They were dancing for joy, it was not a religious ceremony. He could tell that at once since the werowance was seated on a low stool with only an ordinary cape thrown for warmth around his shoulders, and no sacred abalone shells around his neck. He was clapping his hands to the music of the drums and flutes, and smiling.

John went towards the light but knew that he was not suddenly revealed. They would all have seen him in the shadows, sensed him running after Suckahanna and then turning back to them. He skirted the beaten earth of the dancing floor and worked his way around to the werowance’s seat. The three old men glared at him with the bland amusement of cynical old age which always enjoys the diversion of youthful pain.

‘Ah, the visitor,’ said the werowance.

‘I want to marry her,’ John announced without preamble. ‘And my children will be Powhatan, and my heart will be with the Powhatan. And you may command me as a brave.’

The sharp, beaky face gleamed with pleasure. ‘You have changed your mind,’ the werowance observed.

‘I have learned the price,’ John said. ‘I am not a changeable man. I did not know what Suckahanna would cost me. Now you have told me and I know. And I agree.’

One of the men smiled. ‘A merchant, a trader,’ he said, and it was not a compliment.

‘Your children to be Powhatan?’ the other old man confirmed. ‘And you to be our brave?’

John nodded.

‘Against your own people?’

‘I trust it will never come to that.’

‘If it ever does?’

John nodded again. ‘Yes.’

The werowance rose to his feet. At once the drumming stopped, the dancing halted. He put out his arm and John, uncertainly, went towards him. The thin arm came down lightly on John’s broad shoulders but he could feel the strength of the sinews in the hand as the werowance gripped him.

‘The Englishman wants to be a brave of the Powhatan and marry Suckahanna,’ the werowance announced in Powhatan. ‘We are all in agreement. Tomorrow he goes hunting with the braves. He marries her as soon as he has shown he can catch his own deer.’ John scowled at the effort of understanding what was being said. Then the beaky face turned towards him and the werowance spoke in English.

‘You have a day to prove yourself,’ he said. ‘One day only. If you cannot mark, hunt and kill your deer in the day from dawn to sunset then you must go back to your people and their gunpowder. If you want a Powhatan woman then you have to be able to feed her with your hands.’

Suckahanna’s husband grinned at John from the centre of the dancing circle. ‘Tomorrow then,’ he said invitingly in Powhatan, not caring whether John understood or not. ‘We start at dawn.’