The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘It was Compagnie property. You know that. Like the house you’re living in—’

  ‘It’s a hut.’

  ‘But it’s Compagnie property.’

  ‘I think you sold—’

  ‘Katje!’ Kornelia said sharply. ‘You forget yourself. You forget that you were a poor farm girl—’

  ‘Kornelia, you’re a thief. You’re stealing Willem’s share.’

  ‘We will hear no more!’ The commissioner did not intend to sit by and listen to a member of his own family, an impoverished member at that, charging him with defalcations. ‘Take her back to shore,’ he directed the sailors, and during the remainder of the visit he refused to meet with his brother.

  His farewell was a gala. There were fulsome speeches from the German commander and his staff, gracious responses from Karel and his wife. The new Lord XVII, the first to have had extended experience in the East, assured his listeners that the Compagnie would always have close to its heart the welfare of the Cape:

  ‘We’re going to find you additional settlers, not too many, never more than two hundred living here. It was I who proposed the hedge, and it seems a salient idea. Makes this a comfortable little establishment with enough room for your cattle and vegetables. I’m told that my brother Willem, whom you know favorably, is heading eastward to see if he can make some real wine instead of vinegar. [Laughter] But his going must not suggest a precedent. Your task is here, at this fort, which the Lords XVII have decided to rebuild in stone. As Abraham brought his people to their new home and made it prosper, so you have established your home here at the Cape. Make it prosper. Make it yield a profit for the Compagnie. So that when you return to Holland you will be able to say, “Job well done.” ’

  Three days after Karel departed for Amsterdam and his duties as a Lord XVII, Willem started loading his wagon. After providing space for Katje and their son, Marthinus, he tucked in grape cuttings, the tools he had taken from the smithy, all household goods required by Katje, and two items which were of supreme importance to him: the brassbound Bible and the brown-gold crock in which he baked his bread puddings. Without them a home in the wilderness would be impossible.

  As he did his packing, he heard from Katje a constant whine of complaints: ‘You’re taking too many grape vines. You’ll never use that chisel.’ And he would have shown his irritation at this cascade of words except for one thing: he had grown to love this petulant, difficult woman, for he had seen that when family interests were involved, she could be a lioness, and he sensed that on the frontier she would prove invaluable. Like a chunk of hard oak that grows to appreciate the rasp that grinds it down and makes it usable and polished, so he appreciated his wife.

  Before the loaded wagon could reach the trail, it had to penetrate the hedge of bitter almond, and normally it would have gone down the farm road past the fort to the exit, but Willem had no intention of subjecting Katje and Marthinus to the crowd’s derision. Instead, he chopped down four bushes, breaking his own path, and when spies reported this vandalism to the commander, they expected him to order Willem’s arrest, but the commander knew something the spies did not: that the Honorable Commissioner, Karel van Doorn, wanted his abrasive brother lost in the wilderness.

  ‘Let them go,’ he said with disgust as they headed for more spacious lands.

  In the year 1560 in the little village of Caix in the northern wine region, when Mary, the future Queen of Scots, was Queen of France, society was well and traditionally organized. There was the Marquis de Caix, who owned the vineyards, as petty a nobleman as France provided, but petty only in land and money; in spirit he was a most gallant man, survivor of three wars and always prepared for a fourth or a seventh. He was tall, slim, handsomely mustached, and with a goatee of the kind that would in later days represent the France of this period. He could not afford dashing clothes, nor caparisons for his two horses, but he did take pride in his swords and pistols, the true accouterments of a gentleman. His great weakness, for a man in his position, was that he read books and pondered affairs that occurred in places like Paris, Madrid and Rome, for this distracted him from his local responsibilities, and his vineyards did not flourish.

