At a signal from Opechancanough, seated on his throne, dark as a shadow in the moonlight, the men moved off, making as little noise as a herd of wolves, silent in their moccasins, their quivers held still at their sides, their bows strung over their shoulders. The moonlight touched each one like a benison, the white gleam falling on a feather plaited into dark hair, on a pale old scar on one high cheekbone, on a smile of excitement, on the gleam of burnished skin. John went silently in Attone’s steps, watching the pace of his moccasins, the movement of his haunches beneath the leather skirt, concentrating wholly on the moment of the journey so he could hide from himself the knowledge of the destination.

They were to split into two main parties. One was to travel by canoe downriver to Jamestown, taking advantage of the night to move swiftly and to form a pincer around the town by dawn. The other was to go by land either side of the river, and at every house and cabin, every grand, ambitious building and hopeful shack, they were to go in and kill every man, woman and child in the place, leaving none to escape, and none to take the news downriver.

John was in the land party, Attone with him. He thought that Opechancanough was testing his loyalty to the Powhatan by putting him in the group that would kill so early and so immediately – and not against the fighting men at the fort, but against the vulnerable, sleeping men and women with their children bundled up in the same bed beside them. But then he realized that Opechancanough had placed him where, if he were faithless, he could do no damage. He was at the rear, he could not dash ahead and warn Jamestown. All he could do was botch a few killings upriver and get himself shot.

They came upon a little house near dawn. It was set back from the river on a rise of ground, just as John had built his own house, just as Bertram Hobert had built his. Before it was a little cottage garden, neglected and overgrown, and between it and the river were long fields of tobacco, the plants set in straight rows and growing well. A little quay stretched out into the river for loading the tobacco to sail downriver to Jamestown. No light shone in the window and only a wisp of smoke showed that someone had banked the fire in overnight so that it would be hot to cook the morning breakfast.

It was the smell of woodsmoke clean on the air, unmixed with any other scent, that threw John backward; he physically recoiled and collided with the man trotting behind him. It was such an English smell. Woodsmoke for the Powhatan was the scent of the interior of their huts, mingled with the smell of cooking, of children, of people sitting around. The smell of smoke from a sooty chimney was the smell of an English homestead.

The man behind shoved John abruptly in the back but did not utter a single sound. John touched Attone’s shoulder. “I cannot do it,” he said.

Attone turned and his glance was as cold as the blade of a knife on bare skin. “What?”

“I cannot do it. I cannot go in and kill my people.”

“Do you want me to kill you now?”

Dumbly John shook his head.

“The others will kill you if I do not.”

John leaned forward as if he would take Attone in his arms and lie his unhappy face against the man’s shoulder. “They must then. Because I cannot do it.”

“Will you wait here while we do it?”

John nodded.

“And not cry out, nor run off?”

John nodded again.

“My brother will stand guard,” Attone said simply to the others. “Follow me.”

The men trotted past John without a glance at him. He leaned back against a tree, a useless guard, a faithless friend, a broken warrior, and a shamed husband.

They were quick and clean. There was one surprised cry and no more, and in moments they came back, Attone wiping his shell-bladed knife on a piece of European muslin. “Go on,” he said briskly to the others.

They nodded and turned to the trail again. One man had something in his hand. Attone reached out and smacked it down. A stone bottle fell to the ground and rolled away. Attone kicked it with his foot so that it spun round and round, spilling out the raw spirit and making the air stink. Then he turned to John.

“Can you find your way back to Suckahanna at the village?”

“Yes.”

“Then go back there. Wait till the men return.”

“She won’t have me,” John said certainly.

“No,” Attone said. “We none of us will want you, Eagle.” He paused as a thought struck him. “What was your name? Before you were my brother the Eagle?”

“I was John Tradescant,” John said, the name unfamiliar on his tongue.

“Then you will have to be him again,” Attone said flatly. “Now go to Suckahanna before someone kills you.”

“I am sorry-” John started.

“Go to Suckahanna before I kill you myself,” Attone said abruptly, and disappeared into the darkness.

The village was guarded by Attone’s son, who recognized John’s footfall and called into the gray dawn: “Is that you, Eagle?”

“No,” John said. His voice was flat and weary. “You must call me John.”

“Is my father with you? Are the braves coming home?”

“They are at war,” John said. “I am alone.”

The boy checked his loving run forward into John’s arms and suddenly looked at him as if a terrible fear was invading him, as if his trust and certainty in John was suddenly unreliable. “You are not with the men?”

“I could not do it,” John said simply. He had thought that the worst thing would have been to tell Suckahanna; but the bright gaze of her son was hard to meet. The light went slowly out of the boy’s face.

“I don’t understand,” he said plaintively, willing it to be difficult, too complex for his understanding, tempting John to create another explanation.

“I could not kill an Englishman,” John said heavily. “I thought I could do it, but when it came to it, I could not. I left my home in England because I could not choose sides and kill Englishmen, and now I am here, in this new land, and I still cannot choose sides and kill.”

The boy’s eyes scanned his face. “I thought you were a brave,” he said reproachfully.

John shook his head. “No. It seems I cannot be.”

“But you are my father’s friend!”

“Not anymore.”

“And Suckahanna loves you!”

A movement behind him made him turn. Suckahanna was standing there, watching John. The man and the boy turned and faced her, waiting for her judgment.

“So you have decided at last,” she said calmly. “You are an Englishman after all.”

Slowly John dropped to his knees, both his knees, in the gesture he had only ever used before to the greatest queen in Europe, and then unwillingly. “I am,” he said. “I did not know it until the moment when I could not shed their blood. I am sorry, Suckahanna.”

She looked at him and through him, as if she understood everything about him, and for a moment John thought that he would be forgiven, and that the steady, constant love between them could overcome even this. But then she turned away and snapped her fingers for her boy and walked, light-footed, down the street in the dawn light. She did not look back at him. He knew she would never look at him with love again.

The braves came home jubilant. The first wave of the attack on the isolated houses along the riverside had gone perfectly. The attack on Jamestown had hit the sleeping town and taken it unawares. As many as five hundred colonists had been killed, but as soon as the alarm was given the Indian army had fallen back. Although the fort was taken unawares, the town was now so spread out, and the houses so defended with shutters and stout doors, that no single battle could complete the war. The braves had fallen back to regroup, to heal the wounds and bury the dead, and then they would push forward again.