The Covenant Part 54

'I am most pleased to meet you, sir,' he said, whereupon Major Saltwood extended his hand, took the boy's, and drew him back into the room.

'You must come to my farm one day, and see the animals.'

'That I should like to do,' Alfred said, and the brief meeting ended.

In Southampton the authorities were mustering the mercenaries for the voyage to the Cape, and they found themselves with a sterling group of husky young men, but they were not having much success with getting wives. This omission worried Saltwood, since the queen had specifically stated that she preferred complete families in her colonies, so he made a special effort to visit all the nearby towns, seeking women for the young Germans. He was not successful, and when the last of the s.h.i.+ps was ready to sail, the rickety old Alice Grace, Alice Grace, he informed the captain that it must not depart until a final effort had been made to find more brides. he informed the captain that it must not depart until a final effort had been made to find more brides.

'Who am I?' the captain demanded. 'Cupid?'

'No,' Saltwood replied evenly, 'but you do have a commission to perform.'

'My commission is sailing this s.h.i.+p,' the captain replied. 'Not finding wives,' and the adventure would have ended poorly had not Saltwood been a man of ingenuity and humanity.

'You have over two hundred fine young men aboard this s.h.i.+p,' he told the captain. 'I want them all on deck. Now!'

When they a.s.sembled on the afterdeck he told them bluntly, 'Men, it would be most improvident to travel to the Cape without women, so the captain has agreed to hold his s.h.i.+p here for two days. You must circulate through the town and find wives. You'll be married before we sail.'

Saltwood added his own imaginative touch to the quest. Finding himself only a short distance from Salisbury, he hurried there by train, burst into Sentinels and cried, 'I can use all the spare women in town.' His brother was absent, attending Parliament, but his wife was there, and she organized a hunt which produced five young women who had only bleak prospects at home. One ill-favored la.s.s named Maggie began to whimper, 'I don't want no South Aferkee.'

'That's where you're going,' Saltwood said sternly, herding his charges onto the train, which frightened them just as much as the prospective sea voyage.

At the s.h.i.+p two chaotic days were spent in a grand sorting-out, but since many of the Germans and some of the women were drunk, when dawn came on the third day and the pa.s.sengers awoke to see the horrible choices they had made in the dark, there was rebellion.

This man did not intend to spend his life with that woman, and this woman who could speak no German knew that a subst.i.tute husband had been fobbed off on her in the confusion. A wild scene ensued, which the two German ministers aboard could not resolve, and it seemed as if the whole plan might go smash when Saltwood grabbed a whistle, blew it shrilly, and ordered the men to line up on one side of the s.h.i.+p, the women on the other. Then he addressed them: 'Gentlemen, do you wish to spend your lives alone?' When the interpreter repeated this question, many men said 'No.' And Saltwood continued: 'Well, if you don't find your wives this day, you won't find any out there for three or four or a dozen years. Is that what you want?' The interpreter handled this message with brutal frankness, and the German men looked at the deck, saying nothing.

Saltwood then directed his words at the English women: 'You haven't had good lives here. I can see that. Now you have a chance to go to a bright new land, with hope and a good husband. Are you daft, that you would surrender this?'

Before his chastened listeners could dredge up excuses, he ordered the men and women to remain in lines, facing each other, upon which he blew his whistle three times, then said, his finger pointing, 'You, at the head of the line. This is your woman!' And that couple moved forward.

'You!' the interpreter repeated in German. 'This is your woman.'

He went down the entire roster, arbitrarily deciding who was to be married to whom, and at his signal, Reverend Johannes Oppermann stepped forward and in one grand ceremony married the lot. The two hundred and forty couples spent three months together aboard the old Alice Grace, Alice Grace, and when they reached their destination they established some of the strongest families in South Africa. and when they reached their destination they established some of the strongest families in South Africa.

The London press delighted in the spectacle of a brother to the sobersides member of Parliament, Sir Peter Saltwood, engaged in so amorous a royal commission, and a Punch Punch caricaturist fleshed Richard considerably, plumped up his cheeks, stripped off his clothing but added a discreet diaper, gave him a little bow and arrow, and christened him Cupid. caricaturist fleshed Richard considerably, plumped up his cheeks, stripped off his clothing but added a discreet diaper, gave him a little bow and arrow, and christened him Cupid.

