The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘Nor am I a lady,’ Julie snapped. ‘So I can’t be expected to know, either. And I think it’s a thrilling story. So does poor Vera, because without it she’d be a widow.’

  ‘But you must admit, he does overplay it, rather.’

  ‘If I’m in trouble, first I’d want you to come riding up to rescue me. But next in line, Van Doorn.’

  The victory celebrations were so congenial, with many of the English volunteers offering toasts in reasonably good Dutch, that Van Doorn and De Groot lingered, and this delayed their arrival at the Graaff-Reinet Nachtmaal.

  When De Groot and Van Doorn, accompanied by their Coloureds, who had fought bravely, prepared for the ride home they were joined by a veldkornet who had conducted himself, as always, with notable dignity. It was Piet Retief, a farmer from the Winterberg far north; thin, tallish, with a small beard, he was a friendly, outspoken man in his fifties, but when Saltwood and Carleton came out to bid the Boers thanks and farewell, he stood apart.

  Carleton hobbled over to Van Doorn’s horse, grasped Tjaart fervently, and said, ‘Old chap, you carry my life in your saddle. May God bless you for what you did.’

  ‘I’d expect the same from you,’ Tjaart said, and the Boers left town.

  For a day and a half they were accompanied by Retief, and came to understand the perplexities that gnawed at him. He was a strange mixture, an esteemed commando leader from a Huguenot family, but also a reckless business adventurer who seemed destined to overreach himself. ‘The English sued me when the barracks collapsed,’ he grumbled, referring to a disastrous construction venture in Grahamstown.

  ‘But you had it complete,’ Van Doorn said, ‘I saw it, and you did a fine job on the magistrate’s office.’

  ‘I ran out of money. And do you know why I hadn’t any? I was always absent fighting the Xhosa to protect the very people that sued me.’

  ‘You lost everything?’

  ‘Everything. It always seems to happen that way.’

  Van Doorn thought it best not to ask about the other disasters; what he wanted to hear was Retief’s attitude toward the English government, for he was a man whose voice was being heard more and more. He spoke often about what he considered ‘the persecution of the Boers.’

  ‘The English will never give up until farmers like the three of us are ruined. Finished.’

  ‘Why would any government adopt such a policy?’

  ‘Because Keer will make them. His pressure will never cease until the Kaffirs control all the land. Look at your servants running wild over the veld …’ His voice tapered off at the sight of De Groot’s expression. ‘They’re not satisfied with robbing us of belongings and blood. They want to steal our good name, too. I see that as the English program.’

  ‘Wait, wait!’ Tjaart protested. ‘You’ve seen that men like Saltwood and Carleton are decent.’

  ‘They are good men, but they’re here in Grahamstown. Keer is in London, and every law he proposes favors the Kaffirs at our expense. The philanthropist ladies in their London parlors will continue to bleat when they hear we Boers are trying to defend our wives and children against their Kaffir darlings.’

  Van Doorn was unable to decide how much of Retief’s grievance was justified, how much an understandable animosity springing from his ruined business contracts, but before they parted, Retief raised a new bold topic about which there could be no ambiguity: ‘Tjaart, would you contribute rix-dollars to a project that Pieter Uys is contemplating? You know Uys, a very good man.’

  Van Doorn did not know him, but De Groot did, and most favorably: ‘Maybe the best Boer along the sea. What’s his plan?’

  ‘He thinks to go on an exploring trip. Up the coast into the fertile valleys along the Indian Ocean.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He thinks that one day the Boers might have to move there. I don’t want to quit my farm. And I know you wouldn’t want to, Tjaart. But it might be prudent if we looked.’

  ‘To what purpose?’ Van Doorn asked, and in years that were to come he would never forget Retief’s reply. They had reached a landmark where Retief must turn north for his farm among the mountain ranges. Up there lay the kind of place no man would willingly leave, but Retief said, ‘I fear the English are determined to drive us into the ground. Did you read Keer’s reports?’

  ‘You know I can’t read English,’ De Groot said.

