Pocahontas has given up her other name. She undertakes this surrender the day the wind whips out all her pinned up hairs. She's spent most of the time holed up in her cabin, doing her best to play the respectable woman. But she gives up, and goes up the deck, and as soon as she steps into the open air she loses all those ribbons and pins, and sees John at the wheel.
It's then that she loses Rebecca, once and forever– if she ever really had her.
She joins the captain, and he turns to smile at her. There is no bitterness in his eyes, now, only a faint shadow of regret.
'You didn't write to me.' She says, quietly. On the deck below, Meg has a book open, and is telling Thomas about sea birds.
'I know.'
'You didn't come back.'
'I know.'
'Why? I mean, really, why?' Because his last answer wasn't enough.
He seems to refuse to look at her, and she's about to run back to her cabin in anger when he finally speaks.
'How could I write?' He speaks with gritted teeth, for all his face is impassive, his eyes fixed upon his daughter. 'When I recovered there were men who wanted to kill me. I was trying to find a way back to you when they first attacked me – and from then on I was running. I slept in ditches, by the side of the road. And – God's sake, none of this matters. You made your choice. I wish you happiness. I am glad that you have found it.'
Her throat feels thick. Her eyes are stinging – they do that sometimes, start to leak, soak her face appallingly.
'I just want you to know,' and now he looks at her, finally, takes his eyes away from their laughing children, 'that if you had asked me to come with you, I would have. I would have come and lived in the forest with your people. I would have dressed myself in – in animal skin, and painted my face, and shaved my head if that was what I had to do to stay with you. My culture – my history – it means nothing to me. I would have given it up for you. As you gave up your name for Rolfe – for your husband. I suppose you must love him very much. But I will tell you this,' he laughs the intensity away, grins at her to show he doesn't hate her, 'I won't call you Rebecca. It doesn't suit you.'
If she clutches her hands together any tighter she will draw blood. She cannot bear to look at him.
'How is your father?' He asks, eyes back to his laughing daughter once again.
She cannot stand it. Not a moment more.
Only half hiding the sob she runs back to her bedroom – but hears him shouting for Meg to take the wheel, hears his footsteps behind her as she runs to her cabin - or rather his cabin, which is filled with maps and compasses and books and drawing Meg did when she was a little girl, and a small box beside the bed which she wants to open but which is firmly locked. Pocahontas runs to the cabin and she shuts the door, locking it tight and kneeling, still sobbing, pressing her forehead to the grain of the wood.
He comes to the door. A sound as though he is kneeling down. A long silence, punctuated by her sobbing, his even breaths.
She never used to cry this much. When she was a young woman, she hardly ever cried.
But now she cannot seem to stop.
'My father is dead.' The words hurt. 'He died of smallpox – of a virus caught from the white men. Most of my tribe died. Then they left and – and – and I didn't see him, heard all this from a merchant in the town who used to trade with them, and he is dead and I hadn't gone to see him.'
She keens for a little bit, bites her lips to bits.
John does not ask to come inside. But he waits for her, until he's called away, and she is left alone, with her savage sorrow, her aching guilt, and the knowledge that she gave it all for love.