‘I am sorry,’ John said. ‘We did not know that you were living here. If you would help me to get to Jamestown I could tell the governor …’

He trailed off. Suddenly she turned the arrow away from him as if she had lost interest in the whole conversation. ‘We will decide what is to be done with you when the men come home,’ she said abruptly. ‘Stay here till then.’

John spread his hands, trying to indicate his obedience and harmlessness.

‘The child will bring you something to eat,’ the other woman said. ‘Do not shit in here. You must go to the forest for that.’

John felt his face burn scarlet and cursed himself for a fool to be so ashamed for having diarrhoea when he could be facing disembowelling.

‘Of course not,’ he said, clinging to his dignity.

The woman looked at him. ‘We all saw you,’ she said. ‘But we are clean. We are the People, the Powhatan. You must do your dirt in the forest while you are with us, and cover it up after.’

‘I will,’ John said. ‘I am thirsty.’

‘The child will bring you food and drink,’ the other woman said. She slid her arrow into a quiver strapped to her side. ‘Don’t gorge yourself.’

‘And Suckahanna? Is she here?’ John tried to ask the question with a calm, neutral voice but his head hammered again at the thought of her.

They looked at him indifferently, and then they turned and went out.

The child brought a pot filled with icy cold water. John sipped at it carefully. The pot was coal-black, as smooth as marble in his hands. He could not think how it had been made, it was as elegant as a funerary urn in the king’s collection.

He waited. The child, he could not even tell if it were a boy or a girl, wearing an apron of buckskin but otherwise naked, squatted in the doorway of the hut and regarded him with solemn dark eyes. John tried to smile. The child’s face was grave. John leaned back against the wall of the hut and waited.

He could see the shadows lengthen in the little square of the doorway, and then he heard the sound of singing from far away. From the child’s silent alertness he guessed that it had heard them some minutes ago. John looked at the child and raised his eyebrows as if to ask what might be happening. The child was solemn as a warrior, and like a powerful warrior merely shook its head.

John leaned back again and waited.