  Abbeé Desmoulins, the priest of Caix, had infirmities almost as disabling. An older man who had seen the sweep of battle, he had been deeply affected by religious events in Germany and Geneva; the preachings of those two difficult Catholics Martin Luther and John Calvin disturbed him, for he saw in the fulminations of the former a justified challenge to the sloppiness of the church as he knew it, and in the transcendent logic of the latter, an answer to the confusions he was finding in religion as it operated in France. Had he stumbled into a curacy controlled by some unlettered nobleman secure in his faith, the Abbé Desmoulins would probably have remained in line, preached a standard religion, and died without ever having come to grips with either Luther or Calvin. He had the bad luck to find himself in a village dominated by a marquis whose faith was as mercurial as his military exploits, and in a subtle way these two leaders agitated each other, so that the village of Caix was in a rather tenuous position.

  Head of the vineyards was a stalwart, conservative, taciturn semi-peasant named Giles de Pré, thirty years old and the father of three children who already worked with him in the fields, even though the youngest was only five. De Pré was a wonderfully solid man with an uncanny comprehension of agriculture. ‘You’re an oak tree yourself,’ his wife often said. ‘If the pigs rooted at your feet, they’d find truffles.’ Like many farmers around Caix, the De Prés could read, and it was their pleasure to work their way through the French Bible the marquis had given them, noting with satisfaction that many of the noblest figures in that history had been associated with vineyards. But as they read, especially in the Old Testament, they acquired a suspicion that human lives had once been arranged somewhat better than they were now. In the days of Abraham or David or Jeremiah, society had known a sanctity which was now vanished; in those days men lived intimately with God, and rulers were acquainted with their subjects. Priests were devoted to great principles, and there was reverence in the air. Today things were much different, and even if the marquis did rule the area, it was with a most unsteady hand.

  That was the village of Caix, in the year 1560: a marquis who could not be depended upon except in battle; a priest who had lost the assurances of his youth; and a farmer whose reading of the Bible confused him. It was to such men throughout France that John Calvin dispatched his emissaries from Geneva.

  ‘Dr. Calvin is a Frenchman, you understand,’ one of these austere visitors explained to the Marquis de Caix. ‘He’s a loyal Frenchman, and would be living here except that he made an unfortunate speech.’

  ‘Why has he fled to Geneva?’

  ‘Because that city has placed itself in his hands. It thirsts to be ruled by the institutes of God.’ At this mention the emissary said, ‘Of course, you’ve read Dr. Calvin’s remarkable summary of his beliefs?’ The marquis hadn’t, and it was in this way that one of the greatest books in the history of man’s search for religious truth, John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, reached Caix.

  It was a profound book, written with strokes of lightning when Calvin was only twenty-six and published widely the next year. It was beautifully French, so clear in its logic that even the tamest mind could find excitement in its handsomely constructed thought. Martin Luther in Germany had made wild, explosive charges which repelled thoughtful men, while John Knox in Scotland had raged and roared in a way that often seemed ridiculous, but Calvin in Geneva, patiently and with sweet reason, spread out the principles of his thought and with irrefutable clarity invited his readers to follow him to new light springing from old revelation.

  But it was also revolutionary, ‘like nine claps of thunder on a clear night,’ the Geneva man said when handing over the book, and he enumerated Calvin’s shocking rejections: ‘First, he rejects the Mass as an accretion in no way connected with our Lord. Second, he rejects co
mpulsory confession as an ungodly intrusion. Third, he dismisses all saints. Fourth, their relics. Fifth, their images. Sixth, he denies out of hand that the Virgin Mary enjoys any special relationship to either God or man. Seventh, he has abolished all monasteries and nunneries as abominations. Eighth, he rejects priests as power-grasping functionaries. And ninth, it must be obvious by now that he rejects the Pope in Rome as unnecessary to the operation of God’s church in France.’

  The marquis was hesitant about accepting so radical a doctrine, but when he passed the Institutes along to the abbé, he confided, ‘What I like about Calvin’s system is the way it works with civil government to create a stable, just social order. I’ve become really irritated by the confusions in our land.’ He was correct in assuming that Calvin sponsored civil order, for in Geneva he taught that the governance of his church must rest with four groups of serious men: first, a body of brilliant doctors to explicate theology and prescribe how men and women ought to behave; second, clergymen to interpret this theology to the general public; third, a body of all-powerful elders to assume responsibility for the church’s survival and act as watchdogs of the community’s behavior, and when they uncover a miscreant, turn him or her over to the city magistrates for civil punishment; fourth, a collection of deacons to perform God’s great work of collecting alms, running orphanages, teaching children and consoling the sick.

