The Children of Jocasta

If there was one thing Jocasta knew how to do better than anyone, it was endure days of waiting. When Oedipus left, she found herself wishing he would return almost immediately. How clever of him, she thought, to have insinuated himself into her life so completely that after only a few days of knowing him, she missed him. And missed him in a dense physical way, as though she were nursing a profound and worsening injury.

He had been gone for little more than a day when she began to feel a faint, familiar echo of the panic which had so often overwhelmed her in the years after her child died. Her mind jumped from one unpalatable thought to another: what if he never came back? What if he was killed coming through the mountains? He had to travel through them twice, going to Corinth and coming back again. What were the chances that a man could travel through the mountains three times in less than a month, and not be killed? She couldn’t begin to imagine the likelihood. Thoughts flitted around her mind like trapped birds. What if he had been lying to her? Perhaps he had no intention of coming back. Perhaps it had all been a strange, cruel joke. She wanted to believe him, but how could she, now he wasn’t standing in front of her, allowing her to judge his intentions from his frank, open expression? What kind of person arrived in a city for the first time and told the queen that she would marry him? He was probably mad, she now saw. Though he hadn’t seemed mad, when she was with him. He had seemed all sorts of things: impulsive, passionate, impetuous, quick-tempered, but not mad. Still, she reasoned that he must be mad: how else could she explain his behaviour? When she looked at things like this, it would almost be a blessing if he didn’t return. A lucky escape, as her mother would once have said.

By the fourth day, Jocasta was beginning to make pacts with the gods. If she could make the perfect sacrifice of a pair of dappled kid goats, Oedipus would return. Then she reasoned that a paltry two goats was insufficient tribute to Apollo. So she painted the altars with the blood of white bull-calves, but still it was not enough.

On the tenth day, she calculated that he could have returned to his city and arrived back in Thebes easily by now. He had simply said half a month to allow himself the extra time at home. But he must have known she would be worrying: how could he be so cruel as to idle away time in the city where he had spent his whole life, when he knew she was here alone, waiting for him?

By the twelfth day, she knew he was dead. The journey might not have been possible in ten days, but it was more than possible in twelve. The only reason for his continuing absence must be his death. It was easier to imagine him dead than cruel. Sorrow descended and she wrapped it around herself.

On the fourteenth day, Oedipus returned exactly as he had promised. But even he – who travelled so quickly through dangerous territories, as if he were strolling along to the marketplace – couldn’t keep up with the rumours which raced ahead of him: a man, this stranger, had killed the Sphinx. By the time he reached the palace gates, a small band of people clustered around him. Some of them were travellers he had picked up on the other side of the mountains. He had encouraged them to accompany him through the risky terrain, and had dazzled them with his strategy for dealing with the Sphinx, which amounted to little more (so he explained to Jocasta when they were finally alone) than moving through the mountains in total silence – without pack animals or anything which slowed them down or made any noise – and always being armed and ready to fight assailants who might appear from any direction, particularly from above. The Sphinx may have been fearsome once, but they had become – in Oedipus’s opinion – lazy. Too many people made it easy for them by travelling in large groups, which left stragglers and scouts alone to be preyed upon. They announced their presence with noisy conversations or clattering hooves. Oedipus made none of those mistakes. When faced with a group who were determined not just to survive them but to attack them, the Sphinx were easily outclassed. They had already lost men on Oedipus’s first trip through the mountains. And it wasn’t long before he had masterminded a successful attack on the rest. Giddy with excitement and thrilled by the bloodlust, the travellers were soon telling everyone they found on the road to Thebes. They had killed the Sphinx, and it had all been the strategy of this one man, of Oedipus.

Even Jocasta, cut off from most city gossip in the palace, heard the news that the Sphinx were gone and their killer was coming to Thebes to be rewarded for his work. She knew it must be Oedipus, but she refused to believe it until she saw him. Unable to wait any longer, she walked out into the main square to receive him. When he entered through the palace gates, his clothes stained with the blood of the mountain men for a second time, she felt her breath become quick and shallow. If only all these people weren’t here.

‘Welcome to my city, sir,’ she said, and the travellers and Thebans he had gathered along the way began to beat their hollowed hands together in applause. ‘I hear we have to thank you for your remarkable bravery and cunning.’

‘You don’t have to thank me, your majesty.’ He bowed low, smiling, enjoying the audience and the performance they allowed him to put on. ‘It was the least I could do to impress the city of Thebes, as I knew I must.’

‘Why would you need to impress our city?’ asked Jocasta, above enthusiastic cheers from his supporters. These were not Laius’s wealthy friends, Thebes’s elite. They were ordinary men and women who had heard of the traveller’s exploits, and come along to see what all the fuss was about. They didn’t know the rules of palace etiquette, it seemed, so they cheered whenever they felt like it, rather than waiting to be invited. Oedipus’s eyes glittered as they met hers. No one had ever enjoyed himself so much as he did in that moment. He paused until the noise had died down, determined he would be heard by everyone when he spoke. He had, she realized, no doubt that she would agree to anything he proposed.

‘Because I intend to ask their Basileia for her hand in marriage,’ he said.

