by Trilby Kent
“Are you all right?” I asked Sipho once Lindiwe had collected herself and bundled the whimpering girls back into the wagon. She must have been able to tell that her son had no wish to weep shamelessly into her lap. Knowing Sipho, he would be far too humiliated: like a humbled leopard, he would want to retreat into the bush to lick his wounds — alone. The backs of his legs were covered in glistening red stripes, and his lip had split and swollen, turning an ugly mussel blue. When Sipho finally brought himself to look at me, I was shocked to see hate in his eyes.
“It wasn’t the Zulu I was following,” he hissed through clenched teeth, cradling his rib cage with thin arms. “It was the khakis. They know we’re here.”
A KNIFE FOR GUTTING FISH
They descended on us within the hour, when the sun was still high. Most of the women and children were in the wagons, trying to sleep off the heat of the day. The old men were smoking their pipes; a few had gone to water the horses.
The first shots sounded like snapping branches, and instinctively I looked to the forest, expecting to see dozens of treetops teeter and fall against the milky blue sky. But the trees were still.
Then, a cry: a full-throated call, fearless and shrill. It must have been the voice of a khaki, but at that moment all I could see were rolling clouds of dust barrelling toward us, a thicket of rifles, and the straining heads of horses as they pounded across the plain.
Sipho and I returned to find the laager stirring in panic.
“Laager up!” shouted Oom Sarel. “Everyone into the center! The horses, too — women and children, behind the barricade!”
Trunks, boxes, water barrels, wagon parts — all were thrown into the center of the laager to form a half circle buttressed by piles of gunnysacks. The men scattered to their posts, and the rest of us crowded together: children at the center, women closing the circle at the back. I spied Danie and Andries pressing thorn-tree branches into the hands of other children, bundling stalks twice Hansie’s height into my brothers’ hands, before Andries rushed to load Pa’s gun.
“Give it to me!” cried Gert, tossing his branch aside. “I know how to shoot,” he protested, yanking the rifle from Andries.
“You’re to stay with the others,” said Andries, pushing Gert off. He plunged one hand into a nearby saddlebag, withdrawing a clutch of shells. “There aren’t enough guns to go around, and we can’t afford to waste bullets.”
“Come here, Gert,” beckoned Ma. “Keep by me. Corlie, what are you staring at? Get down. Take Hansie.”
“We shouldn’t have stayed here,” whimpered Betsie Gouws. “We should have moved on days ago …”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped my mother. “The Tommies would have found us wherever we went. One of the kaffirs probably gave us away.” She set her jaw, staring down the frightened woman. “The important thing now is to stay low.”
I admired my mother at that moment. It wasn’t her courage that took me by surprise so much as the influence she exerted over the other women. Almost instantly, our little huddle seemed to become resolute, concentrated on survival.
“Everyone knows our men are better shooters,” said Ma. “We have nothing to fear from British guns.”
I knew this was only partly true. The night before, I’d listened to the men talking around the campfire. “It’s not the Tommy guns you should be afraid of,” Smous Petrus had warned. “It’s their bayonets. Nasty, barbaric thing, a bayonet. In the right hands, one’ll slice through a man as easily as if he were a sack of meal.” Shooting at the British from a distance was one thing, Smous had explained. As long as we remained an invisible foe, killing khakis was as easy as picking off eggs in a chicken coop. But hand-to-hand combat was a different story altogether.
“Willem Cloete’s a crack-shot,” mused Betsie Gouws, as if to reassure herself. “He’ll pick the Tommies off like tins on a post.”
“Marius Botha, too,” nodded Lettie Lourens.
I followed the line of her gaze toward Marius, who was unwinding a bandolier from his shoulder to load the rounds into his rifle.
“Someone should run them more ammunition,” said Ma, levering open one of the trunks. “Gert, you take these to Oom Willem. Don’t linger by the wagon, and come straight back, hear me?”
“Yes, Ma!”
