This chapter contains the long-awaited cornfield scene. Not as purely romantic as in the movie, because, unlike the idiot he seems to be in the movie, John Smith has a plan.
In Disney the scene where John Smith meets Grandmother Willow is played 100% for laughs. I thought it might be quite interesting, rather, to imagine what it would really be like, no kidding, for a rational man to meet a friendly nature spirit – assuming that such a thing existed!
Disclaimer: Disney characters ...
CHAPTER 16
For Pocahontas, the day before had been another one of stifling inactivity, indecision and anger. She was up at dawn, plodding through the summer rain, her wet tunic shrinking on her skin, the damp leaves on the path sticking to her feet. She went to a forest hunting-shelter with her father's wife, her aunts and her young nephews and nieces and their guard of warriors; she was spoken to coldly, watched suspiciously, and treated as an inconvenient piece of baggage. In danger like this her mother, at Pocahontas's age, would have been with the scouts, treading light-footed through the undergrowth with an arrow to the string. How much more should her daughter be doing real work at this time of danger, when this danger was especially hers! She, and no other, had the knowledge on which their lives might all depend, yet her tongue was tied and she could not speak of it. She had tried to tell her father the night before, but her heart had failed. Sukanon had never quite lived down the disgrace of bearing a son to a Massowomeck. And here was Pocahontas, the loyal and honourable daughter, longing for the pale horror, the alien invader. If her father found out that she had followed, met, spoken alone with this man – still more, that she could not rest for thinking of him – she could not even imagine what he would do: confusion and dread would not let her push her thoughts further. So, instead of doing her proper task, she was letting herself be treated like a basket of grain in store, to be carried about and kept safe for when Kocoum should choose to dip into it. Kocoum!
She judged her father's part in the matter with the merciless sharpness of the young. Because he could not face the thought that his life's work might end with him, he vainly imagined that he could make his stolid kinsman in his own image. Powhatan's whole kingdom had been built on his foresight; Kocoum would never see anything further away than the next enemy on the battlefield. And Powhatan thought that tying Pocahontas to him would make him a better chief, as though a headdress of feathers could make its wearer one featherweight lighter! Was her father turning dotard, that he was suddenly so cautious in providing for his family and his inheritance, and at the same time so reckless in attacking the white men without knowing anything of them? Would it not be better for him to receive the foreigners, teach them and learn their arts, make the alliance greater still with their help, and thus gain more time and opportunity to provide for his inheritance? So Pocahontas reasoned, yet she knew well, deep down, that her father's decision to drive out the foreigners unheard, even at the risk of his life, was not reckless folly. It was deeply considered. To counter it she would need more than shallow arguments founded on gain; she would need, in fact, a still deeper dream. And she had it, but she could not use it.
There was only one relief in the day: the women would not spend their time urging her to marry Kocoum. They had not been told of the match. It was hard enough for Nijlon to accept that her sons would not be first in the succession; Powhatan did not want to rub salt in the wound. He had not needed to warn Pocahontas to be discreet. She almost smiled, looking at the brooding women. If they only knew how much I agree with them, she thought, that I should not marry Kocoum!
Already her aunt had asked her why the chief had summoned her the night before, and although Pocahontas would have been within her rights to retort that the chief's counsels were his to keep, she gave a soft answer. 'He told me my task in case the foreigners defeat us,' she said. 'To take the way to shelter past the hills.'
'Hmph!' snorted Nijlon. 'As if we didn't know the way.'
Pocahontas said nothing.
'They cannot possibly defeat us anyway,' said Sukanon, Kocoum's mother. 'What can they do, barely a hundred men? We will have five times that.'
She said it to placate Nijlon, and not unnaturally it had the opposite effect. 'What can they not do! They are demons. And what men will we have? Up-river cowards and back-stabbing Tapahannocks!'
Sukanon pursed her lips and looked down at her sewing. The chief's wife glanced up challengingly. 'If they were really demons, they might have killed us all by now,' she said.