Jocasta looked at him, far too young but handsome and – so far – a man of his word. She thought of the time she had spent in the palace alone, and she felt the treasury key nestled beneath her collarbones on the cord he had bought for her.

‘She says yes,’ she said, turning and walking back into the royal courtyard leaving Oedipus, a vision of confidence, to chase after her.

The news spread through Thebes faster than the Reckoning once had. People were asked to repeat it, because it didn’t seem possible. The queen, widowed less than a month ago, was to remarry? A foreigner? He looked how old? It took very little time before the self-appointed Elders of the city – mostly the same men who had travelled back from the mountains with Laius’s body, expecting to depose the queen with little difficulty – arrived at the palace in a sweaty, disconcerted mass. Amphion, a man who had always irritated Jocasta because of his superior manner and florid dress, had been chosen as their spokesman, or perhaps he had appointed himself. They couldn’t have made a worse choice: the Secretary of the Treasury of Thebes bore a marked resemblance to her late father, and she loathed him.

Still, she couldn’t ignore the frantic scrambling of her servants, racing across the cobbled courtyards to tell her that Amphion and his friends demanded an audience with the queen. She told them to take back the message that the queen was currently engaged in other business, but that she would receive them the following morning. It was time to teach these men that they did not own her and could not simply expect her to put everything aside to meet with them.

The following morning, they were standing waiting for her in the public square. They nestled together, gossiping like the old women who hung their faded laundry over the steep, narrow streets outside.

‘Gentlemen,’ she said, walking up behind them. She saw the shock in their faces: the small, pale girl they had laughed at with their king was not afraid of them. And she was no longer a girl.

‘We’ve heard the most ridiculous story,’ spluttered Amphion, and Jocasta wondered how a man could be so self-satisfied that he didn’t feel the slightest embarrassment at the way saliva bubbled in front of his teeth when he spoke.

‘I’m sure you’ve heard lots of ridiculous stories,’ she replied. ‘It’s probably the company you keep.’

Amphion’s face darkened. ‘This particular story is one you must refute. Immediately.’

Jocasta smiled. ‘I’m sure you can’t mean to give the impression that you are walking into my home and giving me orders.’

‘I—’

‘And I’m sure when you began speaking, you meant to say something like, “Good morning, your highness”,’ she continued. ‘Because to start barking orders at your queen, without so much as a greeting and a wish of good health, is – I think we can all agree – rude.’ She looked round at the cluster of old men, some of them beginning to realize that Amphion’s influence might be ebbing away. There was a subtle shifting of position, as the more pragmatic ones edged back, realizing they didn’t want to ally themselves too closely with their spokesman after all.

‘Forgive me, your majesty,’ he said, sarcasm dripping from every consonant. ‘I thought we had something urgent to discuss, and that we might dispense with niceties for now.’

‘Dispense is an odd word to choose, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘It makes it sound as though you normally speak to me with the respect and courtesy that I might expect, given my position. And yet, I can’t remember ever hearing you speak to me by name, let alone by title. Though I’m sure you know both my name and my position. You see, I’ve overheard you speaking about me occasionally, and – I’m sure you won’t mind me being honest, since I know it’s a quality you prize – you didn’t come across well at all.’

He flushed so red that she wondered if he might be about to collapse to the ground, clutching at his chest.

‘I am trying to reassure the people of Thebes that their queen is not about to act in a foolish and hasty manner,’ he said.

‘I’m just not sure that’s true,’ she replied. ‘I think you’ve come here to tell me that I should marry one of you, so you can be king of the city, instead of the man you think I intend to marry.’

Tiny beads of sweat had coalesced on his temples to create small rivulets which were now running down the sides of his face. ‘Do you mean to tell us that you don’t intend to marry some foreigner? Have we been misinformed?’ He gestured around him to include the men who were sidling ever further away.

‘It’s hard to imagine how that could be even the smallest part of your business, isn’t it?’ Jocasta said.

‘I am the Secretary of the Treasury,’ he snarled.

‘Were,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I said you were the Secretary of the Treasury. Now you’re just a rude old man who used to be important, and then wasn’t any more, because he couldn’t keep his spittle-flecked mouth shut. Guards.’ Jocasta gestured to her men, who approached Amphion. ‘This gentleman would like you to escort him from the grounds,’ she said. ‘And any of his friends who would like to leave as well. Gentlemen?’

The Elders looked at the ground and shook their heads. She had a sudden memory of Creon and his school friends, aged four or five, caught stealing figs from a neighbour’s tree. Guilt was a great deal more endearing in children. The guards removed Amphion with an easy efficiency.

‘Did anyone else have a question?’ Jocasta asked, looking from one awkward face to another.

‘Only one, majesty,’ said a grey-haired, pinched-face man who she thought was called Taron.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘When might we meet the new Basileus?’ he asked. She smiled.

‘Clever boy,’ she said.