When officials at Cape Town implored Queen Victoria to send some member of the royal family out to the colony to show the flag and instill patriotism in the hearts of the English segment of the population, she found herself in something of a quandary. She herself would not think of leaving England, and Prince Albert was in failing health. Five of their nine children were girls, and deemed unsuitable for foreign travel among lions and elephants. That left four sons, but the youngest two were ten and seven, hardly appropriate for diplomatic service, while the oldest boy, the Prince of Wales, was visiting the United States and Canada that year. That left only the second son, Alfred, but he was only sixteen. Still, South Africa was a country of farmers and shopkeepers, not a real country like Canada, so little Alfred might do.

He was a popular lad, and within the royal family it had been agreed that he would be the Sailor Prince, with newspapers making a great fuss over the fact that while serving as a mids.h.i.+pman he went barefoot on deck. He was not very bright, which was never a handicap in the English system, but he did love guns; all in all he seemed a sensible solution to the South African problem, and the queen wrote to her friend Major Richard Saltwood of De Kraal, asking him to look after her boy and to 'arrange for him a grand battue, if that be possible.'

It would indeed be possible. Richard knew an English farmer near Bloemfontein who could enlist enough blacks to put on a real battue for the young prince, and all was arranged. Saltwood was at the dock at the Cape when the young fellow landed, and after a round of receptions he sailed with him along the coast to Port Elizabeth, where the royal party disembarked and mounted horses for an adventure inland which would cover twelve hundred miles of saddle-riding over the roughest terrain.

When Saltwood first saw the entourage that proposed to make this journey, he was appalled by its magnitude: the prince, his toothy equerry Friddley, a company of fourteen from the s.h.i.+p, a company of twenty-six from the local government, several score of grooms to tend the spare horses, twenty-seven wagons with drivers to haul the gear, and a professional photographer, Mr. Yorke, to record events on a ponderous camera that required a wagon of its own. All this to enable a boy of sixteen to enjoy a battue.

But it was a no-nonsense expedition, as the riders learned that first day when they rode twenty-two miles without a major stop. The next day they covered forty-six and were dusty-tired when they pulled into De Kraal, where they would rest for two days with the Saltwoods.

It was a splendid respite, with the prince delighted by his first acquaintance with an African farm. De Kraal had been much improved in recent years when the Saltwood fortunes prospered. All the stone buildings dating back to the 1780s had been enlarged and beautified; the grounds had been spruced up with flower gardens; and the fences had been regularized; but the charm of the place, as young Alfred remarked, was still the handsome setting within the hills and the wandering stream that cut diagonally across the holding.

In acreage the farm was somewhat diminished since the days when Tjaart van Doorn operated it: still the nine thousand acres within the hills, but only four thousand outside. 'What I enjoy so much,' the boy prince told Saltwood, 'is the mix of closed-in and open.' He also enjoyed the hunting and proved his reputation by bringing down several smaller antelope.

At dinner on the first night the young man was embarra.s.sed when one of the black maids brought in a bawling white infant to be presented to royalty. 'It's my grandson,' Saltwood explained. 'Seven months old and lord of the manor.'

'What's his name?' the prince asked, holding the baby awkwardly. 'Frank.'

'Frank, I christen thee Sir Bawler,' and that became the child's nickname.

From De Kraal the party headed east to Grahamstown, where Friddley cried, 'What a delightful place! So English. Even the Dutchmen who live here look like our Surrey squires!'

Friddley was a new experience for Saltwood; as the nephew of a duke, he felt ent.i.tled to say whatever came into his mind, and he did so in a flush of patriotic emotion which often raced ahead of his grammar. At the opening reception in Grahamstown he gave a far-ranging toast: 'To the loyal citizens of this brave frontier city whose English pluck and heroic perseverance, which shall ever animate our n.o.ble race, and who love the queen with a devotion unparalleled and thank her for sharing with you her son, the gallant Sailor Prince . . .' He dropped that sentence and launched fervently into another: 'I say, it was your loyalty to our beloved queen and her beloved consort, the father of our beloved Sailor Prince who does us such honor by this timely visit to the most loyal of his mother's colonies, and I have seen him barefooted on the deck of his s.h.i.+p, discharging his tasks like any other decent, red-blooded sailor on whom the safety of our nation depends . . .'He seemed to run out of breath, but then shouted, 'I drink to the brave English hearts that protected this town against fierce savages.'

