The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  He descended into a valley leading to the ruins, and came after a while to an impoverished group of blacks led by a Chief Mugabe, who could speak neither the Zulu nor the Sotho language of the bearers, but after a while one was found who had once drifted down to the diamond mines, and he could speak a kind of lingua franca.

  ‘Zimbabwe?’ He knew nothing of it.

  ‘Who rules now?’ No one, but Chief Mugabe had his kraal on the side of the hill on which the citadel rested.

  ‘Who built the towers?’ That had often been discussed.

  ‘Can we inspect it?’ Why not?

  For two weeks Frank climbed over the ruins, uncovering not a single clue which would indicate origins. The pictures in the Bible his parents had given him on his twenty-first birthday came to mind, but they looked nothing like this. However, suppose that all those pictures had been of Jewish structures? Could not these ruins have been those of the Queen of Sheba, who would have built in a different manner? Or of the Phoenicians, who would have had their own style? And what authority did the pictures in the Bible have? Were they not merely some artist’s imagination?

  Whenever he pursued such thoughts, he stopped before reaching a logical conclusion, because he had to keep in mind the fact that his employer, Mr. Rhodes, desperately wanted these buildings to be the ancient Ophir, not because that would prove the Bible to have been accurate, but for a much subtler reason: to justify his own wrongdoing.

  When he got nowhere with President Kruger in his plan to have a joint English-Boer occupation of the lands north of the Limpopo, he had leap-frogged the Boer republics and thrown his own pioneer column deep into Matabeleland, where Mzilikazi’s son was overrun. When resistance developed, he dispatched a private army to crush it, then annexed the entire area. Even at this moment, grateful imperialists in London were proposing that this new British colony be called Rhodesia.

  So now, if Rhodes could prove that no black society had ever been advanced enough to have build Zimbabwe, his theft of Matabeleland would seem more palatable. It would, after all, be rather ugly to have stolen a kingdom in order to bring it civilization if that kingdom had once been civilized.

  Frank Saltwood was thus obligated to prove that Zimbabwe had been build far back, in the time of the Old Testament, and during his last three days on the site he remained in his tent, drafting another report to Mr. Rhodes:

  Every indication of Zimbabwe proves that it was of Phoenician origin. The grand design, the shape of the tower, the construction of the high citadel, the way the now-vanished huts of the city must have been arranged, and especially the work of the stonemasons, combine to demonstrate a Mediterranean provenance. I could not find a shred of evidence that would support the claims of some that these walls had been erected by primitive black men, and to so argue seems preposterous.

  I put these structures at the late Phoenician period, which means that they could well have been erected by artisans of that nation imported here by the Queen of Sheba in the days when King Solomon ruled in Jerusalem. Since there is strong and viable record of much gold coming from Zimbabwe, I think we can state with certainty that this is Ophir of the Bible and that from it Sheba obtained the gold she took with her on her journey to meet Solomon. The matter is closed.

  But when the wagons were packed, and the last photograph taken, and the antelope shot for the food supply, Frank returned to the ruins alone, sickened by the shameful thing he had done, this profanation of everything he had learned at Oriel: ‘A man must be true to the facts, and if the facts disprove his preconceptions, he must change his preconceptions, not the facts.’

  What have I done? he asked himself as he studied the silent stones whose messages were crying out to be understood. Have I debased myself to curry favor with an irascible man who perverts everything to his own purpose?

  Cautiously he climbed a platform next to the tower to inspect once more the stonework, which now seemed so primitive, so unlike anything the Phoenicians or the Jews of Solomon’s time might have done. After all, the basic stonework of Rome was being laid down in that age, and Greek masons already knew the major principles. Men trained in those schools could never have built these edifices.

  But he found no proof of anything until the final moments, when he had left the tower and was standing at a point where two walls abutted, and he saw with amazement that the stones were not interlocked, as they would have been in any Mediterranean building: that is, the stones of the wall running east and west did not bind themselves into the stones of the wall running north and south, making each wall stronger. In crude fashion, one wall merely leaned against the other, acquiring only such added strength as proximity provided, and it occurred to him that masons had not used that childish device in Rome or Greece or Phoenicia or the Holy Land or Persia or Arabia for the past four thousand years.

