The Children of Jocasta

The races had finished, and we had all moved across the square to the palaestra, built by the palace slaves in recent days. It was not a formal structure, just a neat sand square with sides as long as the track was wide, enclosed by a simple wooden colonnade for the spectators to watch from the shade. There was a small area at the back of the ground for the wrestlers to change their clothes and rub white chalk onto their hands and feet, in readiness for the bouts. My brother Polyn was an excellent wrestler: he possessed the short, stocky build that made him virtually impossible to knock off balance. And he was wily too, which made him all but unbeatable (although Ani once asked him if his run of victories might have any connection to the fact that most of the aristoi would not wish to dishonour the past and future king by knocking him on his back. He didn’t speak to her for days).

An old man had just drawn a wide-toothed rake through the sand in neat lines, the semicircles where he turned back on himself still visible at the edges of the arena, so we knew the boys could fight safely. Although the raking had occurred while we were all over by the racetrack, so I didn’t know whether sharp objects had been left in the sand but had now been removed, or whether it had only been the running track that was sabotaged. I whispered this to Ani as we took our places in the stands, but she shrugged as though it didn’t matter.

I wished that Sophon were present: he no longer attended the coronations. He said the first five had delighted him sufficiently for one lifetime. Ceremonies and public festivals didn’t interest him. He preferred to stay in his study, protected from the brightest glare of the sun, reading his most recently acquired manuscripts. Yesterday, he received two new treatises on farming and the proper way to maintain olive groves. He has never owned an olive grove, but he said he enjoys imagining how he would tend to the trees he doesn’t have.

‘Which one will you read first?’ I asked him that morning.

‘Which one do you think, Isy?’ Sophon replied. He had always done that: answered a question with another one. He says it makes me measure my thinking. I say it makes every conversation take twice as long as it needs to, but I don’t mind very much.

‘I think you should read this one,’ I told him, holding up one of the papyri. ‘It seems to be full of advice on how to keep your barn in good repair.’

His rheumy eyes brightened at the thought, though he has never owned a barn either.

‘Very good advice, Isy. We would all do well to think about such things. You may read it as soon as I have finished with it.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’d rather read about fishing, though.’

‘Fishing?’ He leaned forward to make sure he had heard me correctly. ‘You want to go down to the lake and fish?’

My siblings and I used to do this when we were small: my father would take us. He loved Lake Hylica. He had grown up by the sea in Corinth, and it was the one thing he missed in Thebes, more than a hundred stades from the water. I barely remember going there with him, only flashes of silver scales and slippery white bellies, leaping and gasping on a rock by the side of the water. After he died, my siblings and I would go together each year in the first warm days of the spring. Creon never allowed us to go in the summer: he said it was not safe then, because of the Reckoning.

‘I haven’t been to the water since before,’ I said. Sophon knew before what. First I had been injured, then I had been healing, then I had been forbidden to leave the palace, and then the ceremonial days had begun. I was desperate to get away from the city for a day, to leave behind the sand and dust and the harsh sun. I needed to walk through the grass and watch the grasshoppers leaping across my path. I wanted to see the turquoise-tipped kingfishers which nested by the water, and the frogs which would leap out of the water onto the shore, ten at a time, if you arrived at the right moment. The trees by the lake offered a broken shade even in the hottest part of the day. Most of all, I wanted to feel water on my skin.

‘I think you prefer swimming like a fish to catching them.’ Sophon could hear my thoughts.

‘The day after the coronation,’ I said. ‘I’ll go then. Eteo will be free to come with me once the ceremony is completed.’

‘Yes,’ Sophon agreed. ‘I would guess that the day after he ceases to be the king is the longest day of your brother’s year.’

The coronation falls almost two full moons after midsummer, but I didn’t bother correcting him.

Even though Sophon would doubtless have responded to my questions about the metal traps concealed on the running track with more questions of his own, I would have preferred that to Ani’s indifference. She seemed not to have realized how badly Eteo might have been hurt, and how likely it was that he had been the intended target. Only my uncle, ordering the slaves to examine the sand themselves, shared my concern. Ani would have felt differently if it had been Haem who almost had his foot sliced open, I thought. But since our cousin was a wrestler, like Polyn, she showed almost no interest in the foot-races.

Wrestling bouts were enormously popular in Thebes. Sixteen boys would fight one another in the first round, the pairs chosen by lot. The eight winners would go on to fight one another, again chosen by lot. This would continue until there was one winner, who could wear the olive-wreath crown for the day, and the title of victor for the whole year. Polyn had a pile of these crowns – the leaves dried and curled so you could barely tell which plant they came from – stacked on top of one another in his quarters. But he would always fight for another.

The referee (one of the older palace guards, who had probably trained every boy in the competition at some point) produced an earthenware jar, into which each boy dropped a small wooden block which he had previously engraved with a rough symbol or picture. The referee shook the jar once all sixteen blocks were inside it, smiling as the spectators cheered the rhythmic sound. He reached into the mouth and pulled out the first two blocks.