'They have been making themselves secure first,' retorted Nijlon. 'By the time the warriors arrive they will have finished their stockade. Then there will be no getting rid of them. We should have attacked them at once, as soon as they landed.'
'You didn't say that three days ago,' said the younger woman, looking at her sidelong.
Nijlon drew in her breath sharply. 'Who are you talking to? Do your work and remember your place.' She tossed a bundle of canes for arrow-making at the girl, hitting her on the shoulder.
'Forgive me, mistress,' the girl answered soothingly. 'I know my place.' She looked around her and said under her breath, 'I know where my place was last night, too.'
Nijlon glared. Pocahontas sighed. This endless women's manoeuvring and bickering, which not even war could silence – did she have to live like this? And how could her father put up with it, and take women like these to his bed? She knew quite well that a chief had to have wives for the sake of his standing; it was not a matter of liking. It still set her teeth on edge.
Before noon on the second day her father rescued her. He came and spoke for a little while to each member of the family, and then singled Pocahontas out. 'Walk with me back to the village,' he said. 'I have to see how things are going there.'
Pocahontas went with him submissively and warily. She had defied him two nights before. He had the right to beat or kill her, but he was trying, shyly, to keep the door open between them. Because he loves me, Pocahontas thought, and because he wants to get his way.
He strode downhill towards the river, with Pocahontas following just behind. The sun was coming out after the rain, gleaming on the wet leaves; birds called and fluttered, sending showers of drops flying; the ground smoked, and the leaf-mould was warm and fragrant. Pocahontas remembered walks like this when she was a child. She and her brother would run ahead, climb trees, disturb ants' nests; their father laughed and praised them, and put them on his shoulders when they were tired; their mother told them the names and uses of the plants and showed them where each one grew. The memories were bright and indistinct. Now her picture of the forest was crystal-sharp. She knew everything, down to the cracked patterns in the bark of the fallen twigs that littered the ground, and exactly which grubs she might expect to find underneath. That was all easy. It was the minds of the people around her, and her own mind, which were blurred and as tangled as undergrowth.
Her father called her up alongside him and began to talk, with constraint at first. He reminded her of landmarks they were passing, and then turned to talking of the warriors who would come soon to help them fight, their chiefs and their families. 'Do you remember three years ago when we visited the old chief of Potomac, the one whose fish-traps you admired? His nephew rules in his place now. He hoped for a marriage with our family and was put out not to get one, so we shall have to show him some special courtesy when he comes.' Or again: 'I am afraid that family will not hold the chieftainship for long. The chief has several cousins who have as good a right to it as he does, and two of his best supporters died this year. This war will probably give someone an occasion to challenge him, and then they will all be fighting each other and we will get no help from them for a long time. I shall not interfere, even if they ask me. It is a wasps' nest.' Pocahontas listened carefully, and now and then, guardedly, asked questions. Her father seemed gratified, and spoke more freely. She knew that what he told her could be very useful, and was determined to remember all that she could, but would not let her father see how interested she was. She knew quite well what he was about. He was not such a fool as to ask her directly to change her mind about Kocoum; he knew that what she refused to do one day, she would not suddenly do the next. Rather, he was telling her all this in order to feed her a notion of what an important person she would be as the chief's wife. He hoped that the image of herself, equipped with all her father's knowledge of the shifting layers of power in their alliance, giving shrewd advice to her husband to help him guide their people, would work on her in the course of time. There was not a chance of that; she smiled at his innocence in thinking so, even while she was awed by the breadth of his knowledge and the sharpness of his judgment about the affairs of the kingdom.
They reached the village. The men left on guard reported that there had been no more raids, or sinister messages from the men in the ship. All seemed well, except that the birds were making inroads into the unguarded corn. Powhatan ordered one of the guards to send for some women from their hiding place in the forest, to pick as much of the corn as was ripe enough and take it away to store. 'Will you stay with them?' he asked Pocahontas. 'I'll tell him to make sure Nakoma comes.' He smiled, and Pocahontas bent her head. He knows I prefer that to staying with the royal ladies, she thought. But he couldn't leave me alone, could he?
