The Children of Jocasta

Jocasta would never know what had been the first sign of the new Reckoning. No one did. The first Reckoning had ravaged Thebes many years earlier, a few summers before Jocasta was born. Her parents had survived it because her father was away trading in other cities and, because they were young and yet to have children, her mother had accompanied him. Thebes had closed its gates, and all admittance to the city was prohibited for a month or more. When they returned, only a day or so after the gates were finally reopened, they were startled to see that things were worse than the rumours had warned. The disease had been merciless, and more than one in eight of their fellow citizens were dead.

Some areas of the city had suffered greater devastation than others: the lower district, in the centre of the town, had a higher death toll than anywhere else, but no one knew why. Jocasta’s parents lived high up on the hill on the far side of the city, but they had still lost seemingly numberless neighbours and relatives. People learned not to ask, if someone didn’t appear at the market for a few days, or if their shoes went uncollected from the cobbler. The answer was always the same. Whole families had died, because those who tended the sick were more likely to fall ill themselves. If one child developed the early symptoms, their parents knew they too would have little chance of survival. Their only hope was to throw the sick child out onto the streets, and hope that they had acted in time. The child would die wherever it was, so parents tried to save themselves and their other offspring. Hopelessness was one of many symptoms of a disease which began with a headache and so often ended, seven or eight days later, in death. There was no way of knowing who would survive and who would die. Healthy young people were culled as efficiently as in a war, while their ancient parents – so frail before the Reckoning came – somehow withstood the ravages of the plague.

The sickness afflicted different people in different ways: all had a raging thirst and an unceasing sensation of burning from within. The inner heat was so terrible that people fled the city, clambering over its walls to throw themselves into the lake. But they felt no cooler, no matter how long they lay in the shallows and no matter how much water they drank. And when they tried to return to their homes, the gates were still barred and they could not enter. So they lay dying outside the city walls, their groans a wretched hymn for those guarding the gates.

Despite the intense internal heat, the sufferers’ skin was not hot to the touch at first. The disease moved downwards starting with a cruel, vice-like headache. Most patients would then begin bleeding in the mouth, from the gums and the ulcerated tongue. Then the chest would tighten and an awful hacking cough would develop. By then, many of the sick would be overcome by the desperate state of their plight. They could no longer raise themselves to eat. Only those who were nursed – and hydrated – had any chance of survival. Those who lived in smaller houses, which grew unbearably hot in the summer months, had no hope at all. The disease descended to the digestive system, and the death toll at this stage was highest of all: the weakness caused by vomiting and diarrhoea was impossible to fight.

Those who survived suffered further indignities: the disease penetrated their extremities, and often they lost all feeling in one or more fingers or toes. Many could no longer practise the trade they had worked in all their lives, unable to work the leather or cloth which they had previously cut without needing to look. And even a minor cut, now painless and so unnoticed, could quickly became fatal. Pain was a warning, and the warning had been taken away. Some lost sight in one or both eyes; some lost hearing; others lost even their memories and could not recognize their friends or remember their own names.

In the months after the Reckoning, Thebes lost something of itself. Its people had always prided themselves on their steadiness, their ability to take everything which befell them in their stride. But they no longer felt this way. Too many had died and too many rules had been broken. The dead had not been properly buried while the Reckoning ravaged the city. No one could leave Thebes and inter their loved ones in graves outside the walls, as they used to. So people built funeral pyres and burned the dead instead. Some were too weak or weary to build a pyre, so they simply threw their dead on one already burning. Some used ropes to drop the bodies of the dead or terminally sick over the city walls. But everyone noticed that the vultures and dogs did not eat the corpses of the plague-dead. Even when the ribs of a dog were poking through his mangy fur, he would go hungry before he would chew on the polluted flesh.

The city had a proud history of welcoming strangers and traders from all over Hellas. The rules of xenia – where a traveller could expect food and lodging from strangers which he would one day reciprocate – had always been sacrosanct. But those too had gone. The gates were kept locked during the summer months for many years afterwards. Only those who could afford to bribe the guards could get into the city during the hottest part of the year. And the bribe needed to be a handsome one: the penalty for allowing someone from the Outlying into Thebes when the gates were closed was death. Each spring, Thebes would look nervously at its omens and wonder if this would be the year the Reckoning returned. Parents frightened their children, telling them stories of the terrors that presaged their birth.