  ‘My God!’ he whispered. ‘They’re right. These buildings were erected by black men who never heard of Ophir or the Queen of Sheba,’ and he ran to all the corners where walls abutted, and in every instance one wall merely leaned against the other. With this knowledge, he hastened to the foot of the steep hill on which the citadel rested, and, though exhausted, ran up, breathing furiously until he reached the lonely top where the goldsmiths had worked and the great Mhondoro conversed with spirits. And there, too, the walls leaned one upon the other, and the stonework was primitive, with no sign of Mediterranean sophistication. These buildings, too, had been built by the ancestors of the Xhosa and the Zulu. The nonsense about the Queen of Sheba was a fatuous dream generated by men who had never seen the stones, and kept alive by fancifiers who loved the idea of ancient royalty and despised the actuality of black builders.

  As he was about to leave the citadel he saw, partly hidden by the rubble, something he had missed on his earlier explorations: a beautifully carved narrow stone about six feet high, its bottom squared off for fitting into a socket, its top an intriguing bird, something like a falcon, something like an eagle. In not a single line did it betray Mediterranean influence; this was an artwork of black men, and when he called for servants to carry it down the hill for delivery to Mr. Rhodes, he thought: I have been forced to write that Zimbabwe is Phoenician, but this bird will proclaim the truth.

  Back in his tent as it was about to be folded, he looked at his report and was tempted to destroy it, but he was restrained by the fact that Mr. Rhodes would like it in its present form and would be most distressed if he, Frank, modified it in accordance with his final discovery: I know what the truth is. Does what Mr. Rhodes thinks do any harm? And he carefully filed the papers that would set the intellectual patterns for the next eighty years. Zimbabwe had been stolen from the blacks.

  When he neared civilization he began to hear rumors of turmoil, but exactly what caused them he could not ascertain. Black members of his safari spoke of a battle, but the white members could make nothing of this until a terrified English miner, obviously running for his life, intercepted them with the shocking news that Mr. Rhodes had shortly before declared war on the Boer republics. His ragtag army, led by the mercurial Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, had tried to take over the government but had been roundly defeated.

  Anxiously, Frank interrogated the fugitive, who gave confirming details: Mr. Rhodes had done all the things which Frank had warned him against, and the consequences had been the disaster he had predicted.

  When the safari reached Pretoria it was approached by an armed Boer commando whose leader shouted in English, ‘You have a man named Saltwood?’ and when Frank stepped forward, three Boers pinioned him, took his papers, and carted him off to jail.

  ‘What’s the charge?’ Frank protested.

  ‘You’ll hear. Just before they hang you.’

  He was thrown into a cell that contained an Australian member of Mr. Rhodes’ revolutionary force, two Englishmen and a breezy, even-tempered American mining engineer named John Hays Hammond, who had helped organize the ridiculous affair. ‘What happened?’ Frank asked.

 
; ‘Very simple,’ Hammond explained. ‘We had five hundred hand-picked men under Dr. Jameson, many more waiting in Johannesburg, but with no communication between them. We marched forth to capture the country, but suddenly Boer horsemen appeared from everywhere, led by this great whiskered brute of a man, General de Groot, riding a little Basuto pony. He said, “All right, boys, put down your guns.” So our men put them down, and here we are—in jail.’

  ‘You mean De Groot defeated your whole army?’

  ‘Have you ever seen De Groot?’

  ‘I have. They call him the Hero of Majuba.’

  ‘He’s a formidable man,’ Hammond said.

  ‘But what am I doing here?’ Frank asked. ‘I was north of the Limpopo when this happened.’

  None of the prisoners, cell after cell of Uitlanders, who had called themselves Reformers, could explain why Saltwood had been arrested, but after days in the crowded jail he heard enough from the conspirators to assure himself that they were indeed guilty of insurrection and that the venture had been sorely botched.