Powhatan was called away: a forerunner from the warriors who were on their way had arrived at the shore. Pocahontas went to a store in the village and fetched baskets, several small ones and one that was half her own height and a yard across, made from willow-withes. She carried them easily among the corn hills and set to work. It was sultry and very quiet, and she paused from her picking at intervals to peer between the corn stems that towered above her head, or to glance over her shoulder, afraid for some reason of being watched or caught unawares. Was she afraid of being attacked, a woman out of sight of her own kind? She had never feared that before. No, she was somehow afraid that, alone as she was, she would forget to thrust her dreams down; she would let them escape her in some visible form that an unseen watcher could detect.
She had warning of the coming of the other pickers, though; they could be heard a long way off screeching and flapping their baskets to scare away the birds. Presently Nakoma arrived beside her and greeted her shyly.
'Do you think these are ripe enough to pick?' was the next thing Nakoma said.
'No,' said Pocahontas, 'I think just take the ones that are mostly yellow.' She almost blushed to talk of the yellow of ripe corn, as if anyone could guess what it reminded her of.
'We met a man half way here who said that the warriors are going to be here this afternoon,' said Nakoma.
'Good,' said Pocahontas absently.
'Then they'll fight, won't they? Do you think they'll fight tomorrow?'
'I don't know.'
'We may have to be away tonight if they do.'
'Maybe.'
'Hasn't your father said anything, Pocahontas?'
Pocahontas did not answer at once, because she had been absently scanning the forest margin at the edge of the field. As she turned at last to give Nakoma a proper reply, she saw Nakoma's eyes widen and a look of terror come over her face. She herself glanced round and saw John Smith step sideways out from among the stalks of maize. Moving quickly, as if she were not surprised, she caught Nakoma by the shoulders and clapped a hand over her mouth. John Smith looked at them, an outlandish figure in the familiar field, with his hands slightly raised and with a deprecating smile on his face. Why had she feared the memory of him? Why had she doubted his good will? The moment she saw him again, all she could think of was to protect him, who was venturing so trustingly, childishly, into danger.
Pocahontas said his name, and then, in an urgent whisper in her own language, 'What are you doing here?'
He held out his hands to her and said a word or two. Nakoma wriggled in Pocahontas's grasp and stared at her in disbelief.
The voices of two of the other women could be heard only a few hills away. 'In the name of all the gods, don't say anything,' whispered Pocahontas to Nakoma, released her, and seized John Smith by the hand.
'What are you doing?' hissed Nakoma. 'It's one of them!'
Pocahontas, for answer, only pulled the man in among the corn until he was out of sight. For an instant Nakoma saw her face again, with a finger held pleadingly to her lips. Then she was gone. Nakoma, weak with shock, lowered her basket unthinkingly to the ground.
She picked no more until a woman from the chief's household came up and asked where Pocahontas was. 'I don't know. She went away from here,' was the only answer Nakoma could think to give, and she noticed the hard stare the woman gave her before moving away.
*****
John Smith had been prepared to get into the river and swim to get clear of the camp undetected that morning, but luck was with him: the damp warm dawn brought mist, curling up from the water and drifting between the trees, so thick that each trunk seen from the next looked like a pale shadow. He headed up away from the river, guided by the slope alone, moving with infinite care from one tree to the next. He had a scare when the fog suddenly thinned in front of him and he heard voices. Two men were talking to one another quietly, their distance impossible to judge in the unnaturally still air. He froze and then moved even more carefully in the opposite direction, at pains not to assume that it was safe. No alarm was raised, and after a quarter of a mile he judged he might go slightly easier. Still moving uphill, he came out suddenly from the fog into bright early light.
He had left behind weapons, helmet, and anything that might reflect the sunlight or that might creak or jingle. His plan was to make a circuit of the Indian village first of all, to see if he could ascertain where Pocahontas was likely to be, and, failing finding her, to approach whatever man seemed to be in authority. By the time he arrived there at the pace he had to go, the shadows were shortening, cover was getting more and more difficult to find, and he spent a fruitless couple of hours spying, in the company of thoughts that gave him ever less comfort.
