The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Hilary now placed the child with Saul’s family, where she began learning the alphabet, the catechism and the refulgent promises of the New Testament. She proved an able student, as gifted in singing as in sewing, and before long it was her glowing black face and gleaming teeth that showed in the front rank of the mission choir.

  She was practicing under the trees one evening when Lodevicus van Doorn rode in like a white-haired avenging angel, two guns resting carelessly on his saddle. ‘I’ve come to fetch you, Emma,’ he said quietly.

  ‘She will not go,’ Saul said, trembling at the sight of the menacing guns.

  ‘If you try to stop me, Kaffir, I’ll blow your head off.’ Lodevicus did not touch either of the guns, but he did move his horse closer to Emma.

  With a dignity many of the blacks acquired at the mission, old Saul moved to protect the child, whereupon Lodevicus raised one of his guns.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ a voice cried from one side. ‘Are you mad?’

  It was Saltwood, coming to lead the choir. Unarmed, he walked directly to the muzzle of the gun, looked up at Lodevicus, and ordered: ‘Ride back to De Kraal.’

  ‘Not without my Madagascan.’

  ‘Emma lives here now.’

  ‘I have an order from the court at Graaff-Reinet which says—’

  ‘Such orders apply to runaway slaves, not to little girls seeking Jesus.’

  Van Doorn’s neck muscles stood out like the vines of a squash. ‘You goddamned meddler …’

  ‘Old friend,’ Saltwood said quietly, ‘get off that horse and let’s talk.’

  ‘I’m going to take my slave.’

  ‘Come here, Emma,’ and the little girl in her blue mission dress ran to clasp her protector.

  Van Doorn was infuriated. Emma was his property, worth a great deal of money, and he had a proper order directing her return. If he shot this Englishman now, the frontier Boers would support him and to hell with the English, but as he raised his gun, Saul stepped quietly in front of the missionary and the child, extending his arms to protect them, and there was something in this gesture which caused the Boer to hesitate. If he fired now, he would have to kill three people, and one of them a little girl. He could not do such a thing.

  But as always, Saltwood said the wrong words: ‘If you kill me, Lodevicus, the entire force of the British Empire will hunt you down to the ends of the earth.’

  From his saddle the Boer burst into a contemptuous laugh. ‘You English. You goddamned English!’ Without further comment, he wheeled his horse and headed back to the veld. He would ride through the night rather than spend it with fools like this English missionary.

  When word circulated through the farms of the Boer community that the English missionary Saltwood had stolen the slave girl Emma and provided her refuge at Golan, consternation spread among them, and meetings were convened to which participants might have to ride for fifty miles. At each the principal orator was the patriarch Lodevicus the Hammer, who saw more clearly than most the dangers men like him faced.

  ‘I can see the inevitable,’ he ranted. ‘The English want our Hottentots to live like Boers. Our lands are to be whittled down till we crowd together like Kaffirs. And mark my word, one day our slaves will be taken from us. And then our language will be outlawed and we’ll hear predikants delivering their sermons in English.’

  A farmer from near Graaff-Reinet, who had seen the fairly amicable relations that existed there between Boers and English officials, said, ‘False fears. We can abide the English till they leave again.’

  Quiet happenings proved that he was wrong. This time the English invaders showed no sign of quitting the country, and indignation ran through the isolated community when three new clergymen were assigned to remote districts; all were Scotsmen.

  ‘You’d think we had no predikants of our own,’ the farmers cried, truly distressed at this radical change.

  ‘It’s England pressing us under the heel,’ Lodevicus announced, and he refused to send any further tithing to the church.

  The fault was not England’s. The government knew that frontier congregations longed for predikants who could speak Dutch, and those in charge wanted to send out such men, but there simply were none. Considering all the colonization under way throughout the world at this period, South Africa was the only major settlement in which organized religion failed to provide enough ministers to accompany the outward thrusters. When this deficiency became apparent, the government did the next best thing: it imported large numbers of young Scots Presbyterians who made the easy jump from John Knox to John Calvin; they were fine public servants, men of great devotion and a tribute to their religion.

