The Covenant Part 52

'Agreed.'

So Tjaart, Paulus and the two servants walked the last miles, and from a hill they saw Zimbabwe, not the flouris.h.i.+ng city paved with gold, but the ruins of a notable site, overgrown with trees, captured by vines, and populated by a tribe that knew nothing of past glories. On the ruins where great kings had knelt and along the overgrown streets which Arab traders had trod with bags of gold, baboons played and warthogs shuffled along, grunting and rooting among the fallen stones.

It was a gloomy, sad place and Tjaart said, 'Poor Balthazar. No gold here.'

When they rejoined Bronk, he informed them that two of the horses had died: 'I think a fly is biting them.'

'It's not biting us,' Tjaart said.

'The trip's proved nothing,' Balthazar complained.

'It's proved we don't want to live up here. No gold for you, either.'

So they returned south, three Voortrekkers leading four sick horses, and by the time they reached the Limpopo, two more were dead. Something in the vicinity of this river was inimical to horses, and when they rejoined their families, they found that the oxen were wasting away, too.

'We must leave here,' Tjaart said, and on 20 September 1842 they started slowly south, oppressed by a sense of defeat, which was exacerbated for Tjaart when Aletta began to show a distinct dislike for her granddaughter Sybilla. Because the little girl, now seven years old, was so extraordinarily beautiful, so fragile and so enticing, Aletta saw her as a reminder of her own aging. She was twenty-five now and the hated life of the frontier had attacked both her beauty and her figure, so that she sometimes considered herself actually ugly. 'Won't we ever settle in some town, Tjaart? I want to live with other people.' When he rebuffed her, she took her discomfort out on little Sybilla, who proved a most infuriating child; for when Aletta berated her for some imagined fault, she merely looked at her grandmother, listened obediently, then walked away to find Paulus, who comforted her after such a.s.saults.

It angered Aletta to see the two children together, for obviously they inhabited a private world from which she would always be excluded; Sybilla's habit of clinging to the boy's hand, as she had done that awful night, irritated her, and whenever she saw this she shouted, 'Sybilla, come in here. Girls don't play with boys that way.' And the little girl would just stare at her.

On the southward journey Tjaart kept his group well to the east, and by the middle of November 1842 they had reached a protected valley some hundred miles south of the Limpopo. Here they camped for three months, collecting ivory from the vast herds of elephants that roamed off to the east in the dense forests that presumably led down to the distant ocean. They were quite content to stay clear of those rich lands: 'We want no more lowlands. Boers are meant to live on the high veld with the gazelles.'

On 10 February 1843, in me middle of a promising summer, the ten wagons, loaded with ivory, resumed their drift south, and after four weeks of easy travel, Paulus shouted one dawn, 'Look at them come!'

Startled, still half-asleep, they did not know what to expect. They had been so long removed from enemy tribes that they were quite unprepared for laagers, and none were now necessary, for from the veld to the west came a line of the finest sable antelope any of these wanderers had ever seen. They were larger, sleeker than those that had crossed De Kraal before the trek, and their coats were of a warmer hue. The white of their bellies shone in the morning sunlight, as did the distinctive blaze across their faces. But it was their horns which dominatedforty, fifty inches long, gracefully back-curved and awesome.

'Look at them!' Tjaart said, echoing the boy's delight. Even Aletta showed interest in the splendid beasts as they moved gracefully, unconcernedly away from the wagons.

'Where are they going?' Bronk asked, and Tjaart said, 'I think they're leading us home.' And he turned the wagons eastward, not trying to follow the sables, for they might gallop off at any moment. For some reason, the animals were not frightened by the wagons, so for part of that morning the two groups moved together, sables majestically in front, their horns s.h.i.+ning in sunlight, the men and women behind, praying that they might soon reach the end of their wandering.

And then from the low and level fields that lay to the west of the lake, the Voortrekkers saw for the first time the quiet beauty of Vrijmeer, with its protecting mountains and the two signal hills. After seven full years of wandering, they had come home to what in the developing new language would henceforth be called Vrymeer.

They were not alone, for as they approached the lake they saw at the eastern end the collection of huts and lean-tos occupied by Nxumalo and his complicated family.

