She unstrung the arrow from the bow and handed it to him. At once he realised his mistake. The arrow in his hand was a killing blade. The reed at its head was honed to razor sharpness. He drew it against his thumb and there was no pain, but a fine line of blood bloomed at its touch.

‘Damnation!’ he swore, and sucked his thumb. It might be made of reed, it might be so light that a young girl could carry it all day; but the arrow head was sharper than a knife.

‘How exact is your aim?’ J asked her. He pointed to a tree. ‘Can you hit that?’

She stepped towards the tree and pointed instead to a leaf which was shifting slightly in the wind before the trunk. She stepped back, notched the arrow into the bow and let fly. The arrow whistled softly in the air and thudded into the tree trunk. J stepped forward to look. There were traces of the leaf around the arrow shaft: she had hit a moving leaf at twenty paces.

J made a little bow to her, and meant the gesture of respect.

She smiled, that little gleam of pride again, and then pulled the arrow from the tree trunk, discarded the broken arrow head and replaced it with another, put the arrow back in her quiver and led the way from the forest clearing at her usual trot.

‘Slower,’ J commanded.

She glanced at him. He was clumsy with tiredness, his leg muscles singing with pain, and unbalanced by his burden of seedlings. Again he saw that small smile and then she turned and walked before him with a loping pace which was only a little slower. She paused for a moment in the clearing where he had thrown off his jacket and picked it up, dusted off the leaves and handed it to him. Then she led the way back to the hollow tree at the edge of the forest. She hid her bow and arrow in the trunk and drew out her servant’s shift.

J, after a long day of jogging behind her dappled flanks, was now accustomed to her nakedness. He found that he liked the gleam of her skin better than the crumpled mess of the shift. He thought she was diminished by the gown, she looked less modest than in her proud tattoos and buckskin. He made a little shrug to show his sense that she was returning to some sort of unnatural constraint and she nodded at his sympathy, her face grave.

‘You will stay at my inn tonight,’ J said, pointing down to Jamestown where there were already lights showing and chimneys smoking.

She neither nodded nor shook her head, she was frozen still, her eyes never leaving his face.

‘And tomorrow we shall go out into the forest again. Mr Joseph said you should come out with me every day for a month, until your mother is freed.’