John opened his eyes. Above him was a high, rounded roof made of lashed branches, and thatched with broad leaves. He was lying on some sort of bedstead made of branches spread with mats. He turned his head, half-expecting to see the familiar face of Bertram Hobert or Sarah’s restrained smile. The place was empty.

It was not a house built by a normal Englishman, that at least was clear. It was a domed-ceilinged square hut, roofed and walled with leaves, floored with woven mats and deerskins spread on the earth. In the center of the hut was a small fire with a tiny heart of red which kept the hut warm and filled it with light, acrid smoke. On the walls were hung the skins of animals, and a basket half-woven, and other baskets bulging with goods. The only light filtered in through the hole in the roof above the fire, and flickered at the skins which curtained the door. John swung his feet down to the floor and took two cautious steps to go out.

At once a brown-skinned child popped his head inside the room, took one look at John standing, and, without moving, without taking his eyes from the Englishman, opened his mouth and let out a yell. John froze to the spot, heard running footsteps and then a woman stood behind the child, her hand on his shoulder, and another woman behind her, poised with a bow raised and an arrow on the string.

John dropped to sit on the bed, spread his hands, tried to smile.

“Hello,” he said. He nodded, trying to look reassuring, peaceable. “Hello.”

The two women nodded in reply, saying nothing. Remembering the weeks of silence from Suckahanna, John did not make the assumption that they could not understand him, although their eyes remained blank and black.

“Thank you for bringing me here. The canoe was too strong for me. I was trying to get to my friend’s house – Bertram Hobert – but the current swept me away.”

Again they nodded, saying nothing.

“Is Jamestown anywhere near here?” John asked. He wondered if he had been swept far below the town, down to the edge of the sea perhaps. “Jamestown? Anywhere near? Jamestown?”

The woman with the arrow on the string smiled briefly. “Nowhere near,” she said. She spoke with a strange Welsh lilt to her voice.

“You speak English!” John exclaimed.

She did not nod or smile, nor did she release the tension on the bowstring.

“I am a peaceful man,” John said. “I was trying to farm outside my house, on my land beside the river. I went hungry, and I burned my hand. I was going to find my friend to get help. I am a peaceful man. I am looking for an Indian girl, an Indian woman. Suckahanna.”

Neither of the women responded to the name.

“I want to make her my wife,” John said, plunging in. “If she will have me. I have come back to Virginia-” He broke off. It occurred to him that perhaps in their ignorance they did not know the name of their country. “I have come back here, from my home, to be with her.”

“Suckahanna is married to my brother,” the woman with the bow on the string said precisely. “He went with her when she took her gifts of food to you. We did not realize that you would eat it all at once – like a pig with acorns. We did not mean to make you sick.”

John felt embarrassment burn under the skin of his face. “I was foolish,” he said. “I was very hungry.” The thought of these people discussing his greed, and perhaps watching him void himself and retch, made him want to close his eyes and be anywhere else, even back in his own little house facing death, rather than here with the woman looking at him in mild curiosity.

“Why did Suckahanna not show herself?” he asked. “I would be her friend now she has a husband.” He looked at the arrow on the string again. “I never wronged her,” he said hastily. “I wanted to marry her when I thought she was a maid.”

The woman’s face did not soften. John thought in sudden, rapid terror that perhaps they had saved him for some dreadful execution. There were stories in Jamestown of men having their bellies cut open and their guts dragged out before their eyes. “I meant her no harm,” John said. “I meant none of you any harm.”

“Your house is where we hunt,” the other woman observed. “You have frightened away the game birds and the deer are making other paths in the woods to get away from your burned field and the smell of you.”

“I am sorry,” John said again. He thought of the governor’s map and the empty spaces of forest unmarked by any names. “I thought the forest was empty.”

They looked at him as if his words were simply incomprehensible. “Empty?”

“Empty of people,” John corrected himself. “I knew there were animals living there. But I did not think it was your land.”

“The animals do not own the land,” the woman with the arrow pointed at his body said slowly, as if she were trying to understand some alien logic.

“No,” John agreed.

“But you know they are there, they pass through the forest.”

“Yes.”

“We pass through the forest too, we follow them when we hunt them, we clear land for a season to grow our food. How can land be empty?”

John swallowed on a dry throat, his head thudded sharply. “It is how we white men speak,” he said helplessly.

The woman with the bow nodded, the arrow still pointing at his belly. “You people said you would come here for just a little while, look for precious metal and then go,” she observed. “Now you tell us that the land is empty and you build your houses on the game trails and fell the trees of the forests and never let them grow again.”

“I am sorry,” John said. “We did not know that you were living here. If you would help me to get to Jamestown I could tell the governor…”

He trailed off. Suddenly she turned the arrow away from him as if she had lost interest in the whole conversation. “We will decide what is to be done with you when the men come home,” she said abruptly. “Stay here till then.”

John spread his hands, trying to indicate his obedience and harmlessness.

“The child will bring you something to eat,” the other woman said. “Do not shit in here. You must go to the forest for that.”

John felt his face burn scarlet and cursed himself for a fool to be so ashamed for having diarrhea when he could be facing disemboweling.

“Of course not,” he said, clinging to his dignity.

The woman looked at him. “We all saw you,” she said. “But we are clean. We are the People, the Powhatan. You must do your dirt in the forest while you are with us, and cover it up after.”

“I will,” John said. “I am thirsty.”

“The child will bring you food and drink,” the other woman said. She slid her arrow into a quiver strapped to her side. “Don’t gorge yourself.”

“And Suckahanna? Is she here?” John tried to ask the question with a calm, neutral voice but his head hammered again at the thought of her.

They looked at him indifferently, and then they turned and went out.

The child brought a pot filled with icy cold water. John sipped at it carefully. The pot was coal-black, as smooth as marble in his hands. He could not think how it had been made, it was as elegant as a funerary urn in the king’s collection.

He waited. The child, he could not even tell if it were a boy or a girl, wearing an apron of buckskin but otherwise naked, squatted in the doorway of the hut and regarded him with solemn dark eyes. John tried to smile. The child’s face was grave. John leaned back against the wall of the hut and waited.

He could see the shadows lengthen in the little square of the doorway, and then he heard the sound of singing from far away. From the child’s silent alertness he guessed that it had heard them some minutes ago. John looked at the child and raised his eyebrows as if to ask what might be happening. The child was solemn as a warrior, and like a powerful warrior merely shook its head.