Jocasta Speaks

© Jinny Webber, 2011

Published in Greek Myths Revisited,

Wicked East Press, 2011

https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Myths-Revisited-Isabelle-Rose/dp/1617061476

My name is Jocasta, Queen of Thebes through the line of my mother, who was also called Jocasta. A long line of women ruled our noble city, stretching back, back, back in time.

My mother was priestess as well as queen and schooled me in the old faith until she died birthing my little brother Creon. Our father King Menoceus named me as heir to the throne, not Creon, a petulant spoiled boy with no head for responsibility. Father trained me in politics and diplomacy: I should have been queen in my own right, but instead, the role of king was mine to give.

So I surveyed the boring princes of Attica—until Laius came courting. He exuded a bad-boy charm: those flashing blue-black eyes, that unruly black hair, that full lower lip. For all his faith in reason, Father was charmed by Laius. He saw him as a worthy husband and consort; perhaps he saw the spark of interest in my eye when I gazed upon such a handsome suitor. Laius had his drops of royal blood, though no throne to inherit.

Did Father investigate him? Had he never heard rumors? The seer Teiresias muttered something about Laius committing an impiety, but whatever investigation Father conducted was cursory. Laius appeared qualified to be my husband, and I consented to marry him.

Only the old priestess of Artemis opposed my marriage, indeed pronounced omens against it. It was not as patron of virgins that Artemis spoke on this occasion, but as protector of childbirth. A great wrong would come to me in childbearing if I married Laius.

Would I die? I asked. Would my baby die? The priestess answered “no” to both, declared something worse would strike me, much worse, then hobbled off to the back of her shrine like one who rued her words. If I was safe from my mother’s fate, I could imagine no possible ill. Our marriage preparations underway, I dismissed the priestess’ words.

My father considered much of what the priests and priestesses mumbled to be superstition and never consulted even the Pythia, who pronounces her oracles in Delphi. He listened to his counselors, weighed his decisions on the scale of reason, and acted according to his best wisdom. After he made up his mind, he prayed to the gods for blessing using the time-honored forms, and so he trained me to do.

Had my mother lived, I’d have known that was not enough. Thebes had fallen away from the old ways of the Great Mother. After Apollo slew the Goddess’ sacred Python and seized Pythia’s shrine in Delphi, he became Thebes’ shining deity, not the moon, not the earth, not the daughters of the Mother. Even Dionysus, born in Thebes of Semele not so many generations ago, is today scorned by the righteous. In the old days, all of Thebes went to the mountain to celebrate him, god of passion and inspiration and the transcendent reality beyond Apollo’s sober reason.

* * *

With all due ceremony Laius and I were wed.

My ribald old nurse Selene had told me all I needed to know about bedding a man. I was a vital young woman, ready for initiation into the rites of Aphrodite. At our wedding feast, Laius drank rather more than wisdom would dictate. When it was time for us to retire, Laius stumbled to bed, threw an arm over me, and fell asleep.

Next morning in our villa amidst the olive trees, he found me in the garden, not in the best of moods. I was married—and a virgin. Laius cajoled me, contrite over his drinking. But he did not embrace me then and there as he easily could have: servants in a wedding villa are discreet.

Instead he told me of a dreadful dream. Doubt caught my heart: it appeared that this dream had not come to him on our wedding night but earlier, before our marriage. Hermes, the dancing messenger of the gods, told him that should Laius father a son, the boy would kill him. What god had so determined? Fear-struck by the prophecy, Laius had not asked.

I looked long and hard at him that balmy spring day, this stranger I had married. Laius’ eyes seemed masked; I could not tell whether he feared Hermes’ words or felt no desire for me.

I replied merely, “Dreams can deceive, my husband. Have you spoken to the priest of Apollo? This dream may presage your fears rather than the god’s will.”

Laius took my hand. “My dear Jocasta. Every father must fear his son.”

“Father does not fear Creon. Perhaps you mean every father must fear for his son. Boys can be rash and careless, like Phaeton, who lacked the strength to control the horses of Helios’ chariot.”

