He must have acted so quickly. A few hours only, to ride to the palace, demand an audience with the king. A ship. A crew. Enough to silently threaten and take this vessel, unheard under the cover of Meg's screaming – Meg, who would have known what another boat approaching sounds like, because she grew up on water. The sailors surrendered quickly – this ship is not built for warfare.
And now her husband and the king's men stand in front of them, holding up weapons.
But the Marquis has a weapon, too.
'Move any closer, and I'll shoot.'
John is looking at her with desperate eyes. He wants to save her. He wants to save her so.
But what can he do, when she's in the arms of death?
Pocahontas raises her eyes to the sky. Up above, in the pre dawn glory, a gull flies.
There is only one window in the cabin. It is small. But so is Meg.
So while her father and Thomas, wounded as they are, try to force open the door, she shimmies open the window, climbs up the side of the ship, her father's knife between her teeth. She pulls herself, barnacle wise, up to the deck. Sees the Marquis holding Pocahontas, sees the gun.
She creeps. Silent ghost, she creeps.
So many years. So many years with fear, and running in the night, and frantic eyes, and nightmares that lasted even when you were awake.
He took one mother from her.
He will not take her again.
The gull soars out of sight.
And there is a sound like sliced leather. A warm trickle. A guttural expulsion of air.
The Marquis behind Pocahontas falls, his blood soaking into her hair.
Elizabeth Meg Smith stands there, panting hard, clutching a knife with bloody fingers, covered with dust and arterial froth. The door below decks bursts open, and John and Thomas emerge – just in time to see John Rolfe take his wife with into his arms. Thomas runs to them, embraces his father, his mother.
John Smith puts an arm around his blood soaked daughter, who gives him a disjointed grin. He kisses her forehead, and tastes the bittersweet pang of blood.
He lets her go.
Then she runs to Thomas, stands between her family and his, caught in the urge to embrace and the knowledge that his father does not want her there.
Rolfe does not seem to want to release his son from the embrace he's caught the family in.
But Pocahontas kisses her husband's cheeks, and the boy breaks away, and he picks up and spins his blood stained, bedraggled parody of Ophelia. And John Smith. Crosses the deck. Kneels before Rolfe.
And thanks him, from the bottom of his heart.