  ‘Well, I read them all,’ Retief said with great force, ‘and you know what I think? After next year there will be no more slavery. They’ll take our Coloureds away from us, too, and then how will we farm?’

  ‘What has Pieter Uys to do with this?’ De Groot asked.

  ‘A wise man considers many plans,’ Retief replied. ‘Not for me or you. We can manage. But for the poor Boers who are going to be pressed down by English laws. Uys will look at the lands in Natal and tell us if we can farm them.’

  ‘Aren’t the lands already taken?’ De Groot asked.

  ‘To the north, the Zulu. To the south, a few Englishmen. But in between, magnificent valleys with ample water, trees, good land.’

  He asked again for contributions to the Uys expedition, and Tjaart had to say, ‘I have no money now. Advance it for me and I’ll pay back.’ The English had recently introduced their own monetary system, thinking to replace the Dutch that everyone used, and De Groot did have some of the crisp notes. When he handed his offering to Retief the latter took it, held it in his two hands, and allowed the sun to play upon it.

  ‘I do not like this money,’ he said.

  * * *

  Nachtmaal (night meal) was Holy Communion. It was held four times each year, and those living near the church were expected to attend each one. But Boers in remote areas were forgiven if they missed entirely for three or four years, because at the first opportunity they would come swarming in on pilgrimages that might last a month. With them they brought children to be baptized, young lovers to be married, and elders who whispered, ‘This might be my last Nachtmaal.’

  For such travelers, there could be nothing more exciting and spiritually satisfying than this joyous celebration of the Dutch Reformed Church, for in its companionship there was social renewal and in its religious services a deepened pledge to Calvinist doctrine. A week of Nachtmaal lent grace and harmony to the lives of the Boers and explained why they formed such a cohesive group.

  The rite was carefully structured: church service each day for four days, the one on Sunday lasting four hours; public weddings and baptisms; acceptance of new members into the fellowship; much time set aside for buying and selling of properties; and wonderful singing parties at which youths were almost challenged to fall in love.

  But what everyone cherished about Nachtmaal was the strengthened friendship of families who had shared common struggles: almost every man had been on commando; almost every woman had lost a baby, or a husband; and all had pondered during the difficult years their relationship to God. In the English community there was nothing similar to Nachtmaal, which was one reason why the English could never be mistaken for Dutchmen.

  In 1833 the Van Doorn wagon was not of the best for this long journey: ninety-two miles over a demanding terrain, with the sixteen oxen able to do at best eight miles a day. The cart had worn wheels and such a tattered canvas that Tjaart had been saying for some years, ‘We must find ourselves a new wagon.’ Upon his arrival at Graaff-Reinet, capital of the northeast, he was determined to acquire the best wagon possible, even if he had to trade all the sheep he was driving to the town to get it.

  But his excitement in heading north was nothing compared to his daughter’s, for she had convinced herself that when the Van Doorn wagon overtook the De Groots’ in the far middle of nothingness, they would form a kind of royal procession, and at the entrance to Graaff-Reinet, near the miraculous mountain, they would meet Ryk Naudé, who would be waiting for her like a young prince. She had practiced her speech of welcome: ‘Good afternoon, Ryk. How pleasant it is to see you again.’ She would speak to h
im as if their parting had been two days ago, not two years. She experimented with charcoal to make her eyebrows darker and red clay from the Stevens farm to touch her cheeks. She pestered her mother and the slave women to convince herself that she would be acceptable in Ryk’s eyes, and they assured her that she was a proper little lady whom any man would be pleased to have.

  She was experiencing the wonderful days of awakening, and no one watched her with more approval than Tjaart. And he told his wife, ‘Jakoba, when a girl is almost fourteen she better think about catching herself a husband. You almost waited too long.’ She had been all of sixteen when the Widower van Doorn rode seventy miles to find her, and she could remember how worried she had been. ‘Minna’s just right for her age, Tjaart. She has a good head.’