'Hear, hear!' the audience cried, but Saltwood asked his neighbor, Carleton the wagon builder, who served as mayor of the little town, 'What about the Boers?' and Carleton whispered, 'Tonight Boers don't count,' and Saltwood chuckled. 'Without them, he wouldn't be standing here tonight.'

At each step Friddley was eager to orate, dwelling upon the n.o.bility of the queen in allowing her young son to come so far to receive the plaudits of the colony; he served the same purpose as the official flatterers at the court of King Dingane and his words were equally empty. But the prince was not diverted by this constant aggrandizement. 'When do we get to the battue?' he asked repeatedly, and once Grahamstown was pa.s.sed, he stayed in the saddle for fifty miles a day.

Behind him the entourage rode in clouds of dust; the wagons creaked; the grooms helped along the horses gone lame; and Mr. Yorke performed heroics in keeping his c.u.mbersome photographic wagon within striking distance of the others. When they slept in cots in their tents, he lay curled up in his wagon.

After a final ride of fifty-six miles in one day, they came at last to a large farm east of Bloemfontein, where an enormous plain a hundred miles in circ.u.mference lay hemmed in by low hills. Days before, at every pa.s.s through which game might escape, blacks had been stationed, one thousand in all, and on the late afternoon of 23 August i860 these beaters began slowly moving toward the central area which the prince would occupy next morning. As they moved, they drove ahead of them from all compa.s.s directions a monstrous herd of zebras, blesbok, eland, hartebeest, wildebeest, kudu, ostriches and the soon-to-be-extinct quagga. How many animals did the herd contain? Perhaps two hundred thousand, perhaps less, for no one could count the beasts as they moved in toward the center, then out to the perimeter. Some escaped through unguarded valleys; most were kept penned in by the mult.i.tude of beaters.

At dawn the prince, accompanied by twenty-four other guns, moved to the hunting ground, where Friddley laid down the rules: 'I shall ride at the prince's left, Major Saltwood to his right. We will not shoot. Our job will be to hand the prince freshly loaded guns as he fires at the beasts. Your Royal Highness, reach first to me on the left, then to Saltwood on the right. Now I want six good shots to ride behind us in a semicircle. You gentlemen may fire at the game occasionally, but your main task is to protect the prince, should any beast come at him. Is that understood?'

Just as the sun came up, the twenty-five guns took their positions, plus Friddley and Saltwood as handlers, plus ninety black servants, many with guns, plus eighteen white factotums, plus one thousand beaters out on the plains to get everything in readiness for 'the greatest hunt in history.' Only then did Friddley flash a signal, and the grand battue was under way.

The beaters close in raised a hullabaloo, whereupon the frightened animals in that quarter started to rush in the general direction of the waiting hunters. First a score of zebras rushed past, then a scattered flight of leaping springbok, then the main body of the herd. They came in turmoil, hundreds of them, thousands. At first they veered away from the hunters, and many escaped, but when the crush became sheer chaos, they galloped by within ten paces of the gunners, great concentrations of large animals running in terror.

The firing never ceased. 'Here, your Highness!' Friddley cried as he took the prince's empty gun, thrusting a freshly loaded one into his hands. After firing from ten inches into the side of a zebra, the prince would thrust his gun in Saltwood's general direction, and without even looking, reach for a fresh one, which he would again discharge at animals not ten paces away.

Meantime, the twenty-four other sportsmen were also surrounded by fleeing beasts, often throwing up dust in their faces, and they, too, were firing as rapidly as they could, right into the chests of the rus.h.i.+ng animals.

After an hour of incessant slaughter the herd reeled in confusion, whereupon the factotums rode their horses out into various parts of the plain, encouraging the beaters to accelerate their movement, and this threw a really tremendous flight of animals right past the waiting prince. Indeed, the great beasts now came so close that firing guns at them was senseless, if not impossible, for the barrels could scarcely be raised against the pressure of the animals.