For a moment Laius’ face betrayed a fierce expression such as I had never before seen on anyone: hatred and rage mingled in a look so dark that I quailed to the depths of my being. The shock reminded me of something I knew beyond knowing, something that my father’s rational training had wiped from my mind but which dwelt deeper than thought. The words came to me as if spoken from the ancient stones on which our city was built.

The king must die. Long live the king.

As Laius’ face resumed its usual bland expression, my stomach clenched. What sort of man I had married? What forces played with him, with us?

We were alone in the rose garden, yet I sensed no fragrance in the absence of all sweetness between us. I wished for my mother with an intensity unknown since my childhood, longed for a wise and loving woman who could comfort me, advise me.

Should I reject Laius? I couldn’t, not so soon; not with so little understanding. Perhaps this was a whim of his soon to be abandoned. Yet something had shifted in me which I ought to have honored.

My pain lasted for long minutes while Laius wandered around the garden. At last he turned my way. “I honor the gods, Jocasta. I will take this dream to the priest of Apollo, but for now must abstain from your bed. One day we shall rule Thebes well together.”

I could only imagine what my nurse Selene would say. Perhaps it was true that Laius and I would rule well together. But oh how it rankled: he’d married me for my father’s crown! And our marriage was to be barren.

Apollo’s priest confirmed Laius’ interpretation of the dream: he should father no child on me. I consulted no priestess of Aphrodite, a goddess so scantly revered in Thebes that she has but a tiny shrine attended by one ageless woman. Still, I prayed to the golden goddess, my heart and loins longing for a lover.

Could Aphrodite have no part in Laius? His manner had seemed seductive, springing from his desire, kindling my desire. My father believed it so when he blessed our marriage.

All an illusion.

Father was already suffering his final illness. Within months of my wedding, months that Laius spent learning the ways of Thebes, King Menoceus was dead. We were crowned Queen Jocasta and King Laius.

At our coronation feast, Laius drank deep, as had become his custom. My gown was brilliant, gold tissue draped low across my breasts, girdled tight at the waist. I wore a cloak of Tyrian purple which slipped from my shoulders as we dined in the palace with the leading families of the city. I did not intend to be provocative, consumed with sorrow at the loss of my only beloved parent, too soon adulated as Thebes’ queen. Yet that morning my aching heart urged me to offer the fullest rose of my garden at the shrine of Aphrodite. The priestess had smiled in silence.

When the last flagon had been emptied, Laius followed me to my bedchamber for the first time since our wedding and fell into my arms. I awoke no longer a virgin—in an empty bed.

As the months passed and we found our way into Thebes’ affections, Laius never returned to my chamber. My belly grew, but I said not a word to Laius nor anyone else, wore loose gowns and always the purple cloak, even in summer’s heat. After I married, Selene retired to a farm outside the city walls, and I had no confidant.

Then one day my maid Calyce asked if I wished to consult a midwife. Startled, I couldn’t refuse; I must have a safe delivery, a safe childbirth. The midwife took a small chamber near mine, my own nursery when I was a babe.

In my ninth month, Laius gave me a hard look. “You carry a child. That is dire, most dire. You should have told me.”

His look was so threatening that I wondered if he would have had the babe ripped from my womb. From then on Laius spoke not another private word to me. I hid my grief: a husband estranged from my bed, a pregnancy welcomed by our subjects but only a horror to him.

One chill November day within a week of delivery, Laius found me in my favorite seat in the palace garden. I felt no cold, what with my big belly and warm cloak.

His voice was more frigid than a sharp gust from Mount Kithairon.

“This child may not be allowed to live.”

I stared at him. The baby gave a healthy kick, as if to prove the midwife’s prediction of an easy delivery and bonny child.

Laius’ eyes focused above my head, as they did in tribunal when he sentenced a criminal. “If it is a boy, he must be exposed.”

“No!” I cried. Though I felt like fainting, I held my arms protectively in front of my belly. Laius made no move.

