‘She waited,’ the werowance pointed out. The old men on either side of him nodded, their sharp faces like stone eagles on a lectern in church. ‘She trusted your word.’

‘I am sorry,’ John said awkwardly.

‘You have a new wife and children in your own country?’

John thought of a swift lie, thought he might tell them that the plague had taken both his children as well as Jane. But a fearful superstition halted his tongue. ‘Yes, I have children,’ he said quietly. ‘And a wife.’

‘And is your wife now the one who waits?’

John nodded.

The werowance sighed as if John’s infidelity was a riddle, too tedious and complex to unravel. There was a silence that stretched for a long time. John’s back ached, he had sat awkwardly and now he felt too uneasy to wriggle back on the pile of skins and lean against the wall of the house.

‘Where do you want to be?’ the werowance asked him. ‘With Suckahanna or your wife?’

‘With Suckahanna,’ John said.

‘You will care for her children as if they were your own?’

‘Gladly.’

‘You know the children are not to be taken to your people? They will stay with the Powhatan?’

John nodded.

‘And their mother stays with us too. She will never go to your country with you.’

John nodded again. ‘She told me this.’ He could feel a squirm of excitement starting to grow inside him. This had all the signs of an interrogation of a bridegroom, it was not the preamble to a refusal.

‘She came to us for a home, she could wait for you no longer. She made her choice and now she is our child. We have taken her to our hearts.’

The older men nodded. One said something low in their language. The werowance nodded. ‘My brother says that we love her. We would avenge her hurt.’

‘I understand,’ John said. He was afraid they would hear the beating of his heart, it sounded so loud in his own ears. ‘I don’t want to take her from you. I know she has made her choice, and that she and her children will be with you.’

‘And any children you may have with her,’ came a low growl from another man, speaking clearly in English. ‘They will not be Englishmen, remember. They too will be the People of the Hare.’

John had not thought of his children being born here, being raised by Suckahanna, being rocked in the papoose, learning deadly accuracy with a reed arrow. He felt his heart leap at the thought of fathering such a son. He swallowed. ‘Yes.’

‘If you choose her, you choose to be with her, to be with us,’ the werowance repeated.

John bowed his head.

There was a silence.

‘Do you wish to be our brother?’