‘We’ll both help,’ the woman said shortly. ‘I don’t leave her alone in this town.’ She hitched her skirts a little and went down to the shoreline. J watched the two women. They did not embrace; but they stood just inches away from each other and gazed into each other’s faces as if they could read all they needed to know in one exchange of looks. Then the mother nodded briefly and they turned side by side and their shoulders brushed as they bent over the plants together.

J went up to his lodging to fetch the barrels for packing the plants.

They worked until it was dusk, and then they worked again the next day, wrapping the cuttings in earth and damp linen, layering them in the barrel separated by damp linen and leaves, and packing the seeds in dry sand and sealing down the lid. When it was done, J had four half-barrels of plants which he would keep open to the air and damp with fresh water, and one sealed barrel of seeds. He shouted up to the ship and a couple of sailors came down and loaded them for him. At least he would have room to care for them on the voyage home. There were only a couple of people making the return voyage to England. The rest of the space was taken up with the cargo of tobacco.

‘We sail in the morning at first light,’ the captain warned him. ‘You’d best get your things aboard tonight and sleep aboard yourself. I can’t wait for passengers, when the tide ebbs we go out with it.’

J nodded. ‘I will.’ He had no desire to return to the inn and the embittered landlady. He thought if she called the girl a beast in his hearing then he would speak in her defence and then there would be a quarrel and perhaps worse.

He turned to the two women. ‘What is her name?’ he asked the mother.

‘Mary.’

‘Mary?’

She nodded. ‘She was taken from me when she was a baby and baptised Mary.’

‘Is that the name you use for her?’

She hesitated, as if she was not sure she would trust him. But then there was a murmur from the girl at her side.

‘She is called Suckahanna.’

‘Suckahanna?’ J confirmed.

The girl smiled and nodded. ‘It means “water”.’

J nodded, and then the fact of her speaking his own language suddenly struck him. ‘You can speak English?’

She nodded.

He had a moment of profound, unhappy bewilderment. ‘Then why did you never …? You never …? I did not know! All this time we have travelled together and you have been dumb!’

‘I ordered her never to speak to a white man,’ the woman said. ‘I thought she would be safer if she did not answer.’

J opened his mouth to argue – it must be right that the girl should be able to speak, to defend herself.