“The priest of Apollo is unequivocal. This son will kill me.”

“I have put up with your superstitions for more than a year, have been denied the proper joys of a wife, have served the public image of a queen and slept alone. In all I have bent to your will. Now the gods have granted me the blessing of a child and I shall have her.”

“You may have her, Jocasta. Not him.”

“You will die one day, Laius, as do we all. Babes in arms cannot kill fathers. Even if your dream carries some truth, there’s nothing to worry about for years. Keep knives from him and train him in upright ways.”

“As every tale shows, the gods work their will implacably.”

“Only if there has been a crime. We have committed no crime.”

“So we say in our ignorance.”

“I know the truth of my innocence! I have lived an irreproachable life.”

He muttered something like, “Speak for yourself.”

“If I heard you aright, I did just that. Spoke for myself.” My breath caught in my throat. “You, Laius? Have you wronged the gods?”

“We should not have married.”

“True, you have bedded me but once in all these months. If that your crime it is easily forgiven.”

“We should never have bedded. Not even once.”

“No god calls it a crime to conceive! The gods do so themselves: look at Zeus. Every woman he loves produces a child. Aphrodite herself gave birth to Aeneas as well as Eros. Their children live as demi-gods and heroes.”

“Those are tales told by priests.”

By then I was livid. “I will not let my child’s life be governed by some absurd dream. A child contains divinity within itself, ours more than most, given its royal lineage. It will not be destroyed, whether boy or girl!”

I was seized by a ferocious pain in my womb and stumbled toward the house. Calyce helped me to my bed, the midwife was summoned—and my baby was born in the hour. A boy.

“Keep Laius from the chamber!” I cried. “Do not give the babe to his father, do not, do not.” Those words became a wail of woe that I could not halt until the infant was put into my arms.

I held him to my breast. Perfectly formed and robust. My son. Mine. I would name him for my father and raise him as a prince. When his turn came to rule Thebes, he would be honored for his justice and wisdom. I fell asleep holding him tight against me.

For all of that sweet night, no one existed except me and my precious baby. No destroying father.

We spent two days of milky love, me never letting my infant boy from my sight. I had thanked every god, sent offerings even to the temple of Apollo with its perverse priest. The city would celebrate the baby on his nine-month naming day, so there was no public ceremony, but word had spread. On the baby’s third night, I fell asleep in the bliss of motherhood and woke from a dream of some long-ago ritual but before I could reflect on it I realized: my arms were empty.

Shrieking, I ran from my chamber. No sign of the child, nor of Laius. Calyce slept a drugged sleep by the door. Laius had spirited away the child.

I shook Calyce awake and we ran to the palace gates. I threatened the guard until he told me: my son had been taken to die on lonely slopes of Mount Kithairon. Laius’ diabolical twist: to thong the baby’s ankles together. So he couldn’t crawl away? The child was scarce three days old!

I sent guards to scour the mountain. Not a trace was found of the child, tender morsel to the ravening beasts who dwell in remote crevices and caves.

I fell into deep mourning; Laius gave out that I was ill. Sometimes Calyce sat with me in my darkened chamber and sang old songs, but my soul felt as empty as my arms. In my dreams I called to the Furies, the ancient powers of mother-right.

Feeling like a shadow, I revived sufficiently to leave my room. Laius and I carried on like functioning statues, each with our own side of the palace, our own pleasures, his rollicking, judging from the racket. No one in Thebes dared speak of our baby.

When I was on my feet, Calyce left the palace to work as an attendant at the shrine of Artemis. She took a vow of silence, merely nodding when I passed her. It was as if my dear unnamed son had never been. Whatever lowly person took him to Mount Kithairon had vanished like a wraith.

Only in my heart did my baby live. I never believed he was truly dead, paid special attention when I saw a boy at the age he would have been through his childhood. I dared not picture his face, dreaded seeing the image of a young Laius, though I allowed myself to envision his lithe athletic body, like my brother Creon’s but fitter, with a kinder character and more clever. Creon now lived in the farthest wing of the palace with his bride Eurydice and kept much to himself, which suited us all.

