Tugging at the leather tip, Cimon poured more wine down his throat, feeling it splash off his teeth and spill to run down his chest. He belched, feeling grief rise and fall as if he was the shore and loss was a great tide. There were times when he felt nothing at all, when he could look on the dark yellow wax of his father’s face and see only death, not the one who had taught him the bow and the sword, who had instructed him in the duties of a man. Miltiades had triumphed at Marathon, saving the city from a Persian invasion. Every boy thought their father a hero. Yet Miltiades truly was one.

‘They loved you then,’ Cimon murmured, his voice breaking.

He had something he was meant to do, he recalled, some duty the priest had told him. He shook his head. He would not weep, not with them watching from under lowered brows. They would spread the word that the son of the great general had cried like a woman. He would not give them that. Through the day of laying out and the funeral procession the following night, even to the interment in the great cemetery outside the city wall, Cimon knew he would be watched. He was the head of the family and the heir to a great Athenian.

He drank again, filling his mouth with the thin stream and gulping. He was a fish swimming in wine, a thought that brought him close to choking, so that he had to steady himself against his father’s marble bier until the coughing subsided. His stomach was full of bitter gall. The front of his tunic was stained with it. He realised he could smell vomit and had a vague sense that he was responsible. He waved the idea away and raised the wineskin again. He did not want to feel such grief, so he drank it to fragments, his teeth red with wine.

After a time, Cimon patted his father’s hand, gripping it for a moment, though the touch made his own flesh creep. It was cold and stiff, and yet he trembled as he held it for the last time.

‘I will honour you. I will see you safe, kurios,’ he said.

The title fitted his father well enough. Cimon had thought the hero of Marathon could not fail. Yet even there, in that room, he could smell rot in the leg, still thick and inflamed, with lines like purple veins running into the good flesh. Beneath the wrappings the wound had soured, despite the healers letting it bleed free and dipping bandages in honey. Sometimes, the gods took even strong men. Hades welcomed deserving and undeserving alike for the underworld. In the end, they all crossed the river.

The thought jarred him and he fumbled in a pouch for a gold coin, with the image of a Persian archer on the soft metal. Cimon opened his father’s mouth and slipped it into the cheek, wincing at the clink it made against the teeth. He felt tears come as he tried to close the mouth and saw it slowly ease open once more. It was unnerving to see movement, though he knew the dead could belch and twitch. His father had told him of men killed in battle who could suddenly sit up, hours later, terrifying those around them. Life held on, desperately.