The people of Thebes viewed Oedipus as their champion. Jocasta had never noticed, during her years in the palace, that the city was split into two unequal halves. Laius and his men were not especially popular with ordinary citizens: he was absent too often, and the common perception of him was that he was uninterested in the city, and tended towards snobbishness. His advisers, meanwhile, were viewed less favourably still. It was not only Jocasta who had seen them as a cabal of old men with no common touch. She, on the other hand, had a romantic appeal. A beautiful girl, married to a king whose sexual proclivities were the source of constant gossip, speculation, and more than a few drinking songs. She had spent so much of her time in the palace after the death of her child that she was perceived as a tragic figure, trapped in a court filled with aloof, unpopular men. Ordinary Thebans were rooting for her to marry again, but someone younger and more like them. And Oedipus fulfilled both criteria.

His entry to the city as its saviour – even though most Thebans had never travelled through the mountains – was the real reason they loved him, of course. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who had been lost to the Sphinx. It was easy to turn a now-vanished threat into something more serious than it had been. People didn’t ask how dangerous the men of the Sphinx really were or how much of an impediment to trade they had been. They just celebrated the fact that the Sphinx were gone, and they had this handsome visitor to thank. Finally someone had done what their own king had failed to do for many years. And were the rumours true, that he had proposed to the queen the moment he arrived at the palace? You couldn’t deny that he had charm. Exactly what the queen needed, everyone agreed. Was he too young? Better that than another ossified old fool.

The wedding was arranged with a haste which shocked the Elders and delighted the commoners. Jocasta was a widow for less than two months. She married Oedipus at the start of spring, just as the earliest fruit trees were coming into blossom. Thebans saw the flowers as auspicious. But Jocasta refused to consider auspices any more. The only thing that worried her about the day of her gamos was the absence of Oedipus’s parents. She couldn’t decide whether she would like to meet them or not. With every day that passed, she wanted Oedipus more, and more than wanting him, she desired him. She longed to consume him whole, and have his youth and vigour shine out from her pores. She wanted to wrap herself around him like a cloak and never let go. And she wanted to know everything about his past: his city, his home, his family. But she couldn’t leave Thebes without a ruler, while she travelled with him to Corinth to meet his family and visit his home. It would be unsafe for her, as well as deeply unpopular with her citizens. So all she could know about her new husband was what he brought with him to her city. In the evenings before their wedding she begged Oedipus to repeat stories, so she could learn the names of everyone important to him. Of course she must meet his parents.

But at the same time, she felt a twinge of relief when he said they wouldn’t be able to come. His mother’s health was poor: she was confined to a chair, and could only travel short distances by litter. She could never make the long journey across uneven terrain that would be necessary to see her son in his new home. And his father was always loath to leave his mother for a few hours, let alone a few days: they were, Oedipus assured her, inseparable. And of course she wanted to hear this too, to know that he was the son of a couple who were so devoted to one another.

The notion of his chair-bound mother brought her another, different kind of relief. In their absence, she could render them old, much older than her. It was the only question she never asked him: how old are your parents? Because what if the answer was one she couldn’t bear to hear: oh, about the same age as you. And her imagination took her further still. What if he hadn’t mentioned her age to them? She spent terrible moments imagining a scene where his aged mother looked around for someone young enough to be her son’s betrothed, before her puzzled eye eventually lighted upon Jocasta. It was unthinkable.

‘Tell me again,’ she said, as he lay on her bed, the golden strands of his hair glowing in the candlelight. He propped himself up on one arm, and ran his hands over her skin. She reached out to touch him, but the sight of her hand – every knuckle bearing the marks of every time she had bent every finger – next to his flawless skin made her draw it back so she could look at him unspoiled.

‘You’ve heard it all,’ he grinned. ‘Let me keep a bit of mystery, so you don’t get bored of me as soon as we’re married.’

‘Is there anything you want to know about me?’ she asked. Oedipus’s finger was tracing a silvery mark on the right side of her stomach. Did he know what it was? Should she tell him? Again, she found herself split. She wanted to share the terrible story of her loss, and have him hold her while she wept one last time for her missing boy. Because she was determined that with this new marriage, the one she had chosen, she would finally put aside the grief which had crushed her through the last seventeen years of her life. She wanted to begin again, and she would. But wouldn’t that be easier if she didn’t tell him the whole wretched saga of the past?

‘Tell me what you did, when Laius abandoned you,’ he asked, quietly.

Jocasta was surprised. The only thing that had ever mattered to her about her dead husband was his refusal to have a son. Everything else had blurred away over the years. She was not now sure she knew Laius’s eye-colour, if she ever had.

‘I was relieved,’ she said. ‘It meant he didn’t want to have anything to do with me, and the feeling was mutual.’

‘It’s peculiar that he wanted to get married, isn’t it? Keeping up appearances, I suppose.’

‘I think so,’ she said. ‘It was what Thebes wanted for him. He just didn’t want it for himself. He resisted it as long as he could.’

‘So he married you and then moved to the lower slopes of the mountains to live as he actually wanted to?’

‘Essentially, yes.’

‘And what did you do? Did you have endless affairs?’

‘You are so rude,’ she said, swatting him with a cushion. ‘No, I didn’t. I took my position seriously.’

He began kissing her neck and she felt her stomach contract. What was the point of explaining Oran, the father of her lost child, after all this time? What was the point of even remembering him, when he was so long gone, and Oedipus was so entirely present?