‘I should not have done so,’ John said, his voice very low. ‘I should not have left them in the middle of such a war. I was angry with her and I insisted she came with me and when she defied me I thought I was free to go. But a man with a child and a garden planted is never really free to go, is he, Bertram?’

Hobert shrugged. ‘I can’t advise,’ he said. ‘It’s an odd life you’re making, that’s for sure.’

‘It’s two lives,’ John said. ‘One here, where I live so close to the earth that I can hear its heartbeat, and one there, where I live like an Englishman with duties and obligations but with great riches and great joys.’

‘Can a man do both?’ Hobert asked.

John thought for a moment. ‘Not with honour.’

The moment that Suckahanna saw him come from the shadow of the forest and walk past the sweat lodge, the fields and up the village street she knew that something had happened. He walked like a white man with weight in his heels. He did not stride out as the men of the Powhatan. He walked as if something was pulling his shoulders downwards, pulling his head down to his feet, pulling his feet so that he looked as if he was wading through a mire of difficulties instead of dancing on smooth grass.

She went out slowly to meet him. ‘What’s wrong?’

He shook his head but he would not meet her eyes. ‘Nothing. I have done what I promised to do and now I am come home. I need not go again until harvest time.’

‘Are they sick?’ she asked, thinking that his slouch might be shielding some illness or pain.

‘They are well,’ he said.

‘And you?’

He straightened up. ‘I am weary,’ he said. ‘I shall go to the sweat lodge and then wash in the river.’ He gave her a brief unhappy smile. ‘And then everything will be as it was.’