‘We would have the children,’ she went on. ‘The little boy and my own baby. You would have to promise to love them and care for them like a father.’

‘And where would we live? You said you would not live in my house?’

‘We would live here,’ she said, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. ‘Among the People. You would become a Powhatan.’

‘I would learn your language? Live among you as an equal?’

‘You are learning it already,’ she observed. ‘You laughed at Musses the other day and she was not speaking English.’

‘I can understand some, but –’

‘You would have to join the People, as a brother.’

‘They would accept me?’

‘We would accept you.’

John was silent, his head spinning. This was a far greater step than his adventure to Virginia, this was a step into the unknown beyond the plantation, into the darkness of unknowable lands.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You would have to decide,’ she repeated patiently, as if she had led a child around a circle of explanation and returned to the key point at last. ‘You would have to decide, my love.’

John hesitated at the endearment. ‘Do you want me to be with you?’ he asked.

At once her hands returned to their work, her head bowed and her veil of dark hair tumbled over her face hiding her expression, brushing her naked brown shoulder. ‘You would have to decide, without advice from me,’ she said to the earth. ‘I don’t want a man with half a heart.’

At midday the women rested. The fields they were working were distant from home, too far to return to the village for the usual meal, prayers and rest. They ate a little cold gruel and fruit which they had brought with them, they said their brief prayers to the sun which stood precisely above each and every one of them, blessing each and every one with light and warmth on the exact centre of her head. Then they rested in the shade of the trees. Suckahanna’s baby was at her breast as she lay back, the little boy playing stalking or marksmanship with his tiny bow and arrow, with the others. John rested near Suckahanna, listened to the ripple of talk, picked out words, one word after another, all of them making more sense to him. He watched her openly now, wondering how it would be if they were married. If she could indeed leave her husband and come to him. If he could indeed become a Powhatan. If he could ever be recognised as a man among the People.

When they returned to camp he touched her arm. ‘I need to take advice from a man,’ he said. ‘Can one of the men speak my language? Someone I can trust to tell me how a Powhatan man might see this? Not a friend of your husband?’