By watching the buildings from above for a good while, he came to the conclusion that the dwellings were all empty. There were many people around the village, but they all seemed to be young men. Most of them were busy finishing the high palisade all around the houses, which was not made of hewn tree trunks like the one at Jamestown, but of slender stakes criss-crossed to support one another. Now and then a couple of men would arrive out of the forest with more materials and lay them in a heap. Those in charge of the work carefully looked out trunks and branches that would match one another in thickness, and trimmed them painstakingly with their stone knives. Three-quarters of the fence was built already. It was a beautiful piece of work. Two or three good shots from a cannon would leave it in ruins.
A little way up the river from the houses, he found a group of men standing at the water's edge, and lay under some bushes watching them. They were spearing fish. They stood motionless for so long the eye tired of watching, then moved in a flash, like the finest rapier-fighters, and held up their flapping quarry on the end of their spears. There were no drudges among these men; they all needed this incredible skill. How hard, and how hard-learned, was their way of life; how finely wrought they were to stand it, every one tall and lean and quick, tempered by wars and winters.
They were doomed. Against his people, they could not possibly stand. However strong they were as men, they had no chance against what was coming to them: the deluge of things, of possessions which would make their skill useless, things that allowed many men to be weak and foolish while a few only needed to be wise and strong. Whatever we take from them, thought John, it's what we give to them that will really destroy them. They will not be able to master our possessions, or to do without them. They will sell their women and their truth to gorge themselves on things. And if I go out there and offer them tools or gilt baubles or weapons in exchange for their fish and corn, that will just be the beginning of it.
We should never have meddled here, he thought. The only right thing to do would be to turn around, get into our ship and sail quietly home: leave them alone, forget that the New World ever existed. That's what I should do, if I want to save my soul.
But others will come. There's no stopping it now. And what else is there for me to do? Didn't I grow up knowing that to see new lands was my calling? Didn't I always believe that exploring, discovering, charting, was the best thing a man could do, and a tall ship the finest thing he ever made? I've lost my bearings, he thought. And that greedy beast has got my compass. He smiled wryly at the aptness of it.
He had never thought out what he meant to say to the Indian chief when he met him, knowing that the needs and intuitions of the moment were all-important. He knew, though, that if he did succeed in meeting him his tone would be very different now from what it would have been on the first day. A manner as between lordly equals was out of the question. All he could hope to do was ask humbly for hospitality and pardon for presumption already shown. He could not see that pleasing Ratcliffe at all.
He moved away from the river, skirted the fields and wondered how far into the forest there was any sense in searching, before he simply walked up to any man who seemed less likely than another to stick him on the spot. Then luck turned his way again. Shrill women's voices were coming in his direction. He lurked at the forest margin just above the cornfield and saw the women fan out among the hills of corn and set to work picking. He guessed that if Pocahontas were there, she would be out at the edge furthest from the village, and he was right.
*****
She let go his hand and, glancing repeatedly backward with a hurried and angry expression on her face, led him very quickly into the forest, then diagonally downhill until they were beside the river. He thought that they might stop and talk but she jogged and clambered on for as much as a mile, while the ground began to slope away more and more steeply and great mossy boulders and fallen trees blocked their path. On their left now was a high and steep bank down to the river, which crashed and foamed noisily along a stretch of rapids. John understood that she hoped to be safe in a place where no one had any reason to come, and where the noise of the river would drown their voices. Finally she dropped to her knees on the landward side of a rock about twice his height and settled herself comfortably in the leaf mould. She opened a leather satchel that hung at her side, and as John hesitantly sat down near her she took out a flat unleavened cake and a strip of dried meat, broke the cake in two and handed half to him, then pulled the meat into two sections with her teeth and did the same with that.
