She dragged her children close, bowing her head over them. Agariste saw many of the women had collected their own rocks, red or brown in the wet. Rain fell still, dripping in silver lines under the long roof. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t bear what she was seeing.

The women attacked, falling on the little family, smothering screams behind robes and cowls and dresses, arms rising and falling. The rest of the crowd fell silent in stunned grief. Hands touched mouths, but they did not look away. Those who had called in support of the blacksmith edged apart from anyone who might have heard, keeping their heads down.

When it was over, the women stood back. Little bodies lay sprawled and broken, dusty, surprisingly so, as if they had been tumbled over and over, rolled in blood and earth. The mother and her children were all dead; that was clear from the first glimpse. They stared blankly at the grass roof, lives hammered out into the ground.

A space grew around them as the women slipped into the crowd, dropping red stones as they went, standing under streams of rain to wash the blood off their hands. The silence was a living thing under the thundering rain.

Agariste found herself weeping softly, keening like a child. She held Eleni very close, though she knew the woman had held her own daughter just as tightly. It was a mindless comfort, but she could not speak or think, not then. Pericles stood nearby with his mouth open and his eyes wide. Agariste wished she had managed to turn his head from what he had witnessed, but it was too late for that.

She heard the approach of marching hoplites in the clash of bronze, a sound she knew well from Xanthippus when he trained. Themistocles had brought a dozen armed men, but it was the sight of Xanthippus that wrenched sobs to the surface and had her reaching for her husband. Agariste could not say a word as she clung to him and buried her head in the folds of his cloak.

‘Who killed them?’ she heard Themistocles demand of the crowd.

No one answered. They had shown what they thought of traitors and that was the end of it. Agariste just wanted to go home, but she knew it wasn’t there any longer. Rain struggled against fire in Athens. Perhaps it would put the flames out.