“God willing,” John said.

“Stay with us,” Hobert said. “Stay with us and you can take a share in this, John. I doubt I can manage without you and Sarah cannot do it all on her own. Francis has no skill with plants, I am afraid to let him touch them. If I am sick when they need planting out who is going to do the work? Stay with me and see my tobacco plants safely into the field.”

“I can’t stay,” John said as gently as he could. “I have made a different life for myself in this country. But I can come back to you and see that you are well. I’ll come back gladly and work for you. I’ll set out the seedlings for you and show you how the Powhatan plant their food crops so you never need go hungry again.”

“You’ll come back to plant out my tobacco? You swear it?”

“I swear,” John said.

“Then we won’t need food crops,” Hobert said buoyantly. “We shall buy all we need with what I can earn from the tobacco. And I’ll see you right, John. Next season I shall come to your headright and work for you, as we promised, eh? As we always said we would do.”

On that promise John left the Hoberts and crossed the river just above the falls where he could jump from boulder to boulder in the fast-moving stream. On the far side he stripped off the breeches and the shirt that he had been given and bundled them up into the crook of a tree. It reminded him of Suckahanna’s girlhood and her attempt to live in the two worlds. She used to wear a long gown and sometimes a bonnet in Jamestown, but when she was free in the woods she wore her buckskin pinny and nothing more.

The air felt good on his skin again, he felt more of a man in his nakedness than he ever could do in his breeches. He stretched as if he were freed from a constriction greater than a linen shirt, and set off at the Powhatan hunting stride for his home.

Suckahanna greeted him with the careful courtesy of a deeply offended wife. John neither explained nor apologized until they were alone on the sleeping platform, in the darkness of their house, when the soft sighs from both children showed that they were asleep.

“I could not come back when I said I would come,” he said to her smooth naked back. “Bertram was sick, his wife was hungry and their slave didn’t know what to do.”

She said nothing and did not turn to him.

“I stayed to feed a hungry woman and nurse a sick man,” John said. “When I showed her how to get food and when he was better I came home again, as soon as I could.”

He waited.

“Would you have wanted me to leave them to die?” he asked.

At last she turned back to him. “Better now and by their own failure than later,” she said simply.

John gasped as the words struck him. “You speak like a heartless woman,” he protested.

She shrugged as if she did not much care whether he thought her heartless or kind; and then she turned her back on him again and went to sleep.

Spring 1644, Virginia

John did not go back to the Hoberts’ homestead for a month. He hunted with Attone and the other braves, he lived as a Powhatan. But there was a coldness between Suckahanna and him that the routine of ordinary life could not conceal.

When he judged it was time for the planting out of Bertram’s tobacco he spoke to Attone, rather than Suckahanna.

“My friend who was sick needs me to plant out his tobacco. I should go and help him now.”

“Go then, Eagle,” Attone said unhelpfully.

“Suckahanna will be angry at my going.”

“Stay then.”

“I’m not asking for help-”

“I’m not giving any.”

John paused for a moment and bit back his temper. Attone was smiling. He loved to be annoying.

“I’m telling you that I will be away for a while,” John said patiently. “I am asking you to watch Suckahanna for me and fetch me if she is in any need. She will not send for me; she is angry with me. She would not send for me even if she needed me.”

“She will be in no need. The game is coming back, the fish are spawning. What would she need you for? You can go to your smelly friends.”

John gritted his teeth. “If one of the People was in trouble you would go to his help.”

“Hobert is not one of the People. He is not one of mine.”

John hesitated. “Nor is he mine,” he said, conscious of the pain of divided loyalty. “But I cannot see him fail or fall sick or die of hunger. He was good to me once, and I have made him a promise.”

“This is a path in a circle,” Attone said cheerfully. “You are wandering like a man snow blind, ’round and ’round. What is blinding you, Eagle? Why can you not walk straight?”

“Because I am pulled two ways,” John said grimly.

“Then cut one string,” Attone said briskly. “Before it tangles around your feet and brings you down.” He rose to his feet and loped down the river toward the fish weir without looking back.

The Hoberts’ house was amid a sea of green. Bertram had started planting the fields which ran between the house and the river and the absurd flop-leaved plants were three rows thick before the house.

“John, thank God you’ve come!” Hobert said, kneeling. “I was afraid you would fail us.”

“Mr. Tradescant, you are very welcome!” Sarah said from further down the row.

John, hot in his reclaimed breeches and shirt, waved at them both.

“You should have a hat to shield you from the sun,” Sarah scolded. “Men have died of sunstroke in this country.”

John put his hand to his face and felt the heat radiating from his flushed skin. “It’s these clothes,” he said. “How can anyone wear wool in this country in spring?”

“It’s the vapors in the air,” Sarah said firmly. “When we next go to Jamestown I will buy you a hat. We’ve only just come back from town.”

“There was a letter for you,” Bertram said, remembering. “I went into Jamestown to buy a hoe and to collect some money sent me from England. I called in at your inn and there was a letter for you there.”

“For me?” John asked.

“It’s inside. I put it under the mattress you used last time to keep it safe.”

John put his hand to his head.

“There you are! Sunstroke!” Sarah exclaimed triumphantly.

“No,” John said. “I just feel… It is so odd to have a letter…”

He turned and went into the house, jumped up the ladder in one bound. In the loft bedroom was his straw mattress and underneath it was a travel-stained folded and sealed paper. John snatched it up and recognized Hester’s writing at once.

A great pain shot through John at the thought of his family in Lambeth and a great fear that one of the children, Frances, or Johnnie, was sick or dead, or that the house had been lost to passing soldiers or the garden destroyed, or Hester herself… he pulled himself back from nightmare imaginings, broke the seal and smoothed out the paper.

Lambeth, the New Year, 1644

Dear Husband,

Having heard no news from you I pray that your venture is going well and that you have found the land you wanted, cleared it and planted it. It is strange for me not knowing what the view is like from your window, nor what your kitchen is like, nor what the weather may be for you. I try to tell the children about what you are doing now but I do not know whether to tell them you are struggling through deep snow or digging in damp earth. We are reading Captain Smith’s True History in the evenings so that we may understand a little of your life, but I have to keep missing out some of his adventures as the children would be too afraid for you. I pray that you are right and that it is not such a savage place as he describes, and that the planters too have become more kindly and Christian in their doings.