  Lodevicus, of course, was unaware of England’s good intentions in this matter, and even if they had been explained to him, he would have damned them; all he was concerned with was that the new predikants were from an alien country, and would be bringing alien ideas. It was clear to him that they had been inserted to destroy Boer influence; one element of his gloomy prediction was being proved true.

  Since there were no schools anywhere near De Kraal, Lodevicus was not personally involved in the next scandal, but he was outraged when he heard from farmers in settled areas like Swellendam that English was invading the schools.

  ‘Shocking!’ one man told a group of Boers. ‘My son Nicodemus goes to school on Monday—what does he find? A new teacher. An Englishman who tells him, “From now on we speak English,” or something like that. Nicodemus, he don’t speak English, so how does he know?’

  Bitter resentment developed among the Boers, and many a family, after the Bible reading at night, reflected on the warnings Lodevicus had uttered: ‘It’s coming around the way he said. First our church, then our school. Next we’ll be forbidden to speak Dutch in court.’

  This prediction had scarcely been voiced when a farmer near Graaff-Reinet who wanted to lodge a complaint about a boundary was informed that he must submit his brief in English. This provoked further argument, with Lodevicus resuming his role as prophet: ‘Most sacred possession a man can have, even surpassing the Bible, I sometimes think, is his native tongue. A Boer thinks different from an Englishman and expresses that thinking in his own language. If we don’t protect our language everywhere, church and court, we surrender our soul. I say we must fight for our language as we would for our lives, because otherwise we can never be free.’

  Lodevicus, like all the Van Doorns, was obsessed with freedom, but only for himself. When one Englishman argued: ‘Historical parallelism, old man. When the Huguenots came here, you Dutch were in command and forbade them to speak French. Now we’re in charge, and we want you to speak English. Only fair.’

  At such reasoning the old man exploded: ‘Goddamn! This place was never French! Only Dutch! It will never be English either. You learn the Dutch of the Afrikaner, damn you.’ He would have chastised the visitor had not others intervened. The Englishman sought to apologize, but Lodevicus was caught in a mighty rage and, his neck muscles bulging, he shouted, ‘Never, never will our soil be English.’ Storming about the room like a Biblical patriarch, he thundered, ‘You will have to kill me first … and then my sons … and then their grandsons … forever.’

  It was against this background of rebellious thought that Lodevicus the Hammer rose against the English in 1815. Tjaart was absent with the herds when a horseman came riding up to De Kraal late one evening. ‘Van Doorn! Lodevicus van Doorn!’ he shouted, leaping from the saddle.

  The white-bearded old man stepped outside. ‘Ja, broeder, wat is dit?’

  Breathlessly: ‘Hottentots are killing Boers!’ And when Lodevicus grabbed him by the neck, he stuttered: ‘Frederick Bezuidenhout … lives thirty miles north of here … the court at Graaff-Reinet …’

  ‘I know that court,’ Lodevicus snapped. ‘What’s it done now?’

  ‘Summoned Bezuidenhout … charges of abusing a servant.’ It seemed that when the accused, a rough, unlettered renegade, refused to appear, a lieutenant an
d twenty soldiers were sent to fetch him. Unwisely, all the soldiers were Hottentots, and when Bezuidenhout retreated to a cave, gunfire was exchanged, and the highly trained Hottentots shot him dead. The Bezuidenhout family vowed vengeance.

  Lodevicus reacted spontaneously: ‘Good riddance. Those thieves.’ He knew the Bezuidenhouts as border ruffians who respected neither English rule nor Dutch, and as veldkornet he had often been required to discipline them. ‘Afrika voor de Afrikaner!’ was their battle cry, and they hated the English with a passion equaled only by their abhorrence of those Dutch who served what they called ‘The Lords of London.’

  They were an unregenerate lot and Lodevicus could not feel sorry over the death of Frederick. ‘Van Doorn!’ the messenger shouted. ‘Are you listening? Hottentots sent by the English Kaffir-lovers murder a Boer.’ He shook the master of De Kraal and cried almost plaintively, ‘We need you, Lodevicus Hammer.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To lead the Boers.’

  ‘Against who?’

  ‘The English. Who plan to kill off all us Boers.’

