But the mother cut him off with an abrupt gesture of her hand. ‘I have just come from a month in prison for saying the wrong thing,’ she pointed out. ‘Sometimes it is better to say nothing at all.’

J glanced at the ship behind them. Suddenly he did not want to leave. The realisation that the girl had a name, and could understand him, made her intensely interesting. What had she been thinking during their days of silent companionship? What might she not say to him? It was as if she had been a princess under a spell in a romance and suddenly she had found her tongue. When he had confided in her and told her of his feelings, for his home, for his children, for his plants, she had met his confession with an impassive face. But she had understood, she had understood everything he said. And so, in a way, she knew him better than any woman had ever known him before. And she would know that only yesterday morning he was tempted to stay in this new land; to stay with her.

‘I have to go. I am promised in England,’ he said, thinking that they might contradict him, that he might not have to go, as if the breaking of the spell which had kept her silent might release him too.

The two women said nothing, they simply watched the indecision and reluctance in his face.

‘What will become of you two now?’ he asked, as if their plans might affect him.

‘We will leave Jamestown,’ the woman said quietly. ‘We will go back into the forest and find our people. I thought we would be safer to stay here, my husband and my father are dead. I thought I could live inside the walls and work for the white men. I thought I could be their servant.’ She shook her head. ‘But there is no trusting them. We will go back to our own.’

‘And Suckahanna?’

The woman looked at him, her eyes bitter. ‘There is no life for her,’ she said. ‘We can find our people but not our old life. The places where we used to grow our crops are planted with tobacco, the rivers are thin of fish and the game is going, scared away by the guns. Everywhere we used to run, there is the mark of a boot on the trails. I don’t know where she will live her life. I don’t know where she will find a home.’

‘Surely there is room for your people as well as the planters,’ J said passionately. ‘I can’t believe there is not space in this land … we were out for nearly a month and we saw no-one. It’s a mighty land, it stretches for miles and miles. Surely there is room for your people as well as mine?’