So, Pocahontas and John share their supreme moment. You wouldn't believe it, I put off writing that scene for YEARS because I couldn't imagine how I would do justice to the importance of the moment and the beauty and delicacy of the animation: I was afraid it would turn out cheesy. You can't think how pleased I am that it worked for all of you!

But now, alas, what Laur aptly called The Kocoum Debacle cannot be put off any longer. Here comes the prison hut sequence too. PocahontasJohnSmithForever, you will forgive me not using precisely the same dialogue as the movie. I started off by doing so, and was always inspired by it, but found in the end that the lines seemed a bit too stylised for the more naturalistic effect I was aiming for. I liked the song, too, but felt that John and Pocahontas would really have their minds more on practical matters at this point. It's a great song, but don't you feel 'For ***'s sake, if you've got time to sit here and sing, why not try RESCUING him or something?'

Disclaimer: the Disney Corporation invented these characters in their present form.

CHAPTER 18

Thomas thought he had discovered the trail, but there was little to mark it except that the trees stood further apart than elsewhere, and that beyond it the ground seemed to slope gently downward again. It was now so dark that each tree loomed into view, greyly, only when he was within five paces of it, and he could not even be sure that he was moving in a straight line. He tripped on roots and slipped on banks of compacted fallen leaves. An owl hooted somewhere, far away, and behind him he could just hear a shout from a watchman at the camp. It was his lifeline to the only human company he had on this whole continent. He was afraid to go any further: he would become irrevocably lost in a tangled, enclosed web of blackness.

Just as he despaired, he found that he could see a little better. The moon was rising. Very soon he could see obstacles before he walked into them, and before long the whole forest was transformed into a cathedral nave of silver and black. The great, well-spaced trees receded into the distance in front of him. The path he should take was marked out in shadows. The way was straight, and, more than two hundred yards in front, Thomas glimpsed the man he was following, walking straight and briskly, not stopping to glance behind. Of course Captain Smith had no reason to think he would be followed and no reason, now, to hide: he had even taken off the broad-brimmed hat, the better to see his way.

Thomas made between one and two miles of distance in a dreamlike way, sighting John Smith from time to time, wondering if he should run or call to him, but in the end letting the silence and mystery of the forest stifle any decision. Then, suddenly, between one clear viewpoint and the next, Smith had disappeared. He must have turned off the trail, either to the left or to the right.

All Thomas could do was guess. He guessed for the water rather than the landward side, and headed downhill. He ploughed through a bowl of thick, dry fallen leaves, and skirted a huge brake of brambles. Then he could hear the river, and also, a great deal too close, the voices of Indians.

He listened intently, but there was only one unhurried voice speaking and another answering: no challenge, no English words, nothing to show anything unexpected had happened. But if John Smith had not met these Indians, no more did Thomas wish to. And how was Thomas to find him?

At length he decided to climb back up to the trail and look carefully along it for any waymark that might have shown John Smith exactly where to turn off. After several minutes of anxious searching, he found one, a little further along the trail than he had first gone: four branches of a sapling birch tied together in a bunch as they grew. At this point, again, he headed directly downhill.

He soon found the ground growing wetter, and had a hard time moving quietly as he extricated his boots from one boggy mire after another. He found what seemed to be the head of a muddy creek running into the river, skirted it, was immediately confronted by another, managed to jump over that, wondered what on earth, in this maze of land and water, John Smith might be doing, and, barely a minute later, found out.

He thought he heard soft voices. He took a few more cautious steps, and with the barrel of his musket gently pushed aside a hanging curtain of willow leaves.

He was looking across a channel of water into a clearing, almost an island in the river. And in the middle of the clearing, in the moonlight, stood Captain Smith, and a half-naked, black-haired girl with her arms wound round his neck. A savage girl!

Thomas groped frantically for the proper response. He grinned sardonically in the dark. So this was what the captain meant by parleying with the Indians. He thought of the mixture of admiration and coarseness with which his schoolfellows would have greeted such a scene. How Ratcliffe would laugh ... Deep down Thomas felt shocked, somehow betrayed. John Smith was kissing the girl; his face, drained of colour in the moonlight, was grave and rapt; he had completely forgotten about Thomas and his comrades, gone into another world where none of them mattered, only she.

*****

On the other side of the clearing, Kocoum was watching the same scene. His feelings were unmixed, scalding and unbearable.

He had set out in anger, expecting only to give the lie to that hag in the village, the chief's sister: and yet it was true. Pocahontas. His bride! How he had waited patiently outside her father's door, would have waited for years – while she stood there allowing, no, willing this corpse-faced, demon invader to ... He could not pronounce the words, even to himself. Instead he shrieked a war cry and flung himself forward through the branches. He was upon the stranger almost before he and Pocahontas could draw apart.