  ‘How could Mr. Rhodes have stumbled into this?’ he asked repeatedly, and finally the Australian said, ‘Because he had contempt for the Boers, like all of us did.’

  ‘After what I wrote him?’ Frank blurted out, and when these words echoed in the cell, all the prisoners looked at him.

  ‘Oh,’ one of the Englishmen said, ‘you’re the spy they kept asking about.’

  ‘Spy?’ Frank repeated. He suddenly realized that his prying visit to General de Groot, his chain of persistent questions and his note-taking could be interpreted as spying.

  And at the trial, General de Groot and Jakob van Doorn both testified, with regret, that he had come to them some months before the raid as a friend, asking a series of probing questions relating to the rebellion. Van Doorn in particular could verify that he had written a long report which he admitted he was sending to Cecil Rhodes, and from hints that Van Doorn picked up, it concerned the military capabilities of the Boers.

  ‘Did Mr. Saltwood appear at your farm in military uniform?’

  ‘No, sir, he came as a spy.’

  ‘Did he inform you that he was serving as the agent of a rebellion?’

  ‘No, sir, he functioned as a spy.’

  When the trial ended, the grim-faced judge placed on his head a small black cloth. One by one the prisoners were brought before him: ‘John Hays Hammond, the court finds you guilty, and for your treasons you will be taken from jail and hanged.’

  Frank felt his knees buckling as an ashen-faced Hammond was returned to the jail, and if the Australian had not held him, he might have collapsed. The Australian was sentenced, then the two Englishmen, and now it was Saltwood’s turn, but as he was led into the dock a rude commotion erupted at the rear of the courtroom. Two policemen were trying to restrain an elderly Boer who was struggling with some heavy object.

  When they led him before the bench, the judge looked down severely: ‘Lang-Piet Bezuidenhout, what is this nonsense?’

  ‘Forgive me, your Honor. But I bring something that might help your Honor punish these men.’

  ‘Lang-Piet, this is a court for justice, not a place for cheap revenge. Go before I get angry.’

  ‘But, your Honor, the men of my commando have been in the saddle many days to bring you this thing.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘Die balk van Slagter’s Nek, Oom Gideon.’

  And that was precisely what had happened. Lang-Piet Bezuidenhout and his cronies had ridden down to Graaff-Reinet to buy the wooden beam of the Slagter’s Nek gallows from a family who had preserved the grim relic for some eighty years.

  ‘The rebels must hang from this very beam,’ the old man shouted as his cronies cheered. ‘We want justice.’

  The judge, Oom Gideon de Beer, said quietly, ‘Lang-Piet, in these days we dispense a fairer kind of justice. Sit down and be silent.’ Then he turned his attention to the man waiting in the dock: ‘For your crimes you will be taken from jail and hanged.’

  In this extremity, Maud Turner came to Frank’s rescue. With bars separating her from the man she considered her fiancé, she listened intently as he told her every detail of what he had done since she had said farewell to him at Kimberley. When he explained what he had written in his Vrymeer report to Rhodes, she cried, ‘But that would exonerate you!’ And when he told her of the Zimbabwe report, which the Boer commando had taken from him, she was exultant: ‘It proves you honestly were doing scientific work. That makes your Vrymeer questionings legitimate.’

  But how to get possession of the two documents? The first was held by Rhodes, who would be further incriminated if its contents were revealed. The second was held by the Boers, who would not likely deliver it. There seemed no way to obtain the papers.

  With no other recourse, and with the death of her fiancé imminent, she took the bold step of going directly to the president of the Boers, and she found him sitting on his stoep, wearing a top hat and making himself available to any complaining citizen. At first he terrified her: that face of monumental ugliness, the deep voice that rumbled like a volcano, the flecked beard that rimmed his features, the tight-fitting black frock coat. But after he heard her out, he spoke to her, in English, with a warmth that surprised her.

  ‘You want me to save the young man’s life?’

  ‘I do!’ she cried.

  ‘You sit down here. You say two documents are in existence?’

  ‘They are! They are!’

  ‘And if I could see them, they would exonerate him?’

  ‘They would, sir.’

