‘They were so good. But I ate them too fast. And I burned my hand on the cooking pot and then the wound broke open …’

She took his hand and bent her head over it to see the wound. John looked at the crown of her dark head and smelled the faint, familiar smell of her warm skin and the bear-grease fat which deterred insects, and felt desire spread through him until he thought he must draw her close, and that whatever it cost him, he must hold her in his arms, just once, before he died.

She looked up and at once recognised the desire in his face. She did not flinch back as an Englishwoman would have done. But she did not come forward either. She stood very still and steadily took him in, reading his desire, his fear, his need.

‘I think we can heal the wound on your hand,’ she said gently. ‘Come.’

The little boy at the doorway stepped aside for the two of them and Suckahanna led John out of the hut into the evening light.

John blinked. He was in the centre of a town square, all around were other long huts, built of wood, and walled with reeds, intricately woven. Each hut had a little spiral of scented smoke above its roof, and a flock of children playing in the doorway. In the centre of the square sat a handful of men, at their ease, talking in low, confident voices, one of them tightening a bow string, another sharpening reeds for arrow tips. They glanced up as Suckahanna led John by, but they made no comment, nor even acknowledged his presence. They took him in, as one animal takes in another. They saw in one devouring glance the way he walked, the prints his boots made on the ground, the scent of him, the matted, ill-kept hair and the pallor of sickness. They assessed his ability to fight, to run, to hide. They sensed his fear of them and his trust in Suckahanna. Then they turned back to their work and their talk as if there was nothing to be said about him or to him – as yet.

Suckahanna led him towards a little street with the houses set on either side. At the end of it was a large fire and half a dozen of the black pots sitting squat among the embers, and skewers of meat resting on a rack. John felt his stomach clench in hunger but Suckahanna took him past the food to a hut opposite the fire.

She stood outside and called a word, perhaps a name, and the curtain in the doorway opened and an old woman looked out.

‘Suckahanna!’

‘Musses.’