“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted, completely at a loss. “It would be wrong to tell you to cheer up, when you’ve so recently lost your grandfather.”

“You don’t think it’s un-Platonic of me to grieve?” she asked.

I couldn’t remember what Plato had said about it. I’d read the Republic when I was an ephebe, like everyone else, but that was a while ago and I’d been busy since. “Unnatural not to, if you ask me. It’s five years since Leonidas and Aelia died, and I’ve recovered from the shock, mostly, but right away the grief was like an open wound.”

“Did you weep?”

She was exactly my height, taller than her sister although she was so much slighter. She must have used some flower scent in her soap, because I could smell it on her skin. “Yes, right away I did,” I said. “When we found the wreckage. And at the memorial, and then afterwards whenever I’d think about them I’d feel tears coming to my eyes. Even now sometimes. We all grew up together in the same nursery, sucked milk from the same breasts, as they say, and then we worked together on the boats. You can’t forget people you’re that close to as if they’d never been. Yes, I wept. There’s nothing shameful about tears like that.”

“Thank you.” She wiped her eyes again, unselfconsciously. “We should keep walking. It’s cold.” She took my arm and we walked on, past the Temple of Nike with its neatly swept gravel courtyard. “I never knew Leonidas, but I remember Aelia. She used to eat in Florentia sometimes, with the quilters. She helped old Tydeus when his sight was going. She was kind. And you’re kind too, Jason, you’re always kind.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I do my best,” I muttered. If it had been a dream I’d have had dream eloquence, but it was waking life and the girl I’d been in love with since we were both fifteen was telling me I was kind and my tongue was thick in my mouth. “Tell me about your grandfather. I didn’t know him well.”

“He wasn’t like anyone else. Of course, he was the god Apollo, and you couldn’t forget that. But he was also a man, a man astonished at growing old, at grey hair, at weakening muscles.” We came to the walls and turned in at the gate. Thetis’s voice echoed for a moment as we passed beneath the arch. “I always loved him. He had so many grandchildren, and he cared about all of us. I’m not really his grandchild, did you know that?”