Outside the gate, the ruins of ancient tombs still stretched. The Persians had destroyed them all, breaking them with hammers. Pericles thought first it had been to loot keepsakes and trophies – the weapons and armour of Athenians, perhaps. As he walked through a field of broken tombstones, it seemed too thorough for that. Pieces lay in the road with names carved into them. That seemed the merest spite, just to hurt the ones who had loved the dead. In one place, bodies were being wrapped and reburied, piled on one another with a dozen men working to fill a huge pit. Someone had given an order their families could not, he realised. Pericles thought of Cimon’s pain when he heard. His father’s corpse would be there, somewhere, among the bones and broken things.

In a few months, or a year, Pericles knew Ariphron would be collected from his burial spot and returned to the family tomb. When it too was remade. He felt a chill at that, but their mother would want a place to come and mourn.

Beyond the city, the road was quiet. Xanthippus still walked as if alone, without looking back. Pericles struggled to keep up and had to shake his head twice when Epikleos held out his hand to take the sack of armour. He felt his own mood darken and grow cold as he approached the estate. When they had left, it had been burned out, deliberately despoiled. Hard laughter had sounded in that place as Persians smashed everything of craft and value. Pericles had not been sure he could live there again, but a new house loomed as they approached, low and wide, with a roof of red tile and wooden posts. It looked a little smaller than he remembered.

The estate wall was not finished, so that Xanthippus just stepped over the boundary to his home. A slave called out in warning and the whole house roused to see who approached without an invitation. Pericles felt his eyes fill as he saw Manias and a dozen others appear, armed with swords and clubs. A pale figure moved in the cloister, and then his mother came out.

Agariste approached slowly at first. Her face was calm and yet she walked faster and faster towards them, as if she could not stop herself. Xanthippus stopped and waited, until she drew to a halt before him, looking up. Pericles wanted to shout for his father to embrace her. Instead, they stood and faced one another. Without warning, Agariste slapped her husband hard across the face. Xanthippus could have stopped the blow. He did not try to.

When he did not respond, she did it again, then a third time. Pericles was weeping and he did not know how long they would have stood there like that if Epikleos had not stepped forward and grabbed Agariste by the arm.

‘I’m sorry, Agariste,’ Epikleos said. ‘Ariphron died bravely and well.’