The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away … So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.’

  On their return, the mourners reached the point at which Saltwood and Saul must head east for Golan, and it seemed to the missionary that his life and Tjaart’s were as divergent as the directions they would now follow; he had been as close to a Van Doorn during these past days as he would ever be, and this moved him to say fervently, ‘Tjaart, don’t ride with the rebels. Don’t seek tragedy.’

  ‘You?’ Tjaart asked. ‘You worry about my soul?’

  ‘Concerning the slave girl, Emma, who has caused so much bitterness. I want to buy her.’

  ‘A dominee? Buying a De Kraal slave?’

  ‘Her and her parents.’

  ‘Where would you get the money?’

  ‘I’d write home … to my mother.’

  The fatuousness of this statement amused all the Van Doorns, and for the first time since the death of the Hammer they broke into laughter. ‘He’ll write home to his mother!’ Tjaart mimicked. But he did agree to sell the slaves.

  Even as the laughter echoed, the final scenes of the futile uprising were being enacted to the north, where well-trained English soldiers pinned down a ragtag commando of seventy dissident Boers, most of whom surrendered without a shot. A few of the ringleaders escaped to fight a bitter-end clash, but when it ended, Johannes Bezuidenhout, brother of Frederick, who had started the troubles, lay dead. The first abortive rebellion was ended.

  It was a sound that never before had been heard in this part of the world: two slow-footed drummers marching alongside a cart in which stood six manacled men and beating out the pace of death. The two horses, groomed for the occasion, hauled the last of the Bezuidenhout rebels into a beautiful valley surrounded by comforting hills. The six men had been sentenced to death, but one had been reprieved: before his life in jail began he must stand tied by the neck to the gallows while his five companions were hanged.

  The place chosen for the hanging was so appallingly named, and the events it would witness so hideous, that it would reverberate in South African history: Slagter’s Nek—The Neck of the Slaughterer.

  The crowd of witnesses was great. All revolutionaries not condemned were required to stand in the shadow of the gallows, as were members of the men’s families, and the two widows of the Bezuidenhouts already dead. Near three hundred militia were present to control passions: English troops in red, Hottentot militia in marching gear, and loyal Boers in the rough dress of the commando. And in command of all rode a most extraordinary man: the son of the mayor of Albany, New York, in the new United States of America.

  Colonel Jacob Glen Cuyler, forty years old and a fine figure of a man, had been born on the eve of the American Revolution into a loyalist family. When his parents refused to support the revolution, they fled to Canada, where young Jacob joined the British army. Because of his Dutch heritage, it seemed sensible to send him to South Africa, where he landed with the second English invading force of 1806. A man of courage and intelligence, he prospered in the new colony, rising to rank of colonel and magistrate of a large district south of Graaff-Reinet.

  He was a foe of revolutionaries. They had driven him from his home in America and left him with indelible memories: when he came to South Africa he brought with him two handsome portraits of his parents, completed shortly before his death by Major John André, who lived with the Cuylers before his execution as an English spy.

  Colonel Cuyler, acting under strict orders from Cape Town, was determined that these hangings be conducted with propriety. It was he who had suggested the two drummers; it was he who had stopped at Golan Mission on the way north to tell Missionary Saltwood: ‘It’s always proper to have a clergyman present at a hanging. Gives religious sanction and helps control the doomed men.’

  No one who attended the hangings at Slagter’s Nek would ever forget them; women and men would sometimes cry in the night, not because of the hangings, which occurred often in those days, but because of the soul-wrenching thing that happened.

  When the five condemned men were led to the gallows, they were forced to climb upon movable platforms and stand at attention, hands and feet tied, as the ropes were attached to their necks and knotted. Some of the men accepted blindfolds, others ignored them, and when all was in readiness Cuyler ordered the drums to roll, and the platforms were kicked away. For a long, terrible moment the doomed men struggled in the air—and then the miracle happened! Four of the five ropes broke, allowing those men to fall free.

