They did not expect it to be this easy. After taking all the weapons John had – two swords, one gun, a knife, they had stolen a small boat, rowed out towards where the larger vessel moved – caught up with it, against all odds, for the wind is weak tonight. Thrown up a rope and grabbling hook.
They should have been caught. But they haven't been.
'Stay behind, Thomas.' Pocahontas tells him. He shakes his head, clenching his jaw – he will go after her, he will find her if it kills him.
'Thomas, I need you to keep watch, be ready to row the boat away. Give us a signal, a whistle, if you see any indication that they might be about to discover us.'
'But-'
'I am your captain, Thomas, and you will follow my orders.' Then he turns to Pocahontas.
And he's about to say what he said when they took this boat in the first place. That she should stay. That he does not want to see her hurt.
That he could not bear to –
But she shakes her head. And she reaches for the rope.
One after the other they climb, silently pulling themselves to the deck.
Clinging to the shadows, they find the door which leads below.
The ropes and sails creak. There is a deathly silence. The faint shadows of sailors are looking outwards – they watch in anticipation of rocks, of ships, not two night clouded figures.
From below. A whimpering.
Down the steps, silent, silent, follow the keening moan.
They find the door. John picks the lock, as Pocahontas tenses, listening for footsteps, breaths. The door opens.
Meg sits, a mess of blood and hair and rags of nightdress, muttering under her breath, some childish mantra, a tangle of words indecipherable from one another, and Pocahontas catches a hail Mary and a Mother and an eyeless corpse in the mess of words.
The two adults approach her cautiously. She does not look up. There are awful raspberry smears of blood across her skin, and the nightdress is torn at the chest. Her anxious fingers pick and pull it closed. Her feet squirm.
She is the picture of mindless distraction. Hysterical in the best sense of the word, with her corn gold hair tumbling loose and her eyes wide and very dark.
'Meg.' Her father whispers. But she seems not to hear him.
'Elizabeth.' Pocahontas whispers. John looks at her in surprise, but she knows what she is doing. He told her that was the name her mother gave to the little baby, when she was first born. After the brave queen of England, who was strong and intelligent and bowed to nobody. It didn't fit for a sailor's daughter, so her father called her Meg.
But her mother called her Elizabeth.
Slowly, Meg turns to look at both of them. And perhaps despite the buzzing words, she remembers a story her father told her once. Of how the woman who saved him had a vast quantity of jet black hair, straight and thick and lovely as obsidian. Perhaps she remembers that her mother's eyes were dark as her own.
She looks at them, and stops her twitching. Two very large tears trickle, one after the other, from her left eye.
Then her father, and the closet thing she will ever have to a mother, step forwards and help her stand.
In the distance, they hear a shot.
'Well. That was touching.'