  Van Doorn, much as he hated the English, could not accept this ridiculous statement. He started to tell the messenger that he was forgetting the early days when trekboers armed their Hottentots to fight the Xhosa, but the man was persistent.

  ‘Lodevicus Hammer, if we let the English do this thing to one of us, they will do it to all,’ and his arguments were finally so persuasive that the old man asked, ‘What do you want of me?’ and the messenger said, ‘Lead us against the English.’

  ‘And where would we get the troops?’

  Softly the messenger said, ‘The Bezuidenhouts say we must go to Kaffirs.’

  Neither man spoke, for this was the moment of treason, the moment when loyalties and moral judgments hung in the balance. Lodevicus van Doorn knew well that the ultimate battle his people would have to fight would be against the blacks, and he had seen how fearful that struggle could be. His father Adriaan, his mother Seena, his wife Rebecca had all been slain by the Xhosa, and he in turn had decimated their ranks. To ally with them now was unthinkable.

  ‘The only Kaffir this Boer wants to speak with is a dead one,’ he growled.

  ‘No, no! Van Doorn, listen to me. With the Kaffirs we can drive out the English. When that’s done we can settle with the Kaffirs.’

  ‘They butchered my family,’ Lodevicus said grimly.

  ‘And now we use them for our purposes.’ He explained how this could be done, and concluded: ‘I’ve heard you say yourself, Vicus, that the English will destroy us. They will stamp on the backs of the Boers. They will make us say “Mister” to the Hottentots eating at our own table.’ On and on he went, driving home the message that the Englishman was the real enemy: ‘Look what he did to you in the Black Circuit.’

  This was the telling blow. Lodevicus, who had hammered the Kaffirs, took a great step down the road to treason: ‘The enemy that matters is the enemy of today. He is white and English.’

  ‘I know where we can meet with the Xhosa generals,’ the messenger whispered, and without conceding that he would actually unleash these fearsome warriors against the English, Lodevicus did agree to talk with them.

  Through the dark night the two conspirators rode east to the Great Fish, forded it upstream from a rude fort, and sought the dwelling of Guzaka, son of Sotopo. When at last Lodevicus faced the warrior, the two adversaries glared at each other in silence. Guzaka had slain three members of the Van Doorn family; the Hammer had captained the destruction of more than three thousand Xhosa. Finally Guzaka rose, extended his two hands, and said, ‘It is time.’

  They sat outside Guzaka’s hut, two grizzled warriors licking their wounds like old tomcats, their claws blunted by the years. ‘Ja, Kaffir,’ Van Doorn said slowly, ‘here stands a Van Doorn asking your help. God knows it’s not right, but what else is there?’

  ‘The Redcoats will destroy both of us,’ the white-haired Xhosa said.

  ‘We must kick them out.’

  ‘Killings, too many killings,’ Guzaka said.

  ‘Settle with them, then we’ll settle peace between us.’

  ‘But you Boers steal our lands, too.’

  ‘Did we ever drive twenty thousand across the Big Fish? It was the English who did that.’

  ‘It’s still our land,’ Guzaka said, confused by the drift of the conversation.

  ‘Old man, you and I don’t have too many years. Let us solve the land question now. We drive out the English, then you and I make peace. We each herd cattle. We share the land.’

  ‘Can we defeat the Redcoats?’ the old warrior asked.

  ‘Together we can do anything,’ Lodevicus said with fervor, and impulsively he clasped his enemy’s hand, for at that moment he truly believed those words.

  Inspired by this show of friendship, Guzaka said, ‘Tonight I shall discuss this with my headmen. Tomorrow we make the treaty.’ It was a word he knew well, for along this contested border there had been more than fifteen treaties, none with prospects more hopeful than this: Boer and Xhosa against the enemy.

  But during this parley, which might have meant so much to the frontier, a young Xhosa warrior with wild and shifting eyes who claimed to see visions and exercise prophecy—a thin man with a ridged scar across his forehead—had sat off to one side, carefully watching, his heart smoldering with hatred for Van Doorn. He remembered that years ago this huge Boer had scattered tobacco on the ground as a trap; his father had stooped to retrieve it—and fifty warriors had perished.