*****

Thomas saw the Indian bear John Smith to the ground, striking out furiously with his axe. All thought left him except the need to save the captain. He heard the girl crying out, and as he frantically readied his musket, half saw her seize the Indian by the arm and try to drag him off, only to be flung aside and land winded on the ground. Thomas splashed through shallow water to reach the edge of the clearing, and skirted the fighters, trying to get a vantage point for a shot. He was only yards away but there was no sign that they saw him. The Indian was crouching over John Smith, now grasping a stone knife in both hands and pushing it downwards, against the captain's grip on his forearm, to drive the point into his neck. The captain was unarmed, Thomas thought in panic; his heart was not in the fight, while the Indian was possessed by murderous rage; he was sure to kill him.

The girl, who had got to her feet, cried out again and caught hold of the Indian's right arm. This time she pulled more strongly. And Thomas, looking along the barrel of his gun, saw the man come nearly upright, his bare chest exposed, Captain Smith still on the ground, the girl to one side. He found his hands were shaking and, with a tremendous effort, he steadied them. This time he must shoot straight. What shot would he fire in all his life that was more important? Now! He took aim at the left of the two red painted marks on the Indian's chest, and fired.

The shot roared out, appallingly loud, the recoil making Thomas stagger backwards. Through the smoke he saw the Indian seem to straighten – making him think for an instant that he had missed, after all – then sway on his feet, put out one hand to try to save himself, and slowly overbalance backward, splashing into the shallow edge of the river, where the dark water lapped his face.

Thomas ran forward. 'Is he…?' It was the first time he had killed. Panic and disbelief overcame him.

The girl, kneeling in the water at the warrior's side, turned her face to Thomas, ugly with grief and horror. John Smith had stood up. The three people left alive in the clearing stared at one another as if they were all strangers. The girl whispered a few frozen words, then, as Thomas dazedly stepped forward – for what? to see if the man were really dead? to ask pardon for what he had done? – she leaped at him like a wild cat, screaming.

John Smith threw his arms around her, trying to hold her back gently. 'Pocahontas – it won't help – he was only…' She turned to John, thrusting him away, sobbing.

There was no help for it, for any of them. Already there were other voices among the trees, coming swiftly nearer. The men guarding the boats had heard the cries and the shot and were running up, shouting to each other. John Smith turned from the girl to Thomas:

'Thomas,' he snapped, 'get out of here!'

Thomas hesitated. He couldn't leave John Smith, couldn't run away from what he had done.

'Go!' repeated John, louder, jerking his head. Thomas knew an order when he heard one. He ran, loosely, musket swinging, under the cover of the trees. As he went he broke out in tears. He never expected to see his captain again, and the last look he had had from him was the first that had held no kindness for Thomas, no recognition: that had no energy to spare from the task in hand.

John Smith now waited for things to go as they would. Even as he fought for his life with the young warrior he had known that his battle was lost. For him to live, the young man had had to die, and the Indians would not forgive that: not even, surely, Pocahontas. She would love him no longer, although the last waves of the dreamlike surge of passion still lapped over him. But he could not, if he wanted to, have lifted his hand against her people any more. As for fleeing, what was left for him at the English camp now? He moved a little away from Pocahontas, faced the approaching voices, and waited the few moments before the warriors raced into the clearing. Four of them immediately surrounded him. Three wrenched his arms behind his back and held him, the fourth brandished a spear in his face. He managed one glance back towards Pocahontas as they dragged him away, but she was not looking at him. She had gone into the water to kneel beside Kocoum's head.

Three more men went across to the shallows and looked down at Kocoum with grave, set faces. They saw at once that there was nothing to be done. They spoke to each other softly, knelt down and gently lifted his dead body onto their shoulders. Pocahontas supported his hanging head as water streamed from his long black hair. They utterly ignored her and walked slowly off with their burden.

Pocahontas stayed where she was for some time, frozen, too stunned even to move. At last time crawled into motion again, and she with it. With dragging steps she followed the receding voices back towards the village. Kocoum's falling hand, heavy in the grip of death, had caught in her necklace and broken it, and the fragments remained lying on the ground where they had fallen.

*****

When John Smith reached the Indian village with his captors he could see that the news of what had happened had been sent on ahead. Men lined the path from the stockade to the open space with the carved posts. They jostled each other to get a view, shouted, stared, and made signs as if to avert something evil. A woman was crying. The men carrying Kocoum's body went forward and laid it down carefully in the space between the posts. The woman, clearly the dead man's mother, came and threw herself down beside him, tearing at her grey hair, sobbing and moaning one word or phrase over and over again. The nearer onlookers seemed stunned. Thomas had killed someone of importance, there could be no doubt of it.

