‘No greater fool than you are already – what else should I call them but what they are?’

‘What you want,’ the man said pacifically, pushing away his empty bowl and taking out a pipe and filling it with rich golden tobacco leaves, ‘is an Indian, a savage. One to use as your own. To take you out into the forest and show you all these things. Take you out in a canoe up and down the river and show you the things you want to know.’

‘Don’t any of the planters know these things?’ J asked. He felt fearful at the thought of being guided by an Indian. There had been too much talk in London of brown men armed with knives of stone who crept into your house and cut your throat while you slept.

The woman hawked and spat into the fireplace. ‘They don’t hardly know how to plant!’ she said. ‘Everything they know they learned from the Indians. You can find yourself an Indian to tell you what the soapberry tree is. Civilised folks here aren’t interested in anything but gold and tobacco.’

‘How shall I find an Indian to guide me?’ J asked. For a moment he felt as helpless as a child, and he thought of his father’s travels – to Russia, to the Mediterranean, to Europe. He had never asked his father if he had felt fear, or worse than fear: the babyish whimper of someone lost, friendless in a strange land. ‘Where would I find a safe Indian?’

‘No such thing as a safe Indian,’ the woman said sharply.

‘Peace!’ J’s fellow lodger said quietly. ‘If you’re serving the king you must have papers, a safe pass, that sort of thing.’

J felt inside his shirt where the precious royal order was wrapped in oilskin. ‘Of course.’

‘Best see the governor then,’ the man suggested. ‘If you’re from the king and you’ve got some influence at court, the governor’ll have time for you. God knows he has no time for honest working men trying to make a living here.’

‘Does he have a court?’ J asked.

‘Knock on his door,’ the woman said impatiently. ‘Court indeed! He’s lucky to have a girl to open the door for him.’

J stood up from the table. ‘Where shall I find his house?’

‘Set beyond the Back Road,’ the man said. ‘I’ll stroll over with you now.’

‘I have to wash first,’ J said nervously. ‘And get my hat and coat.’

The woman snorted disparagingly. ‘He’ll want to paint and powder next,’ she said.

The man smiled. ‘I’ll wait for you outside,’ he said and went out, closing the door gently behind him.