  ‘I like his sense of order,’ the marquis said.

  ‘Where would you fit in?’ his priest asked.

  ‘Certainly not a doctor. I’m a stupid man, really. I could never learn Greek, let alone Hebrew. And I’d not be pastor, that’s certain.’ When he shrugged his shoulders, the priest laughed, recalling the scrapes this handsome man had engineered.

  ‘I don’t think I’d like to be an elder,’ the marquis continued. ‘The women, you know. I’m not intended to be a watchdog of other people’s morals. But I could be a deacon. I could work for the welfare of a system like Calvin’s.’ He paused to reflect upon the fact that for most of his life he had been just this, a man trying to help where needed. ‘Yes,’ he said loudly, ‘I could be a deacon.’ Then he burst into laughter. ‘But I’d want to be very careful who the elders were. I don’t want to enforce the rules of some damned snoop-snoot.’

  When the Abbé Desmoulins returned the Institutes to the marquis he was deeply worried: ‘The four orders we spoke about I understand. They’re needed to ensure civil tranquillity and order in the church. But the doctrine that even prior to birth all men are divided between the few who are saved and the many who are perpetually damned … That’s very unCatholic.’

  ‘I knew you’d have trouble with that,’ the marquis said eagerly. ‘I did myself.’

  He led the priest to a corner of the garden, where under branching trees beside a low stone wall erected some three hundred years earlier the two men analyzed this fundamental doctrine of the burgeoning religion, and the marquis offered the bald, simplified interpretation of Calvin’s thought that was gaining currency among non-theological groups: ‘It conforms to human experience, Abbé. In this village you and I can name men who were saved from birth and others who were doomed from the moment the womb opened. Such men are damned. God has put his thumb upon them and they are damned, and you know it and so do I.’

  ‘Yes,’ the priest said slowly, ‘they are damned, and proof of their damnation is visible. But by faith they can be saved.’

  ‘No!’ the marquis said sharply. ‘There is to be no more of this salvation by faith.’

  ‘You speak as if you’d accepted the teachings of Calvin.’

  ‘I think I have. It’s a man’s religion. It’s a religion for all of us who want to move forward. There are the saved who do the work of the world. There are the damned who stumble through life headed only for a waiting grave.’

  ‘And you’re one of the saved?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because God has given signs. This vineyard. My castle. My high position in this village. Would He have given me these if He did not intend to assign me to some great task?’

  But when the abbé studied the Institutes with his background of religious speculation, he found that Calvin had preached no such fatalistic doctrine. Only God in the secrecy of His wisdom and compassion knew who was saved and who not, and high estate on earth was unrelated to one’s ultimate estate in heaven. All children were to be baptized, because all had an equal hope for salvation: ‘But I judge that most will not be saved, according to Dr. Calvin.’

  An assignment which would encourage the marquis to believe that he was among the saved was at hand, for when the king in Paris heard of the growth of Calvinism in the towns along the Flemish border, he dispatched a Catholic general at the head of twelve hundred stout Catholic yeomen, and they lashed about the countryside, maiming and killing, and leading errant Protestants back into the customary fold. In late 1562, with the boy king dead and Mary on her way back to Scotland a widow, the Marquis de Caix rallied two hundred of his men who had never heard of John Calvin or Geneva, either, and marched forth to do battle. It should have been a rout, twelve hundred against two, but the marquis was so able in the saddle and so grand a leader to his men that they repelled the invaders, chasing them fifteen miles south and inflicting heavy damages.

  Among the foot soldiers who routed the Catholics was the wine-maker, Giles de Pré, who, when he returned home weary and triumphant, announced to his wife that he was now a Huguenot. When she asked what this word meant, he could not explain, nor could he tell her what his new religion stood for, nor had he heard of the Institutes, or Geneva. But he knew with striking clarity what his decision entailed: ‘It’s an end of priests. No more bishops shouting at us what to do. That big monastery, we’ll close it down. People will behave themselves, and there will be order.’

