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 leadership 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 horsemen burst into the heart of the village, massacring 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 constitution for a new republic outlawed it. But the Bible had expressly authorized Israelites to take children from the Canaanites and raise them as servants:
Morever 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 assigned 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 incessantly—Xhosa, Matabele, Zulu—as 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 assessment, but he also knew they could be wonderful friends and trusted associates. 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 attitudes toward life grew tedious. He had been exciting as an alternative to her pusillanimous Ryk Naudé, 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 damnit, 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: God, 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 muffled 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 compassion 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.
In the middle years of the n
ineteenth 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 investiture 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 assembly 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 shifty 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 reassuringly.
‘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 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 assegai, 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 Nongquase 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 English! 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 t
alk 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 ship and unite them 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, assuring 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.’
The Covenant: A Novel Page 82