He only knew how grateful he must look when her face lit up with a flashing smile that brought all their earlier time together vividly back to him. They sat opposite each other for a few minutes and ate with concentration. Then she took a hollow gourd from her satchel, swung herself down to the river, filled the gourd with fast-flowing water and handed it up to him. When they had both drunk, he thanked her formally, and she held out her hands and spoke some words which had the sound of a housewife accepting a guest's compliments.
Now they had to tackle business, and he was terribly aware of the burden of his people and hers behind them, when the first time they had met they had thought of little but each other.
He began by trying to explain to her that he had come to meet the ruler of her folk, to talk to him; that his men wanted to ask for food, hospitality, permission to stay. Now that the words had to be found seriously, not in play, and now that rather than laughing her brow was furrowed with the effort to understand him, understanding seemed to take much longer than before. At last, however, he felt sure that she did understand.
'The chief is my father,' she said. She got up and mimed (she did it extremely well) a chief standing to his full height, crowned with feathers and holding a long spear in his hand. Then she seemed to shrink to the size of a child and stand before the chief, her arms imitating his arms around her shoulders.
John Smith nodded slowly with satisfaction, unsurprised.
Then she asked, 'Why have you come here?'
That was the difficult one. He first thought he ought to explain how they had come. He got out his tablets, which she had not yet seen, in which he had smoothed over the rough map of the rivers that Thomas had drawn out for him the day before. On the wax he scratched a picture of the ship, the Susan Constant, between the two coasts of the ocean. He drew the rising sun and the setting sun, east and west, and held up seven fingers ten times to show how long the crossing had taken. She pointed at the sun in the sky for confirmation, and he agreed. She seemed almost too awestruck to ask him any more questions for the present, but he ploughed on unasked.
'And why we have come …'. Why? Poor men hoping to get rich, rich men hoping for glory – why come all this way for that? For gold? On his little finger he had a worn gold ring that had belonged to his mother, which he took off and showed to her. She shrugged her shoulders, spreading her hands wide. It was obvious she had never seen anything like it before, and could see no particular worth in it.
'But I came – ' … he could think of nothing else to do than to climb a step or two up the great rock they sat against, and look out over the land and then turn to face the river, shading his eyes with his hand exaggeratedly.
Pocahontas sat back and laughed with startled delight. This was exactly the way she had first seen him close, looking out over the forest from that tree by the shore. But now she had begun to know him, and instead of fear she felt for him a mixture of motherly indulgence and rapt admiration. He was at play in this land, as only a very small boy, who had not yet shouldered any of the tasks of manhood, could possibly play. But his restless wide-eyed face had seen the other side of the ocean that, as far as she had ever known, had no further shore. What distant lands, what unimaginable realities did his mind encompass? Her own thought stretched to try and match it, but in vain.
'You too are a chief,' she said softly.
'No,' he said ruefully, sitting down again. He picked up a pine-cone and placed it on a fairly high ledge of the rock, then another on the ledge below it. 'Second to the chief,' he explained. 'And my chief wants war with yours. And we will have to be very quick to stop him.'
'My father too,' said Pocahontas carefully. 'My people are in great fear of you strangers. The shaman has warned us not to have anything to do with you. More warriors are coming before sunset today, and after that they mean to attack you.'
After she had made this clear to him piece by piece, he sprang catlike to his feet. 'Then we have to go at once,' he said. 'Can you take me to your father now? I must speak to him. I must try to tell him that we will do you no harm, if it is in my power at all.' When Pocahontas made signs that she was afraid for him, that he would be in great danger with no protection but hers, he brushed her words aside with a sweep of his hand. 'It doesn't matter. It must be now, or it may be too late.'
Pocahontas blamed herself, then and afterwards, for not doing as he said. But she convinced him, slowly and with difficulty, that it would be much better if she could speak to her father first and persuade him to provide safe conduct; that he would be sure to listen to her, now that she could tell him for certain who the strangers were and what their business was; that there would have to be a council and various ceremonies before her people could possibly attack. She knew in her heart, even then, that her only real reason for wanting to delay was fear: fear of owning her feelings for the stranger to her father and the whole people, and even to herself. She also knew that the fear would only grow greater from not being faced at once. Both to justify the delay and in the hope that this would build up her courage, she decided to take John Smith to the place where her guide lived.