This delighted Friddley, who shouted, 'Your Highness, let's use the blades!' And he took away the prince's gun, thrusting into his hand a short-handled hog-hunting spear, so sharp that Friddley had named it 'the Paget blade,' after the surgeon who attended Queen Victoria and her family. The young prince used it with some skill; he and Friddley spurred their horses and charged the stampeding beasts, stabbing at them as they roared past. Within minutes both Friddley and the prince were splattered with blood from the frequent stabbings and the fall of the animals.

The two men used their lances for the better part of an hour, with the six precautionary gunmen ranged behind them to fire in the event that some confused beast turned to threaten the royal hunter. Saltwood, without either gun or hog-spear, watched with a kind of detached horror as one great animal after another stumbled to its knees, gus.h.i.+ng blood; at numerous times he could hold out his hand and touch the stampeding antelope sweeping past. The only danger a child would have had in that mad affair would be if it stumbled beneath the flying hooves or got in the way of some sportsman's rifle.

'Enough!' someone finally shouted, and when Saltwood got to the prince to take away the bladed-spear, he saw that he was completely covered with blood, like some inept country butcher. In the celebration that followed, one local gentleman shot off his own arm while firing a salute in honor of the heroic young visitor, and Friddley gave a stirring address of thanks to the hundreds of Bloemfontein people who had arranged the shoot: 'On this day we have slain six hundred and forty animals, each larger than a horse, plus thousands of smaller beasts we will not bother to register. Our glorious Sailor Prince proved that he is as brave on land as he is at sea, and we can a.s.sure the queen that we watched with manly pride the extreme courage he displayed when faced by the thunder of those enraged beasts. We are sorry that His Royal Highness was deprived of his lion, which we have no doubt he will confront and shoot before he leaves these sh.o.r.es.'

As an afterthought he added, 'This great onslaught was no willful waste of G.o.d's creatures. Our faithful Kaffirs need not go hungry this night.'

And since there was no stopping Friddley once he got going, he went on to observe: 'It was a very exciting day, and were His Royal Highness to live for a hundred years, I do not believe he could ever see such a scene again, for the game in these parts is fast disappearing.'

Prince Alfred sent his mother such a glowing account of Richard Saltwood's hospitality that when her prime minister raised a matter of importance which concerned both India and Natal, she put forward the name of the master of De Kraal, pointing out: 'Saltwood's familiar with both places. Give him the job.' And thus she granted Cupid one more chance to launch his arrows.

At the age of seventy-one Richard was approached by the Natal government on a negotiation which would require some delicacy: 'Natal's a great land for sugar, but there's d.a.m.ned little we can accomplish unless we find labor.'

'You've got the Zulu,' Richard said. 'Put them to work.'

'Zulu don't tame easy, old chap. Not like your Xhosa after this cattle madness. No Zulu will work in the fields; won't use his hands. Says it's undignified. Women do such work. We've brought in a couple of Chinese, but the d.a.m.ned Chinamen won't work for the ten s.h.i.+llings a month we offer. They want to save money and buy their own shops.'

'So you're suggesting Indians?'

'Couple of thousand of them, ten s.h.i.+llings a head, we won't know what to do with all the sugar. They've been a success in Mauritius and the West Indies. Why not Natal?'

'What am I to do?'

'The necessary laws have been pa.s.sed. Now we must go to India and collect them in an orderly way. You did a fine job with those German chappies, and we're sure you can do the same with Indians.'

At his age, Richard would have preferred keeping close to De Kraal with his young grandson, but he had the energy to accept this arduous task, and when he learned that the queen herself had recommended him, he had to accept.

More than forty years had pa.s.sed since he fought in India, and when his s.h.i.+p reached Madras he was struck by the changes, for he entered that port barely eighteen months after the terrible Indian Mutiny. That b.l.o.o.d.y uprising had been suppressed after grievous loss on both sides, and it was a jittery peace that prevailed.

'Soldiers that we trained,' an officer at Government House recited, 'turned against us. Burning, looting, murdering. And do you know why? Because of those d.a.m.ned bullets at Dumdum.' Noticing Saltwood's quizzical look, he added, 'The new cartridges for the Enfields were greased at one end and had to be bittenbefore use in muzzle loaders, that is. Rumor spread that the grease was pig fat, and the Muslims wouldn't touch it. Said we did it to humiliate their religion.'

