He thought she might grow kinder to him if he worked without complaint and lay on the floor of her house at night like a dog, like a hunting dog which has been beaten into submission. But she stepped over him when she rose in the morning and went to her prayers in the icy water as if he were a log on the floor. She went past him without disdain, without a glance that might offend him, without a look that might open up a conversation between them, even if it were to be a quarrel. She acted as if he were a dead man, a lost man, a ghost, and as the months went by Tradescant felt that he was lost indeed.

He went to find Attone, who was setting a fish trap by the river and watching the flow of the rising flood water over the markers at the riverbank.

‘Can I speak with you?’ John asked humbly.

His former friend glanced at him and then away as if the sight of John displeased him. ‘What?’

‘I need advice.’

There was an unhelpful silence.

‘Suckahanna turns from me and says not one word to me.’

Attone nodded.

‘Is there anything I can do to make it better between us?’

Attone bent down and raised the trap from the water. The delicate withy-work was bending in the current; he straightened a twig and then carefully bedded it in with pebbles before he answered. He took his time, the whole process took nearly half an hour.

‘Nothing.’

‘Will she take me back as a husband if I serve her without complaint? Perhaps in Coltayough? In the warm time?’

Attone thought for a moment, his eyes still on his fish trap, and then shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘At Nepinough?’

Again the dismissive shake of the head.

‘Will she ever forgive me for coming home without blood on my hands?’

Attone turned from the river and looked John squarely in the face. The relief of being seen, of gaining a response, was so great that John wanted to fling his arms around his former friend. Just that one look was an affirmation that he was a man still; that he could be seen and acknowledged.

‘Never, I should think,’ Attone said.

Tradescant drew breath. ‘What have I done that is so bad?’

‘Don’t you know?’

Dumbly, Tradescant shook his head.

‘You’ve shamed her. She stood for you before all the People and said you were a man worthy to be tested. You were tested and you passed and she chose you as her man, before all the People. Now they all look at her and say what a fool that woman is to choose a man who bends like a willow, who is neither white nor brown, who is neither English nor Powhatan, who is neither hunter nor gardener, who is neither Eagle nor John.’

‘Will she never forgive me?’