased number of guards and slaves. I understood why Eteo was worried, but I was growing bored of being stuck here on my own. I found myself peeking through the gaps in the outer walls, trying to imagine myself on the hillside, sitting beneath the shady pine trees that dappled its lower slopes. Or, looking out the other way, I could just make out the edges of Lake Hylica from the east wall. I could see children diving in, their muscled bodies like dolphins against the glinting water.

How I envied them. But I couldn’t sneak out to join them, even if I hadn’t made a promise to my brother to stay in the palace. Sophon would never forgive me if I swam with a still-healing wound. And though he was right to tell me I had to keep it dry and clean, I wanted to feel the weeds beneath my feet and the cool water on my skin. It was so hot in the palace: dipping my toes in the fountain made little difference. The water was too shallow, and it soon grew warm in the afternoons. Besides, I wanted to see the kingfishers and frogs, hear the insects buzzing around me. I wanted to watch the water-skaters dancing across the surface as they tried to escape my splashing arms.

And on top of the boredom was the strange atmosphere in the palace. Usually, we marked the changing of the kings with celebrations. Preparations took several weeks, as the public square was decorated and a calf was sacrificed every day in the temples. The priests burned incense to the gods and the whole city participated. But something was different this time. Instead of a sense of excitement for renewal, Thebes was like a snake sloughing off its old skin too soon, and crawling – still soft and vulnerable – into the light. We were fearful rather than exuberant. Nothing was safe.

Even my uncle, who was usually so calm, had been touched by disquiet. The day before, he had had a statue delivered for his rooms, which were across the courtyard from ours. He had decided to redecorate his quarters, as part of the new year celebrations. It was the second delivery of this likeness, because when it first arrived, it was a rather nondescript representation of him: plain, almost austere. Even the stone looked to be of lower quality than the other statues in the palace. The marble was veiny and held a strange pinkish colour. Creon was disappointed with the piece, even more so when Haem snorted at the likeness.

My uncle had obviously expected something more impressive. So the sculptor was commissioned to improve upon the original before bringing it back. The man painted detail into the clothes and hair – applying a handsome pattern of interlocked blue squares around the hem and neckline of the reddened tunic – which had left the face strangely bare in comparison. Creon still felt the statue failed to reflect his status, as well as his appearance. So the sculptor agreed to make further improvements on site rather than carting the statue back to his workshop a second time. He decided to replace the blandly painted eyes with ones made from lapis, which is extremely prized in our city and all across Hellas. He must surely have believed that my uncle could find nothing to complain about then.

The sculptor could not find two pieces of the bright blue stone which were large enough to use in their entirety, so he smashed several smaller stones onto a palate covered with adhesive paste to create a glittering blue that he could paint over the irises. He stood on a ladder – the statue was slightly larger than life-size – and coated the dead stone eyes of my uncle’s likeness with a layer of sparkling blue dust. When he came down the ladder and looked up at his work, he wasn’t quite satisfied with the symmetry of the result. He climbed back up and pulled a chisel from his belt, to tidy the right eye which offended him. At this precise moment, Creon walked in from the courtyard, and saw the sculptor jamming a metal shaft into the statue’s eye. My uncle – who never shows weakness or fear – gave a horrible cry and ran out of his rooms, out of the courtyard altogether. Palace guards came running from the second square when they heard the awful sound and marched the offending craftsman away.

The statue was removed, but no one knew where. Sophon has asked around but even he cannot find out what happened to the sculptor.

*

And then one day, they found my assassin. My would-be assassin. When everyone called him a killer, they seemed to have forgotten I didn’t die. He was one of the new young recruits for the palace guard. Sixteen years old, the same age as Ani. The recruits live in dormitories, with twenty boys to each room, in the barracks down the hill from the market square in front of the palace. Their training-grounds and gymnasium are all part of the same complex. They are taught to defend the king, his family, and each other, in that order. They spend many days learning drills and practising with their weapons. They start with wooden swords, just like my brothers did when they were first taught to fight. Only when they have proved they won’t injure themselves or their comrades are they given the heavy bronze swords they have earned. It is a source of enormous pride to be the first boy to graduate from his practice-weapon to a real one and a corresponding shame to be the last.

The evidence was easily found: this boy had not progressed yet to the bronze. He was still practising every day with wooden sticks. Yet he had a knife, a real one, stashed beneath his blanket which he had folded to use as an extra pillow on his pallet. The blood – my blood – was still visible on the blade, a dark rusty coating which he should have known to wipe off.

He was marched up the hill to stand before the king and explain himself. The rumour raced around the palace more quickly than the guards could drag him through to the main square, where cases of treason are heard. Thebes’s traders were hard at work in the agora in front of the palace, so the guards lost time going around the outside. If not, I wouldn’t have been able to squeeze my way through the crowds which had formed when my brother and his advisers strode out into the main square to sit as judges. I knew if Eteo saw me, he would be angry that I had ignored his request to stay in the secluded part of the palace. But surely he would understand that I had to see the man who had tried to kill me. If I didn’t, I would forever be plagued by the nightmare vision of a masked man. I needed to see the face which had worn the mask.

The crowd were jeering and shouting so loudly I could scarcely hear what was being said. The accused boy had the same difficulty. He was too frightened to speak until he was punched hard, once in the ribs and once in the side of the head, by one of his erstwhile trainers. Eteo sat in front of him – his advisers on both sides, my uncle in the most prestigious place to his left – and asked the boy to explain himself. The boy could not. He had never seen the knife before, he didn’t put it there, he didn’t know who had, it hadn’t been there last night or this morning, he hadn’t ever been to the palace, he would never hurt a member of the royal family. He wept as he gave his answers. Perhaps he was younger than Ani after all.

My uncle leaned over to advise my brother, and the men huddled together for a moment. Eteo nodded and turned to the boy. The crowd fell quiet.

‘Thebes finds you guilty,’ said my brother in a stranger’s voice. ‘The sentence is death.’

There was a scream but it didn’t come from the boy. It came from a woman in the crowd. She was his mother, I suppose. Her cries were quickly hushed by her neighbours.

I didn’t see the boy’s face until the guards turned to march him away. I had pushed myself around the edge of the crowd to catch sight of him, and I knew from a glance that they had the wrong man. He was nowhere near tall enough, he must have been a hand’s width shorter than me. The man who attacked me had been my height, and his eyes were grey. This boy had brown eyes, like a calf about to be slaughtered by a priest.

I pushed my way through to the front and shouted to Eteo.

‘I need to speak to you,’ I called. Annoyance and worry flashed across his face, one after the other. But he knew why I had come.

‘I’m not glad to see you, Isy,’ he said, stepping down from the wooden platform so he could hear me. ‘I wish you’d stay inside, where you’re safe.’ I watched him realize the folly of his words. The palace was the place where I had been least safe.

‘It isn’t him,’ I said. ‘He’s not the one.’

Eteo looked at me so sadly that I wanted to reach over and hold him. ‘I know, Isy. But there’s nothing I can do.’

‘You can’t mean that. He’s innocent. You’re sending an innocent boy to his death.’

‘It’s him or me, Isy. Not just me, us.’

‘The man who did it is still out there. Out here.’ I waved my arm at the dispersing crowd. They had seen executions before, but many of them were still wandering out of the courtyard towards the barracks where the boy would be killed: strangled, probably, or bludgeoned by his former comrades.

‘I know,’ my brother said. ‘Stay beside me until we’re in the second courtyard. The guards will escort us back inside. You have to trust me. It’s better this way.’