  So after Lodevicus and the messenger withdrew, the trembling prophet harangued his tribesmen: ‘Jackals! Cowards! Men without skins! Who is this Van Doorn who comes begging? Is he not the sorcerer who uses tobacco to slay his enemies? The blood of my people is on his hands.’

  ‘The blood of his people is on our hands,’ Guzaka replied. ‘This is the time to halt the bloodshed.’

  ‘What can this monster do for us?’ the prophet demanded.

  ‘He will help us fight the English,’ Guzaka argued. ‘With the Boers we can live in peace. With the English, never.’

  ‘If we help these Boers today,’ the scarred prophet warned, ‘they will steal our land when the battle is over. I say kill them tonight.’

  But Guzaka saw a chance to gain that lasting peace without which his people would suffer unbroken travail, and he tried vainly to support the concept of a combined attack on the English; he achieved nothing, for the prophet, inflamed by an apocalyptic vision of long-dead Xhosa generals rising mysteriously to launch an attack on both the English and the Boers, expelling them from the land, cried, ‘He is old and frightened!’ And three young warriors struck Guzaka, leader of many battles, to the ground and killed him.

  They then raged out into the night, seeking the trail by which Lodevicus had left the camp. In the mists, sixty warriors, spurred on by the prophet, fell upon the tent where Lodevicus slept. The old man reached for his gun, but before he could fire even one shot, assegais pierced his chest and he fell back.

  As he lay dying in treachery he moaned, ‘Merciful God, forgive me. Forgive me.’ As he fell back, blood gushing from his lips, he mumbled, ‘Adriaan, Seena. Rebecca, me. The circle …’

  News of the death of Lodevicus had not yet reached De Kraal when Hilary Saltwood entered the valley with Saul. Tjaart, returning from the cattle drive, eyed the missionary suspiciously, seeing him only as the Englishman who had stolen the slave girl Emma. Clasping the sjambok at his side, he flicked the long hide over the grass and growled, ‘Off these lands, Saltwood.’

  Hilary, perched on the riding seat of a small cart, felt Saul trembling next to him. ‘Put that down, Tjaart. This is no time for argument.’

  ‘Back to your Hottentots, Englishman, and take that damned Kaffir with you.’

  Saltwood’s eyes followed the line of the menacing whip, then crept up to Tjaart’s face. The Boer recognized a look of anguished appeal, and his next words were less intemperate: ‘What is it you
want?’

  ‘It’s your father, Tjaart.’

  Wilhelmina and Tjaart’s wife, who had been listening inside the house, stepped outside and stood glaring at the intruder; at the sight of the women Saltwood held back his words.

  ‘What about my father?’

  ‘He rode with the rebels.’

  ‘Damnit, man, I know that. And I join them tomorrow.’

  Lord, why me? Hilary asked himself as if in prayer. Why does it always have to be me who faces this family.

  ‘Tjaart, your father is dead.’

  The younger Van Doorn ground out his words: ‘What you say, Englishman?’ Till now they had been conversing in the language of the Boers, but in his agitation Tjaart used the missionary’s language.

  The color drained from Wilhelmina’s face. Putting her arm about her daughter-in-law’s shoulders, she drew her close to her bosom, and in that instant she thought of the long years since the day she rode north from a godless past to offer herself to Lodevicus the Hammer. They had been good years and violent. Twice her lips formed his name, and when she looked up at the stricken, bean-thin missionary she knew that he was telling the truth. Her wild old man was dead.

  ‘The Kaffirs killed him,’ Saltwood repeated. Quietly he explained that his Xhosa, Saul, had been visiting across the Great Fish and had learned of the mission to Guzaka and of the dual tragedy that ensued. When he assured them that Saul would be able to lead them to the body, Wilhelmina said softly, ‘Dominee, you must be tired. Come in.’

  That afternoon they started the grim journey; Wilhelmina was insistent that the Hammer should be buried where he fell. ‘He was a man of God but not of churches,’ she said, and she refused Saltwood’s offer of burial at the mission. At noon next day, while the Xhosa were lamenting the death of the general, Guzaka, the white men and women piled rocks above the grave of Lodevicus, whereupon the missionary offered a prayer in Dutch, after which he recited the somber passages of the Ninetieth Psalm: