They ran the canoe aground at the side of the quay and started to unload the plants. From the shadow of the dockside building a woman came and stood before them.

She was an Indian woman but she wore a dress and a shawl tied across her breasts. Her hair was tied back like a white woman’s and it exposed her face which was badly scarred, pocked all over with pale ridges of scar tissue as if someone, long ago, had fired a musket at point-blank range into her face.

‘Mr Tradescant?’ She spoke with a harsh accent.

J spun to hear his name and recoiled from the bitterness in her face. She looked past him at the girl and spoke in a rapid string of words, fluting and meaningless as birdsong.

The child answered, as voluble as she, shaking her head emphatically and then pointing to J and to the plants and to the canoe.

The woman turned to J again. ‘She tells me you have not hurt her.’

‘Of course not!’

‘Not raped her.’

‘No!’

The bowstring-tight line of the woman’s shoulders suddenly slumped, and she gave a sharp sob, like a cough of vomit. ‘When they told me you had taken her into the woods I thought I would not see her again.’

‘I am a plant collector,’ J said wearily. ‘See. There are the plants. She was my guide. She made a camp. She hunted and fished for us. She has been a very, very good girl.’ He glanced at her and she gave him a swift encouraging smile. ‘She has been very helpful. I am in her debt.’

The Indian woman had not followed all of the words but she saw the glance that passed between them and read correctly the affection and mutual trust.

‘You are her mother?’ J asked. ‘Just … er … released?’

The woman nodded. ‘Mr Joseph told me he had given her to you for the month. I thought I would not see her again. I thought you had taken her to the woods to use her and bury her there.’

‘I’m sorry,’ J said awkwardly. ‘I am a stranger here.’

She looked at him with a bitter line around her mouth. ‘You are all strangers here,’ she observed.

‘She can speak?’ J remarked, tentatively, wondering what it might mean.

The woman nodded, not bothering to answer him.

The girl had finished unloading the canoe. She looked at J and gestured to the plants, as if asking what should be done with them. J turned to the woman. ‘I have to fetch some barrels and prepare these plants for my voyage home. I may take a passage on this ship. Can she stay and help me?’