To Aristides, the regent’s voice had a sharp tone, always on the edge of complaint. He wanted to ask if Pausanias thought a sacred festival should be begun again at his whim. The goddesses would surely not mind too much, or see it as mockery. Yet he remained silent. He had already brought up the reason they were all in Eleusis – and been rebuffed as if he had broken some rule of good manners. Aristides needed to persuade a man whose support he had to have. So, if Pausanias appeared brash, or a fool, it did not matter. Aristides would flatter and compliment, do whatever he had to, to gain the Spartan’s goodwill. He counselled himself to be cautious. Pausanias seemed somehow distant, oblivious in the manner of certain noblemen Aristides had known, as if only his own needs and interests mattered. Yet if Pausanias was truly unaware, Aristides suspected the man’s soothsayer was as sharp as obsidian. There was intelligence in that one, in every shadowed glance and half-smile.

The news of the death of King Leonidas was still spreading through the cities and towns of the Hellenes. For Aristides, for any citizen of Athens, the action at Thermopylae was relatively trivial. He knew the Spartans had lost their battle king. Pausanias had lost his uncle! It was only right to show respect for such a recent grief. Yet what was that loss against the horror of a Persian army trampling sacred places in Athens, pulling down walls and desecrating tombs? Aristides felt their presence in his city like a weight on his shoulders, a cloak he could not throw off no matter how it bore him down. He reminded himself the people had been saved and taken to Salamis. He could see the island across the bay from Eleusis, the sea glittering between. At that very moment, the Athenian Assembly rowed and fought. Xanthippus was out there somewhere among them, with Themistocles and Cimon. Their wives and mothers and sisters watched and prayed. Aristides clenched his jaw. While the fate of his city was being decided, he had to play politics with Spartans.

He knew a city was more than streets and a market. Athens lay in the memories of those who actually lived in her. Walls could be rebuilt, even temples raised again. Aristides still felt like a husband whose wife had been ravished, enraged and helpless. Persian soldiers walked and urinated in the dust of his city – and all he had been able to do was wait on neutral ground for Pausanias to agree to meet him.

Aristides felt the strain like a hand gripping his neck, a growing pressure. He’d expected to deal with Leonidas, a man of vast experience, renowned for his wisdom. The king’s brother too had been such a man, though it seemed Cleombrotus was too old or perhaps too ill to become regent. Pausanias had just waved that question away like an impertinence.