She nodded her consent to that. Then she stepped forward and pointed at the little plants in his pocket and gestured towards the river. She mimed the strong paddling of a canoe, out towards the sea. Her hand gestured to the right, they should go south, she waved, a long way, waved again, a very long way; then she stepped back from him and with her arms spread and her shoulders rounded she mimed for him a tree: a tree with branches that bowed down, bowed down low over still water, spread her fingers: with branches that trailed into the water.

J was entranced. ‘But can we get a canoe?’

The girl nodded. She pointed to herself and held out her hand, pointing to her palm, the universal mime for money. J proffered a silver coin, she shook her head. He drew out his tobacco pouch. She nodded and took a fat handful. Then she pointed his face towards Jamestown, looked into his eyes again as if she were reluctant to trust so stupid a man to find his own way home, and then she nodded at him and turned towards a shrubby bush.

In a second she had disappeared. Disappeared without trace. J saw the little branches of the bush quiver and then she was gone, not even a glimmer of the servant’s smock showing in the darkness. For a moment he waited, straining his eyes against the failing light to see if he could spot her, but she had disappeared as surely as a roe deer will vanish by merely standing still.

J, realising that he would never find her against her will, knowing that he had to trust her, turned his face towards Jamestown as she had bid him and trudged home.

When the lodging-house woman knew that J had spent all day with the Indian girl in the woods, and would spend nights away with her, she was scathing.

‘I’d have thought a man fresh out of England could have done without,’ she said. She dumped in front of him a wooden bowl filled to the brim with a pale porridge.

‘Suppawn,’ his fellow lodger said out of the side of his mouth. ‘Indian cornmeal and milk.’

‘More corn?’ J asked.

The man nodded grimly and spooned his portion in silence.

‘I’d have thought you could have brought a woman from England, if your needs are that urgent,’ the woman said. ‘God knows, the town needs more women. You can’t make a plantation with nothing but soldiers and fools.’

J bent his head and slurped porridge from his spoon.

‘Don’t you have a wife you could have brought?’ the woman demanded.

Grief stabbed J like a knife in the belly. He looked up at her and something in his face silenced her nagging.

‘No,’ he said abruptly.

There was a short embarrassed silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘if I spoke wrong …’

J pushed away the bowl, the familiar feeling of grief choking him from his belly to his throat.