"It is true," Arenthe told me. "There is pain in the bearing of children. But there is also joy. The creation of new life is a wonderful mystery, and this gift is our own. It is the gift we as women were given by the gods themselves. Men may bellow and brag, and they may have control over all other things. But this place is our own, and I would not exchange it for all the battle-pride in the world."

"Why?" I asked her. It was funny when Arenthe talked like this, and at nine years old, I was not entirely sure whether to be amused, confused, or perhaps a little scared.

"Because it is the woman's own mystery." She ran a comb lightly through my hair. I enjoyed the smooth, comforting rhythm of her hands. Three daughters, the woman had borne. Daphne was the youngest, and all were slaves. I wondered that she could still be saying these things, when every child she had would almost certainly come to share that fate. "One day, you will understand, Princess. And that day will be a day of joy."

She turned me around, and even then the smile upon her face had been the tender expression of a fond old woman. "May the gods grant you good fortune, and healthy sons," she told me. "I cannot think of a greater blessing. Now, run along and play. It will soon be time for supper."


My monthly cycle usually came with the approach of the Full Moon, but when it did not, it was not a long time before I discovered that my handmaidens were all watching me even more closely. "Let us hope," Chalcione told me, the smile of anticipation plain upon her face. "There are several possibilities, but certainly one more likely than the others."

But when the sickness came, even she grew close to certain.

It was Daphne, the youngest, who was given the task of carrying my good news to Laius, King of Thebes. And it was good news, I told myself even as my stomach threatened to leap away from its place at my belly. If the will of the gods was favourable, the king's fourteen year old wife would be quicker than anticipated in giving him a child.

When Daphne returned she was flushed and tense with lowered eyes. "The King sends me to deliver you to him, Lady," was all that she would say of what had passed between them.

Deliberately shaping my face to a mask, hiding a fresh grimace as the queasy discomfort of early pregnancy threatened to overwhelm me once again, I hauled myself from my seated position until I was somewhat balanced on both unsteady feet. Arenthe rested a hand upon my arm. "It will ease, Lady," she promised.

"When?" I demanded, unable to prevent a series of gasps from entering my voice. "When will it?"

"With time."

With an even greater effort than I had ever thought myself capable, I regained enough composure to make my own way - unaided - to the hall where my king was waiting. Seeing him arrayed, magnificent as Lord Zeus himself, in the robes of his office, I bowed low and paid no heed to the unsteadiness of the stone beneath me. "Husband," I said.

"My queen." Laius' response was equally distant. His cold, level eyes had gained an overlay of storm-silver from the stone of the room, and he rose to both feet like a mountain waking. Equally regal as I met his gaze, the daughter of Oenameus hated him.

"I am told that you may be with child, Lady Jocasta," he commented, stiff and formal. "This is good news for our family, and good news for Thebes. I shall travel tomorrow to consult with the Oracle, and if the news remains favourable, there will be celebrations in the city."

My knees were still shaking, feet unsteady on the marble floor, and my stomach still twisted inside me like a knotted thread that had snagged in its loom. But I held back on accepting Arenthe's assistance as I retreated, one step at a time, to the welcome security of my chambers.


Ever since Pandora, the first woman ever created, was introduced into the world, there has been a single purpose for our existence. To provide the children of men with a vessel in which they can grow and develop, until they are heavy inside us and our backs ache with the act of supporting their weight. But a married woman is an outsider, a foreign element in the established family of her husband. They have never truly had any trust for us, and it is likely that they never will.

Agave tore the head from her only son and paraded it through the forests of Thebes. Her sister Ino clasped both young children to her side and carried them over the cliffs, their shattered bodies left to wash into the sea. Women of Thebes are too often as unfortunate as those they have carried to term. So it comes as little surprise that there will be no celebrations in the city upon the king's return.

It is the goddess Hestia who comes to me in the night, hair cascading over both pale shoulders and the billowing cloth of her chiton.

"You will find no luck in this union." Her voice is not as harsh as I had expected it to be, but she speaks with no more feeling than the crack of a hearth-fire. "Nor in this child."

"Why?" I ask. Tears are wet upon my cheeks, and I do not understand how this should be. "What god have I offended? What have I done that was so very wrong?"

"Jocasta," she says. "The Fates themselves have cursed your union. It was no other god. The Fates themselves have cursed your son."