Suddenly there was a crack of a musket shot, loud and startling as cannon fire in the icy silence, and John flung himself backwards in terror. The hare was thrown into the air and fell down on its back. John rose up from the bushes, half-naked in bear-grease-stained skin and buckskin kilt and jerkin, and looked into the wan, half-starved face of his old friend Bertram Hobert.

He recognised Bertram at once despite the marks of hunger and fatigue on the man’s face. He was about to cry out in greeting but the English words were sluggish on his tongue; and then he realised that Bertram was pointing his musket at John’s belly.

‘That’s mine,’ Bertram snarled, showing his black and rotting teeth. ‘Mine. D’you hear? My food.’

John spread his hands in a quick deferential gesture, aware all the time of his razor-sharp reed arrows nestling in the quiver in the small of his back. He could have one on the string and loosed long before Bertram could reload and prime his musket. Was the man mad to threaten with an empty gun?

‘Step back.’ Bertram waved him aside. ‘Step back, or by God I’ll shoot you where you stand.’

John went back two, three steps, and watched with silent pity as Bertram hobbled over to the dead hare. There was precious little meat on it and the rich guts and heart had been blasted out by the shot on to the snow. The silvery pelt, which would have been good to trade, had been destroyed too. Half the hare had been wasted by killing it with a gunshot whereas Attone’s reed arrow should have gone straight to the heart and left nothing more than a farthing-size hole.

Bertram bent stiffly over the body, picked it up by the limp ears and stuffed it in his game bag. He bared his teeth at John. ‘Get away,’ he said again. ‘I’ll kill you for staring at me with your evil dark eyes. This is my land, or at any rate, near enough mine. I won’t have you or your thieving people within ten miles of my fields. Get away with you or I’ll have the soldiers out from Jamestown to hunt you down. If your village is near here we’ll find it. We’ll find you and your cubs and burn the lot of you out.’