'Enemy!' Bronk cried, reaching for his gun.

'Wait!' Tjaart advised, after which he walked forward cautiously, gun at the ready, primed to defend himself if need be but also ready to accept friends.h.i.+p if that were proffered.

From his rondavel Nxumalo saw the white people approaching, and prudently he took down his stabbing a.s.segai, and almost naked, strode forth to meet the newcomers.

Slowly, cautiously the two men approached each other, and in the heart of each there was a weariness with killing. Tjaart wanted no more rivers of blood and sorrow; Nxumalo had fled the excesses of King Shaka and the evil force of Mzilikazi. They were older men now, Tjaart fifty-four, Nxumalo one year more, and they sought repose beside some lake. Fate, at the end of wars and tribulations, had brought them to the same spot, and it would be madness for them to contest it.

Pa.s.sing his gun back to Paulus, Tjaart extended his hands to show that he carried no weapons, and at this gesture of friendliness, Nxumalo, now white-haired, handed his a.s.segai to his son. Paulus and the black boy waited as the two men moved cautiously forward, stopped an arm's length apart, and stared at each other. Finally, Nxumalo, on whose land this meeting was taking place, pointed to the lake and said that it was a safe, strong place. Tjaart, knowing little of the Zulu language, said haltingly that he had had this lake in his heart for all the years of his life, that his grandfather had discovered it and pa.s.sed along remembrances of it. Pointing to the ronda-vels, he indicated that his people would build theirs at this spot, too, and this Nxumalo understood.

'There is room,' he said. In the days before King Shaka had run wild he had seen many tribes living side by side, and it could be done again.

But Tjaart, whose ten wagons represented just about the same population power as Nxumalo's acc.u.mulation, felt it necessary to demonstrate that the white men had certain advantages which the blacks would be wise to respect. Turning to Paulus, he told the boy, 'Shoot us a bird. Or an antelope.'

At that moment the sables elected to move on, and in doing so, came into range of the little fellow, who took careful aim, fired, and dropped the last in line. Nxumalo was dutifully impressed by two things: that the white man could kill at such a distance and that he would want to kill an animal as splendid as the sable antelope.

When the hartebeest huts were finished, identical with the rude sheds occupied by Hendrik van Doorn one hundred and forty-nine years earlier, a most fortunate thing occurred, one which Balthazar Bronk was able to utilize to the general advantage of the white community.

Relations with Nxumalo's tribe had prospered, and it was apparent that whites and blacks could share Vrymeer in harmony. There was no trouble about land, nor hunting rights, nor anything else; Nxumalo tried to make it clear, as he learned bits of Dutch, that his Zulu would in no way become va.s.sals of the white men, nor would they work for them on any regular basis like their Coloured servants; they, too, were free and proud of that. But when during the building of the huts the blacks volunteered much labor and showed the newcomers how best to utilize the terrain for drainage, Tjaart said confidently, 'They'll soon be working for us.' It was a happy, prosperous relations.h.i.+p, with the Voortrekkers providing an occasional antelope for Nxumalo's pots and with certain women of the tribe volunteering to care for the white babies while their mothers worked at other tasks.

The situation did not exactly please Bronk and his group; they wanted the blacks to become slaves, as the Bible directed, and there was even some talk of eliminating Nxumalo's tribe altogether, in obedience to the precepts of Joshua, which Balthazar was skilled in quoting: 'And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them: and there was not any left to breathe: and he burnt Hazor with fire . . . And all the spoil of these cities, and the cattle, the children of Israel took.'

To the surprise of all, Tjaart opposed this draconian solution, whereupon Bronk countered with the suggestion that the blacks be converted into servants, as the Bible ordered in so many places, but this, too, Tjaart rejected, saying, 'We have searched so long for a place in which we can live in peace, let us do so here.' And since he was the acknowledged leader of the group, this counsel was accepted.

But then the fortunate stroke came, and the whole problem was neatly settled. One night cattle thieves broke into the Van Doorn kraal and made away with some twenty oxen, half of them belonging to Balthazar, who threatened to annihilate the black settlement, but when Tjaart and Paulus went to investigate, they found that none of Nxumalo's people had touched the cattle: 'It's the village far over the hill. They steal our cattle, too.'