'Our problem was red earth,' Saltwood muttered to himself.

'Wha.s.sat?'

'Our Kaffirs fought us because they needed red earth from one of our farms for their ceremonies. Hundreds died for red earth.'

More significant for Saltwood was the disappearance of John Company from the Indian scene. Even before the mutiny was quelled, Queen Victoria had signed the act which transferred the subcontinent to the crown, and after two centuries of deadly rivalry with the Dutch, the English company was dead.

'Maybe the businessmen should have retained power,' the officer said. 'Why?'

'They'd have dealt differently with the rebels.' The bitterness of the traditional colonial officer came through: 'A few of the leadersthe really bad ones who killed our peoplethey were hanged. But we have hundreds walking around with the blood of Englishmen on their hands. "Clemency Canning" they call our viceroy. By gad, his father, the real Canning, he'd have given them clemency at the end of a rope. Our Canning said it wouldn't do to make martyrs of them. More trouble than greased cartridges. Saltwood, I saw our women and children at Allahabadhacked to death or tossed into a well still breathing. "Clemency Canning," d.a.m.n him.' Saltwood was to hear endless repet.i.tion of these complaints.

He was furiously busy during his stay at Madras, ironing out the hitches in the labor contracts, consulting with recruiting agents; nevertheless, he was able to accomplish his commission, and one afternoon he stood in a large compound at the edge of town where nine hundred Indians squatted on the ground, each praying that he would be chosen to fill one of the two hundred vacancies that would enable him to escape the poverty of India. In less than two hours Saltwood had made his selection, but as he strode out of the compound, the three Desai brothers grabbed at him: 'Please, Sahib, Great Master, we go to your country, too.'

'All places taken. You'll have to wait for the next s.h.i.+p.'

'Please, Great Sahib!' And in the time remaining before his departure, these Desais dogged his steps, walking for miles behind his carriage, waiting at the gates to Government House, desperately striving to keep themselves before him. They would nod, break a pathway for him through crowds, repeat their names, tug at his arm: 'Please, Great Sahib, it is a matter of life and death.'

And always they grinned, showing very white teeth. Eventually they wore Saltwood down, so that he asked the captain of the Limerick, Limerick, 'Got s.p.a.ce for three more?' 'Got s.p.a.ce for three more?'

'Well, my friend, that's a question,' the captain said. 'This is not a slave s.h.i.+p I run.'

'Captain, Captain!' the three Desais cried, bleating like injured sheep. 'You are a very great captain. Surely you can arrange . . .'

'Well, maybe I can fit them in.' The Desais kissed his hands, came weeping to do the same with Saltwood. 'You will never regret this,' they a.s.sured him.

So two hundred and three Indian men were certified for pa.s.sage to Natal on ten-year contracts, after which they were to return home, but when Saltwood reported to the Limerick Limerick to see her off, he found some five or six hundred Indians ready to sail, many of them women. The three Desai brothers, grinning happily, had five extremely attractive women in tow. to see her off, he found some five or six hundred Indians ready to sail, many of them women. The three Desai brothers, grinning happily, had five extremely attractive women in tow.

'Our wives,' they explained.

'You're not Muslim,' Saltwood growled. 'You don't have more than one wife.'

'These two,' the Desais said. 'Our wives' sisters.'

'They can't sail with you. Men only. You work ten years, then come back to your wives.'

There was no great wailing. Life in India, especially after the mutiny, was difficult, and if this was the way these men were to earn their living, so be it. But that night at Government House, Saltwood raised the question with an official, who coughed and said, 'Well, there is some rubbish in the law about taking wives to Natal. But you certainly don't want that, do you? Take wives along, every man will have ten children in ten years.'

'Do you want them to live without women for ten years?'

'Do some of them good.'

'We have found in South Africa that it's inhuman to keep men separated from their women, and I'll have none of it.' His arguments prevailed; the government conceded that in future, women should accompany their men and work with them in the sugar fields, and it was then that some wag posted a letter to Punch Punch detailing the further adventures of Cupid Saltwood, and soon the caricaturist had a new series showing the diapered Saltwood hovering with his bow and arrow over Indian couples working the sugar in the fields of Natal. detailing the further adventures of Cupid Saltwood, and soon the caricaturist had a new series showing the diapered Saltwood hovering with his bow and arrow over Indian couples working the sugar in the fields of Natal.

