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  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 forwards again.

  Meanwhile in Jamestown the governor was mustering all the able-bodied men and hunting dogs to counter-attack. He had promised the colonists a fight to the death, a solution once and for all.

  ‘We have to move,’ Attone said as soon as all the men had returned. ‘Deeper into the forest, perhaps across the river and into the wet creeks. Once the village is safely hidden we can come out again and fight.’

  The women went to the houses at once to start packing. ‘And the crops in the fields?’ Suckahanna asked him.

  He made a gesture which told her that they were lost. ‘Perhaps later. Perhaps we can come back,’ he said.

  They exchanged a sharp, hard look. He took in the hardness of the lines around her mouth and John, hovering helplessly behind her.

  ‘You are hurt,’ she said.

  ‘Just bruised. You?’

  She turned away. ‘Just bruised.’

  They travelled all day. Once, when they paused, they heard a hunting horn and the baying of a dog. It was the governor Sir William Berkeley’s hounds on the track, hunting Indians would be the colonists’ great sport this season.

  They crossed the river at once, the children riding on the shoulders of the men, the women wading through chest-high, rapid-flowing water without a whisper of complaint, and crossed it again, then Attone led them on at a steady run.

  John was in the rear, helping the old men and women keep up, carrying burdens for them. Suckahanna had told no-one of what had passed between her and her husband, but she did not need to speak. Everyone could see that the Eagle was not at the side of his friend, not at the side of his wife. Everyone could see that he was a dead man to Attone, to Suckahanna, as surely as if he had gone into Jamestown and fought like a brave and died like a hero. So they let him carry their goods or hold them steady in the river as if he were a rock or a tree, or something of use. But they did not speak to him, nor smile at him, nor even look into his eyes.

  All day they travelled as Attone led them closer to the sea, where the mosquitoes rose in clouds from the sodden grass and reeds and the trees bowed down low over dark, silty, salty water. At night they found some ground only a little higher than the tidewash. ‘Here,’ Attone said. ‘Make shelters but no fires.’

  An old woman died in the night, and they piled a heap of stones over her face.

  ‘We move on,’ Attone said.

  All day they travelled at that punishing pace. An old man and an old woman stopped at the side of the trail and said they would go no further. Attone left them with a bow and arrow to do what damage they could to the pursuers, and with a tiny sliver of sharpened bark to open their veins rather than be captured. None of them stopped to say goodbye. The safety of the People was greater than the farewells of individuals. Attone wanted to get the People away.

  On the third day they reached a small hill deep inside the swamp and Attone gave the order that they could rest. There was nothing to eat except some dried flour which they mixed cold with the marshy water. Attone sent out scouts, empty-bellied, to go down the trail and see if they were followed. When they returned and said that the trails were safe he sent them out again. Only when the third party had come back on the fifth day did he say that the women could light fires and start to collect food and the men could go hunting.

  ‘What happens now?’ John asked one of the old women.

  ‘We live here,’ she said.

  ‘In the middle of a foul swamp?’

  She gave him a look which told him as clearly as words that she despised his weakness. ‘In the middle of a foul swamp,’ she said.

  Summer 1644, England

  Alexander’s predictions seemed correct. Through the spring and early summer gossip, wild surmise and news filtered back to London, and finally to Lambeth, of small battles all around the country and then finally, in July, a dreadful battle at Marston Moor. Alexander wrote to Hester:

  I cannot come out to see you, I am so busy with the demands of the ordnance. There has been a major battle in Yorkshire and it has gone the way of Parliament. I hear that Prince Rupert has met Cromwell himself, and it was Cromwell that triumphed. In haste … Alexander.

  Hester waited for news for another few days and then one of her neighbours rapped on the door to say that she was going up to the House of Commons to see the king’s standards. ‘Forty-eight royal standards laid for all to see on the bar of the House,’ she said. ‘I’ll take Johnnie along with me. The boy should see it.’

  Johnnie shook his head. ‘Is Prince Rupert’s standard taken?’ he asked.

  ‘You shall see it,’ the woman promised. ‘Stained with his own blood.’

  Johnnie’s brown eyes grew bigger in his pale face. ‘I don’t want to see it,’ he said stubbornly, and then remembered his manners. ‘But thank you very much for inviting me, Mrs Goodall.’

  She bridled for a moment. ‘I hope you’re not siding with the enemy?’ she said sharply. ‘The king has forced us to this battle and now he is defeated and good riddance to him.’

  Hester stepped forwards and laid her hand on her stepson’s shoulder. ‘He’s still the king,’ she said.

  Mrs Goodall looked angrily at her. ‘Some say that a king who is his people’s woe is no king. The law that says he is king says that he rules for our good, not for our regret. If he does not please us then he is no king at all. There are those who are saying that he should die in one of his bitter battles and we would be a happier land without him.’

  ‘Then his son would be king,’ Hester said steadily. ‘There would still be a king.’

  ‘Of course you were at court,’ the woman remarked pointedly. ‘Enriched by the pack of them.’

  ‘I worked there as many did,’ Hester said. She sounded defensive and her hand tightened on Johnnie’s shoulder as if to draw courage from his narrow little bones. ‘But I have taken neither one side nor the other. All I have wanted from the beginning is peace.’

  ‘So do we all,’ the woman agreed. ‘And there can be no peace with that man or his son on the throne again.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Hester said, swiftly stepping back and drawing Johnnie back with her. ‘Please God we shall have peace at last and our men can come home.’

  October 1644, England

  On a cold day in the middle of October, Alexander Norman rode to Lambeth between frosty hedges on icy tracks. Frances was on the look-out for him and ran out into the stable yard with her cape around her shoulders to take his horse and send Alexander into the parlour, to the warmth of the fire.

  Hester had mulled wine to greet him. He took a deep draught and set it down. At once Hester knew that he had something important to say. ‘Is it peace?’ she asked. ‘Has the king surrendered?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘He’s taken Salisbury, it looks like he’s rallying again. But it’s not that I came about. It is time for me to speak to you about another matter.’

  ‘Frances,’ Hester said, knowing at once what Alexander Norman meant.

  ‘Frances,’ he replied.

  ‘I wrote to her father,’ Hester said. ‘I did not tell him what you had said. But I told him of my worries about keeping her safe. I thought he might make some suggestion.’ She paused. ‘I have not had a reply. Nothing since that consignment of Indian goods and a barrel of plants.’

  ‘I don’t want to wait for his reply,’ Alexander said. ‘Whether it is for me or against me.’

  Hester nodded, taking in the determined to