The next time she sees John Smith is when she has her audience with the King.

Mrs Jenkins helps her dress. She is laced, stockinged and powdered into a semblance of English beauty. They even ghost her cheeks with rouge. Then her hair is fixed with a hairpiece of pearls and emeralds, which is far too heavy, and she is dressed in her dishonest finery – in gold and white brocade, with an underskirt of pale yellow.

She remembers why she came here.

And so she and John and Thomas bow and curtsy to the King and Queen, and explain the situation – the illegitimate child, the Russian noble, the constant flight (they leave out the madness, lest it is judged a deserved punishment from God).

Behind them stand John and his daughter. Meg is wearing sky blue silk, which suits her, but the skirt and sleeves swamp her, as does the overflowing quantity of her golden hair.

Her sunburn has been powdered over, and her lips painted red. But she looks little more than a small, frightened child, clutching at her father's hand.

As before, after the appeal, Pocahontas is exposed. She smiles, and dances and answers all questions as she should – tells them how she converted in a dress of dove white, how she lives in a house like the other English wives, that she is found of embroidery and oh so very loyal to the nation which has saved her from damnation.

Meg drags her father to a corner of the room, where she stands behind him, and he whispers to her to stop her screaming.

Finally, finally it is over. They half burst into the palace grounds. It is late afternoon – perhaps they would like to take a turn around the gardens, before they leave? His Majesty would be most pleased if they would accept his hospitality.

Her husband wants to go home. But home is filled with lifeless walls and thick shined floors, and so Pocahontas lets Meg grab her hand and they run. Run out of sight of the palace, to the open grounds where there is no one there to spy. They leave behind father, husband, and sprint into the green.

It is growing dark. It starts to rain.

Laughing with more than a little hysteria, they lift up their heads to the opening sky, two women who are almost dead from walls. They spin and turn cartwheels, and dance, dresses caught up in the soaking gale, blowing dilapidated vibrance in the cold grey air.

And when they finish their skirts are all in tatters, their hair hanging in loose, soaking tendrils, and Meg catches her hand and both of them walk, oddly sedate, back to where their families wait. Thomas is standing outside in the rain, lifting his head up to the sky. John Rolfe, ever the English gentleman, has retreated into a waiting carriage. But John Smith stands beside Thomas, and they are deep in conversation, and as they turn to see mother and daughter they both laugh.

And Meg runs to Thomas, who catches her in his arms, and she kisses him, right there, in the middle of the rain, dressed in silk of famished sky.

Pocahontas and John Smith look at their children. At one another.

Then she climbs into the coach, to sit beside her husband, who is looking with disapproval at the young couple laughing in the rain.