John stepped back, never taking his eyes from Bertram. The man’s face was a twisted ruin hammered from his old sunny, smiling confidence. John had no inclination to step forward now, to greet his old friend and shipmate by name, to make himself known. He did not want to know this man, this weak, cursing, stinking man. He did not want to claim kinship with him. The man threatened him like an enemy. If his gun had been reloaded John thought that it would have been his blood on the snow, and his belly blasted away like the hare’s. He bowed his head like a servile, frightened, enslaved Indian and backed away. In two, three paces, he was able to lean into the curve of a tree and know that a white man’s eyes would not be able to pick him out from the dapple of white snow and dark tree shadows and speckled bark.

Hobert glared into the shadowy forest which had swallowed up his enemy in seconds. ‘I know you’re there!’ he shouted. ‘I could find you if I wanted.’

Attone came up beside John so silently that not even a twig cracked. ‘Who’s the smelly one?’ he asked.

‘My neighbour, the farmer, Bertram Hobert,’ John said. The name sounded strange and awkward on his lips, he was so accustomed to the ripple of Powhatan speech.

‘The winter has rotted his feet,’ Attone remarked.

John saw that the brave was right. Bertram was painfully lame and instead of shoes or boots his feet were encased in thick wrappings tied with twine.

‘That hurts,’ Attone said. ‘He should wear bear grease and moccasins.’

‘He does not know,’ John said sadly. ‘He would not know that, and only your people could teach him.’

Attone gave him a quick smile at the unlikeliness of such a meeting and such a lesson. ‘He has our hare. Shall we kill him?’

John put his hand on Attone’s forearm as he reached for his arrow. ‘Spare him. He was my friend.’

Attone raised a dark eyebrow. ‘He was going to shoot you.’

‘He didn’t know me. But he helped me build my house when I came to the plantation. We travelled across the sea together. He has a good wife. He was once my friend. I won’t see him shot for a hare.’

‘I would shoot him for a mouse,’ Attone remarked, but the arrow stayed in his quiver. ‘And now we will have to cross the river. There will be no game here for miles where he is stamping on his rotting feet.’