Down the slope from the longhouse came a tall man in a long cloak, carrying a spear, flanked by two warriors: unmistakably the chief. He stood looking down at the body. He closed his eyes and held his spear high for a few moments. Then he looked outward. His shoulders rose and settled, as if he were taking a hold on his grief and anger and laying them on one side, before his voice rang out in a question.

John heard the leader of the guard reply, without understanding him: except that, right at the end of his account, came the name 'Pocahontas', after which he checked himself, as though knowing he had said too much, but not sorry to have said it.

The chief turned to look at John, and gave an order with a sweep of his hand: and for the first time John realised just how insolent he and his men had been, carving out a camp for themselves uninvited, within a few miles of the stronghold of a ruler like this.

It was two miles from the willow-glade to the village. John was dazed: he had been hauled onward, his arms nearly pulled out of their sockets, made to stand while they tore Sir Richard's good doublet off him and searched him for armour and weapons, tied his wrists, and then argued furiously whether to march him any further or kill him at once. He had been a prisoner before and knew that there were ways to make it better. You let it all wash over you and eventually your chance came: to say something unexpected, to catch them off balance, remind them you were a man too. But he could say nothing to these Indians. They handled him with convulsive violence, as though they both wanted to damage him and hated to touch him. He was loathsome to them. As they pushed him stumbling over the threshold of the longhouse and he scanned the grim faces of a group of seated older men, and more young warriors who lined the walls, he knew that if he had ever wished for a day when his handsome face would not help him at all, he had his wish now.

They forced him to his knees in front of the chief and held him there; a man behind him wound his fingers in his hair and dragged his head back. It felt like a deliberate mockery of the caresses he had been given such a short time before. Oh God, how quickly the draught of life had been snatched away!

He tried to rally himself. It was not the way he had hoped to meet Pocahontas's father. Yet here he was: it was what he had planned for. Come, Smith! Your charm, your address, your manners! You've used them in worse straits before … But what could he say? Could he say, 'Do not fight us, for hundreds of you will die?' This man would not be impressed by vulgar threats. 'Do not fight us, out of kindness to my people?' What possible claim had he on their kindness, after what had happened? That young man outside was dead, on his account, even if not by his hand. 'Do not fight us, for I love your daughter?' Worst of all. Above all, he must say nothing of that, though it filled his mind and heart.

He said nothing.

The unreadable eagle eyes stared through him; the spear that the chief held levelled and came within an inch of his throat. For the second time in an hour he expected to die on the spot. He held still and clenched his teeth. The spear-point moved away. He swallowed in a dry throat. Not now. Later.

'Your weapons are strong, but now our anger is stronger,' said the chief. 'You will feel it, you and your folk.'

'But Father…' All eyes turned to the doorway of the longhouse when they heard the clear, desperate voice. Pocahontas stood there.

John's heart thundered. She was still fighting for him. He looked at the ground, trying to shut his ears, willing himself not to do anything that would give away her secret or harm her further. Who knew what these people did to disgraced women? Don't try, he pleaded with her silently; if I must die, do I have to see them hurt you as well?

*****

Powhatan looked at her. There was a look he had as chief that could make the fiercest warriors draw back, that he had never turned on his daughter before. He did so now, in front of his men.

'I told you to stay in the village. You disobeyed me. You have shamed your father!'

'I only wanted peace,' said Pocahontas, and although she still spoke clearly she knew there was no strength behind the words. They sounded utterly foolish. She was crushed, left with only a shadow of her old self.

'Because of your folly,' Powhatan said, outrage weighing every word, 'Kocoum is dead!'

Pocahontas was silent. What more could she say? It was true.

'This is not your place,' said the chief. 'Go, before you disgrace yourself any more.'

After a few moments, she turned and stumbled out.

Powhatan was thankful. He did not want to know what his daughter's part in this affair had been, and he did not want anyone else to know or guess. How dared she come to a men's place, meddling in men's business? How would the scandal ever be lived down? For the moment, there was the fate of this raider to decide.

'Did one of you bring this man's weapon?' he asked the guards.

'We did not find it,' one said, rather foolishly.

'That was not well done,' he said, noting in his mind who they were.

'Our friends are still searching over there, Chief.'

The Tapahannock chief spoke out. 'Three of these are my men. I will discipline them later.'

'I thank you,' said Powhatan. 'Let us set the matter of their punishment aside until after the battle; that may bring other needs. But you see we have no proof.'

