Epikleos had put a hand on his shoulder and Xanthippus breathed, in and out once more, closing the door on it. That session was brought to an end.

No further grief or emotion had showed in Xanthippus through the following day, when he described his actions along the Ionian coast. He spared no detail of his decisions and all he had done there. In the end, as he’d stepped down, they began to cheer him, the sound spreading across the city, deme to deme, district to district. He’d looked at them in confusion then.

The news that Themistocles would testify only thickened the crowds camping around the Pnyx. Every inn and spare room was already taken in the city, while the man himself was kept under guard in the council building. Aristides came to him there and found him pacing his room. With his appearance booked for the following morning, Themistocles was not quite under arrest. Yet Scythians patrolled the corridors and outside. They had stepped aside for Aristides. In part it was because he had already been marked for praise by the Assembly. Perhaps it also mattered that if they had stopped him, he might have returned with a thousand men – men who had stood with him as hoplites at Plataea. That had been the victory none of them had truly expected. Though it had come in the end in chaos, though the Spartans had been the stone in the flood, the Athenians too had stood their ground – and the largest army in the world had fled from them. If it was Aristides who called, the Scythians knew they would be swept away. That awareness was visible in them as they stood respectfully and asked after his health.

‘Come walk with me,’ Aristides said to Themistocles when he looked in. ‘This room is small enough to be a cell.’

‘I told them that when they were rebuilding them,’ Themistocles replied. He wore a long tunic to his thighs and an old pair of sandals. He cast only a quick glance behind him before stepping out behind Aristides. ‘A man has to be able to pace, to think. These rooms are too small. There was some fool of an architect insisting he could get twenty rooms where there were only a dozen before. And the costs! Truly, I have never seen such sums.’

He fell silent in the corridor that led to the Agora and the open air. The Scythian commander was a burly man with a streak of white in his beard. He had planted himself so neither could pass without him stepping aside. Some conflict was being waged in the Scythian as he looked apologetic, yet did not move.

‘I have no orders concerning you, Archon Aristides,’ he said.

‘You have no orders concerning my friend either,’ Aristides replied gently. ‘None that are lawful. Step aside, please.’