He sighed. He thought too much, he always had. There were times when he realised whole days had passed unnoticed, somehow sliding by. Yet they were mere instants, moments, not the great oceans he had imagined. He had taken up a dozen different jobs in his exile, from breaking horses to constructing a roof, to writing speeches for clerics in Corinth, men hardly able to believe one who looked like a carpenter could form letters as well as any temple scribe.

‘That’s it for today,’ Pelias called.

The men didn’t argue. They gathered up the spades and hammers and tossed them onto the work cart, then formed a weary queue for the silver coins. Xanthippus took his with the rest, almost out on his feet with tiredness. He wondered if he could ever feel at peace.

It was an hour’s walk to his home, on the edge of Corinth. By the time he reached it, his feet were like lead and he was walking almost in a daze. He needed food and perhaps a cup or two of wine.

A cart and pair of horses stood in the road, with four armed men waiting. The scene brought him back to sharpness. His door was open! He could hear his dog whining at his approach. Xanthippus felt his hand drop to his waist, but there was only a pruning knife there, with a wooden handle. Even so, he took it up and held it ready to slash as he entered his home.

Agariste was out of place in his little kitchen. He recognised her but still stood with a stunned expression. He heard the metallic sound as the knife fell from his grasp, but didn’t stoop to pick it up.

‘Agariste?’ he said, filled with dread. ‘You didn’t write, to say you were coming.’

Her face was pinched and taut. She nodded as he went on, fearing the news.

‘Is it the children? Is Ariphron all right? Pericles? Eleni?’

‘They are all well, Xanthippus. I have come to bring you home,’ she said. ‘The Assembly voted.’

‘It has only been seven years,’ he said, trying to take it in.

His eyes slid to the second person in the kitchen, watching him in silence with her hand over her mouth. His mistress, Alia, was of Corinth, a woman with two children and a dead husband who had passed away while she was still coming into her beauty. It was she who held his dog, though the big brown mastiff struggled in her grasp, unable to understand why he was not allowed to go to the master. Xanthippus held up a hand to quiet the dog’s whining. From the tension in that room, he guessed Agariste had understood her role in his household.

‘The Persians are coming, Xan. I thought …’

To his horror, Xanthippus saw his wife’s eyes fill with tears. Agariste rose from her seat and pushed past him into the open air. He was left in the room with his mistress, standing like stone. As if her strength failed her, Alia opened her hand and the big dog bounded towards him, fussing and wriggling. Xanthippus had named the animal ‘Conis’ as he was the colour of dust. To any Greek, though, the name carried a shadow of death with it, of men returned to dust. It suited an animal as ferocious-looking as any monster Heracles had ever defeated.