‘Oh, I will be grave – and stern and dignified,’ Xanthippus said, though his eyes gleamed with humour. ‘The gods must truly be capricious. Today, they smile on me.’

He gave a great roar of delight, surprising Epikleos and making him grin. Xanthippus patted the air with one hand and pressed the other to his lips, laughing as he did so.

‘That is all, I swear. No more. Will you come to the baths? I imagine there will be some sort of meeting of the Assembly this morning, once the news spreads. I’d like to be clean and to have eaten by then.’

‘I’ve already had a little bread in wine,’ Epikleos replied. ‘Let me go out and judge the mood of the city. You’ll find me on the Pnyx.’

19

Cimon swayed as he stood over his father’s body, looking down on cold flesh. A half-full wineskin hung like a slaughtered lamb from his hand. The young man reeked of sour wine and vomit, the smell strong in that small place. He had remained there, just looking, for a long time. No one had dared interrupt him. Outside the room, the household waited in silence and whispers for the heir to say goodbye, unwilling to interrupt his vigil.

There was no mistaking death, not in its presence. He had heard of others who claimed it looked like sleep, as if their loved ones had breathed out and out and simply rested. Miltiades had not become a shade so easily. Separated from his family and friends, behind a locked door, Miltiades had gone from the world in delirium and pain.

Cimon reached out to touch a cold hand, a hand that had once embraced him, that had ruffled his hair. He would never again hear his father’s voice, in praise or exasperation, not a single word. A priest of Hades had come to bless the body and send the soul safe to his master. That man waited in the doorway, his impatience showing. Perhaps he had seen so much of death he could no longer even understand loss. Fishermen care nothing for their catch, Cimon knew. The young man had brushed past the priest when he’d come through, or rather the priest had stepped out of his way rather than be flattened. There was something implacable about Cimon when he had been drinking hard.

The temple of Athena on the Acropolis had sent their high priestess to honour Miltiades. She stood with her colleague just back from the threshold of the room, a motherly woman bearing a staff and a branch of green olives. When the priest of Hades bent close and murmured something, she shook her head sternly. Cimon’s mother and her sisters were also present, there to wash and clean his father’s body. Together, they stood as a group in careful, aware silence, like actors about to go on.

That was in part why Cimon had not moved for an age. His father had found his aunts irritating. That they should be the ones to wash his flesh, even just to look on him when he was vulnerable, when he could not defend himself from their judgement with his sharp eyes and sharper thoughts … it kept Cimon in the room, guarding Miltiades in death as he had not been able to in life.