She looked up, her face shining with new hope. ‘That’s what I had feared,’ she said. ‘But now you are come, sent by God to help me. You will help me plant the fields, won’t you, John? Help me until Bertram is well again? He will be well now that you can bring him food, and when the summer comes he will be well and strong again. He is a man of much strength. This is only the dreadful seasoning of Virginia. They all say that. A man must be seasoned to work under the hot sun. Bertram is burning up now, no sun will ever be too hot for him again.’

‘I cannot stay,’ John said awkwardly.

‘Where else could you go?’ she asked. ‘Your own headright is overgrown and the savages will have stripped your house of everything you ever owned.’

John felt completely incapable of telling her that he had a new house in the Indian village, and a wife and children waiting for him.

‘A cup of ale, for the love of God!’ Bertram called loudly from his bed.

Sarah turned and poured him a little pot of water from the pitcher.

‘I’ll get you some more,’ John muttered, and took the pitcher and went outside.

He walked slowly down to the river, filled the pitcher, and strolled back, taking the chance to think. If he left Sarah to fend for herself he was signing her death warrant as clearly as if he were the king in Whitehall condemning some poor soul in the Tower. She and Bertram and Francis would die in the forest and the trees would grow through their earthen floor and the trumpet vine strangle their chimney. There was no chance at all that they would survive in this fruitful, overwhelming land without help. In contrast, Suckahanna and the children would be guarded by Attone, and fed and protected by the village. The land was no danger to Suckahanna, she fed from it as easily as a deer nibbling green shoots in the woods.

John squared his shoulders, picked up the pitcher and went back to the house.

Francis was outside, stacking firewood. ‘Go in and guard your master,’ John said. ‘I must take Mrs Hobert out into the wood and teach her how to gather fruits and roots and berries. You have been starving in the midst of plenty here. Why did you not tell her?’

‘Me? How should I know?’

‘You must have eaten nuts and berries in your own country,’ John said irritably. ‘Gathered them in the forests?’

The man raised one eyebrow. ‘My own country is not like this one,’ he said. ‘So we don’t have the same fruits. And in any case, I had my meals served to me by my wife or by my slave. I didn’t go out clambering in trees for cashew nuts like a monkey.’