His successful mission to India, and the subsequent landing of young, healthy coolies with their wives, added the final complexity to the South African racial crucible: Bushman, Hottentot, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaner, Englishman, Coloured, and now the Indian.

When the cane workers, arriving under contract, were in place, 'pa.s.senger Indians' who paid their own way to Natal set themselves up as shopkeepers, and together, these initial groups grew to three-quarters of a million within the century. And though all were repeatedly offered free pa.s.sage and bonus money if they would return to India, few were foolish enough to accept. They had found life so sweet in the land of Shaka that they intended staying.

Richard had succeeded beyond expectations. The Indians were happy to be in Natal and the white farmers were glad to have them. For his enterprise in handling this migration, and especially his foresight in also bringing wives, he received from the queen herself a letter which formed the capstone to his life: 'Because of your generous services to the Royal Family and the Throne, and in so many capacities, we wish you to come to London to receive a knighthood from our hands.'

When the ceremonies at court ended, Sir Richard Saltwood of De Kraal boarded his first train and rode down to Salisbury, where in the ancient hang-tile house beneath the sentinel oaks and chestnuts he sat with his older brother, Sir Peter, looking across the river at the still-glorious cathedral. They spoke of many things; Sir Peter was no longer in Parliament, having surrendered that seat to his son, but like all the Saltwoods, he was interested in everything.

'Tell me, Richard, what's to be done with the Dutchmen out there?'

'The Boers, or Afrikaners as some call them. They're a special breed. A real Dutchman came out not long ago, a clergyman from Amsterdam, intending to make his life there. I knew him well, and after six months he sat in my house and said, "I'm going back to civilization. These people don't even speak proper Dutch. They wors.h.i.+p in a fas.h.i.+on we discarded two centuries ago. Few have read any book but the Bible, and even there, only the Old Testament." And he returned to Holland.'

'What did the locals say?'

'That's where it gets complicated. You've got to understand that the visiting Dutchman was talking about emigrant farmers who trekked maybe fourteen thousand of them. But you must remember there were other thousands who did not trek. They still form the majority in the colony, and they don't know whether to love or hate their brothers up north. Our Amsterdam clergyman was trying to change the trekker Boers, but they are set in their ways. It'll take more than a Holland predikant to push that lot into the nineteenth century.'

'Are their ways so old?'

Sir Richard sat with his fingers propping his chin, and hesitated about answering, because what he said next would determine the nature of his reply to Sir Peter's major question about the probable future, and he knew that Peter still carried much weight in London. Very carefully he said, 'The ways of the Boer are very old indeed. And the ways of the Englishman are very modern. Sooner or later the two must come into real conflict.'

'War?'

'I don't know. If somehow we could maintain relations with them, the chasm could be bridged. But look at what happened to Tjaart van Doorn, the man who sold me his farm. Peter, you should come to South Africa and see it. No cathedrals visible from it, but a glorious place.'

'What about Van Doorn?'

'Same age as me. Same degree of energy. Splendid fellowhe stood at my side in forty skirmishes against the Kaffirs.'

'But what about him?'

'When he emigrated from our area . . . wrote a first-cla.s.s letter giving his reasons. He battled Mzilikazi, then stormed down into Natal and helped destroy Dingane. Then fled to some valley far and gone. Lives there with Kaffirs, a few families like his own. No books, no newspapers, no ideas. None of the children can read. Lost. Lost.'

'But if he's fallen back into the bush, why fear him?'

'Because the Tjaart van Doorn I knew was a powerful man. You don't have men like that in England. Carved out of solid rock. Peter, if your government insults this man, or enrages him, there could be h.e.l.l to pay.'

'What do you want us to do?'

'Conciliate.'

'Bosh.'

Without discussing the matter openly, the brothers agreed that since this would probably be the last time they would ever meet, they ought to take a traditional family excursion to Stonehenge and perhaps on to Oriel College in Oxford, where Sir Richard's grandson would one day be a student, like the three grandsons of Sir Peter. They arranged their schedules, told the grooms to prepare the horses, and one morning Peter said, 'Shall we saddle up and see the Stones?'