‘You’re a savage!’ John exclaimed. ‘What d’you mean, slaves, and being served?’

The black man looked from the remnants of his own breeches and shirt to John’s embroidered buckskin loincloth and his stained and tattooed skin.

‘I see only one savage here,’ he remarked.

John swore under his breath and pushed open the door. ‘Mrs Hobert!’ he said. ‘Come out and let me show you how to find nuts and roots for your dinner.’

She brought a basket, Indian-made, John observed, and she was quick to learn how to identify roots which could be cooked and eaten, and roots which could be sliced and eaten raw. John showed her nut-bearing trees and pointed to the wild plum and the wild cherry trees which would blossom and bear fruit later in the year. They came home with a basket full of good things and she sliced the roots to supplement the remainder of the elk in the cookpot for their dinner.

Hobert had lapsed into a deep sleep, the sweat thick and cold on his forehead.

‘We won’t wake him,’ his wife decided. ‘The fever may be breaking and he will need his rest.’

‘The Powhatan have physic,’ John said. ‘For fevers and also for frostbite. I could ask the werowance, or one of the physicians, to come and see Bertram. Or there’s a wise woman very gifted with herbs, she made me well. She might come.’

Sarah shook her head in absolute refusal. ‘They would poison us and hack us up to eat,’ she said. ‘You may have been lucky, John Tradescant, that they chose to keep you alive. But they have been our enemies since we came here. At first we traded with them and gave them little trinkets for food and for goods. Then we tried to make them come and work for us, clear the land and dig the fields. But they were lazy and idle and when we whipped them they stole what they could and ran away. After that Bertram has shot at them whenever he has seen them. They are our enemies. I won’t have them near me.’

‘They have skills that you need to learn,’ John persisted. ‘This dinner you are eating is Powhatan food. You have to learn how they live in the forest in order to live here yourself.’

She shook her head. ‘I shall live as a God-fearing Englishwoman and I shall make this land into a new England. Then they can come to me to learn.’ She closed her eyes briefly in a prayer. When she opened them she was looking sharply, critically, at John.

‘I have unpacked a shirt and pair of breeches belonging to Bertram,’ she said. ‘You can have them in return for the service you have done us by coming to our door in our time of need. You will not want to walk around half-naked as you are.’

‘This is how I live now,’ John said.