  The senior members of the family had also been attending to their appearance: Jakoba had made herself a new dress, a new bonnet, and had ordered new shoes for herself and Tjaart from Koos, an old cobbler who moved from farm to farm. Tjaart, in turn, had unpacked his one fine suit of dark clothes: coat, vest, trousers with a big front flap, felt hat with enormous brim. On the final evening, when all the attractive things were spread on the floor prior to being wrapped for the dusty journey, he took down the brassbound Bible and opened it to Isaiah, where he read: ‘ “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength?” ’ And he answered the rhetorical question by saying in his own words, ‘It is the family of Tjaart van Doorn. Traveling to Graaff-Reinet for Nachtmaal, to do You honor.’

  In the morning they started—father, mother, two sons and their families, and the girl Minna—all in their oldest, roughest clothes, the three men in broad-brimmed hats, the women in sunbonnets to protect their complexions from the sun. Four Coloureds accompanied them to tend the sixteen oxen, pitch the tents at night, and guard the large flock of sheep Tjaart intended to trade for his new wagon, and three women slaves to do the cooking and watch after the needs of the travelers. They stopped by midafternoon, for the oxen had to be outspanned in daylight hours so they could forage on the rich but sparse grass.

  They were traveling over a route with which the Van Doorn people had been acquainted for many years. Their course was a strict north-northwest, but it deviated sharply at times to allow the crossing of ravines or the circumvention of large hills; so at night, when the Southern Cross appeared, Tjaart had to correct his heading, which he did with confidence that on the morrow they would see familiar hills.

  The slow movement of the oxen—each of which responded only to its individual name—the swaying of the wagon, the soft singing of the slaves and the rhythmic walk of the men produced a kind of timeless lethargy in which there was constant movement but little change, just the grand emptiness of the veld across which not even animals moved at this time of year.

  But there was excitement! Minna, alert to the increasing nearness of Graaff-Reinet, began to display nervousness; for one thing, she kept strictly in the shade so that her complexion would be as light as possible, for she knew that Boer men treasured this in their women. When the afternoon sun threatened her face, she produced a light goatskin mask which she wore as a shield. At intervals she also smoothed her rough traveling dress as if she were already preparing to meet young Naudé. And often she joined the slave women in their singing, for her heart was fluttering and sought release. She might not be beautiful, but she was inspiring to see as she blossomed in the veld like a gray flower expanding after a long drought, and Tjaart reveled in her happiness.

  Her nervousness was caused in part by the delayed departure for Nachtmaal, which meant that the Van Doorns and De Groots would arrive not on the Wednesday as planned, but only on Friday itself, when the ceremonies would be beginning; and it was in those preliminary days, before the preaching began, that the young people conducted much of their courting.

  ‘Minna!’ her father assured her. ‘He’ll appreciate you more when you do arrive. He’ll be hungry to see you.’

  And then came the small miracle which enlivened the prospect of Nachtmaal as nothing else could have done, for out of the east, at a far distance, rose a faint sign of dust: it must have been fifteen miles away, two days of travel, but there it was, a mark in the sky. And all that first day the Van Doorns watched the pillar of dust, and at night they strained their eyes for any indication of light—a campfire perhaps—but none showed, and on the second day they looked with joy as the pillar expanded and assumed the thickness that would be caused by a large team of oxen.

  It was the De Groots, coming out of the northeast, leading a herd of cows to Nachtmaal, converging their course with that of the Van Doorns, and before evening the juncture had been made. There were kisses among the women, backslapping for the men, and the jollity of renewed friendships for the servants and slaves.

  The two wagons rode together for the next four days, at the end of which De Groot said with some confidence, ‘Tomorrow we’ll see Spandau Kop,’ and Minna was walking at the head of the procession when she cried, ‘There it is!’

