On that promise John left the Hoberts and crossed the river just above the falls where he could jump from boulder to boulder in the fast-moving stream. On the far side he stripped off the breeches and the shirt that he had been given and bundled them up into the crook of a tree. It reminded him of Suckahanna’s girlhood and her attempt to live in the two worlds. She used to wear a long gown and sometimes a bonnet in Jamestown, but when she was free in the woods she wore her buckskin pinny and nothing more.

The air felt good on his skin again, he felt more of a man in his nakedness than he ever could do in his breeches. He stretched as if he were freed from a constriction greater than a linen shirt, and set off at the Powhatan hunting stride for his home.

Suckahanna greeted him with the careful courtesy of a deeply offended wife. John neither explained nor apologised until they were alone on the sleeping platform, in the darkness of their house, when the soft sighs from both children showed that they were asleep.

‘I could not come back when I said I would come,’ he said to her smooth naked back. ‘Bertram was sick, his wife was hungry and their slave didn’t know what to do.’

She said nothing and did not turn to him.

‘I stayed to feed a hungry woman and nurse a sick man,’ John said. ‘When I showed her how to get food and when he was better I came home again, as soon as I could.’

He waited.

‘Would you have wanted me to leave them to die?’ he asked.

At last she turned back to him. ‘Better now and by their own failure than later,’ she said simply.

John gasped as the words struck him. ‘You speak like a heartless woman,’ he protested.

She shrugged as if she did not much care whether he thought her heartless or kind; and then she turned her back on him again and went to sleep.

Spring 1644, Virginia

John did not go back to the Hoberts’ homestead for a month. He hunted with Attone and the other braves, he lived as a Powhatan. But there was a coldness between Suckahanna and him which the routine of ordinary life could not conceal.

When he judged it was time for the planting out of Bertram’s tobacco he spoke to Attone, rather than Suckahanna.

‘My friend who was sick needs me to plant out his tobacco. I should go and help him now.’

‘Go then, Eagle,’ Attone said unhelpfully.

‘Suckahanna will be angry at my going.’

‘Stay then.’

‘I’m not asking for help –’

‘I’m not giving any.’

John paused for a moment and bit back his temper. Attone was smiling. He loved to be annoying.