The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Tjaart, imbued with the spirit of the Hammer, perceived the impending attack as one more clash in a never-ending battle. There stood the enemy, here stood the men of God—and the only obligation of the latter was to chastise the former. Turning to the men near him, he said, ‘Anyone afraid to fight, ride off now.’ And he looked directly at Saltwood, half expecting him to flee, but throughout history no Saltwood had ever deserted, and Hilary would not break that tradition. Turning to his six Hottentots, he asked, ‘Are you ready?’ and the brown men nodded.

  ‘Then let us pray,’ and when he had done so in English, Tjaart asked if he might add words of his own, and in Dutch he prayed: ‘Like Abraham we face the Canaanites. Like him we place our lives in Thy hands. Great God, guide us good Christians as once again we smite these Kaffirs.’

  The attack came in early afternoon, wave after wave of shrieking Xhosa roaring down the hill to hurl themselves against the soldiers in the town. Those in the barracks had to watch, helpless, as the regiments rushed at the little houses.

  ‘We must go to help them,’ Saltwood said.

  ‘Stay!’ a lieutenant ordered. ‘Our time will come.’

  The most daring of the Xhosa got to within one hundred feet of the soldiers, but then massed gunfire raked their ranks and the two cannon wreaked devastation. Hundreds of blacks fell in the front ranks, until their commanders, seeing that the English line could not be broken, gave the order to swing onto the barracks. Here they were more successful, penetrating the small collection of buildings. This landed them in the center of the barracks square, where they were safe, since the cannon could not be brought directly against them for fear of killing fellow Englishmen and Boers. The fighting would have to be hand-to-hand.

  Tjaart and Saltwood were in the midst of it, shoulders pressed. They saw two Hottentots go down, a Redcoat fall. A huge Xhosa leaped at Saltwood, swinging his war club, but Tjaart twisted about to drop him with a pistol shot. For almost an hour the battle raged in the square, then finally the gallant Xhosa, facing gunfire they had not anticipated, had to retreat. A jubilant cry arose from the white and Hottentot fighters as the warriors fled in uncontrolled panic. Grahamstown had been saved!

  In the aftermath of battle Saltwood was missing, and for a while Tjaart wondered if this missionary, who had fought so bravely, had been dragged away by the fleeing Xhosa, but as Tjaart searched a field he saw Hilary, bloody and disheveled, kneeling beside a dying Xhosa. Tears streamed down his face, and when he saw his neighbor Van Doorn approaching he looked up in bewilderment.

  ‘Seven hundred of them dead,’ he mumbled softly. ‘I’ve counted more than seven hundred lying here. Three of our men dead. May God forgive us for this slaughter.’

  ‘Dominee,’ Tjaart reasoned. ‘God wanted us to win this battle.’ When the missionary muttered something incoherent, Van Doorn added, ‘In warfare like this, so few of us against so many of them, it’s no time to love thy enemy. Destroy him. Because where would you be now if they’d broken through? Can you see Golan burning?’

  Saltwood looked up at the man who had saved his life. He tried to justify his feelings of repugnance, but he could form no words. ‘It’s all right, Dominee,’ Tjaart said. ‘We taught the Kaffir bastards a lesson they’ll remember. Till next time.’

  ‘Next time?’

  Tjaart tugged at his beard. ‘It will never stop, Dominee. Not till one side is victor in this land.’

  Saltwood had to admit, though reluctantly, that what Van Doorn was saying was true, but he did not voice this thought, for next to him the young Xhosa warrior, no more than a boy, shuddered and lay still.

  When Hilary Saltwood’s letter reached Sentinels in the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral, his mother was fifty-four years old, a widow and eager to help her distant son find the proper wife. The commission was not an unusual one in rural England. Sons of distinguished families would venture to all parts of the world, serving for years as outriders of civilization in places like India, South America and Ceylon, without ever thinking of marrying local women the way Portuguese and French colonizers did. An Englishman remembered the girl left behind, and when he was in his mid-thirties he would come home, and some gaunt woman in her early thirties, who in another society would never find a husband, would be waiting, and they would repair to the village church, two people who had been terrified of missing life, and they would be married, and flowers would be scattered, and the local curate would dry his eyes at this little miracle, and soon the pair would be off to some other remote spot.