So a retaliatory commando was enlisted, and under the leaders.h.i.+p of Balthazar Bronk it ranged far, following the spoor of the stolen cattle and coming at last upon a meager village of some forty people. There, in the kraals, stood the Van Doorn cattle, so with a mighty shout the hors.e.m.e.n burst into the heart of the village, ma.s.sacring everyone.

'Not the children!' Bronk shouted. 'Save the children!'

In obedience to his command, eleven black children were saved, and these were driven back to the white camp, where they were distributed among the families to work for the rest of their lives. They were not slaves; the law forbade any further slavery and every Voortrekker const.i.tution for a new republic outlawed it. But the Bible had expressly authorized Israelites to take children from the Canaanites and raise them as servants: Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever . . .

Cleverly the Voortrekkers reconciled this Biblical injunction with the new English law: No slavery, but if a black child is left orphaned in battle, it must as an act of charity be taken into a white home, where it shall serve as helper till the age of twenty-one, without wages but with Christian instruction and wholesome Kaffir food. After that, of course, the black would have nowhere to go, really, so it would be logical for him to stay on, at whatever compensation the master saw fit to offer.

So the sensible thing to do on commando was to see that there were orphans, and Balthazar Bronk had done so. Tjaart argued mildly against what seemed to him an evasion, but his wife was so pleased to receive the two children a.s.signed to her that he said nothing, for even though he was disposed to ask Aletta not to keep them, there in his Bible were the instructions commanding him to keep the children, and to accept others when they came his way.

Now that the great fixed battles had ended, Tjaart could think of the blacks against whom he had fought so incessantlyXhosa, Matabele, Zuluas men of enviable courage. He had been awed by their willingness to keep coming forward into the face of certain death, and he prayed that the time had come when blacks and Voortrekkers could share peace. In both religion and tradition he had been taught that no black could ever attain the cultural or moral level achieved by the most ordinary white man, and he was now satisfied that they were intended to be servants. The Boer leaders referred to them as 'the inferior race,' and he saw no reason to alter that a.s.sessment, but he also knew they could be wonderful friends and trusted a.s.sociates. In his lifetime he had been forced to kill well over one hundred and sixty individual blacks himself, and he could think of not a single instance in which he had been in any way at fault. It was strange that not once did he fire a gun at a black without having at his elbow one of his Hottentot or Xhosa servants, who had helped him track the enemy and prepare the guns. And no matter where he traveled, in peace or war, he never went anywhere without blacks who had elected of their own volition to stay with him. On numerous occasions he risked his life to preserve his personal freedom, but if anyone had told him that blacks would do the same, he would have been dumfounded, for he believed that they welcomed the coming of the white man and preferred an orderly progress in servitude and self-development, much as the oxen yoked to his wagon liked to be told where to go.

Aletta was now completely disenchanted with Tjaart, finding him a monotonous, single-minded man whose rigorous att.i.tudes toward life grew tedious. He had been exciting as an alternative to her pusillanimous Ryk Naude, but as a legal husband, he was tiresome. Much more to her taste was a man like Balthazar Bronk, younger, livelier, more fun by the lakeside, and before long she was seeing this flamboyant gentleman with some regularity.

Paulus alerted his father as to what was happening: 'Aletta goes to the fields.'

'Who with?' 'Balthazar.'

As always, Tjaart studied the matter cautiously, and when he proved to his satisfaction that his wife had returned to her customary deceptions, he went into seclusion for several days, during which he calculated the remaining probabilities of his life: I'm an old man now, and all my children are dead. My two sons slain at De Kraal. Minna dead at Blaauwkrantz. If I lose Aletta, I'll never leave any sons. This Paulus is a man among boys, finest lad I've ever known. I'll care for him and get him started, but d.a.m.nit, he's not mine.

Here he paused, for from his window he could see Paulus and his grandchild Sybilla, twelve and nine, walking beside the lake, and as always, she held on to his hand. Impulsively, Tjaart set aside his own miseries and prayed: G.o.d, protect those two. They are the seed of our nation.

