Jocasta: Wife and Mother. Brian Aldiss

to the moist flesh of her upper body. Her thick black hair, flecked with white, hung down her back in a knotted rope. Her body was developing a certain heaviness: yet she strode so easily up the hill that her guard panted to keep up. She was the Queen of Thebes, lovely of lip, beauteous of bosom.

      She had caught a hare among the rocks in the valley. Its body was slung across the small hummocks of her spine, with a sharp twig piercing the tendons of its legs. The jog of her movements caused blood to run like tears from the dead creature’s nose; the tears dripped down Jocasta’s back, staining the tendons of her legs as she walked.

      The stone walls of Thebes were lit by the lowering sun. She went in through the south-east gate, under the eye of a lounging sentry who brought his staff to the vertical in salute, himself with it. The palace was a low building, distinguished from its neighbours by its spaciousness and the four-pillared portico adorning its facade. Jocasta avoided the front entrance, trotting round to the rear over weedy wasteland.

      She passed her grandmother’s altar stone, on which something still smouldered among ashes. Most likely it was the remains of a snake, old Semele’s favoured offering to her dark gods. On the ground in front of the stone, human ordure had been part-covered by sprinkled soil. Jocasta clapped her forehead in instinctive obeisance as she passed by.

      As if from a magician’s cupboard, Jocasta’s old handmaid, Hezikiee, came trundling forth, arms raised in hopes to embrace her mistress.

      ‘O Queen Jocasta, my pet! And you’ve been out hunting again. How I feared you were killed.’

      ‘Nonsense, Hezikiee, I merely chased a hare.’

      ‘Oh, but the wild beasts—’

      ‘Round Thebes? Nonsense. Let me pass.’

      ‘Please tell me you’re not killed. It bleeds, your poor leg! You will soon be dead.’

      ‘Stop it, will you, my Hezikiee? It’s the blood of the hare I killed, and nothing more.’ She pushed past the trembling, devoted old creature, who still mumbled to herself in an apotropaic fashion.

      As the queen entered the kitchen, she heard the voice of her husband Oedipus roaring in the front chamber. He was holding an audience with a delegation of local people.

      ‘You farmers, you’re so fond of complaining instead of tending your land! Small wonder it fails. What can you want of me now? Can you not leave me in peace?’

      And an old man’s voice answered with a whine in his throat. ‘Great Oedipus, the plague is here. You see it is not only the old who come before you, but the young chicks among us too. For the curse upon Thebes afflicts young and old alike. Everywhere there is affliction.’

      ‘Affliction is the common lot of man,’ said Oedipus, more calmly.

      His wife, standing with the hare in one hand and a knife in the other, said, aloud but softly, ‘And of women, too!’

      Passing the dead animal and the knife to one of her slaves, she went to lave her hands in a bowl of scented water which Hezikiee held, murmuring her happiness to have her mistress safe. Jocasta took little notice; her mind was clouded by other matters. As she washed her arms and hands and bathed her face, grateful for the liquid coolness of the water, animal cries of dispute came to her from outside.

      ‘Oh, dearie me, it’s that awful thing again,’ said Hezikiee. ‘And in an egg-laying mood, without anything to provoke birth with the usual you-know-what business first.’

      Promptly, but without haste, Jocasta left the palace and went to cross the square towards the building where her grandmother lived. It was not the Sphinx causing the commotion, as the old slave woman had supposed.

      Semele was outside her dwelling with a broom, trying to beat off three large flying creatures of grotesque appearance which were hovering above her porch. Rising just out of reach of the bristles, the creatures were singing raspingly to the beat of their leathery wings:

       This is the house with no luck at all.

       A shadow lies over it, over it.

       This is the house that’s bound to fall.

       Innocence lost –

       Terrible cost –

       You’ll not recover it!

      ‘I’ll give you recover!’ shrieked Semele. ‘You’ll not recover when I swat you lot, you flying bitches!’

      Jocasta ran forward, crying to Semele to stop. She seized the old woman’s skinny arm, and bid her be silent. These flying creatures were the Furies, the Kindly Ones, who must be appeased.

      ‘Fetch milk and wine for them. Bow to them. Make every attempt to flatter them – if it’s not too late.’

      ‘Not me, Jocasta girl. I’ll have nothing to do with them.’ With that she flung down the broom and ran into the darkness of her house.

      Jocasta raised her pale arms above her, calling to the snarling creatures which fluttered close to her head. ‘We’re sorry, we intended you no harm. My grandmother is old and mad. I am your friend. Welcome, thrice welcome! Why are you visiting us?’

      The dreadful creatures wore distorted imitations of female faces, emaciated baby bodies and disproportionately large dugs, with tiny bulging bellies and whiplike tails. They flew on wings resembling those of large bats, while the flanges of their over-developed ears, trained to pick up any whisper of human hubris, met in the middle of their foreheads, pipistrelle fashion. Taking up Jocasta’s words, they chanted:

       Too late! Too late!

       Too late by far!

       We’ve come today

       Only to say

       You and your mate

       Must face your fate!

       Har har har!

      Spitting and shrieking with horrid laughter, they rose higher, their bat wings drumming against the air.

      It’s as I thought, you vile pests, said Jocasta to herself but, as had become her custom, what she said aloud was in different vein.

      ‘Oh, how melodious are your voices! But please don’t say that, dear ladies! Come and stay with us and you shall have wine, and milk served with honey. Tell us what we have done. And what the remedy is …’

      But the evil creatures rose above the tiles of the roof, striking into the pure air, and were away, their unwholesome figures dwindling with distance.

      ‘Oh, Zeus!’ exclaimed Jocasta, clutching her head. ‘As if I do not know what this ghastly visit forebodes!’

      ‘You don’t believe that old nonsense, do you?’ said Semele, poking her head out through her door. Her laughter was almost as shrill as that of the so-called Kindly Ones. ‘Those ancient harridans need a covering by bulls, that’s what!’

      The skirmish roused a beast within the hut. From the grandmother’s suite burst forth the Sphinx, terrifying in height, miscellaneous in form, grand in colour. Flapping her wings as soon as she gained the open, rising no more than a metre above the thyme with which the square was bedded, she squawked in indignation as she went. A griffin came chasing after her. The griffin saw Jocasta, turned tail, and darted back into Semele’s quarters.

      As he did so, Semele’s venerable prune of a face reappeared, screaming, ‘I won’t have that Sphinx-thing in here. It keeps going invisible – just to annoy me! Lock the damned thing up, will you?’

      Jocasta stood back as the monster approached, still squawking. She loomed above the queen, who saw that her hindquarters were still not entirely visible. The Sphinx was a considerable riddle of a beast, her lion’s body, eagle’s wings and serpent’s tail, emblems of the three seasons, not