He followed her without demur downstream, another mile or more, to where the bank grew lower, the ground levelled and began to be broken by marshy channels. Between the trees, he suddenly saw much wider water. This was where the river on which the village stood met the greater river on which the English were camped, he realised. Far to the east, that river in turn emptied into the vast tidal bay they had first entered from the open sea.
Here, it was not clear what was land and what was water. The ground must always be soft, and now was even softer from the previous day's rain. They crossed muddy spits where they had to use tree-roots as footholds to prevent themselves getting bogged down, and on slightly drier ground they threaded their way through thick tangles of undergrowth. Some channels they crossed on fallen, half-rotted tree trunks, others they waded. It was just as well, John thought, that his clothes were already too much ruined for him to worry about what impression he would make on the chief at the end of all this. He was not sure whether they were on one divided stretch of land or a maze of islands, but at last they came out into a brighter little glade, bordering on the main river, where one huge tree had triumphed over all the jostling, leaning saplings of the rest of the shore: a great, spreading willow tree.
Pocahontas sat with her knees tucked under her on a tall, blackened stump in front of the tree's main trunk. John Smith sat down on a root that arched out over the water. He watched the girl, with half-closed eyes, very gently lay her hand against the cracked, grey bark of the tree. She sat there quite still for several minutes.
John looked around. Smooth, humped grey branches thicker than his waist snaked their way across the clearing. A curtain of willow-leaves cut off a secret pool at the river's edge. The water close to the bank was so still it was almost invisible but for the shadows of the branches and reflections of clouds in it here and there between rafts of long, yellow leaves that lay immobile on the surface. The bottom was muddy. The air was hot and humid in the quietest part of the day: not a creature seemed to be stirring. Why was this place important to the girl? How long did they have to stay here? He wondered if it would be thought improper to take his boots off and dangle his feet in the water, and glanced across at Pocahontas to see if he could guess. She slowly shifted her listening stance and turned to him, and a luminous smile spread over her face. She motioned to him to touch the tree.
John, puzzled but patient, moved a few steps and in his turn placed his hand on the tree-trunk. It was rough, as he had expected, pressing hard on some parts of his palm and barely touching others, but that was not what made him snatch his hand away and start several paces back. It was the feeling of a sudden motion, a prickle of life through the bark, as though some presence had become aware of him and was listening and sensing through the stillness of the glade, in which the roar of the rapids sounded muffled and distant.
This was different from the sense of one-ness with the world that he had felt in Pocahontas's company three days before. This personal, brooding presence in the tree at once aroused all his Christian horror of idols, demons, the worship of stocks and stones. He stared at Pocahontas in dismay. She was yielding to – was possessed by – this … thing.
Yet she gazed at him earnestly. 'Is she speaking to you?' she whispered.
'She?'
'You should answer. Answer.'
John Smith wondered if he looked as faint as he felt.
'This is not for me … I can't,' he got out.
Pocahontas made reassuring small downward gestures with her open hand, as if pushing away his fear. She seemed to think it was of no moment. 'Listen – listen. It will all be well,' she said, and other short words of the same kind, now standing against the tree, turning her face back towards him, and smiling.
John had always assumed his own religion to be the only true one, without actually troubling himself much about it. God was a matter best left to the priests and doctors; taking religion seriously was too difficult, too disconnected from the kind of life he had to lead, and he had always vaguely hoped that a very perfunctory observance would be enough to save him from divine anger, while not gaining him any special favours. I should have given God more of his due, he thought now, then I would have had some defence against this. How can I tell her that her god is deceiving her when I know nothing of mine?
Braced against a malevolent presence, he stood in the middle of the glade wishing to be anywhere else. But his pulse slowed, and nothing further happened. He wondered if he had only fancied he felt anything. But then it began to seem to him that, far from being threatening, the quietness around the tree was peaceful, enveloping him in kindliness.