  Or, as in this case, the son would write home to his parents and ask them to pursue his courtship for him, and they would visit only the daughters of families they had known for a generation, and again some older woman who might never have married would find that she was needed in some far country by a man she could only vaguely remember. This was the English pattern, and men who deviated from it by marrying local women were apt to find their lives truncated, if not ruined.

  Emily Saltwood, upon reading her son’s appeal, retired to her room for two days and reflected upon the marriageable daughters of her friends, and after trying her best to judge the girls from a man’s point of view, and a missionary’s, she decided that the family she must visit was the Lambtons, who lived across the bridge within the purlieus of the cathedral.

  Wishing not to share her secret mission with any servant, she elected not to use her carriage but to walk to the village, where she sought out the bricked path leading to the Lambton residence, at whose door she knocked quietly. After an interval that troubled her, because it seemed that no one was at home, she heard shuffling feet approach, and an elderly maid creaked open the door. ‘Mrs. Lambton is not at home,’ she said. Nor was Miss Lambton there, but there was a possibility that they could be found near the cathedral grounds, for they had planned on having tea in that vicinity.

  Emily said, ‘You know, it’s frightfully important that I see Mrs. Lambton immediately, and I think you’d better go fetch them.’

  ‘I couldn’t leave the house, ma’am.’ The maid was insistent.

  ‘On this day you’d better.’ Emily Saltwood could be just as insistent.

  ‘Couldn’t you go and meet them at the cathedral?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. Because what I have to discuss is not for an open park. Now you scurry off and find your mistress, or I’ll take this umbrella to you.’

  This the maid understood, and after a while she returned, leading both Mrs. Lambton and her daughter Vera. This was rather more than Emily had expected, so she said quite brusquely, ‘It was your mother I wished to see,’ and the tall girl, twenty-nine years old and somewhat timid, dutifully vanished.

  ‘I’ve had a curious letter from my son Hilary, in South Africa,’ Emily began, and without another word being spoken, Mrs. Lambton grasped the significance of this abrupt meeting. Keeping her hands under discipline, lest they tremble, she said, ‘Vera and I remember Hilary well. The soldier, wasn’t he?’

  ‘The missionary,’ Emily said.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Her hands were now trembling furiously, but she kept them hidden. She knew she’d made an unforgivable mistake, confusing the Saltwood boys, but she recovered admirably by throwing Emily on the defensive: ‘Didn’t you have a son who went to America?’

  ‘Alas, we did. Never hear of him.’

  ‘They tell me that your boy Richard’s thinking of returning to India … without the regiment.’

  ‘He’s headstrong. He’ll be off to some remote spot.’

  ‘Tell me, Emily, how does a mother feel when her chicks are so scattered?’

  ‘You may soon know, because Hilary has asked me to ascertain whether Vera …’ It was most difficult to say such a thing bluntly, without preparation of any kind, but it was inescapable. ‘He wonders if Vera would like to join him in South Africa—in the mission field, that is.’

  ‘She’s a devout girl,’ Mrs. Lambton parried. ‘All us Lambtons are devoted to the church.’

  ‘I know, I k
now. That’s why it’s been so easy for me to approach you on so delicate a matter.’

  ‘I don’t know how Vera …’ Mrs. Lambton spoke defensively, as if her daughter were accustomed to weighing such proposals, but Emily Saltwood was not going to have any of that. Abruptly she said, ‘Vera’s at the age when she must make up her mind … and quickly. Hilary’s a fine lad and he needs a wife.’

  ‘How old is he?’ Mrs. Lambton asked sweetly.

  ‘Thirty-four. The proper age for such a marriage.’

  ‘And has he propects?’

  ‘His older brother—Peter, that is—he’ll inherit the house, of course. But we expect Hilary to be dean of the cathedral one of these days. When his tour ends, of course.’