  When this occurred a great shout of joy rose from everyone, even the rows of Hottentot corpsmen. Reverend Saltwood actually jumped up and down, throwing his arms in the air and crying, ‘God be praised!’ In a frenzy of relief he clasped the men who had been so miraculously saved and knelt in the dust to untie their ankle fetters. Then he led them in prayers, which seemed to gush forth as if God Himself were rejoicing. In his exultation at this happy escape from tragedy, even though the unlucky fifth rebel dangled dead, he found himself next to Tjaart van Doorn, and in mutual joy the two enemies embraced. ‘Thank God, thank God!’ Hilary mumbled repeatedly as he and Tjaart danced in the shadow of the gallows.

  ‘Tjaart!’ Saltwood cried ecstatically. ‘You must come and worship with me. We can be friends, truly we can.’

  ‘Maybe we can,’ Tjaart said, and it was in that moment of reconciliation that the awful thing happened.

  ‘Re-form!’ Cuyler shouted. ‘Bring new ropes.’

  ‘What?’ Saltwood cried, unable to comprehend what he was hearing.

  ‘New ropes!’

  ‘But, Colonel! In English law … if the rope breaks, the man goes free!’

  As soon as Hilary voiced this ancient edict, and a good one it was, for it acknowledged that God Himself sometimes intervened to save the condemned, the crowd took up the cry, and those relatives who had been rejoicing with their reprieved men ran to the officer, reminding him of this honored tradition.

  ‘They are saved!’ the people cried. ‘You cannot hang them a second time.’

  ‘True,’ Saltwood pleaded, tugging at Cuyler’s sleeve. ‘It’s a custom all men honor. The hanging was completed when God intervened.’

  Suddenly Cuyler’s eyes hardened. He had a job to do, a revolution to quell. Having been driven away from Albany, he understood the terror that could engulf a land when revolutionary ideas were allowed to gallop across a countryside, and he intended having none of that in Africa. These men must die. So it was frustrating when this damn-fool English priest started making trouble. With a vigorous shove he knocked Saltwood back and cried to his orderly, ‘Bind that silly ass and take him away.’

  ‘No, sir, no!’ Hilary protested. ‘You will defile this land if you—’

  ‘Take him away,’ Cuyler said coldly, and soldiers seized the missionary, clapping a hand over his mouth so that he could protest no further, and dragged him off.

  Then the four survivors whom God had touched were placed once more upon the platforms, their faces ashen as fresh ropes were tied about their necks.

  It was not a roar that came from the crowd. It was not a military challenge to the new government. It was only a vast sigh of anguish that so foul a thing should be done on so fair a day. Then, from the area in which he was being held, came Saltwood’s high begging scream: ‘No! No!’

  Once more the platforms were kicked aside. This time the ropes held.

  When Tjaart van Doorn returned to De Kraal he was silent for a long while, then grimly he summoned his mother, his wife, his children, and in solemn conclave lined out the mystical litany that would be recited in die-hard Boer families from that day forward: ‘Never forget the Black Circuit when Hottentots and liars bore testimony in English courts against honest Boers. Never forget how the English have tried to banish our language. Never forget Slagter�
��s Nek, where an English officer hanged the same men twice, in disobedience to God’s law.’

  Tjaart was twenty-six now, a quiet, stubborn man emerging slowly from the shadows of his father’s flaming exuberance to assume responsibility for De Kraal. His character was not yet fully formed; he supported all his fiery father had done, even his near-treason, convincing himself that ‘Father was driven to it in desperation over the illegal acts of the English.’ But he knew he could never take the Hammer’s place as champion of the Boers; his was a calmer approach, that of the self-confident bull who rules the pasture without bellowing. It became obvious to him that English rule would have to be challenged, but when and how, he could not guess. He supposed that the invaders would make one small mistake after another, digging their own graves, until that day when the Boers would be able to resume control of their native land.