The grace of the great tree was extraordinary. The way the slender wands curved from the crown like the water of a fountain and fell on all sides in fretted curtains of green touched with gold: there was something extravagantly festive about it, and yet quiet and slightly melancholy, as the reflected light from the smooth river water filtered in over the pale golden, leafy floor. John began to feel held and contained, as if he were part of that subtle force that lifted the tree upwards and poured its life, refreshing and sheltering, through the encircling branches.
Unaccountably he remembered the beginning of a grey dawn from very long ago: he was lying safely in bed, he could hear the liquid, icy-clear notes of a blackbird, and he knew that outside the orchard trees were in full bloom.
How long was it since he had been safe? Or since anyone had held him? He had forgotten what it felt like, until now. He suddenly felt his whole self to be taut, strained as a bowstring, stretched by the need to fight for those who relied on him and to seek out truth in the world. Here, a teasing grandmotherly presence smiled at the strivings of men and invited him to let all his trouble go. What truly is, it said, does not strive alone but flows at ease.
I can't let it go, not yet: I mustn't, he felt his inner voice protesting. They need me.
Then ask for help.
Help me, then, if you can.
Yes. Your load will be borne up. You are not alone.
At that, he found he was looking at Pocahontas as if there had been some interruption in his ordinary vision, like a moment of sleep or darkness. Shaking his head to clear it, he saw her nod in recognition, as if she knew without words the nature of what had happened to him. He was confused. What had taken place was real, as real as anything else in his knowledge. But it did not fit with any of what he knew. It left the world blurred. No, the world was as it had been, but no longer just there: the world was a sign, something wrought, something created to speak to him. He in turn was laid bare to it. He felt as if he was quick all over like a peeled twig, and ready to cry like a young child.
Pocahontas turned fully towards him. 'I am glad…' she said.
Before she could go on, the quietness, which had seemed to last forever, was suddenly and terribly shattered. A loud, confused noise began somewhere far out on the water. There was what sounded like a concerted shout from a number of deep men's voices, with a high ululation above. Then, unmistakable to John though strange to Pocahontas, there were several loud cracks, the reports of muskets. He remembered that the English camp was only a couple of miles away.
Oh, no, he thought, snatching his inner defences around him before he could consider what he was doing.
Pocahontas had leaped up and was climbing like a squirrel into the higher branches of the willow. She thrust her head out over the leaf canopy, bracing her arms against branches. 'It is our warriors. They are coming,' she called down with her voice full of dread.
John was climbing after her. Uncertain of his foothold, grasping handfuls of withes and leaves, he peered out over the river. Half a mile downstream, in the middle of the wide current, was a line of canoes, more than he could quickly count, thirty or so. He could just see the flashing movements of men paddling, perhaps eight to each boat. Except that some were not paddling but kneeling still with outstretched arms along the sides of the canoes, all facing one way. Between them and the near bank a puff of white smoke suddenly rose into the air, and a moment later the echoing crack of a gunshot sounded. Without the smoke to guide his eyes John might have had difficulty in spotting the small boat that the shot had come from, but now he saw it, and three or four men in it. The kneeling men in the canoes made sudden movements of release, one after the other. He saw what they were doing: shooting with bows, although the arrows were too distant to be seen.
He dropped some way down the tree hand over hand and let himself fall the last six feet. Pocahontas too was scrambling down towards him. 'I have to go,' he said to her, his voice shaking, 'there is some madness going on. Our camp is there, my people, I have to stop them.'
'But my father! The warriors are here.'
He took a deep breath. 'I will come back,' he said. 'I'll come back here. Meet me here, if you can, at moonrise. It may be difficult … I will come. Tell him; please tell him.'
'I will,' she said. 'I will. I'll be here,' and she pointed emphatically at the ground before her.
'Good-bye,' said John, and ran. It seemed he had buckled all his armour on again without realising it; everything was as it had been that morning, but worse.