Then he returned to himself: The years roll past so swiftly, and we are so many miles from the families we knew at De Kraal and Graaff-Reinet. I'm alone, and I need this woman, whatever her behavior, and I shall keep her.

Strong in his resolve, he stormed back into community life with fire and terror. Grabbing his gun and marching to the hut of Balthazar Bronk, he called him out, aimed the rifle directly at his heart, and cried in loud voice, 'Balthazar, pack your wagon and leave within the hour. Elsewise, I shoot you dead.'

'But what . . .' It was Bronk's wife, peering out from the hut.

'He knows' was all Tjaart would say. And he stood there while the Bronk family packed and sorted out their cattle from the common herd.

'Where shall I go?' Bronk said in a whining voice.

'I care not,' Tjaart snapped, and he called for Paulus to fetch another gun and stand guard with him till the wagon was rolling.

'Give them our biltong,' Tjaart growled, and Paulus ran to fetch the Van Doorn supplies. When the wagon started to move, Tjaart waited till it was well under way, then fired shots over it to warn the Bronks that they must not turn back, but on the second volley Aletta appeared, crying that she must run to join them.

Once again Tjaart, who could manage men so ably, flew into a red fury when called upon to reason with a woman. Throwing his gun to Paulus, he grabbed his wife by the arm, swung her about, and used the only logic he knew: he struck her three times across the face, and when she fell into the dust, he reached down, pulled her back to her feet, and struck her again.

'Into the hut!' he commanded, and all that day the neighbors watched as he sat by the door, gun in hand, saying nothing.

At sunset he went inside, and when he undressed for bed and stood before his wife, she burst into uncontrollable tears: 'You're old and fat and you have a big belly. Ryk was so young and strong. I despise you.'

With a great swing of his arm he knocked her down once more, so that she ran screaming from the hut, with him chasing her in only his pantalets.

'I shall go after him,' she wailed.

'Do,' he shouted. 'Go into the darkness, with the lions waiting.'

And when she had taken only a few steps, she saw the eyes of those animals who came to the lake at night, and she heard strange sounds and the m.u.f.fled roaring of a distant lion, so terrifying that she hurried back to the protection of the village, and after a while, into her own hut.

Tjaart was waiting. With compa.s.sion and a profound unexplainable love, he took her in his arms and said, 'Ryk was young and beautiful, but he's dead. I'm old and fat, but I'm alive. That's how it is.' And that night Aletta conceived the boy Jakob, named after Tjaart's revered second wife.

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IN the middle years of the nineteenth century a chain of unlikely events inspired Queen Victoria to confer a knighthood on Major Richard Saltwood, of De Kraal, Cape Colony, and when this occurred, cartoonists of South Africa and England lampooned him in a congenial way as Sir Cupid. He was a hero, and his invest.i.ture became an act of warm celebration, uniting the colony more firmly to the mother country. the middle years of the nineteenth century a chain of unlikely events inspired Queen Victoria to confer a knighthood on Major Richard Saltwood, of De Kraal, Cape Colony, and when this occurred, cartoonists of South Africa and England lampooned him in a congenial way as Sir Cupid. He was a hero, and his invest.i.ture became an act of warm celebration, uniting the colony more firmly to the mother country.

Saltwood's personal good luck began in 1856 when he was catapulted into national prominence because of a disaster which riveted the attention of the world. It began one autumn morning in May 1856 when a short, frail girl of fourteen went to a pool in a stream east of the Great Fish River and saw therein a ghostly a.s.sembly of figures accompanied by swirling mists.

This might have had no aftermath had not the girl, Nongqause, happened to be the niece of that cunning seer Mhlakaza, whom Tjaart van Doorn had come close to shooting back in 1836. Now, after twenty additional years of chicanery and nefarious behavior, this s.h.i.+fty man saw in his niece an opportunity to set himself up as the great prophet of the Xhosa people.

Mhlakaza interrogated the child at length, but found her answers confused and vague. She recited a rambling account of her walk to the pool and kept referring to a hornbill that had flown near her'certain omen of disaster, for it brings droughts'but he did not interrupt her until she said something startling: 'They were strangers, my Uncle. Some with black skins like Xhosa. But others in the mists ... I am frightened!'