Like the runners before them, the boys had already covered themselves in oil and red dust, and now they took their places in the centre of the palaestra. They stood a few feet apart: wrestlers cannot be close enough to touch one another before they begin. The referee reminded them of the rules – no gouging, no kicking, no biting – before announcing the start of the bout. The boys grappled with one another but it took no time at all before the taller of the two had been tripped onto his back three times: an automatic defeat.

Polyn’s bout was next, but he did not need to go as far as knocking over his opponent three times. He pushed the boy off balance then took his legs out from beneath him. Once the boy lay winded on the ground, Polyn leapt onto his back and grabbed him round the throat. The boy tapped the ground twice in quick succession: he conceded, and my brother had his three points.

I tried to stifle a yawn. It was hot and the day had already been long. But the pairings were well matched: all but the first two took time to play out. Gamblers were watching intently, trying to assess which boys were likely to be a safe bet in the next round. There was a tempting smell of onions coming from the other side of the marketplace: someone had begun frying herb pastries by the running track. I turned to see if the stall-holder had a tray he would be bringing over to the spectators soon, but a sudden shout drew my attention back to the palaestra. The first quarter-final was being contested, and the boy who had just been declared the winner had done so by grabbing the wrist of his fellow combatant and forcing back his fingers, until he cried out in pain. There was a lot of hissing from the audience, who believed this to be cheating. The referee shrugged and allowed it. But the boy facing us was nursing his hand in pain: one of the fingers was sticking up at a horrible angle, clearly snapped. As his taller opponent advanced on him, the boy backed off and conceded defeat.

There was something about the naked fear in the boy’s eyes, and the way the taller boy moved, which made me want to join in with the booing of the crowd. But the victor swaggered off the sand, to be punched affectionately on the arm by my brother Polyn. They were friends then, he and the cheat. My brother won his quarter-final without such tactics, and began preparing for his next opponent: re-chalking his hands and feet so he wouldn’t lose his grip. The pastries smelled so good, I could feel my stomach growling. My sister elbowed me when I turned to look again at the food-seller. We were supposed to be paying attention to the games, no matter how long they went on for, or how much of a foregone conclusion they seemed to be.

Polyn and his tall friend were the finalists, and the audience cheered enthusiastically. Many of the men watching would have bet on my brother as the winner: the real surprise was that they could find anyone to wager on a different outcome. But the taller boy was talented, and perhaps he would put up a more vigorous contest than Polyn’s earlier opponents. I leaned down to ask my sister how much longer they would be.

‘It’s all about your stomach, Isy. Why didn’t you eat this morning? You know how long these days are,’ she snapped. She was right. I did know that the coronation days were long. I’d just forgotten in all the noise and fuss.

Polyn was now facing us, and his friend reached forward to begin the final bout. They wrangled for a few moments before Polyn made a grab at his opponent’s leg, trying to draw him off balance. But his rival was not going to fall for anything so obvious. He skipped back out of Polyn’s reach and wrenched Polyn’s outstretched arm as he went. It was just enough to pull my brother forward onto his knees. But he was up again in an instant: no danger of hitting the sand with his back, and losing a crucial point. They approached each other again, and this time my brother needed to defend himself against an attack at his ankles. If you could take out an ankle, the wrestler almost always hit the ground square on. It was the easiest way to win a point. But Polyn transferred his weight to the other leg, bent forward, and head-butted the boy back. The crowd cheered.

The taller boy was losing patience now, and he circled Polyn, looking for another opportunity. He hadn’t noticed how far from the centre of the ground they now were, so when Polyn ran at him and shoved him with all his might, the boy stepped back in surprise. This was a foolish tactic that would take my brother off balance and leave him vulnerable to an easy attack. The boy was already reaching forward to grab Polyn’s foot and pull him over. But the referee stepped in and declared my brother the winner. The boy looked down in horror to see that his back foot had strayed outside the fighting square. It was an instant defeat.

Polyn raised his arms in victory, and his friend looked on with a weary amusement. He was the better fighter, but my brother was more cunning. Only when he turned to watch Polyn receive his olive-leaf crown did we finally see his face: the whole bout had been about showing off the king to his people, so it was always Polyn who held our attention and the prime place in the square.

‘Good match,’ said my brother, grabbing his rival by the arm and raising it for the applause of the crowd. Polyn was a far more gracious winner than he was loser. The tall boy nodded and smiled and took the applause of the crowd, his eyes finally taking in the spectators, where previously he had been focused only on his opponent. For the briefest moment – no longer than it takes to blink – his eyes met mine, before he turned to receive plaudits from the other side of the square.

It was all the time I needed. The man standing on the sand, next to my brother – his friend and competitor – was someone I would have recognized anywhere, as soon as I saw his eyes. I had seen them before, once in the courtyard of the palace, and many more times in my mind when I woke up with my heart racing, knowing I was in danger but unable to do anything to keep myself safe.

My brother’s friend was the man who had embedded a knife in my side.