held in Thebes while the king and his family were away. Absence had made some hearts grow bolder. The main speakers were men in the prime of their youth, with golden hair and good sinews. Older men and women stood on the fringes of the crowd that had gathered. Children, those who had energy enough, ran about and played in the dust.
‘The curse that has come upon this town will soon kill us all unless we do something about it,’ said one youthful speaker. ‘We bring our green boughs to the altars of Pallas, and the sacred embers of divination, yet still the drought prevails, the River Ismenus dries, and still its waters turn to mud.’
‘How are we to water our fields?’ called a man wrapped in a sheep’s hide. ‘That’s what I want to know.’
Other voices shouted that there was death in their pastures also, and in their patches of garden, and in every place where once things used to grow green. And when the shouts of complaint died, an older man spoke, in a voice creaking like a cartwheel. ‘There is death also in the wombs of women. My poor wife bore forth a dead child, a daughter, last week, and is ill of its contagion even now.’
In the silence following this statement, a young man said, ‘The birds did not build their nests this year.’
Beside him, an old bowed woman responded. ‘It’s what you young fellows get up to – that’s what’s caused all this. You don’t control yourselves.’
‘The ordinary business of mortal life has become confounded,’ said an old one, shaking his shaggy head. ‘The Furies laugh at us.’
The youthful speaker who had begun this litany now spoke again. ‘We look to King Oedipus to save us. He is at the shrine of Apollo even now. Tomorrow he will return and we may expect a change for the better. But if better does not come, what then shall we do?’
‘Young Pylades lies sick with a mortal and malodorous fever,’ cried one townswoman.
A husky older man then spoke up. ‘We shall survive this ill season. I am old enough to recall the gloom that fell upon us once before, when King Laius was exiled from the city. We have all heard tell how robbers set upon him and slayed him by Triodos, in Phocis, where three ancient roads meet.
‘That was the bad time, when a sphinx, that vile creature from the past, ravaged our lands. Was it not then Oedipus who answered its riddle and thus preserved Thebes?’
‘We can rely on Oedipus to save us again.’
‘Not while the sun and moon are at odds,’ said the old one who had previously spoken.
All this while, Creon watched from his lonely tower, listening to what was said. At this stage in his life he was frequently silent.
Semele had also listened to the speeches, crouching behind a side door of the palace, nattering to herself, showing her teeth.
‘We don’t want those monkeys gathering, making things out to be worse than they really are,’ she said to the griffin accompanying her. She clutched him by his mane to keep him quiet. ‘There’s a way we can make them run, and no mistake. The Sphinx will see them off.’
She climbed on her ugly pet’s back. She weighed nothing. Holding on to the creature’s ears to guide him, she rode him into the inner recesses of the courtyard. The griffin started to growl.
The old woman climbed from his back and approached the cage wherein the Sphinx was confined. Seeing her coming, the Sphinx rushed to the cage door.
‘By the great oval owl eggs of the outer lands, Grandmother Semele, free me from this stinking cage.’
Semele gave her a cunning glance. ‘What if I do?’
‘I’ll not touch you. I’m broody, old lady, and have an egg to lay.’
‘What’s freedom worth, then? – Or you can lay your egg in the cage.’
The slave, also confined, called shrilly from the rear of the cage. The floor was strewn with cracked deer bones and excrement, over which the slave ventured a step forward. ‘Fair lady Semele, please unlock the door of this cage. I can’t bear the Sphinx’s company any more. I shall die unless I can guess what is one yet is lost if it comes not two.’
‘Quiet, varlet, or I’ll have your tongue cut out. You shall do it yourself,’ promised Semele. Turning again to the Sphinx, she asked, ‘What reward if I set you free?’
‘Oh,’ squawked the great beast, ‘what makes hell so full of humans, and humans so hellish? Rewards, rewards! Very well, if you free me, I shall conjure up a little sprite with meaty organs, who will lie with you as no one else will …’
‘Ah! And what will this sprite do, since mere lying is not enough?’ Semele’s cunning little eyes were half-concealed under the complex straggle of her hair which, unwashed, sheltered several objects within it, such as twigs and beetles.
The Sphinx spread her wings and banged them against the bars of the cage. ‘This sprite I have in mind has the curious habit of licking between the legs of old ladies. He is young and bald, with red hinder parts.’
Semele let out an andante squeak. ‘Has he tits? And what exactly does he lick with?’
‘I ask the riddles here, old hag! The sprite licks with what one and all lick with – the tongue. What else? The tongue of this sprite is well known in the bordellos of hell for having a long but plump – decidedly plump – tongue with flesh hanging from it, very tickly.’
‘Oh, let’s not waste time then!’ Her little wizened hands trembled before her. ‘I like the sound of this sprite. I like the sound of its bad habits.’
The key to the cage hung from a hook nearby. Plucking it off the hook, Semele in her excitement dropped it. She groaned and clutched the small of her back as she picked it up. And then she shook so much she was unable to insert it in the lock. ‘Oh, oh, dear …’ she muttered. ‘We must drive away that smelly crowd outside the palace …’
‘Give me the key. I’ll unlock from here,’ ordered the Sphinx.
Extending her paw through the bars, she snatched the key from the dithering old witch. She inserted it deftly into the lock, turned it, wrenched open the door, and burst forth so fiercely that Semele barely had time to hop aside.
‘Oh, oh, now – the sprite, dear Sphinx! Send him to me. My thighs burn.’
The Sphinx crowed like a cockerel and lashed her tail. ‘No sprite for you, you old hag! You did not free me from that stinking cage. I freed myself.’
‘You lying foul deformed demonic phantom of a former age! Then go to the great door and frighten the plebeians festering there.’
‘I’m for egg-laying!’ said the monster, departing with a scatter of feathers and a shriek of triumph. ‘Frighten them yourself. You have but to show your behind or your face.’
‘Aaaargh!’ shrieked Semele, jumping up and down without allowing her flat feet to leave the ground. She turned to the slave still cowering in the cage.
‘You! I’ll free you! Down on your knees!’
She advanced towards the man, bow-legged, on pleasure bent.
