‘You thought right,’ she said sharply. ‘I am hungry for meat. So eat your breakfast, Eagle, and go out and drop from the sky on to a deer. The People need food. The hunters must do their work.’

He nodded at the wisdom of what she was saying, but he could not understand how she could refuse a bowl of porridge when his own belly growled with hunger at the sight of it.

‘I love the People more than I love a fat belly on myself,’ she explained. ‘And I was fed from my grandmother’s bowl when she went hungry to feed me, and she was fed from hers.’

John dipped his head and ate his porridge and gave thanks for the filling warm sweetness of it.

When he looked up her bright hungry eyes were on him. ‘Now go and kill a deer,’ she ordered.

It was not always easy to hunt. The days were short and icy cold, and when they had shot a white-coated hare, or a deer, or a skunk, or a foolish foraging squirrel there was less meat on the bones than on summer carcases. The fish weirs froze and the little treats which supplemented the Powhatan diet, the fruits and nuts and berries, were gone. There were edible roots which the women could dig for, and there was the great temptation of the storehouse.

‘Why can we not eat from the store?’ John asked Suckahanna.

‘We do,’ she said. ‘But we share it very carefully when there is no food to be had in any other way. It has not come to that yet. It may not come to it this year.’

‘But there is enough in the store to keep the village for the whole season!’ John exclaimed. ‘It will spoil if we don’t eat it!’

She gave him a sly sideways smile. ‘No it won’t,’ she said. ‘The meat is properly smoked and the fish salted down in pots. The oysters and crayfish are smoked and dried and the seeds and nuts are dry and safe. You are pretending that the food will go bad to give you an excuse to eat.’

John made an impatient noise and turned on his heel.

‘Why can we not eat the store food?’ he asked Musses.

She shook her head. ‘That is the wealth of the People,’ she said. ‘Our inheritance. We saved it carefully, from good harvests and bad. We keep it through the winter and eat as little as we can. That is the way of this people. They are not Englishmen who eat their seed corn and then find in spring they have nothing to plant.’

‘Why can we not eat the store food?’ John asked Attone.

‘Why not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you asked Suckahanna?’

‘Yes, and Musses.’

‘And what do the women tell you?’