I watched him scurry around the barricade and across the laager, trailing a cartridge belt that he’d slung over one small shoulder. All around us, the men were poised to shoot, waiting for the khakis to come into full view. Almost as soon as my brother returned, landing on the ground next to me with an exhilarated thump, they opened fire.
Startled by the ear-splitting crack of gunshot, a flock of waxbills burst into the air, climbing desperately to reach the safety of the sky. At that moment, frozen with terror, I wished I could have been among them — swimming breathlessly toward the clouds, climbing, climbing — until I was directly overhead and the soldiers below were as small and insignificant as pinpricks. As it was, I could barely make sense of what was happening ten feet in front of me.
“There’s heaps of them coming straight for us,” shouted Gert in my ear. “Twenty at least, all on horses!”
“Have you seen Sipho?”
“No …”
I glanced across the barricade to where Lindiwe was cowering with her daughters. Her lips were moving, forming a stream of soundless words.
“Ma,” I said. “Should we pray?”
My mother didn’t have time to answer. Behind her, the canvas roof of one of our wagons was suddenly ripped in two by a peppering of shots. A volley of bullets struck the ground not three feet from where we crouched, creating an explosion of dust.
Betsie Gouws screamed and began to tear at her hair. “We’re all going to die!”
“Shut up, Betsie!” My mother grabbed Hansie from me, pressing his flushed face into her skirts, shielding his head, and muffling his wails. She took Gert’s head in her free hand, tenderly stroking his white-gold hair for a moment before forcing him to meet her gaze. “You tell Andries to give you your pa’s gun,” she said. “We’re going to fight these monsters. We won’t be taken.”
I still don’t know if she thought my brother might be killed that day. In hindsight, I suppose she was preparing herself for this possibility and making sure that, at the very least, her son would be given the chance of a hero’s death.
Without hesitating, Gert rushed to join our cousins. He was still wearing Pa’s hat, and from behind, it was difficult to tell him apart from the older boys. By the time he’d made it to the far end of the laager, it was almost impossible to see him for all the gun smoke.
“We’ll start fires,” said my mother as the other women stared dumbly on. “We’ll douse rags in oil and launch them at the soldiers. Corlie, you’re in charge of the little ones. Ring the edges of the laager with your thorn-bush branches: wave them about to create a distraction. The Tommies won’t shoot at children.”
She spoke to me almost as if I was an equal. Filled with a sudden rush of pride, I leaped to my feet.
“Yes, Ma!” I said, grabbing Lizzie and Irene by the wrists and tearing them from their pleading mothers. Both girls were crying and digging in their heels, so as soon as we were out of reach of the barricade, I spun on them with all the ferocity I could muster.
“Do you want to just sit there like a couple of cows?” I shouted. “Do you?”
“You’re horrible!” bawled Irene. “I hate you, Corlie Roux!”
“I don’t care,” I hollered back. “All I care about is not getting killed by a bunch of filthy khakis. Pick up those branches, and follow me.”
To my surprise, they obeyed. We each positioned ourselves between two wagons, balancing on the yoke that hooked up to the axel of the wagon in front, and waved our thorn-tree branches through the gaps — anything to make it harder for the enemy to pick out our shooters. Farther down the line, I saw Lindiwe set herself up in this way with Nosipho and Neliswe. After a while, little Kurt Viljoen joined us, al
ong with his brother Jan, so there were eight of us waving our thorn-tree branches at the advancing army, expelling our terror through wild hoots and hollers.
My mother, meanwhile, was busy setting fires in the center, and the other women began tearing up their aprons and knotting them into bundles to be doused in oil. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Tant Minna clamber up on top of one of the wagons to pass ammunition to one of the men. When the man suddenly tumbled from his post just seconds later, she grabbed the rifle from his hand and proceeded to load it herself. I’d never seen my aunt load a gun, let alone fire it. But fire it she did, flattening herself against the wagon canvas and taking aim with all the skill of a practiced hunter. As soon as she shot, she readied her rifle for another round. The fallen man — Jacob van der Westhuizen, who had played his banjo for us every night around the campfire — remained where he had landed, crumpled in a heap on the ground. It took me several moments to realize that he was dead.