Laius treated me with deference. In council, I often spoke the last word. Thebes had always been a warlike place, founded by soldiers, Cadmus’ Sown Men, as they were called. But in our time, there was peace; our most trusted ambassadors deftly settled trade disputes. Attica knew prosperity in those days, good crops and flax aplenty, rich trade across the seas. No one was in want, and many gained wealth.

My role as queen was a source of pride, though I had extinguished the needs of my woman’s heart, body, soul, abandoned by Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, and her divine sisters. Sleepless in the dark hours before dawn, I raged and wept and wished Laius dead—which no one would guess from my austere daytime face. As the years passed, I was at times overcome with dizziness, my sight blinded in a red and black miasma, and I often had nightmares.

I kept all to myself, knowing one thing for certain: I would outlive Laius.

* * *

One stormy day some seventeen years after I gave birth, a nightmare came to haunt us. A dreadful apparition appeared on the walls of Thebes, all too real, however mythic her appearance.

The Sphinx.

Blind old Teiresias squatting outside the city walls said she was sent by Hera to punish Thebes. When Laius threatened him with torture unless he explained, Teiresias answered that he could not tell, nor did he know the answer to the riddle the Sphinx would pose each day to a Theban citizen. If this man failed to give the correct answer, he’d be hurled from the top of the highest wall into the rocky chasm.

Thebes’ bravest sons vied to answer the riddle and be our hero. Young Polydor won the first draw and strode forth to the high wall where the Sphinx crouched. We followed at a distance for a good look at the monster. She had shiny coal-black curls down her back, piercing black eyes in a horridly beautiful woman’s face. Her breasts were small, virginal—and human, though broad eagle’s wings sprang from her shoulder blades. Below the waist, she was all lioness with powerful haunches.

Dressed in a short tunic, Polydor resembled a youthful Apollo walking with the pride of one who carries the fate of the city on his back. He paused for the briefest moment as the Sphinx’s tail switched like an angry beast’s. She crooked a finger, a woman’s finger. Polydor took a deep breath and walked toward her.

The Sphinx beckoned him closer, closer, until she could whisper in his ear. I smelled her fierce animal breath, which made me hold my own. Laius too seemed not to breathe. We’d hoped that she would speak out the riddle, Polydor answer and throw her from the wall and everyone head to the palace for a celebration. Some of the crowd prayed to Apollo or bright-eyed Athena or Artemis to guide Polydor to the answer.

Polydor whispered—the wrong answer. With no ceremony, the Sphinx grasped him in her arms and threw him into the chasm. He had no time even to cry out; it was left to us to wail and beat our breasts.

The funeral for Polydor was held on the palace steps where our celebration should have taken place. And the second funeral, and the third, the fourth, fifth—and eleventh. No one could answer that mysterious riddle.

Early on the twelfth day, Laius ordered Teiresias to beg respite from the Sphinx so that he might visit the oracle at Delphi. She agreed. One day only.

Laius promised to return that night with the words we needed to save ourselves. As our young men spoke no farewells before being flung to their deaths, neither did Laius, his chariot clattering out the city gates.

By nightfall he had not returned, nor the next morning. The Sphinx was adamant: only one day’s reprieve.

Thebans dressed in black; only youths wore bold white. One by one, they faced the Sphinx—and died.

The fifth day after Laius’ departure, a shepherd brought: on his return from Delphi, Laius had been killed by bandits, as had his charioteer. Only one of their party survived, now recovering from his injuries in a distant hut. Laius was buried where three roads meet. No one knew what the Pythia had spoken.

After Laius’ funeral obsequies, the Sphinx threw another youth to his death.

“The Sphinx must depart. Whatever impiety Laius brought our city died with him.” Creon shouted at the council meeting. “We shall lose all the young men of Thebes!”

But she remained, riddling and killing our young men.

“You lack a consort,” my wise counselor Myiodes said. “If we offer the kingship to the hero who can answer the riddle, someone from beyond Thebes’ walls may succeed.”

Stunned as I was, I agreed. For seventeen years I had lived in palace quarters distant from my husband’s and could do so again for the sake of our city if matched to an unacceptable man.

On the twelfth day after Laius’ death, a stranger approached Myiodes, who was to draw the sticks. “I shall answer the riddle,” he said.

My counselors and I joined the black-garbed Thebans at the Sphinx’s wall, the unknown young man appearing as confident as Polydor had that first day.

He looked at me unflinching. I wondered if a god had sent him, a demi-god himself. He appeared that magnificent with his gleaming muscles. I gave him my blessing.

The Sphinx beckoned, and he bounded up the steps to her side, close enough to kiss her. She whispered in his ear, he whispered back—and the Sphinx threw herself into the abyss.

Amidst our cheers, the young man stood alone, looking toward the mountain.

Myiodes called: “Tell us your name, young man.”

“I am called Oedipus.”

“Swollen foot?” asked Myiodes.

Oedipus extended a perfectly formed foot in its sandal and shrugged. “Merely a childhood name that stuck.”

“Where is your home?”

“Corinth.” Myiodes asked no more about his parentage; we could all see he was noble. He had vanquished the Sphinx. When he was asked her riddle, he declined to say. Later the rumor persisted that she had asked, “Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?” That seemed too simple to me: the answer couldn’t simply be Man. Woman, perhaps? Others suggested a different question: “There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?” Night and day of course.

I never knew nor cared. Myiodes’ words blotted out all other thought:

“Oedipus, you have earned the hero’s honor. Tomorrow you shall be married to Queen Jocasta.”

Oedipus looked at me, his eyes open so wide that their shadows disappeared. He made the smallest of smiles and bowed deeply. My heart was won. Oedipus was younger than Creon, but he had more courage, wisdom, and manliness than Creon would ever possess. I could rule Thebes happily with this valiant young man.

Our wedding and Oedipus’ coronation were joyous, as if my first marriage had never been. Our bedchamber, a spacious, airy room, we used well and happily.

We never discovered Laius’ murderer. The mountains are lawless, and there was no one to raise a search for brigands. We had much to do to restore Thebes to health and prosperity.

King Oedipus was a genius statesman, clever and reflective, and a loving husband. A private pain occasionally darkened his eyes, but he never spoke of his past or his parents. Within a month of our wedding, I carried our firstborn.

Then a strange thing happened. The survivor from Laius’ chariot approached Oedipus and me where we sat in the agora to receive petitioners. He bowed to us, and departed without a word. Later he sent a request to return the distant shepherd’s hut where he’d lived before joining Laius’ party as his guide to Delphi.

As he had reported what little he knew of Laius’ fatal encounter, I consented. That night I tossed in my bed, wishing that I’d spoken to the man myself. Oedipus rubbed my back, spoke calming words for what he assumed was discomfort of pregnancy, and I fell asleep.

Our children were born, one after another. Polyneices and Eteocles, Ismene and Antigone. After the loss of my first baby to harsh Mount Kithairon, I’d expected never to know motherhood, but now I had a brace of beautiful children. Oedipus was an adoring father. No evil prophecy hung over us, not that I believed prophecies. The one Laius had anguished over proved false.

Oedipus and I ruled in concert. We traded with Corinth, but never did he visit there. When I questioned him, he replied that state and family concerns kept him in Thebes.

Once I had a dream that the Delphic Oracle prohibited his going, but Oedipus denied any such thing. “I do not wish to.” That was the end of our talk of oracles: I doubted he’d ever visited one, though his religious observances were beyond reproach.

Our children grew and Thebes prospered, the future bright with Oedipus on the throne beside me. And then, without warning, plague descended. Descended: I don’t believe our fates descend from the heavens: the gods play with us for their entertainment and forget us as easily. Seers claim see glimmerings of divine workings, but I see no evidence of a divine plan working itself out among humans.

Look at Teiresias, that ragged old man called seer who dwells outside Thebes’ walls. He was born here, son of a noble family, and became revel master to my father King Menoceus. One day, the story goes, Teiresias went walking in the woods, saw two serpents mating, struck them apart, and on the instant was turned into a woman. Seven years later she took the same walk, saw the same sight, again struck the serpents apart, and returned to her manly form.

It gets yet more bizarre. On Mount Olympus Zeus and Hera were arguing over who more enjoys the sexual embrace, man or woman. Zeus insisted it was woman, Hera man. They summoned Teiresias to settle their dispute, he who had known both ways. He agreed with Zeus. Woman. Hera, angered that the secret was out or, more likely, that she lost the wager, struck Teiresias blind. Unable to undo what a god has done, Zeus could only add the gift of second sight. Teiresias has lived on these many years, regarded as our blind seer.

Yet how frivolous his encounters with the gods! Serpents are sacred; their coupling should be secret—but why would a god switch the sex of a mortal witness to the act, not once but twice? A priestess whispered that Teiresias had trespassed on Artemis’ hunting ground, but the story doesn’t hold together. It’s likely a legend. Teiresias couldn’t solve the Sphinx’s riddle, nor has his knowledge benefited Thebes. He did not warn us of the plague.

Still, I understand his answer to the gods, thanks to my beloved Oedipus. In his arms I discovered womanly joy, so different from that one drunken episode with Laius.

I recount this tale from my palace chamber overlooking Mount Kithairon beyond the chasm where the Sphinx cast herself those many years ago. My children play in the courtyard below, Eteocles and Polyneices practicing with wooden swords as always. Ismene sews and Antigone is out running. If she dwelt in Mycenae, Antigone would win the girls’ running race and become priestess of Hera, as suits her implacable nature.

Antigone is my choice of heir. Oedipus suggested that Polyneices and Eteocles alternate year by year, but I only need glance out the window to know that will never work. The female line must prevail.

My mind wants to leap ahead to when plague is long behind us and Oedipus and I have lived out our lives as Thebes’ rulers. But never since the Sphinx settled her eagle’s wings on our high wall have we been as threatened as now. The death toll climbs; my own children could fall victim. No age or condition of person is exempt. Teiresias, no surprise, refuses to speak. “What will be will be.” Useless man!

We summoned priests from the school of Hippocrates in Epidaurus, healers from their sacred springs, root-wise priestesses from their woodland sanctuaries—but no one came.

The city is silent, not even a cry from the dying. Often, an otherworldly din, louder than the beating wings of the Sphinx, pounds in my head, and I retreat to this chamber so as not to trouble my poor husband. I pray, for one must supplicate the gods, but they have deserted us.

After days without sleep, Oedipus sent to Delphi for the Pythia’s wisdom. I shuddered at the thought: it was on his return from Delphi that Laius was murdered. Oedipus agreed to send couriers rather than going himself.

* * *

The couriers have returned with the Pythia’s oracle: we must find the murderer of King Laius.

The trail was cold to begin with, and now years have passed. We haven’t a clue to go on.

My eyes are heavy. I could sleep away the afternoon if only that terrible ringing in my ears would stop. We need a fresh breeze from the distant sea to wash us clean.

But thoughts of past impieties burn into my mind. One way or another, Laius is at the heart of Thebes’ troubles: he married me in greed and deception. He must have offended the gods before he came to Thebes and presented himself as my suitor. Perhaps his murderer should be named hero. Perhaps the truth will save our city. I’m raving, I know.

May the murderer come forth. May plague leave us. May Oedipus and I again reign in peace and plenty.

Oedipus summons Teiresias to speak to us in private.

No one could imagine the first words out of his mouth: “You, Oedipus, you are the murderer you seek.”

Neither of us speak. Then Oedipus kneels before me and takes both my hands in his.

“Beloved wife. Before I came to Thebes, I killed a man where the three roads meet. I fear who he might have been.”