'What others?' he asked rea.s.suringly.

'White men rising from the mists, my Uncle.'

Mhlakaza did not press her. Placing his hand gently on her shoulder, he said, 'Go to your hut, Nongqause, and tell no one of this.' He watched until she disappeared through the low entrance of her parents' place; then he stole from the village to inspect this pool.

It was four hours before he returned, and his slightest movement was watched, especially by older men and women who concerned themselves in such matters. For months he had been promising that the Xhosa would hear words of importance from his lips, and now his secretive behavior indicated that the prophet was ready.

When he stalked silently to his hut, word spread that no one was to approach him for two days and nights: the spirits had ordered him to do certain things. No questions were to be asked of the diviners, and young people were not to speculate on what his forthcoming revelation might be. If they did, their chatter might interrupt his communication with those who dwelt in the sky.

Alone, within his hut, Mhlakaza burned herbs and medicines to thwart witchcraft, then sat naked as the acrid smoke fumed about his body, causing his eyes to stream. He swallowed powerful emetics to purge himself, daubed his skin with red ocher and white clay, and entered into long incantations, begging the spirits to unleash forces that would prepare him for the great role he was about to play.

On the third day he came out from his seclusion, and with the entire village at his heels, strode to the cattle kraal, where he chose the plumpest beast from his own herd. Prodding it with an a.s.segai, he pierced the skin until the animal bellowed with rage. He loved that sound; it meant the spirits were speaking to him. Then, with a vicious thrust, he drove the iron tip deep into the neck of the ox. Next he cut out the stomach and bladder, anointing his body with their contents, and to the delight of the witnesses, ordered the ox to be roasted and eaten. He was purified.

On the fourth day Mhlakaza returned alone to the stream long before first light, and his vigil ended when he uttered a mighty cry, as if things deep within him were released. There in the gray dawn stood an older brother who had died in the 1835 war against the English. 'Draw near, Mhlakaza, my good brother who is chosen for great deeds' came the voice. 'Our child Nongqause is chosen with you to lead our people to victory. To you, members of my family, will be shown the Xhosa strength.'

And then, just as Nongqause had seen the strangers in the pool, so did he! Regiment upon regiment of Xhosa heroes, risen from the dead, marched triumphantly through a great valley where no English or Boer face was to be seen. But with the black legions rode the white strangers who had come from overseas to help the Xhosa.

A dazed, wild-eyed Mhlakaza staggered back to the village, where his followers were not disappointed, for he told them that he, too, had seen the strangers who had first shown themselves to Nongqause. They had, he said, ordered him to purify himself before talking with them, and had not everyone seen him do this?

'We saw! We saw! The nights of smoke. The days of prayer.'

'Those that wait by the pool say this: "There is a valley of desolation, with the bones of many animals, with baskets empty of grain." '

A frightful cry rose from the listeners, wails and groans at so grim a vision.

'But look further, my friends. Open your eyes. And this land of death begins to blossom like a paradise. The cattle rise and are fat. The fields burst with the finest corn.'

'Aieee, Mhlakaza! How wonderful!'

'Say the ones at the pool, "All this is yours if you obey us." I saw a million Xhosa ready for battle. And with them came a regiment of strangers who fight alongside us as brothers.' Flecks of spittle hung at the corners of his mouth as he revealed his startling visions: 'They will slay the Englis.h.!.+ They will trample the Boers!'

When the roar of approval died, he added, 'The Xhosa will inherit everything. All the farms in this land will be yours. You will never again know a cattle shortage. Your grain baskets will overflow forever.'

Now, it so happened that Mhlakaza had recently traveled through the frontier districts, moving along the fringe of settlement as on that morning at De Kraal when Van Doorn wanted to shoot him. And as he moved about he listened: 'In lands beyond the sea there is a body of warriors called Russians. They are like the Xhosa, except they have white skins, but like us, they fight the English.'

'They're afraid of these Russians,' a servant whispered. 'In one battle they struck down the best commando of the English. Killed six hundred when the English ran at them on horses, with stabbing sticks.'

