‘What? ’ Themistocles said, gaping at him. ‘You’re telling me there is no hope? I could recite my honours, starting with Marathon – and Salamis, where I saved us. You know that Spartan Eurybiades came to honour the duel he promised? You see this wound, or this?’ He pointed to marks on his ribs and a stitched line on his calf. ‘He knew all I had done, even if my own people don’t! I wish I could call him as a witness, to tell them all they owe me. The ungrateful …!’

He threw his hands up and limped away from Aristides under the moonlight in a great circle. By the time he returned, he was calmer.

‘What do they need, six thousand votes? Perhaps I’ll have the fleet rowers kick the pot over.’

‘And start another war?’ Aristides said. ‘No, if you are sent into exile, you’ll go, as quietly as I did, as well as Xanthippus did.’

‘Ah, that’s it, isn’t it?’ Themistocles said bitterly. ‘Of course. You two are delighted to see me brought down with petty accusations, with nothing more than gossip.’

He blew air out in disgust. It was hard to believe his own words when Aristides watched him in concern. There was no spiteful pleasure in the man. No pleasure of any kind in Xanthippus, not any longer.

Themistocles felt drained, empty and tired as he stood there. He muttered a curse under his breath.

‘There is always hope, Aristides. While some of them love me, there is always hope.’

‘The last thing in the box Pandora opened,’ Aristides said, ‘after all the evils of the world came out.’

‘Well, that is no comfort at all ,’ Themistocles said, though he forced a grin. ‘Come on. I should at least try to sleep. I do not want to miss the great and good of Athens saying what a nasty, wicked man I am.’

He turned his steps back towards the council building, where shadows of Scythians waited.

‘See those?’ Themistocles muttered.

With an audience, he came alive. He raised his head and put his shoulders back, marching across the Agora under the moonlight, his arms swinging.

‘Never let them see they have hurt you,’ Themistocles called over his shoulder, his voice echoing.

34

Themistocles left the council building at dawn. The streets were already filling by then, with crowds desperate for a good spot on the higher slopes, or even the stone Pnyx benches where they could hear him speak. Themistocles looked fresh and clean, his robe bright in the rose dawn. He was flanked by a hundred of the Scythians, so that he frowned around him, feeling like a prisoner rather than a witness.

‘Why do you glower so?’ he said to the Scythian captain. ‘Are you worried for me?’

The man did not reply and Themistocles cursed under his breath, muttering about short men and their dignity.