Gradually, the fear subsided. But this was largely because those who had lived through the Reckoning were dying, not from the disease but from simple old age. By the time the disease struck Thebes for a second time, it was fifty years after the first blight. Only those who had been children the first time were still alive. And people had long since forgotten the symptoms, lost beneath layers of exaggeration and rumour. So Jocasta did not know, could not have known, that when the first of her citizens began to complain of a vicious spiking pain in the head and an unquenchable thirst, Thebes was at the beginning of something far worse than the usual summer sickness.

It was the summer of Isy’s fourth birthday, and it was Sophon who came to the palace asking for Jocasta. He was tutoring Polynices and Eteocles in their letters and geometry, having long since retired from treating the sick. He was sixty years old and his hands were too shaky, his eyes too weak for dealing with people who were frightened by whatever ailed them. But no doctor could really retire, especially not him. People still turned up at his door, begging for advice on one ailment or another. The past week had seen the numbers increase at an alarming rate: parents worrying about their children, children fearful for their ailing parents. On this day, he told the boys that he needed to see their mother before they could recite the verses they had learned for him. The slaves took one look at his dishevelled appearance, and took him straight into the second courtyard to speak to the queen.

‘There’s something wrong,’ he said, as he hastened through the doorway into the treasury. Jocasta turned in surprise to greet her old friend. She was sitting with Oedipus and Creon, discussing the provisions the city would need to import during the coming winter. They had expectations of a good harvest: the grapes and olives were ripening on the hills outside the city. As usual, they would need to import grain. Jocasta looked well, perhaps a little tired, Sophon noticed. Motherhood suited her. Her greying hair betrayed her years, of course, but it was a clean, metallic grey, and her face lifted as she smiled at him.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Are the boys arguing in your class? I know they can be a nuisance.’

‘The problem is not in your household,’ he said. ‘It’s outside. In the city.’

Oedipus swept round behind him and pulled up a light wooden chair. ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘Get your breath back.’

The old man sat down heavily, banging his elbows on the carved flowers which covered the arms of the chair. He sat for a moment, looking at the stone floor. ‘My queen,’ he said when he raised his eyes again. ‘Too many people are falling ill. It reminds me of before.’

‘Of before?’ she asked. But she knew what he meant.

‘Of the Reckoning,’ he said. ‘The headaches, the fever. Those who fell ill first are now developing the cough, four days in. It’s the same as before.’

‘You were alive during the Reckoning?’ Oedipus asked. ‘But that was a lifetime ago.’

Sophon eyed him. ‘That’s hardly an accurate system of measurement,’ he replied irritably. ‘It is more than your lifetime, than any of your lifetimes.’ He looked from husband to wife to brother, and his tone softened. ‘But somewhat less than mine. I was a child when it took the city the first time.’

‘How did you avoid catching it?’ Oedipus said.

‘I didn’t.’ The old man’s shoulders heaved. ‘I caught it, but I recovered. So did my father. My mother died of it, as did my sister.’

‘And you recognize the symptoms again now?’ Jocasta asked.

‘I’ll know for sure in three days,’ Sophon replied. ‘When they start to die.’

‘What can we do?’ Creon asked. ‘How did they stop it before?’

‘They didn’t stop it,’ Sophon said. ‘No one could. It consumed the lower city. It devastated us. And there was nothing we could do to contain it or prevent it. Everyone fell sick, no one was safe. Eventually, people either recovered or died. Those who recovered didn’t catch it again.’

‘We can’t let that happen now,’ Oedipus snapped. ‘There must be something we can do. In Corinth,’ he paused, thinking about the stories he had been told as a child, ‘they said it came from the water.’

Sophon nodded. ‘The same belief arose here. It was nonsense, of course. People who lived near the wells died because sick people congregated near the wells. The disease makes you thirsty.’ His eyes were cloudy as he remembered drinking everything he could find, and still feeling his furred tongue and cracked throat, desperate for water. He saw again his father offering him the last cup of water in the house, though his own lips were split and bleeding.

‘Does water cure them?’ Jocasta asked.

The old man shrugged. ‘Many of them will die even if they can get enough to drink. All of them will die if they can’t. Or if they refuse to.’

‘Why would they refuse?’ asked Creon.

‘Fear,’ Oedipus said, before Sophon could reply. ‘They will avoid the wells if they believe the water is tainted. People aren’t rational when they’re afraid.’