  ‘Most interesting.’ Mrs. Lambton knew of three young clergymen who were being considered for that promotion. Besides, Hilary suffered an impediment which completely disqualified him, and it was important to knock down Mrs. Saltwood’s bargaining position early in the game: ‘Didn’t I hear that your son took orders with the Methodists, or something quite awful like that?’ She beamed her benign Sunday-in-church smile.

  ‘Merely for his ordination to do Christ’s work. He’ll scamper back into the proper fold, once he returns.’ She, too, smiled. ‘You’ve heard, I’m sure, that before he died, the old Proprietor, who was extremely fond of Hilary, made special overtures for him at the cathedral.’

  ‘Pity he died,’ Mrs. Lambton said. She had other solid objections to sending her daughter to a land so remote as South Africa, but she was realist enough to know that Vera was aging and had better catch a suitor promptly. Even a ghost like the absent Hilary had to be considered, so she extended Mrs. Saltwood a courtesy she did not fully feel: ‘I think we should discuss this, Emily.’

  ‘Shall we involve Vera?’ Mrs. Saltwood asked.

  ‘Not at this point, I think. And certainly not the two of us. It would make everything seem too important.’

  ‘It’s just that,’ Emily said with that charming frankness that characterized so many elderly English women who no longer felt restraints. ‘It’s very important for my son, and frankly, it ought to be for Vera too. She’s not getting any younger.’

  She walked home across the old bridge, turned right, and went down the quiet lane leading to Sentinels, where she felt vaguely uneasy, although unaware that national events were about to do her work for her.

  In London her eldest son, Peter, now a member of Parliament for Old Sarum, had become a leader in the movement to alleviate English unemployment by the device of granting large funds for shipping unwanted families out to South Africa:

  This interesting action will serve two noble purposes. In England it will remove large numbers of unfortunate people from our charity rolls, and in South Africa it will correct the imbalance that now exists between the many Dutch and the few English. If our new colony below the equator is to become properly English, as it must, we shall have to throw many Englishmen into the balance pans, and this act will do just that.

  A gigantic effort was mounted to convince impoverished Englishmen that they must quit their hopelessness at home and venture into the new paradise. Articles were published extolling the agricultural possibilities, the beauty of the landscape, and the salubriousness of the climate on the right bank of the Great Fish River, in the vicinity of that splendid rural capital Grahamstown. No mention was made of the recent attack by ten thousand assegaied Xhosa on said capital or the deaths among those who had defended it.

  Most helpful were the speeches and writings of Reverend Simon Keer, who assured Englishmen that those lucky enough to be included in the roster of immigrants—whose boat fare would be paid by the government and whose land would be given free, a hundred rolling acres to each family—would be entering a paradise to which America and Australia were niggardly in comparison. To residents of crowded England, where a family could live well on twenty acres, the vision of a hundred, rent-free, tax-free, was compelling.

  Ninety thousand citizens, well mixed as to occupation, education and ability, volunteered to emigrate, a superior lot, really, to those who had emigrated earlier to Canada and America, and had they all been moved to Cape Town, the history of Africa would have been sharply modified, for at this time there were only some twenty-five thousand Boers in the entire colony, and the infusion of so many Englishmen would have made South Africa much like any other British colony. But enthusiastic members of Parliament, such as Peter Saltwood, promised much more than they could deliver, and when the time came to fill the ships, only enough money to transport four thousand settlers was provided, so that the eighty-six thousand who might have restructured a nation had to be left behind.

  Among those lucky enough to be included was a young man of twenty-five named Thomas Carleton, a carriage builder by trade, whose enthusiasm matched the rhetoric of speakers like Peter Saltwood and Simon Keer. From the first moment he heard of the emigration plan, he wanted to go, and with letters of approval from his minister and sheriff, he was among the first interviewed: ‘My business is solid, but it’s not really thriving. I want to go where distances are great and men must have wagons.’

  ‘Have you any money saved?’

  ‘Not a penny, but I have strong arms, a willing back and a complete set of tools fully paid.’

