‘He married me because he was advised to do so,’ she explained. ‘And then he had to keep me, and my mother, and we brought no dowry, no bride price at all. So he could never afford to take another wife, if he should like another woman. He was stuck with only one: me. And now everything has changed for him. He is a bachelor again, you will have to pay him for me, he will like that, and he can look about him and choose a girl he really wants this time.’

‘How much will I have to pay?’ John asked.

‘Maybe a lot,’ she warned him. ‘Maybe one of your guns that you left at your house.’

‘Are they still there?’ John asked incredulously. ‘I would have thought that everything had been stolen.’

She nodded serenely. ‘Everything has been stolen. But if it is to be Attone’s gun I think you will find that it will be returned.’

‘I should like my guns returned to me,’ John observed.

She laughed. ‘I should think you would. When you are adopted tomorrow, when you are one of the People, then no man or woman or child will steal from you ever again, not even if they are starving. But they took your goods when you were a rich white man, and now your goods are gone.’

She looked at his half-convinced expression.

‘What would you want with them? What would you do with them here, when everything that a man wants can be got with a bow and arrow, a spear, a hoeing stick, a knife or a fish trap?’

John thought for a moment and realised that his goods were part of the life he had left behind, part of his old life, better lost and forgotten than standing in the corner of his new Indian house reminding him of the man he had been, of the life he might have lived.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If he can get them back he can have them.’

John was woken just before dawn by Attone’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Awake, Eagle,’ the man whispered. ‘Come and wash.’

They were early, only the men were moving like grey shadows down the village street. It was still dark, only a line of pale grey like a smudge of limewash above the dark of the forest trees showed that dawn was coming.

Tradescant waded into the river beside Attone and followed every move that he made. First the careful washing of the face: eyes, mouth, nostrils, and ears. Then the meticulous washing of armpits, and crotch, and then finally a deep immersion in icy water, while rubbing chest, back, thighs, calves, and feet. Attone emerged blowing water and flinging back his long hair.