  When Colonel Cuyler returned from the hangings at Slagter’s Nek, he was so disgusted with Reverend Saltwood’s pusillanimous behavior—for so he considered it—that he submitted an angry report to Cape Town, confirming what many government officials had begun to suspect: that Hilary was an irresponsible character whose loyalties were questionable. From then on, the English segment of South Africa had little to do with the gawky missionary at the eastern edge of settlement.

  During these years Captain Richard Saltwood was conducting himself rather well in India; at Hindu hangings, of which he saw not a few, he gave way to no hysterics: ‘Blighter was caught, he gets hanged, that’s that.’

  In 1819, as a newly commissioned major with six campaigns to his credit, two with Ochterlony against the Gurkhas, losing 1814, winning 1816, he shipped home to England from his regiment, and when his transport lay to at Cape Town he fully expected to unite with his brother, who was serving somewhere as a missionary, but when he found that Hilary was four or five hundred miles distant, he was amazed: ‘This place is as big as India.’ And he surrendered any idea of trying to find him.

  He was not pleased with what he heard in Cape Town regarding Hilary’s curious behavior; one army wife said, ‘It’s the frontier, Richard. The Kaffirs, the Hottentots, the Boer farmers who can’t read or write. Our army men are stationed there only seven months. That’s about all they can take. How long’s your brother been there? Nine long years? No wonder he’s acting up.’

  An army captain who had been stationed at Graaff-Reinet was more specific: ‘It’s the moral loneliness … the intellectual loneliness. The church in London sends them books and all that, but there they are, stuck away and gone. I wouldn’t dare leave one of my men out there for even two years. They’d go to rot.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘They begin to see everything from the point of view of the natives. They learn the language, you know. Eat Kaffir food. Some of them, God forbid, take Kaffir wives.’

  ‘Not missionaries, certainly.’

  ‘Yes, even marry them. And there have been cases …’ He dropped his voice significantly to allow Major Saltwood to guess what those cases had consisted of.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ Richard asked.

  ‘There certainly is. Find him a wife.’

  ‘Can’t he find—’

  The captain interrupted, wishing to elaborate on a point which he had often considered: ‘Fact is, men everywhere are sounder stuff if they have wives. Keeps them responsible. Go to bed earlier. Eat better-prepared food. Missionaries are no different. Your brother needs a wife.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he take one?’

  ‘None to be had.’

  ‘I saw lots of women at the dance last night.’

  ‘None single.’ He ran off a list of the pretty women Richard had met, and every one was married.

  ‘They didn’t seem so last night,’ Richard said.

  ‘What you must do,’ the captain said, ‘is when you get home, find your brother a good wife. One who accepts missionaries.’

  ‘And ship her out?’

  ‘That’s the way we all do. Every ship comes into Table Bay has its quota, but never enough.’ He looked reflectively into his cup. ‘When you’re in England, and women are everywhere, they seem rather ordinary. But when you’re overseas and there are none—no white ones, that is—damn, they seem important.’ It was under this urging that Richard Saltwood drafted a letter to his brother:

  I was most fearfully disappointed not to have met you during my visit. The regiment’s home to Wiltshire with me a major, thanks to some lucky work against the Gurkhas. I find myself quite homesick for Sentinels, and wish to God you were going to be at home when I get there.

  Several people in Cape Town, religious and military alike, urged me to find you a wife when I get back to Salisbury, a task I face for myself. Send Mother a letter, quickly, telling us whether we should proceed and how. Your woman could be aboard one of the next ships to Cape Town, and I could be, too, because I’ve taken a great liking to your land. I think an English soldier could do well here, and I’m afraid I’ve gone about as far as I can in the Glorious Fifty-ninth.

  When Hilary received the letter he was at low ebb, for Golan Mission was not doing well. The rows of huts were filled with Hottentots and Xhosa seeking to avoid work under the Boers, but few were sincere Christians. Not even Emma’s parents had converted, and there was a problem with Emma herself. She was nineteen now, and a true Christian, but plans of some kind had to be made for her future; the most she could hope for was marriage to some half-Christian Xhosa; more probably she would slip back into servitude at some Boer kraal.

