She was not there. Not among the crowd on the quayside, nor back in the shadow of the warehouse walls where he had left her. He shook his head, he had not really expected her to be there, on the quayside; but he could not help the pang of childish disappointment. Somewhere, in a corner of his mind, he had seen himself coming down the gangplank and Suckahanna, a little older, a little more beautiful, running towards him and into his arms. It had been a foolish dream by a man who had already buried one wife and deserted another, a man who knew that love and desire do not always have a happy ending. But John still looked for her, and still knew disappointment that she was not there.

He watched his box being unloaded and then took hold of it and dragged it through the slush up to the inn where he was absolutely certain that he would find the landlady as sour-tempered and as inhospitable as four years before.

His first visit was to Mr Joseph.

‘Of course I remember you,’ the magistrate said. ‘You went out into the woods in an Indian canoe and came back with barrelfuls of plants. Were they any good in England?’

‘Most of them took,’ John said. ‘Some of them did very well. One of them, the spiderwort, is one of the most beautiful flowers I have ever grown. We had the purple one before, but this is white like a little three-petalled star.’

‘And what news of the king?’ Mr Joseph interrupted.

‘Good news. Prince Rupert’s cavalry had a great victory at a place called Powick Bridge,’ John said, repeating the popular belief. ‘They say he can’t be stopped now.’

Mr Joseph nodded. ‘Well, thank God for that,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what would have been our case if Parliament had won. We’re a royal colony. Do we become a Parliament colony? No-one thinks of these things. What about you? Would you have been a gardener to Parliament?’

‘I’m here because I don’t know what I would have been,’ John admitted. ‘I couldn’t see my way clear at all.’

The magistrate nodded. ‘Now what can I do for you? D’you want another Indian guide?’

‘I want the same one,’ John said, keeping his tone deliberately casual. He wondered if the man could hear the pounding as his heart raced. ‘I want that girl again. Do you know where she is?’

‘What girl?’

John had to force himself to speak quietly and steadily. ‘You sent me out with a girl, d’you remember? Her baptised name is Mary. Her mother was in prison for a month for accusing someone of rape. You had the girl in service here, d’you remember? When I came back her mother met us and took the girl away. She said they might go back to their own people. Have you seen her since then?’