Though the guards seemed sure this man had killed Kocoum, he doubted it. Even though his heart burned at the death of his kinsman and the ruin of his well-laid plans, he was not prepared to let all discernment leave him. It even occurred to him to wonder if some of his own men had killed Kocoum, using the presence of the foreigner as a blind. Not everyone had wanted Kocoum to be chief; jealousy and power could be poison.

'Was it you who killed Kocoum?' Powhatan asked bluntly.

The foreigner, still kneeling and pinioned, understood the question. He said 'Yes' in the Tenakomakah language, but speaking the word hoarsely and strangely.

Powhatan was even more puzzled. Anyone who had killed a warrior like Kocoum would want to boast of it, even in enemy hands. He was almost sure that what the man said was not true. Yet there was truth in his face. In fact, if he had not known this man for a robber and an infidel, he would have supposed that he was a man of worth. Fearing that he would allow himself to be bewitched, Powhatan drew his gaze away. Either the man was telling the truth and he was a murderer; or he was not and he was a liar. What were the odds?

'What is to be done with him?' he asked the other councillors.

'Let us take him to the foreigners' camp when it gets light, and see if they will agree to leave in return for his life,' said the Tapahannock chief. 'And if they will not, we can kill him and then the rest of them.'

Kekata reached for the speaking staff. 'I am unwilling to bargain with them,' he said. 'It may be walking into a trap. I was warned of their deceit. It may be unfathomable.'

'He may help us fathom it,' said one of the lesser headmen. 'He understands our language. Ask him what they are here for, and what magic they hold over us.'

'He does not speak our language,' said Powhatan. 'See how he watches. He understands nothing.'

'I cannot believe that,' said the headman. 'Even the men from the far south understand some of our words. How can he not understand any human speech?'

'You see he does not.'

'I don't believe it,' said the headman again. 'Ask him how they can be defeated. If he pretends not to understand, fire will loosen his tongue.'

'I forbid it,' said Powhatan angrily. 'Now above all, we must keep ourselves clean before the gods. If we kill him, we must kill him as a conquered warrior.'

'Kill him now, then,' said the Tapahannock chief.

A murmur of agreement came from the others.

Kekata had been looking at the captured man, and now he moistened his lips and seemed to draw himself up. 'He must die to appease Kocoum's spirit, and to help us to victory tomorrow,' he said. 'We should kill him at sunrise in the appointed place. That way the gods will be with us.'

'Then are we to keep him all night?' asked one.

'He can be bound and guarded,' said Powhatan.

Not all the others liked it, but they seemed ready to submit. Powhatan lifted the speaking staff. 'He dies at sunrise, then.'

'Agreed,' they all said.

It was due to the prisoner's honour as a warrior to explain this decision to him, so some of the young men put on a dumb show to convey it. Being young and tensed for battle, they laughed a little as they did so. His response disappointed them. It was clear that he understood, but he broke into no death-song or chant of defiance. He merely bent his head as if it was what he had expected, and continued to look at them in silence, with eyes that most of them could not judge for truth or untruth, that were merely light and still and despairing, like a trapped wolf's.

'Take him away, then,' ordered Powhatan, and it was done.

*****

Pocahontas sat curled with her arms round her knees in the shadow of the longhouse. Shame and remorse, her father's anger and the rejection of the gods, crushed and flayed her. She wished she never had to move or be seen by anyone again.

Her necklace was broken. She was no bride. Kocoum's face filled her mind's eye, set in bitter condemnation, cursing her as he died. The more she tried not to remember that look, the more it terrified her. Surely his angry spirit was nearby and would avenge itself. It made no difference that she had liked him on the whole, had never wished him any harm. What she had meant was of no concern to anyone; only what she had done mattered. And what had she done? She saw her love for John Smith through her people's eyes now, as a shameful betrayal. She, the daughter of the chief, to behave as she had! Nakoma knew, the guards guessed; it was as if she could already feel the unspoken, unconscious condemnation spreading through the village, ready to cast her out. Her people were strong, and her lover was now nothing but a degraded prisoner, a thing, as good as dead. She could scarcely remember the passion she had felt when they embraced.

And yet she had not imagined it. Nor had she imagined the chance for peace which was now gone; now there would certainly be war, if she could not induce her father to spare the foreigner – and he would never listen to her.

Where had she slipped – where had she gone wrong? A few days ago she had been so carefree. What had brought her to this utter disaster, in which she was to blame for everything, and anything she did would only mesh her and those she loved even deeper in it? A few days, a few scarcely noticed choices, and now this. Could she not somehow have her turn over again, as she had sometimes had in children's games, and make it all not to have been?