He picked up what additional information he could about the disastrous charge of the English brigade at Balaklava, and one fact began to burn in his mind: his enemy England had another enemy, the Russians.

Mhlakaza took Nongqause aside and explained the mystery of her visions: 'The Xhosa will be reinforced by the white strangers you saw, the Russians. We must hurry to the pool to get further instructions.' And when these words were locked in her childish mind, he took her to the kraal of the great chief, Kreli, where she stood before the councillors of the area: 'To prove your faith in the ancestors who spoke with me, you must do two things. Kill all your cattle. Burn all your mealies. Only when you are purified in this way will the ghosts march to help us.'

Chief Kreli, bewildered by such instructions, said, 'Step forward, child, and let us see who it is our ancestors speak with.'

Nudged by her uncle, Nongqause moved timidly toward Kreli, her large hazel eyes meeting those of the great chief.

'Tell them the white soldiers are ready to march with us,' Mhlakaza said.

'It is so, my Chief.'

'They have come across the sea to fight for us?' Kreli asked.

'They have,' she said quietly, going on to describe in detail the heroics of the Russians in their battle against the English. As she spoke, a chatter ran through the crowd, for if Mhlakaza vouched for her as a true Mother of Greatness, she must be listened to.

'The cattle are to be killed,' she said again. 'The baskets empty. The land bare. When that is done, the Russians and the Xhosa will drive the English and the Boers into the sea.'

The idea of slaughtering all cattle was so infamous, threatening as it did the very existence of the Xhosa, that older councillors scorned both Nongqause and her prophecy. One white-haired advisor protested: 'Where was this nonsense seen?'

'At the pool,' Mhlakaza said. 'She saw it first. Then I did.'

'This talk of a day when all people, dead and alive, shall come together. Isn't that what they say at the Christian mission at Golan?' the old man asked. 'Isn't that where you heard it?'

'It is the word of our ancestors,' Mhlakaza insisted.

'You bring us missionary ideas,' the old councillor persisted. 'The tribes of the dead coming back to earth, bringing paradise with them.'

'Our ancestors told me. At the pool.'

Chief Kreli, an artful, determined leader, had long sought some tactic that would unite his Xhosa, and he surmised that this young girl's visions might be the answer. Organizing a pilgrimage to the pool, he allowed his councillors to see Nongqause talking with the departed leaders and hear her speaking with the waiting Russians. When she reiterated the ghostly commands, that all foodstuffs be destroyed, he began to believe that if this were done, the Russians would arrive by s.h.i.+p and unite with the long-dead chieftains to expel the white men from the land.

'We shall do it!' Kreli announced, and for nine months Nongqause and her uncle paraded west and east, to the Xhosa and all adjoining tribes, a.s.suring everyone that the day of revelation was at hand and the miracle about to occur, if only they would slay their cattle and let their fields lie barren. 'The ghosts wait there behind the clouds, all the victorious warriors of the past, eager to help us regain our pastures. But you must do as they command.'

It was a powerful doctrine, made more compulsory when Mhlakaza boldly predicted the precise day on which the miracle would happen: 'On the eighteenth day of February 1857 the ghosts will return, driving millions of plump cattle before them and bringing us untold baskets filled with grain.'

When reports of the cattle killing reached government agencies at Grahamstown, there was initial disbelief that such hysteria could ensnare an entire people, especially on the word of a child who could not possibly know where Russia was or what the name represented, but a tremor did run through the colony, for twice before, fanatic prophets had incited the Xhosa ma.s.ses, whipping the kraals into a frenzy and leading them to disaster. In the first attack on Grahamstown a prophet had a.s.sured his people of victory, and not long ago another prophet had convinced his warriors that white men's bullets would be no stronger than raindrops if only the Xhosa killed all cream-colored cattle.

Now the government received proof indisputable that entire villages were engaging in an orgy of cattle slaughter, and serious attention had to be paid, for the people in Grahamstown had now lived side-by-side with the Xhosa for two generations and knew how much they revered their cattle. 'If they're actually killing them, something desperate's afoot,' a new district officer said, and Major Saltwood of De Kraal was sent for.