‘I remember watching you learn to ride, Eleni,’ Xanthippus said, ‘over a much smaller jump, with a little pony. Yes! Pericles stood behind the pole, just there. I was worried that if you missed the jump, it would take him off his feet.’

Neither of the two boys replied. They watched him as they might have watched any of their mother’s friends. Eleni beamed in memory.

‘I remember!’ she said. ‘I was on Shadow. He was wonderful.’

‘Not Shadow,’ Pericles muttered.

His sister glanced at him, but went on, caught up in the memory.

‘We sold him when Peri outgrew him – and I bought Soldier here. He’s Peri’s horse, really, but he likes me more.’

She grinned and Xanthippus thought how beautiful she was, how full of life. Conis wagged his tail at just the sound of her voice.

‘The pony’s name wasn’t Shadow,’ Pericles said again. ‘It didn’t have a name. Nor is this one Soldier. They don’t have names.’

‘They do when I ride them,’ Eleni said, keeping her smile in place.

Looking from one to the other, Xanthippus could see it was an old argument.

‘I don’t see that it does any harm to name them,’ Xanthippus said gently. ‘I called my dog “Conis”, you know. “Dust”, after his colour.’

Pericles glared at him and Xanthippus could see him struggling between a desire to reply and sensible caution.

‘And your mother and I named you, all three of you,’ Xanthippus went on. ‘“Ari-phron” means “great mind”. You are my firstborn, the great-nephew of Cleisthenes, who gave us our democracy in Athens.’

His oldest son lost some of his glower at that.

‘And “Eleni”?’ his daughter said.

Xanthippus smiled.

‘It means “light” – a torch in the darkness. Because of how my heart lifted when I heard your mother had given birth to a girl. I chose that one.’

She was delighted at that. Silence fell. Pericles said nothing, while Eleni looked from her brother to her father, then lost patience with their quiet clash of wills.

‘And what about Peri? What does his name mean?’

‘It means “famous”,’ Pericles said under his breath. He seemed annoyed by it. His father nodded.

‘It does. Your mother had a dream of a lion on the night before Pericles was born. Such a vision does not come often, or to many. She gave you the name as an ambition, that one day all men would know it.’

‘And you, father?’ Eleni said. ‘How did you get yours?’

‘My mother dreamed of a pale horse,’ Xanthippus said with a shrug. ‘I do not know what that dream meant.’

To his surprise, he found he was enjoying the conversation, that something tight had eased in him. Perhaps it had been the laughter of his daughter, he thought. Men needed women for such things, or life would have been a dark and pitiless place. Even with a dog.

That thought made him look past Conis to the house. He took a deep breath.