‘Did you kill this deer?’ he asked John.

John could feel a bubble of laughter, of joy, rising up in his tight throat. ‘Yes, sire,’ he said. ‘That is my deer, I killed it. I want Suckahanna.’

‘Eagle! Eagle!’ The shout went up from the braves.

The werowance looked at Attone. ‘Do you release your wife to this man, your wife and your first-born son, and your second-born child?’

Attone looked straight at John and his hard, dark face creased into an irresistible smile. ‘He’s a good man,’ he said. ‘He has the determination of a salmon leaping homeward, and the heart of a buffalo. I release Suckahanna to him. He is my brother. He is the Eagle.’

The werowance raised his ornate spear. ‘Hear this,’ he said so quietly that all the women at the edge of the dancing circle craned forward to listen, Suckahanna among them.

‘This is our brother. He has proved himself in the hunt and he is the husband of Suckahanna. Tomorrow we receive him into the People, and his name shall be Eagle.’

There was a roar of approval and applause and people crowded around John. John had to fight his way through smiling faces and slapping hands to get to Suckahanna and fold her in his arms. She clung to him and lifted her face to his. As their lips met he felt a sudden jolt of passion, a feeling he had forgotten for many years, and a deep hunger for more of her; more, as if a kiss alone would not satisfy him, could never satisfy him, as if nothing would ever be enough but to fold her into his heart and keep her beside him for always.

Suckahanna moved her face from his and reluctantly John released her. She rested her head on his shoulder and his senses shifted again to take in the touch of her slight body tucked beneath his arm, the way her long legs matched his side, the scent of her hair, the warmth of her naked skin against his cool damp chest.

The people were cheering them, linking their names together.

‘Why do they call you Eagle?’ she asked, turning her head up to look into his face.

He caught sight of Attone, waiting for his answer. ‘It is private,’ he said with assumed coldness. ‘Something for us braves.’

Attone grinned.

John could not sleep with Suckahanna that night, though she moved from Attone’s house to stay the night with Musses. Attone himself carried her deerskin, her baskets and her pots to Musses’s hut and kissed her tenderly on the forehead as he left her there.

‘Does he not mind?’ John asked, watching this affectionate farewell.

Suckahanna shot him a quick, mischievous smile. ‘Only a little,’ she said.

‘I should mind,’ John observed.