‘So that’s it?’ Alia said. ‘I thought you said we had more time.’

She was being brave, he realised. Just that morning, they had lain in bed together, as they had for the best part of four years.

‘I never lied to you,’ he said softly, patting and rubbing the dog. ‘You knew I would go back to Athens, to my family.’ He made himself say it. ‘To my wife.’

He could hear the creak of harness and cart outside and was suddenly fretting. Seven years! Had Agariste expected him to live like a hermit? It was too long for a man to spend alone. He could only thank Athena there were no children to bring back. That thought chilled him. He held out his palm to Conis and made him sit.

‘Alia, if it turns out you are pregnant, bring the child to me. It would be a citizen of Athens and I can …’

‘I am not pregnant,’ she said.

She spoke with such certainty, he guessed she too took the herbs and tea that bled children away. His women all seemed to shrink from bearing his children. For a moment, just a heartbeat, he wanted to strangle her. He was not a weak man, however. He mastered himself.

‘The house is yours, to sell as you wish. Conis too. There is a little gold and silver in my cloak, upstairs. I must go, Alia.’

‘Because your wife calls you back to her skirts,’ she said, a note of acid creeping in.

‘Because my city calls me,’ he said. It sounded like an excuse and he would not allow it. ‘And because my wife has come, yes. I never lied, Alia.’

‘You did, Xan. You lied with every touch.’

He stared at her for a long time and then went out, stepping up beside his wife without a word. As the cart moved away from the home he had known for seven years, he heard Conis whine. Xanthippus shook his head, too tired to think. He gave a low whistle. If someone tried to hold that dog then, he knew they would have been dragged across the room. He looked back to see the big beast barrelling down the road after him, leaving a wake of rising dust. Though he was weary, though Agariste sat with a face like thunder, the sight of his dog’s massive head and wide grin lightened his heart. Conis howled as he ran, until Xanthippus put out his arm and the dog leaped up to him and was heaved on board, trying to lick his face with all its might.

Neither Xanthippus nor Agariste spoke again as the road took them east, to the narrow border that separated the Peloponnese from the rest of Greece. Soldiers of Sparta had built a huge barrier there, with just a narrow gate and a resulting queue of carts and people that stretched back half a day. After they had waited for a time, Xanthippus reached across and took his wife’s hand. She yanked it away from him, so he spoke instead to the dog.