He waved a hand at the lathes along the docks, where weary men worked pedals wound about with string, while others stood in line and held iron chisels to the spinning wood. The water was thick with a curd of shavings and oil nearby.

‘After that, just the tools, the lathes, the fresh food and … the water to bring on board. That’s it, I think.’

He looked at Cimon with the admiration of a young man for one he respected. Cimon had insisted on learning the skills of the shipwrights. They’d considered it a fine joke at first, a whim of a wealthy young man and his friends. That attitude had faded as some forty of them turned up at dawn each morning. They completed each task they were given with quiet concentration, Pericles among them. He’d understood it was a test of sorts, that Cimon was watching them to see how well they worked together, how quickly they learned. There are worse ways to select crews. In the end, only two men had been turned away and both of those had been badly injured. Cimon had paid for doctors to tend them and slaves to help their recovery. They had wept even so, denied their places at the last.

‘That’s all, is it?’ Cimon said. He opened his eyes, revealing white lines where the sun had not been able to reach. ‘We still have to name the three ships – and select the crews for each one.’

‘I imagine you have an idea about that already,’ Pericles said.

He was almost certain he would be allowed to go with the rest. Though he was one of the youngest, he was a member of the Assembly, with voting rights. Cimon had made him ask permission from his father, but that had been a formality. Xanthippus didn’t care. He didn’t seem to care about anything any more. He just sat and drank wine without water, reading or staring into nothing as the days passed. If he was disturbed, his temper was volcanic.

Pericles had lived on board the ship for months, far from his mother and sister as they tended to his father. His world had become those docks and his place in the crews. When he thought of Xanthippus at all, he tried to think of the man he had been before exile and war, not the man he had become.

Cimon looked across at him, interrupting his thoughts.

‘Do you have a favourite ship? If you could choose any of the three?’