‘They closed the city,’ Jocasta said, snatching at the memory she didn’t know she possessed. But she remembered her parents talking about it: their grand adventures in the Outlying, while Thebes was bolted shut.

‘The disease must have come in from somewhere,’ Sophon agreed. ‘A traveller, a tradesman, someone brought it in with him, this time just as before. But shutting the gates can’t help you now. The disease is already here.’

‘It might prevent more travellers bringing it in,’ said Creon. ‘You should close the gates.’

Jocasta looked across to her husband, her eyebrows raised. He nodded.

‘The gates will be closed in the morning,’ she said. ‘Only one announcement beforehand. If Thebans are away, they will have to manage until we reopen the city. Foreigners in the city will be able to leave if they wish.’

‘They might be no safer out there,’ Oedipus said.

‘That’s not my concern,’ his wife replied. ‘I am only queen of my own citizens. How do we persuade the people that the water is safe?’

Sophon sighed. ‘I’m not sure you can,’ he said.

‘We can make an official pronouncement,’ Creon suggested. ‘Telling the citizens that the water supply has been checked and is harmless.’

‘What would you think if someone said that to you?’ Oedipus asked.

‘I’d think they had something to hide,’ Jocasta said. ‘But what else can we do?’

The four of them sat in silence for a moment, until it was broken by Oedipus.

‘Put guards around the wells,’ he said. ‘Order them out there now. Two guards on each well from sunrise to sunset.’

‘The heat of the day is when people will need water the most,’ Sophon protested.

‘They will store water to use during the day,’ Oedipus replied. ‘If the guards are seen there all day, drinking the water as they please but preventing ordinary citizens from doing the same, Thebans will be furious. They’ll wait till the guards leave, fill every vessel they have, and carry it back to their homes.’

‘That’s clever,’ the old man smiled.

‘It’s infantile,’ said Creon. ‘Thebans will believe their queen is deliberately withholding water from them.’ He turned to his sister, his hands spread in supplication. ‘They will never forgive you. They’ll blame you even if they survive,’ he said. ‘Follow this advice, and they will hate you. You can’t win.’

‘I don’t want to win,’ she replied. ‘I just don’t want them to die. Alive and hating me is better than dead.’ She addressed the old man again. ‘Is there anything else we could do?’

Sophon nodded slowly. ‘The Reckoning was fast,’ he said. ‘Impossibly fast. It went through the city like a blaze. People were dead or recovered in a matter of days. If they recovered, they didn’t catch it again. Those people must help us nurse the sick: first the old, who survived it last time. And perhaps, once they have recovered this time, the young. And it is not just nursing we will need help with. Bodies must be buried or burned, as soon as they are dead.’ He ignored the horror which spasmed across Creon’s face. ‘The stench of this disease is nothing compared to the smell of the dead, piling up behind the closed doors of houses. The Reckoning wasn’t the only thing that killed people the last time. Corpses are dangerous, and they carry their own diseases. We need somewhere outside the city walls. A lime pit. Do you understand?’

‘So we need to have men ready to dispose of the dead,’ Jocasta said. ‘That shouldn’t be too difficult. My guards can organize that.’ She thought for a moment. ‘There are a few older ones. And those without children, after them. Their commander will arrange it.’

‘They should cover their faces,’ Sophon said. ‘With scarves. It makes it easier to breathe if you can’t smell the dead.’

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘What else?’

‘Nothing that will help,’ the old man sighed.

‘What else?’ she asked again, reaching over to her friend and patting his arm so he understood that she needed to know everything, even if it would frighten her.

Sophon thought for a moment, and spoke again. ‘Even if they have water to drink, and somewhere cool to sleep, even if this heat breaks and the disease breaks with it, and even if we can get rid of the bodies before they contaminate anything else, it might not be enough to save everyone who could have survived. Because people stop trying when they’ve lost too much. It’s not something you can prevent. I survived because my father survived. I had him to live for and he had me. So although my mother was gone . . .’ He paused to wipe away a tear which had sprung from his eye, pushing his hand into his face as though he wanted to punish it for its weakness. ‘I had someone to feed me and look after me. And my father had someone to look after. He couldn’t just lie down on the ground and weep for everything he had lost, though I’m sure he wanted to. And that’s the one danger you can’t guard against. The more people die, the more people have lost their reason to live. Do you understand?’

Jocasta nodded. Of course she did.