  Slowly the village of Caix became a Huguenot center, but with almost none of the changes predicted by De Pré in effect. The good Abbé Desmoulins continued as before, arguing forcefully with the marquis against the theory of predestination. When the bishop arrived from Amiens he thundered in the same old way, except that now he fulminated against Calvin and the Huguenots. In 1564 John Calvin, the most significant Frenchman of his era, died in Geneva, but his influence continued to spread.

  In 1572 the Marquis de Caix, veteran of nine battles in which Huguenots confronted royal armies, decided to visit Geneva to see for himself what changes Calvinism sponsored when it actually commanded a society, and with his chief farmer Giles de Pré, set out on horseback for the distant city. Any Huguenot had to be careful these days in traveling about France, for that old tigress Catherine de Medici waged ceaseless war against them, even though she had long since ceased being the legal queen; and if a Protestant like the Marquis de Caix, with his powerful military reputation, dared to move about, he was apt to be pursued by a real army and slain on the spot. So the two travelers moved cautiously, like two rambling farmers, eastward toward Strasbourg, then south to Besançon and across the low mountains into Geneva.

  The visit was a disaster. The free-and-easy marquis found that Calvin’s successors were terrified lest their Protestant Rome, as some called it, be overturned by Catholic princes storming up from the south. Extreme caution ruled the city, with synods condemning men to be burned for theological transgressions. When the marquis, wearied by his long journey, sought some inn where he could employ the services of a maid to ease his bones and comfort him, the innkeeper turned deathly pale: ‘Please, monsieur, do not even whisper …’

  ‘You must have some girls?’

  The innkeeper placed his two hands upon the wrist of his guest and said, ‘Sir, if you speak like that again, the magistrates …’ He indicated that at some spot not far from there—where, he never knew—there would be spies: ‘Catholics trying to destroy our city. Protestants ready to trap men like you.’

  ‘I seek some merriment,’ the marquis said.

  ‘In Geneva there is no merrime
nt. Now eat, and say your prayers, and go to bed. The way we do.’

  Wherever they moved, the two Frenchmen encountered this sense of heavy censorship, and it was understandable. The city, inspired by fear of a Catholic attack on the one hand and Calvin’s severe Protestantism on the other, had evolved what later historians would describe as ‘that moral reign of terror.’

  ‘This is not what I had in mind,’ the marquis confided to his farmer. ‘I think we had better quit this place while we have four legs between us. These maniacs would chop a man in half … and all because he smiled at a pretty girl.’

  They slipped away from Geneva without ever having announced themselves to the authorities, and during the long ride back home they often halted at the edge of some upland farm, sitting beneath chestnut trees as they discussed what they had seen. ‘The trouble must rest with Geneva,’ the marquis said. ‘We’re not like that in France, spies and burnings.’

  ‘The good far outweighs the bad,’ De Pré argued. ‘Perhaps they have to do this until the others are disposed of.’

  ‘I caught the feeling they were doing it because they liked to do it.’

  The travelers reached no conclusion, but the marquis’s suspicions deepened, and he might have changed his mind about Protestantism as the solution to the world’s evils had he not become aware that along the roads of France there was a considerable movement of messengers scurrying here and there, and he began to wonder if perchance they were looking for him. ‘What are they after?’ he asked De Pré, but the farmer could not even make a sensible guess.

  Since it was mid-August, there was no necessity to frequent towns or cities in search of accommodation, so the men slept in fields, keeping away from traveled routes, and in this way moved across northern France toward the outskirts of Rheims. On the morning of August 25 they deemed it safe to enter a small village north of that city, and as they did so, they found the populace in a state of turmoil. Houses were aflame and no one was endeavoring to save them. Two corpses dangled from posts, their bowels cut loose. A mob chased a woman, caught up with her, and trampled her to death. Other fires were breaking out and general chaos dominated the village.