  Funds to support the mission were slow in coming from England, and one young man who had been seconded to relieve Hilary had taken one look at South Africa and scrambled back aboard his ship, preferring to trust his luck in India. Hilary kept himself insulated from such disappointments by cherishing his trivial accomplishments and sharing them with Emma: ‘Phambo appeared at prayers again, and I do believe he is on the way to salvation.’ Three days later, when Phambo ran off to the Xhosa camp on the other side of the Great Fish, taking with him three Golan cows, Hilary did not condemn him: ‘Poor Phambo heard temptation and could not resist, but when he returns, Emma, as I am convinced he will, we must greet him as our brother, with or without the cows.’

  Hilary refused to acknowledge the ostracism directed against him by both the Boers and the English: the former because he was an agent of the English repression; the latter because he had ‘behaved poorly’ at Slagter’s Nek. And both sides viewed him with scorn for supporting the Kaffirs against white men. One good reason why he was able to ignore the ostracism was that he rarely participated in any public gathering. His world was his church.

  But his brother’s letter suggesting that he take a wife made great sense; he was thirty-four now, worn and wasted by his exertions on a difficult frontier, and he felt the need for someone to share his spiritual burdens; if his mother, in consultation with her other sons, could comb the Salisbury scene and locate a suitable wife, the years ahead might prove more profitable both to Jesus and to His servant Saltwood. So he wrote a careful letter, advising his mother as to the requirements for a missioner’s wife in South Africa.

  He was distracted from such personal matters when Tjaart, accompanied by four Boers, galloped into the mission one morning, shouting in anxiety, ‘We need every man! The Kaffirs are marching on Grahamstown.’

  The commando waited some fifteen minutes for Saltwood to arm himself, and Hilary spent ten of these in agonizing inner debate as to whether it was Christian for him to participate in armed combat against the Xhosa, a people he loved; but he realized that until the frontier was pacified, not even missionary work could proceed, so reluctantly he took his rifle.

  ‘Bring your Hottentots, too!’ Tjaart cried, and six of them eagerly mounted up. For the English to have used armed Hottentots against the Boers had been criminal; for the Boers to use them against the Kaffirs was prudent.

  It was seventy miles from Golan Mission to the little military post at Grahamstown, and
as the Boers urged their horses onward, Saltwood reflected that only Englishmen lived in the village, yet here were the Boers galloping full speed to aid them. He was aware that Tjaart despised the English, inveighing against them at every chance, but when an English outpost was threatened by Kaffirs, the Boer commandos were always ready to saddle up. It was confusing.

  The twelve newcomers were given a cheering welcome at Grahamstown, where fewer than three hundred English and Hottentot soldiers, plus two cannon, awaited the Xhosa attack. Tjaart’s contingent meant that thirty civilians would aid the soldiers; he was distressed when the English commander divided his troops: ‘Half to the barracks southeast of town, half here with me to defend the empty town.’ He sent the women and children to the safety of the barracks, except for five, who said, ‘We’ll fight with our husbands in the town.’

  Throughout the night Hottentot scouts crept in to report the steady advance of the Xhosa horde, but Tjaart and Saltwood could not credit the numbers they recited. ‘Hottentots always exaggerate,’ Tjaart explained. ‘Whites and blacks are so much bigger, they think there’s more of us.’ But at dawn the defenders gaped in sickening awe as the slopes northeast of Grahamstown showed more than ten thousand warriors descending in three massed divisions. The noise of this multitude as they began dashing toward the settlement caused fear in every heart.

  The brow-scarred Xhosa prophet had predicted certain victory: ‘When Grahamstown falls, we have a clear run through every frontier farm from the ocean to the mountains at the north!’ Behind the exulting regiments came hundreds of women with their cooking pots and gourds, for the prophet had promised them: ‘At sunset we shall feast as never before. Redcoats and Boers alike, destroyed.’