Of all the questions Opechancanough had put to John he had never asked him if the colonists would leave if they were defeated – the question never arose in the chief’s mind. He knew that land which had been won in a battle could be lost in a battle. He knew that a newly arrived people could be easily dislodged. It never occurred to him until this terrible winter that the white people would renege on their promise to move on, on their promise that they wanted only a small patch of land at Jamestown, and then their promise that they would settle a narrow strip by the river and live in peace with their neighbours.

Opechancanough did not expect men to be honest. He himself had promised peace with a smile on his face and twice gone to war. But he did not expect the depth and consistency of duplicity that the white people brought to the virgin earth. He did not expect their determination, and to his death he never understood their greed.

In the little village there was a strong sense that everything had gone wrong. The first attack had been a victory but since then they had been hunted like frightened hares. Hidden now in the swamps in midwinter they were safe enough but there was a growing fear that the swamps might be all that was left for them, that only the arid land, the brackish water, the desolate and barren places would be left for the People who had been proud to walk safe on their footpaths through fertile woods.

John’s share of the food stuck in his throat. He did not go hunting with the braves, he was not invited. He cleared the land around the temporary village with the women and with the old people, keeping his head low and scraping the earth with his hoeing stick, dropping the precious seeds safely into the earth and covering them up. He felt as if he had died on the raid on that little farmhouse and that it was his ghost who worked in the row behind Suckahanna and humbly lay in her little house at night. She did not reject him, she did not invite him. She did not by one gesture or one glance show that she saw him at all. She carried herself with simple dignity as a widow who has lost her man, and John in her shadow found that he was wishing that he had died before seeing that beautiful, loving face look away from him and those dark, veiled eyes go blind.