The siege can’t have gone on for long, but to me it felt as if days passed before the first enemy face appeared between two of the wagons. The soldier was beefy but compact, with mutton-chop whiskers and a fleshy, sunburned nose. Between his teeth he clenched a silver whistle that glinted in the sun. Filling red cheeks as round as apples, he blew with all his might, alerting his comrades to the chink in our defense. Like rats, they poured through the gaps. Lizzie and Irene were the first to flee, screaming, as the soldiers tore the thorn-tree branches from their hands. In an instant the laager was swarming with khakis.
Through the mayhem, I caught a glimpse of Sipho lunging at one of the British soldiers from behind, brandishing a knife. It must have been the same knife that he’d taken from my mother’s kitchen all those weeks ago, and for an instant I froze in disbelief. Shooting at khakis to defend the laager was one thing, but to attack a grown man with a knife used for gutting fish — I couldn’t decide whether to be horrified or awed by my friend’s bravery.
I didn’t see what happened because my brother had appeared at my side, hair slick with sweat, blue eyes widening in terror.
“There’s no more ammunition,” gasped Gert. His face was streaked with gun powder. “I fired until I had no more bullets, so Andries gave me some of his. Then Oom Sarel ran out, and Koos Viljoen. Only Oom Willem has any left, and they won’t last another round.” My brother scanned the chaos around him — the panicked, screaming women, the wailing children cowering beneath their families’ wagons, the tired old men struggling against trained soldiers half their age — and his chin began to dimple. “I saw Jacob van der Westhuizen fall from the wagon, Corlie,” he said. “Two of the others are dead. Danie was hit in the shoulder — you can see right down to the bone …” I watched his shoulders buckle as Pa’s rifle slid from his hands to the ground.
“Pick that up,” I snapped. “Don’t leave Pa’s gun in the dirt.”
My brother started to lean down to do as I said — but then he froze, his gaze trained on something beyond my shoulder. I turned just in time to see Sipho fly toward Smous Petrus, grasping the glinting blade. The older man was fleeing a pair of soldiers who were calling at him to freeze — “Staan stil!” they cried in our language — when Sipho slid beneath his flailing arms, plunging the knife into Petrus’s abundant belly. It all happened in an instant: then he was gone. As Smous Petrus fell to the ground, features twisted in rage and anguish at the sight of blood blooming through his sweat-streaked shirt, the soldiers descended on the old man without paying the African boy a second thought.
Had I been the only one to see this, I would never have breathed a word of it. As God is my witness, I would have taken my friend’s secret to my grave. But through the commotion, I caught sight of my mother, and I could tell by the expression on her face that she, too, had witnessed the terrible act.
Only then did I realize that our time had run out.
HER HUSBAND’S GUN
We surrendered with a white petticoat tied to a stick.
As Oom Willem and Koos Viljoen laid out the bodies of the dead men, Oom Sarel addressed the decimated laager. A mounted British soldier remained at his side, gun brandished across his chest. The soldier was such a large man that I felt sorry for his horse. His little black eyes focused on each of us in turn, and I could almost hear him making a mental tally: counting the women and children, adding their numbers to the men’s, taking account of the wounded, subtracting the dead. Not twenty yards from where we stood, a group of soldiers was tending to their own casualties. I counted five khaki bodies before my mother cuffed me round the ear and told me to pay them no attention.
“The commandant says that the men will be separated from the women and children,” boomed Oom Sarel. I could tell that he was trying to communicate with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances. Behind him, the burned-out shell of our wagon resembled an enormous, blackened rib cage. “Women may take only what they can carry for their families. Everyone must hand in their weapons.”
“Where will they take us?” demanded Andries. It was obvious by the way he puffed up his chest and pretended to deepen his voice that he was playing the part of a tough commando. I took Gert’s hand and squeezed it tightly.
Oom Sarel turned to the commandant and relayed the question in English.
The commandant straightened, and adjusted his gun.