  ‘Then why don’t you produce them?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Because Mr. Rhodes has one. And you have the other. And you are both very stubborn men.’

  He halted his interrogation and called for his wife to fetch them coffee, and when Mevrou Kruger appeared on the stoep, a heavy, wheezing housewife, she seemed more like a kindly grandmother than the first lady of a republic. Her Coloured servant handed Maud a gaudy cup and saucer, with a second saucer to hold a helping of rusks. To her husband, Mevrou Kruger handed a double portion of rusks, then sat beside him with hands folded.

  ‘You say you are Miss Maud Turner?’ the president asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you planned to marry this young man? Before he was caught as a spy?’

  ‘He was never a spy, sir.’

  ‘But you yourself told me that in his first report he informed Mr. Rhodes of our strength.’

  ‘That he did, but if you remember, he also warned Mr. Rhodes against any military adventure.’

  Mevrou Kruger broke in: ‘Do you still want to marry him?’

  Before Maud could respond, President Kruger astounded her by breaking into a hearty laugh. ‘My dear young lady! Do you think we Boers want to give the English a motive for revenge, such as they gave us at Slagter’s Nek?’ He paused. ‘Have you ever heard of Slagter’s Nek?’

  ‘I’ve been there, twice. Do you know the role played by Frank’s ancestor? Reverend Saltwood the missionary? Who tried to halt the hangings?’

  ‘We Boers do not cite missionaries as evidence,’ Kruger said, and again he broke into laughter. ‘Miss Turner, early this afternoon I commuted all the sentences.’ He reached over and patted her knee as Mevrou Kruger offered fresh coffee to both her husband and his guest.

  ‘Yes,’ Kruger said as Maud daubed at her eyes. ‘He’s free, if he can pay his fine.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Twenty-five thousand pounds.’

  She gasped. This was more money than she had ever visualized, a vast fortune really, but she firmed her chin and said, ‘Somehow I’ll get it.’

  ‘No need. Mr. Rhodes has already informed us that he’ll pay it.’

  ‘Then Frank is free?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her fortitude deserted her. With trembling hands she put the saucers aside and buried her face in her hands. After a few moments Mevrou Kruger came to her side and he
lped her to her feet. ‘He was free when you arrived,’ she said. ‘My husband likes to talk with pretty woman.’

  When Mr. Rhodes learned that Frank was determined to marry Miss Turner, he was deeply distressed. The loss of any of his young gentlemen to matrimony was a calamity, but to have Frank leave when he was going to be so sorely needed was intolerable. Summoning Miss Turner to his offices in Kimberley, he put it boldly to her that she was ruining the young fellow’s life by insisting upon marriage.

  ‘Seems to me,’ she snapped, ‘it’s you who’ve done the ruining.’

  ‘Don’t be pert, young woman,’ he replied.

  ‘I didn’t land him in jail,’ she retorted, and the debate was on.

  Rhodes pointed out that if Frank stayed with him he would always have a fine job, at the center of things, helping to decide affairs of great moment, to which she replied, ‘He decided how to get himself hanged.’

  ‘I saved him,’ Rhodes said, and he proceeded to depict the bright future that awaited this brilliant chap—

  ‘He’s not brilliant,’ she cut in. ‘He’s not even bright, if you ask me, getting involved in your daydreams.’

  Ignoring the interruption, Rhodes explained the dismal prospect that would await Frank if he married and lost his job, to which Maud asked, ‘Why must he lose his job? If he does a sensible thing like marrying the woman of his choice?’

  ‘Because no man can work as my personal assistant, and share the dreams I have, and cater to a woman, too.’

  ‘Your dreams, Mr. Rhodes, are addled, and I’m taking Frank away from you before you turn him crazy, too.’

  The threat was easier made than discharged, for when Frank was brought into the discussion, Rhodes pleaded for the young man’s continued help, especially at this time of crisis: ‘You must come with me to London. To help me face down the inquisitors.’ And he made such a plaintive appeal, explaining the morass of legal problems he faced as a consequence of the rebellion, that Saltwood once more allowed himself to be entrapped by this man.