“The prophecy has been fulfilled!” Teiresias says. “Hera has brought forth her dread justice.”

“Teiresias, please explain.” I use my most conciliating tone.

“I have been in the Goddess’ cave, my last act before my days as woman ended. There Hera blessed me. You, Jocasta, are caught in the goddess’ divine workings. The king must die. Long live the king.”

I shiver. Those very words echoed in my grieving head long ago.

“Laius sinned against Hera. Her vengeance works itself out, enigmatically as ever.” Teiresias laughs. “To the gods, mortal time and mortal suffering mean nothing. You, Jocasta, were marked out for a rare fate, to restore what Laius destroyed.”

“You speak in riddles, old man,” Oedipus says gently.

Again, wild laughter. “What do you expect?”

“Help us understand.”

Teiresias speaks more calmly. “Laius lost all connection to the Goddess. He stole the boy Chrysippus to his lust; he married Jocasta in bad faith; he tried to murder his own son. His hubris nearly brought an end to Thebes, bringing the Sphinx and now the plague. Stand proud, Oedipus. You need only go out on the palace steps and say ‘I killed King Laius” and plague will depart our gates.”

“No, no,” I cry. “What relief can come from something so horrifying?”

Teiresias puts his cold hand on mine. “The coils of justice will be fulfilled.”

“I can make no sense of this,” I persist. “You say mine is a rare fate?”

“You have brought back the Goddess’ order. You have married your son—”

“No!”

“Yes. Oedipus is your son whom Laius exposed on Mount Kithairon. Yet that is not all he is. He is your divine child, transfigured. They’ll tell the tale of how he was fostered by a shepherd, adopted by Corinth’s king, and fled after hearing he would murder his father. Truth is less clear-cut, less prosaic.”

“She cannot be my mother and my wife,” Oedipus says. “Is that not a worse impiety than Laius’ crimes?”

“No,” Teiresias replies. “Jocasta enacts the will of the Goddess, who does not abide by man’s laws. Man’s!” Again that mad laugh. “No more shall Laius’ lawlessness go unpunished! You have restored order.”

I sigh, tired of Teiresias’ riddling words. “A mother cannot marry her son.”

“Oedipus is your husband. Who he once was does not matter. Think of the ancients. Mother and her child divine. Husband and wife equal. Or wife more so, to be more precise,” he chuckles.

“I did not live in ancient days, even as a child worshipping the Mother and her Olympian daughters,” I say. “I think you speak of Egypt, of Phoenicia, of some distant land with shocking beliefs.”

“Do not be shocked: you are of their order. You and Oedipus shall rule in peace and plenty. Your daughter Antigone shall succeed you one day, and Thebes will continue a notable city. Until it falls, as all cities do in this land of earthquake and fire. Your story—” Teiresias shrugs. “Your story may be told strangely in future days, stranger even than it is. That isn’t something to trouble ourselves about. Go stand on the palace steps, Oedipus, with Jocasta beside you. Confess your murder of Laius. Ask the Great Mother’s blessing. I shall lead the chorus of all the city crying, ‘The king is dead; long live the king.’ Hearing those words will remind your listeners of the ancient way and I promise you: they will fall down and worship.”

* * *

As the sun slopes toward the sea, I head out to the woods that skirt Mount Kithairon. Hidden springs bubble up, then pour underground again. I know the paths from my girlhood. It’s been years since I have taken this walk; indeed since I have gone beyond the walls of Thebes. Something propels me towards the woodland shrine tended by a priestess of the old order, one of those who fled the destruction of Crete, or her descendant.

I sit in silence and let the gentle sound of the water and rustle of wind in the trees tell me what Teiresias did not. All happened on the palace steps as he foresaw. Oedipus spoke his truth, and we reign in peace and prosperity. We shall die one day in each other’s arms, and Antigone, our dauntless daughter, will succeed us.

Thebes is again in health, by means that pass all understanding. I offer the Great Mother my gratitude, her mysteries deep and abiding, despite man’s folly.