“Standerton,” he said, nodding at the open cart that awaited us. The commandant had peculiarly pointed nostrils, which flared each time he spoke; he wet his lips and the saliva glistened in the sun, demarcating the boundaries of an uncompromising mouth. “From there the women and children will go to Kroonstad.” He shot Andries a warning glance. “For their own safety.”
“And the men?” asked Oom Sarel.
“The men will become prisoners of war.”
Oom Sarel announced that we were to obey the Tommies or else we would be shot. At this, some of the little ones began to whimper. Their mothers muffled their sobs, as tired as they were frightened.
“Wees sterk, vriende,” concluded Oom Sarel. Be strong, friends.
The men stomped their feet and heckled the British patrol while being chained together at the ankles, until eventually they began to resemble a convulsing, many-limbed insect. My mother told me not to let go of Gert and Hansie — not even for one second. She took Pa’s gun from Gert and strode up to the commandant, head held high.
“Dis my man se geweer,” she said. This is my husband’s gun. She did not drop it on the ground at the feet of horse and rider, as the others had done, but held it up toward him. The commandant considered my mother, and the rifle. He took the gun and nodded curtly.
“Thank you,” he said.
As my mother returned to us, two soldiers appeared with Lindiwe and Sipho in tow. Neliswe and Nosipho trailed behind them, escorted by a third, older soldier, one who looked almost kind.
“We found some blacks trying to escape into the forest,” said the one holding Lindiwe, the strangesounding words emerging through a bristling, gray beard. “The lad’s in bad shape, but the woman and her kids are all right.”
Sipho was hanging his head so low that the bones on the back of his neck stuck out. I tried willing him to look up, but my friend seemed determined not to meet the gaze of any of us. Lindiwe, on the other hand, fell to her knees the instant she saw my mother, beseeching us with outstretched palms.
“Please, nooi, take us with you!” she pleaded. Seeing their mother in distress, the little girls broke free from the kind-looking soldier and tumbled next to her. Sipho remained where he was, motionless.
My mother opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, Oom Willem’s voice rang out loudly over our heads.
“That boy killed one of our men,” he said to Oom Sarel. “I saw him stab Smous Petrus — look for a knife with an ivory handle and you’ll find Boer blood on it. The hole in that man’s stomach was not made by a bullet, any fool will see that.”
“No!” Lindiwe dug her fingers into
the ground. “He is only a child. He was afraid — we are all afraid. Please, nooi, take us with you!”
I looked up at my mother, who had steeled her jaw and was staring intently at the ground between our servants and us. Please, I wanted to say. Do something! You’re the bravest one here — tell the commandant that they belong to us.
“I will not let our women and children travel with a murderer in their midst — so help me, God!” said Oom Willem loudly. “Over my dead body will I allow my daughter onto that cart with a Boer-hating kaffir.”
The rest of the laager murmured its approval. Even Oom Sarel nodded in agreement.
“The law says that a kaffir who murders a white man must be put to death,” interjected Koos Viljoen. He turned to the commandant, trying to make the soldier understand. “Even your law says so. The penalty for murder is hanging.”
I felt my stomach lurch. I could count the bones on Sipho’s neck.
“Gert,” I whispered, “I’m going to be sick.”
The British soldiers started to realize what had happened, and the commandant began to look uncomfortable. At last, he addressed the soldier who held Sipho.
“The boy shall go with the men,” he said to Oom Sarel, to translate. “Charges will be laid. The woman and her daughters will be sent to the African camp at Bethlehem.”
As Sipho was led to the wagon where the rest of the men were being settled, Lindiwe let out an anguished howl.
“Please, nooi! He is only a child — let him come with me, please! I beg you!”
The two remaining soldiers grabbed her and the weeping girls and pulled them away. Even though his mother continued to scream for him, Sipho did not look up once.
“Do something, Ma,” I whispered, tasting the bile rising in my throat. “They can’t kill Sipho —”
“Nooi!”
Although I could no longer see her behind the wall of soldiers and their horses, the terror in Lindiwe’s voice sent a rush of pinpricks up my spine.