After a while she realised she was not alone: someone huddled beside her. It was Nakoma. Pocahontas glanced at her face. Nakoma looked as remorseful and shaken as she did.

'Pocahontas ...' said Nakoma, her voice wavering, 'it was my fault … I told Nijlon.'

Pocahontas stared at her. So this was all her aunt's doing.

'I was afraid for you ... I thought I was doing right,' confessed Nakoma, close to tears.

Should she fly at Nakoma, claw her face, fling bitter words at her? Good work, you meddling bitch: with one wag of your tongue you've killed both the men who loved me? What was the use? How did Nakoma's meddling compare with her own?

'I am to blame,' she said leadenly. 'Kocoum is dead, the other one will die; I have killed them.'

There was something Nakoma could do. 'Come with me,' she said, and pulled Pocahontas to her feet.

They walked to a hut at the edge of the village. Two young men with spears stood outside: one was Nakoma's brother. Nakoma stood with her hand on Pocahontas's arm and spoke up:

'Pocahontas wants to look into the eyes of the man who killed her cousin, Kocoum.'

The two hard-faced boys looked at each other suspiciously. They were deeply distrustful of the foreign prisoner, but it was a demand they were not allowed to refuse. 'Be quick,' said Nakoma's brother, standing a little away from the deerskin that hung over the door.

Pocahontas lifted the skin noiselessly, stepped inside and let it fall. John Smith sat with his back to her in the empty hut, against its central post behind which his hands were tied. He seemed not to hear her come in: he shifted a little and then stayed still, his head bowed, the circle of moonlight that came through the smoke-hole shining palely on his hair. Pity, and the horror that clings round a creature marked for death, twisted her stomach. She almost crept out again without speaking to him. Yet that seemed too ignoble, besides being ungrateful to Nakoma. Instead she went round in front of him and hesitantly stepped nearer, then crouched before him. At last he looked up.

'Pocahontas!'

His face lit up, keen and alive. In that moment she knew why she had done everything, and that she would do it again. She would not accept anyone's condemnation, not even Kocoum's. But how could John Smith himself not blame her? She dared not embrace him, but barely touched his shoulder.

'Forgive me,' she whispered.

'Can you forgive me?' he said.

She bent over and a dry sob shook her.

'Never mind, Pocahontas.' For a brief moment, he smiled at her. 'But listen … do not stay here any longer. There will be war now and it will be terrible.' His words were a halting mixture of languages; she saw him move as if he would help the words

with his hands as he had always done before, but uselessly now. 'Go, leave … when it is over, no one will remember tonight.'

'It would have been better if we had never met; then none of this would have happened,' said Pocahontas bitterly.

'Pocahontas,' he said gently, 'look at me …', and he waited without speaking until she was forced to look straight at him, and see what she had brought him to. His eyes blazed in his pale face. 'This. This is better: for me. If I die, it is better than not knowing you.'

He was speaking the truth. It hurt in her veins like fire. She gripped his arm, as his hand was out of reach.

Nakoma appeared in the doorway. 'Pocahontas...'

Already? She sobbed aloud.

'I am with you,' she thought he said to her. 'Live. Help your people.'

She could not kiss him, with the guards waiting outside and the certainty of his death weighing down like stone. She only caressed his head and face as she stood up, and he moved his head to press his lips against her hand as it passed them. She sensed him turning to keep her in sight as long as possible as she stepped to the door and stooped to go out.

Outside, Nakoma spoke to Pocahontas gently but got no answer. At last, sadly, she went away and left her alone.

Pocahontas walked down to the edge of the river, where her canoe was. She sat on a stone and put her feet in the dark water, nearer to tears than she had been yet. The love she had felt was alive, but powerless, curled and vulnerable somewhere far down in her heart, trying to keep out of sight of the scorn of her people. At least it was there, a smouldering, covered fire: John Smith had brought it back to life for her, but what had she done for him? She realised with self-hatred that he, who was about to die, had comforted her, but she, who was alive and safe, had not said a single comforting word, or even dared to give him a frank embrace. What must he be feeling now?

She sat there a long time. There began to be more stirring and noise in the village. Men passed where she sat, carrying weapons. None paid any attention to her. The fire in the central space, behind her, flared up brightly and a low drumming and chanting began. They must be getting ready for battle tomorrow, already. It had begun: nothing she could do could prevent it any more. How easy just to sit in the darkness of the night, in the darkness in her heart, and let the hours slip away, until it was too late to do anything even if she had the strength ...

She climbed noiselessly into her canoe, pushed off and turned the paddle in the water, steering for the middle of the stream.