  The examiners doubted if they would find many men so qualified and unanimously recommended that he be accepted, so he was given a slip of paper guaranteeing his passage and the allocation of one hundred acres. He was to report three months hence to Southampton, where the ship Alice Grace would be loading. ‘That’ll give you time to find yourself a wife,’ the examiners explained.

  ‘Not me!’ Thomas said. ‘I haven’t a penny to feed a wife.’

  When the news of this grand scheme reached Salisbury, the Lambtons listened with more than casual attention, and the more they heard, the more convinced they became that this was the kind of adventure to which an unmarried girl of good breeding might subscribe. Of course, Vera would not be sailing as an ordinary charity case, her way paid by the government; as the intended bride of a clergyman who might one day be dean of the finest cathedral in England, and the sister-in-law-to-be of an important member of Parliament, she would have preferment.

  But the grand decision hung in the balance until Salisbury was visited by the one man in England who spoke as if he knew most about the new colony, Dr. Simon Keer, as he now called himself, a power in the LMS. He announced a public meeting in the cathedral cloisters, where chairs lined the hallowed square and where against a background of gray stone he explained everything. He was now middle-aged, a short, plump little man with red hair, a Lancashire accent and a powerful voice that boomed as it echoed from the noble walls; his oratory rolled like thunder as he spoke of challenges and flashed like lightning when he outlined the potentialities:

  ‘If we grapple courageously with the problem of slavery in this colony, we shall show the way for Canada and Jamaica and Barbados and, yes, the United States itself. Any English man or woman who accepts this invitation to perform God’s duty will be serving all of mankind. I wish I could sail in those ships, for all who do will be rebuilding the world.’

  When the Lambtons lingered to ask him if he knew anything of Grahamstown, where the new settlers would be given their land, he showed his frank astonishment that a family as distinguished as theirs might be interested in emigrating: ‘It’s for the poorer type, you know. The solid workers of the world.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mrs. Lambton said. ‘But we’re told that the Golan Mission, run by your Society …’ She had to say no more. With a wild clap of his hands and a leap in the air he cried, ‘I know! I know!’ And he took Vera’s hands and danced a jig with her, even though she was a head taller than he. ‘You’re going out to marry Hilary Saltwood.’

  He spent an hour assuring the Lambtons of how fine a man this missionary was. He reviewed the steps by which Hilary had reached conversion, and said that whereas he himself had not yet visited Golan
Mission, for it had not been in existence when he served in that area, he had excellent reports of it. But then Vera took him aside for a confidential assessment.

  When he finished she was convinced that she could profitably sail to South Africa, but her mother raised one serious objection: ‘With whom can Vera travel? I don’t fancy her alone on a ship for four months, surrounded by God knows whom.’

  ‘That’s a real problem,’ Dr. Keer conceded, ‘but I’ve been working closely with the shipping companies. Real gentlemen, you know.’ To hear the former missionary speak, he consorted only with the best families, stayed only at the great houses, and one gained the impression that he enjoyed missionary work far more when lecturing in England than he had when serving on the Xhosa frontier. ‘I’m sure we’ll find persons of quality among the ship’s officers. I’ll make inquiries.’

  This wasn’t necessary, for within a week of Dr. Keer’s lecture in the cloisters, Richard Saltwood came down from London, where he had been consulting with his brother in Parliament, and his news was exciting: ‘Mother! I’ve resigned my commission. Wasn’t going anywhere down that lane. And Peter’s arranged with the colonial secretary for me … Point is, I’m to have a government job at Grahamstown! David lost in America. Me lost in South Africa.’

  ‘Are you contemplating staying there?’ his mother asked.

  ‘There’s nothing for me here. I’ve neither the money nor the talent to be a colonel of the regiment. So I’m off to the new land. I saw it and liked it. Much better than India.’

  ‘This could be providential,’ his mother said. ‘We’ve found a bride for Hilary. The Lambton girl. You knew her years ago. She’s a tall, thin thing now and is desperately hungry for a husband, although she won’t admit it.’

  ‘She’s sailing to Cape Town? Splendid for Hilary.’

  ‘She’s ready to sail,’ Emily said hesitantly, ‘but she’s afraid of going out with the emigrant mob—unattended, as it were.’