Opechancanough’s dark smile gleamed. ‘Never mind. So if a man was warned and wanted to take the warning to Jamestown, he would have to go himself? By foot or canoe?’

‘Yes,’ John replied.

There was silence for a moment. ‘In the last war we were betrayed,’ Opechancanough said thoughtfully. ‘It was a couple of our boys who had been treated kindly by their white master and could not bear to hurt him. They warned him. They had grown soft like white boys. They thought they would save him alone; but in warning him they betrayed every one of us. He ran to Jamestown and warned the fort so they were ready for us. And what of the boys who loved their master so much that they betrayed their own people and warned him?’

John waited.

‘Shot by the white men,’ Opechancanough said. ‘That is how the white men reward a faithful servant. We saw it done. And those of us who had fought, and those of us who had not, were all driven further and further away from our villages and watched our fields hoed for tobacco, nothing but tobacco, everywhere the plant for smoke and nothing for life.’

‘When will the new war be?’ John asked.

Opechancanough shrugged. ‘Soon.’

John woke in the night and lay still. Something had disturbed his sleep but he could not trace the noise or the movement or the sense which had woken him. Then he heard it again. From outside the house a twig cracked, and then the skins at the doorway parted and a low voice spoke briefly into the warm darkness: ‘It is now.’

Attone at John’s side was awake and standing. ‘Now!’ he said, and his voice was filled with joy.

‘What is now?’ John asked, as if he did not know, as if he were not near to sinking down on the ground and weeping into the earth for his sense of dread and guilt.

‘We are on the warpath,’ Attone said gently. ‘It is now, my brother.’

Outside the tent the town was in alert silence. Men were stringing their bows and tightening their belts, checking the gleam of the blades of their knives. There was nothing to prepare, for the Powhatan were always ready for travel, for hunting, for war. John fell into line behind Attone and knew that his breath was sluggish and slow beside Attone’s light panting, knew his heart was not in this, knew also that there was no way forwards and away from his allegiance to the Powhatan, and no way backwards to the English.