The woman spoke in a rapid flow of language, and Suckahanna replied. Something that she said made the old woman snort with laughter and she shot a quick smiling look at John as if he were the butt of the joke. Then she stretched out her hand to see the burn on John’s palm.

Suckahanna gestured that he should show her. ‘This is a wise woman, she will cure the wound.’

Hesitantly, John opened his fingers to show the scar. It was getting worse. Where the blister had burst the raw flesh had got dirty and was now smelling and oozing. John looked at it fearfully. If he had such a wound in London he thought that a barber surgeon would have cut the hand off, to prevent the infection spreading up his arm to his heart. He feared the infection only slightly less than he feared these savages and whatever treatment they might prescribe.

The woman said something to Suckahanna and Suckahanna laughed, a spontaneous giggle, like the girl John had known. She turned to John. ‘She says you should be purged, but I told her you had already done that for yourself.’

The woman was laughing, Suckahanna was smiling, but John, in fear and in pain, could muster only a grim nod.

‘But she says you should still sweat out your illness before we cure the wound.’

‘Sweat?’

‘In a –’ Suckahanna did not know the English word. ‘Little house. In a little house.’

The woman nodded.

‘We’ll go there now,’ Suckahanna said. ‘Then we can get the herbs for the wound before nightfall.’

The woman and Suckahanna led him to the boundary of the village. There was a smaller round hut on the very edge of the little town, its roof at ground level, and thick smoke billowing out from the hole in the centre of the roof.

‘It’s very hot,’ Suckahanna explained.

John nodded, it looked like hell.

Suckahanna laid a gentle hand on his dirty shirt. ‘You must take off your clothes,’ she said. ‘All of them, and go down into there, naked.’

Instinctively, John’s hands gripped the belt of his breeches and then he gave a little yelp of pain at the touch of the cloth on his raw palm.

‘There!’ Suckahanna said, as if that proved the point. ‘Take your clothes off and go down into the little house.’

Reluctantly, John pulled his shirt off. The old woman regarded his pale skin with interest, as if he were a ham ready for smoking. John shot a swift, frightened look at the little house.

‘Suckahanna – am I to be killed?’ he asked. ‘I would rather die with my breeches on.’

She did not laugh at his fears. She shook her head. ‘I would not lead you to your death,’ she said simply. ‘I kept you safe in the woods for a month, didn’t I? And then I told you that I loved you. Nothing has changed.’