“Oh go, Englishman,” Attone said, suddenly weary of the whole thing. “I will tell her the words if I can remember them, but we have no interest in words. And words from Englishmen mean less than nothing. You are a faithless race, and you talk too much. Go and see if your talking can save Opechancanough and then go back to your people. Your time here with us is finished.”

John washed himself clean in the river but the paleness of his skin seemed stained forever by the redness of the bear grease. He asked Musses to cut his hair for him, in a short crop, the same length on both sides, so that he no longer had the side plait of the Powhatan braid. She did it neatly, with two sharpened oyster shells, and gathered up the fallen locks and threw them on the fire.

“Going home?” she asked.

“I have nowhere else to go,” John replied, hoping for sympathy.

“Good-bye,” she said pleasantly and walked away.

John rose up from her fire, took a knife and his bow and arrow and went to find Suckahanna. She was at a corner of the camp, a deerskin strung taut on the curing frame; she was rubbing oil into the skin to keep it supple and sweet.

“I am going to Jamestown to speak for Opechancanough,” John said.

She nodded.

“After, I shall take a ship for England.”

She nodded again.

“I may never come back,” he warned.

The tiniest of shrugs greeted that remark and she turned around and tipped some more oil into her palm and worked it into the skin.

“Before I go, I want to tell you that I love you and that I am sorry for not being a true brave,” John said. “I know I have disappointed you; but I could not spill the blood of my countrymen. If we had found a way to live at peace, white men and Powhatan, then you and I would have been happy together. It is the times which failed us, Suckahanna. I know that I loved you then, and I love you still. Without fail.”

At last she paused in her work, she tossed her head and her black hair slid over her shoulder, and he saw the almost-forgotten sweetness of her smile.

“Go your way, Englishman,” she said. “You don’t snare me with words.”

“And you still love me,” John hazarded.

She gave him that swift, flirtatious, elusive smile. “Go away.”

It was a long way to Jamestown. John went northward along the shoreline. He lived off shellfish and berries and early ripening nuts, and occasionally he shot a bird for some meat. He thought it was ironic that now he was preparing to leave the country he had found that he could live off it and that it was the rich and fertile place of his wildest childhood imaginings.

For the first three days he trudged dully, like a London apprentice going to work, watching his feet on the stones of the shore, and looking around him only to check for enemies and to look for game. But on the third day he realized that just over the arid dunes was forest filled with trees and saplings and seeds coming into ripeness, and he left the shoreline, went into the forest and started collecting.

By the time he reached the James River he had made himself a satchel from two duckskins, which were not properly cleaned and were smelling powerfully, and stuffed it with seeds and roots. He approached the first plantation he saw with caution, he did not want to be shot as an Indian by a nervous planter. He saw the man down on his roughly built quay.

“Ahoy!” John called from the shelter of the forest. The English words felt strange on his tongue, for a moment he was afraid he had forgotten his own language.

The man turned to where the sound came from and raked the forest with his gaze. “Who’s there?”

“A friend, an Englishman. But buck-naked.”

The planter lifted his musket. John saw that the fuse was not glowing and the chances were good that it was out. He stepped out of the shelter of the woods.

“You’re an Indian dog! Stand still or I shoot you as you stand.”

“I promise,” John said. “I’m as English as you. I’m John Tradescant, gardener to the king of England, I have a house and a garden in Lambeth and a wife called Hester Pooks and a daughter called Frances and a son called Johnnie.” As he spoke the familiar, beloved names he felt a stirring as if they themselves were calling to him and he should have been listening, he should have heard them earlier.

“Then what are you doing like a savage in the woods?” the man asked, his gun pointed unwaveringly at John’s crotch.

John hesitated. Of course, that was the very question.

“Because I didn’t know where I should be,” he said slowly. Then he raised his voice and said loudly enough to be heard: “I was living with the Powhatan, but now I want to go back to England. Can I borrow some clothing and take a boat to Jamestown? I can get money sent to me there, and repay you.”

The man motioned him forward and John stepped cautiously closer. “What’s the name of the new Parliament commander?” the man asked him quickly.

John spread his hands. “I don’t know. I’ve been with the Powhatan for the last two years. When I left the king was defeated at Edgehill – I thought it would not be long for him then.”

The man laughed shortly. “It still is not decided now,” he said. “What’s the name of the king’s cousin?”

“Prince Rupert?”

“His son?”

“Prince Charles?”

“Nationality of his wife?”

“She’s French, I can tell you the color of her eyes,” John said. “I was in court service, I was gardener at Oatlands Palace.”

The man checked. “You were gardener to the queen of England and here you are as naked as a savage after running wild two years with the Powhatan?”

John stepped forward and held out his hand. “Odd, isn’t it? I’m John Tradescant, of the Ark, Lambeth.”

They loaned John a pair of breeches and a coarse linen shirt and he crammed his feet into a pair of shoes that should have been the right size but which pinched his feet unbearably. Running barefoot for two years had hardened the skin and spread the bones of his feet, John feared he would never walk comfortably in boots or shoes again.

A tobacco ship called in at the quay to load their crop the next day and John sent a note to Hester at Lambeth and packed his seeds and roots into a watertight barrel addressed to her.

Dear Wife,

I hope this reaches you in good health and fortune. I am on my way to Jamestown after many months living in the forest. I have no money. Please send a note of credit for me to draw twenty pounds for my board and lodging and journey home. I shall come home as soon as I receive the money.

John flinched a little at the bareness of the note but he did not feel he could, in all conscience, offer any explanation or any reassurance of love. He feared that perhaps Hester would be hard-pressed to find twenty pounds to pay into a London goldsmith so that the note of credit could be good in Virginia, but he could not bring himself to offer advice as to what she might sell from the collection. He had been too long away. He did not know if she had been able to keep the collection safe. He did not even know for certain that she was still at the Lambeth address. He felt as if he were pitching a rope into darkness and hoping that someone on an unseen quayside might catch it and haul him in. He paused before signing his name. If anyone would haul him in, it would be Hester.

I trust you, Hester, and when I come home I shall thank you for your care of me and mine.

He signed his name and ran down to the wooden pier and thrust the note at the captain. “Please see that she receives it,” he said. “I am trapped here unless she can send me my fare home.” He looked at the ship. “Unless I could work a passage?”