‘Conis? This is Agariste. She is my wife and you will protect her and keep her safe. Do you understand?’ The dog made a sound partway between a whine and a cough. ‘Good boy.’

Xanthippus lay back and closed his eyes, lolling and dozing. Agariste said nothing, staring coldly ahead until they passed the barricades and staring Spartan guards, then turned the cart towards Athens.

Aristides sipped a tisane of jasmine and mint, satisfied with his morning’s work. The batch of pots coming out of his kiln were exactly as he had imagined, a blue glaze that reminded him of the sea on a summer’s day. He had proved the colour would remain true and he had a dozen packed in, with charcoal banked underneath and the bricks hissing and chinking under an intense heat. There was peace in their creation and it pleased him to sell them in the markets of Ithaca.

The population of the island was small and he had more simple glazed plates stacked in his workshop than would ever be bought, but he caught his own fish and had restored a little one-roomed place that suited him. It looked as if Odysseus himself might have walked past it when he returned from his adventures. Aristides had taken work in a dozen places to learn the crafts to restore his home. His kiln had come from first attempts to make tiles. He’d volunteered in a potter’s for the best part of a year until he had the skill and knew how to find the right clays and make the charcoal.

He smiled as he sipped the drink, breathing in scented steam. He had built the roof first, to get him out of the cold and rain. After that, he’d shaped a door and hung it on leather folds, then later, working in a forge in town, he’d bartered his labour in exchange for iron hinges and a handle. That first door had warped and he’d had to sell a few plates for seasoned wood to replace it. Each piece of the house had come from his own mind and hands. Though it was tiny, it was perfect, close by the shore, where fishing boats came in and unloaded their catch. In exchange for a hot drink or some loaves from his kiln, they would leave a fish or two. Greeks understood hermits, after all. Aristides had let his beard grow long, though there was no wild look to his eyes, nor visions to disturb his sleep. When he sat still in the evenings, watching the sea, he was at peace. Most days, the same red cat came to sit with him. Aristides had not given her a name, as he thought he was not her master. Still, he fed her scraps and had taught her to give him one paw and then the other.

Out on the sea, he saw two triremes race. He watched idly, noting the eyes painted on the prows rise and fall in the swell. The trierarchs were competent enough, though he had little expertise in the tactics of the sea. Beyond accounting for the costs involved, anyway. Those he did know. For a time, Aristides amused himself estimating the cost of creating the ships, then crewing them with rowers. Assuming a full complement of men, it was a staggering total. Only Athens could have kept so many at sea.