  Tjaart had first seen this incredibly beautiful hill as a child, traveling to Nachtmaal with Lodevicus the Hammer, and to him it signified the beacons which God had placed in all deserts of the world for the guidance of His people. Abraham, coming out of Babylonia, had seen such reassuring signals, and Joseph, traveling home from Egypt, had seen the same. But what Tjaart had not appreciated as a child was the many-turreted chain of taller mountains that rimmed Graaff-Reinet, forming a kind of amphitheater of protection. When one came in from the flat veld, the physical appearance of this little town was overwhelming, and Tjaart saw with pleasure that his daughter was relishing the sight as he had done at her age.

  The entire town was given over to the canopied wagons of men and women who had traveled vast distances for this religious ceremony: sixty groups had already arrived, their canvas tents pitched beside their wagons, their oxen grazing in the nearby meadows, attended by the herdsmen, who were enjoying the noise and the beer as much as their white masters.

  The large square in front of the church was crammed with wagons by the time the Van Doorns arrived, but there was a tree-lined street leading to the parsonage which in some ways was preferable, for one’s wagon was not surrounded by neighbors, and here the Van Doorns and the De Groots settled down.

  It was Friday morning, and before Minna had time to seek out young Ryk Naudé, everyone had to convene in the famous white-walled church. The Van Doorns arrived just as the first long service was to begin, and they met with two situations that shocked them. The resident dominee, a Scotsman who had married a Boer girl, spoke more Dutch than English, and would have six sons, five of whom would be ordained at Graaff-Reinet, and five daughters, four of whom would marry dominees—this beloved man, a better Boer than many Boers, was absent in Cape Town, and in his place served a large, red-faced preacher from Glasgow who could barely speak intelligible Dutch; it was something to hear the burgeoning local patois delivered in a heavy Scots accent.

  And then Minna saw to her horror that Ryk was sitting with a family that had a girl fifteen or sixteen years old and of remarkable beauty.

  ‘Oh!’ she sighed, and when her father asked what was the matter, all she could do was point with trembling finger across the church. It was unfortunate that she did so, for now Tjaart saw the girl, and for the duration of the service he could not take his eyes away. She was a glorious child, and at the same time a woman; her skin was fair, but touched with red at the cheeks; her face was broad and perfectly proportioned; her neck and shoulders were frighteningly suggestive, and despite the fact that he knew he was committing sin, he began to undress her in his mind, and the fall of her clothes was more provocative than anything he had previously known.

  ‘Look at her!’ Minna whispered, and he blinked his eyes and began to look at her in a different way, and what he saw boded unhappiness for his daughter, for this girl, whoever she was, had obviously decided
that she was destined to marry Ryk Naudé, and by every feminine device, was ingratiating herself to him. Tilt of head, movement of arm, deep convincing smile, flash of white teeth—she used them all until the young man seemed quite bewildered by what was happening. Tjaart, himself so profoundly affected by the girl, knew that Minna had lost her young man, and to quieten both himself and his daughter he took her hand, and felt its trembling.

  None of the Van Doorns paid much attention to the Scots minister, who was delivering one of the dullest sermons they had ever heard; he lacked the fire of a true Calvinist predikant, keeping his voice to a monotone, with none of the tumultuous raging the Boers liked, and often his words could not be easily understood. The true fire that day rested on the benches occupied by Ryk Naudé and his new girl.

  When the sermon ended and the Boers had come out into the square, Minna, without any sense of shame, moved swiftly toward Naudé, posted herself where he could not escape her, and said boldly, ‘Hello, Ryk. I’ve been waiting to see you.’

  He nodded bleakly, well aware that he had promised two years ago to attend Minna at the next Nachtmaal they shared, but also aware that any such promises had been obviated by the dramatic arrival in town of the girl he now presented: ‘This is Aletta.’ He did not give her last name, for he had already determined that before this Nachtmaal ended, she would take his.

  Aletta was as charming to Minna as she had been to Ryk during the service, and when Minna’s father lumbered up, she was equally gracious, extending her hand and greeting him with a ravishing smile: ‘I’m Aletta Probenius. My father keeps a store.’

  ‘He’s the man I seek,’ Tjaart said, pleased that his business would keep him in touch with this exciting girl. ‘Is it true that he has a wagon for sale?’