The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  The two men used their lances for the better part of an hour, with the six precautionary gunmen ranged behind them to fire in the event that some confused beast turned to threaten the royal hunter. Saltwood, without either gun or hog-spear, watched with a kind of detached horror as one great animal after another stumbled to its knees, gushing blood; at numerous times he could hold out his hand and touch the stampeding antelopes sweeping past. The only danger a child would have had in that mad affair would be if it stumbled beneath the flying hooves or got in the way of some sportsman’s rifle.

  ‘Enough!’ someone finally shouted, and when Saltwood got to the prince to take away the bladed-spear, he saw that he was completely covered with blood, like some inept country butcher. In the celebration that followed, one local gentleman shot off his own arm while firing a salute in honor of the heroic young visitor, and Friddley gave a stirring address of thanks to the hundreds of Bloemfontein people who had arranged the shoot: ‘On this day we have slain six hundred and forty animals, each larger than a horse, plus thousands of smaller beasts we will not bother to register. Our glorious Sailor Prince proved that he is as brave on land as he is at sea, and we can assure the queen that we watched with manly pride the extreme courage he displayed when faced by the thunder of those enraged beasts. We are sorry that His Royal Highness was deprived of his lion, which we have no doubt he will confront and shoot before he leaves these shores.’

  As an afterthought he added, ‘This great onslaught was no willful waste of God’s creatures. Our faithful Kaffirs need not go hungry this night.’

  And since there was no stopping Friddley once he got going, he went on to observe: ‘It was a very exciting day, and were His Royal Highness to live for a hundred years, I do not believe he could ever see such a scene again, for the game in these parts is fast disappearing.’

  Prince Alfred sent his mother such a glowing account of Richard Saltwood’s hospitality that when her prime minister raised a matter of importance which concerned both India and Natal, she put forward the name of the master of De Kraal, pointing out: ‘Saltwood’s familiar with both places. Give him the job.’ And thus she granted Cupid one more chance to launch his arrows.

  At the age of seventy-one Richard was approached by the Natal government on a negotiation which would require some delicacy: ‘Natal’s a great land for sugar, but there’s damned little we can accomplish unless we find labor.’

  ‘You’ve got the Zulu,’ Richard said. ‘Put them to work.’

  ‘Zulu don’t tame easy, old chap. Not like your Xhosa after this cattle madness. No Zulu will work in the fields; won’t use his hands. Says it’s undignified. Women do such work. We’ve brought in a couple of Chinese, but the damned Chinamen won’t work for the ten shillings a month we offer. They want to save money and buy their own shops.’

  ‘So you’re suggesting Indians?’

  ‘Couple of thousand of them, ten shillings a head, we won’t know what to do with all the sugar. They’ve been a success in Mauritius and the West Indies. Why not Natal?’

  ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘The necessary laws have been passed. Now we must go to India and collect them in an orderly way. You did a fine job with those German chappies, and we’re sure you can do the same with Indians.’

  At his age, Richard would have preferred keeping close to De Kraal with his young grandson, but he had the energy to accept this arduous task, and when he learned that the queen herself recommended him, he had to accept.

  More than forty years had passed since he fought in India, and when his ship reached Madras he was struck by the changes, for he entered that port barely eighteen months after the terrible Indian Mutiny. That bloody uprising had been suppressed after grievous loss on both sides, and it was a jittery peace that prevailed.

  ‘Soldiers that we trained,’ an officer at Government House recited, ‘turned against us. Burning, looting, murdering. And do you know why? Because of those damned bullets at Dumdum.’ Noticing Saltwood’s quizzical look, he added, ‘The new cartridges for the Enfields were greased at one end and had to be bitten—before use in muzzle loaders, that is. Rumor spread that the grease was pig fat, and the Muslims wouldn’t touch it. Said we did it to humiliate their religion.’

  ‘Our problem was red earth,’ Saltwood muttered to himself.

  ‘Whassat?’

  ‘Our Kaffirs fought us because they needed red earth from one of our farms for their ceremonies. Hundreds died for red earth.’

  More significant for Saltwood was the disappearance of John Company from the Indian scene. Even before the mutiny was quelled, Queen Victoria had signed the act which transferred the subcontinent to the crown, and after two centuries of deadly rivalry with the Dutch, the English company was dead.

  ‘Maybe the businessmen should have retained power,’ the officer said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’d have dealt differently with the rebels.’ The bitterness of the traditional colonial officer came through: ‘A few of the leaders—the really bad ones who killed our people—they were hanged. But we have hundreds walking around with the blood of Englishmen on their hands. “Clemency Canning” they call our viceroy. By gad, his father, the real Canning, he’d have given them clemency at the end of a rope. Our Canning said it wouldn’t do to make martyrs of them. More trouble than greased cartridges. Saltwood, I saw our women and children at Allahabad—hacked to death or tossed into a well still breathing. “Clemency Canning,” damn him.’ Saltwood was to hear endless repetition of these complaints.

  He was furiously busy during his stay at Madras, ironing out the hitches in the labor contracts, consulting with recruiting agents; nevertheless, he was able to accomplish his commission, and one afternoon he stood in a large compound at the edge of town where nine hundred Indians squatted on the ground, each praying that he would be chosen to fill one of the two hundred vacancies that would enable him to escape the poverty of India. In less than two hours Saltwood had made his selection, but as he strode out of the compound, the three Desai brothers grabbed at him: ‘Please, Sahib, Great Master, we go to your country, too.’

  ‘All places taken. You’ll have to wait for the next ship.’

  ‘Please, Great Sahib!’ And in the time remaining before his departure, these Desais dogged his steps, walking for miles behind his carriage, waiting at the gates to Government House, desperately striving to keep themselves before him. They would nod, break a pathway for him through crowds, repeat their names, tug at his arm: ‘Please, Great Sahib, it is a matter of life and death.’

  And always they grinned, showing very white teeth. Eventually they wore Saltwood down, so that he asked the captain of the Limerick, ‘Got space for three more?’

  ‘Well, my friend, that’s a question,’ the captain said. ‘This is not a slave ship I run.’

  ‘Captain, Captain!’ the three Desais cried, bleating like injured sheep. ‘You are a very great captain. Surely you can arrange …’

  ‘Well, maybe I can fit them in.’ The Desais kissed his hands, came weeping to do the same with Saltwood. ‘You will never regret this,’ they assured him.

  So two hundred and three Indian men were certified for passage to Natal on ten-year contracts, after which they were to return home, but when Saltwood reported to the Limerick to see her off, he found some five or six hundred Indians ready to sail, many of them women. The three Desai brothers, grinning happily, had five extremely attractive women in tow.

  ‘Our wives,’ they explained.

  ‘You’re not Muslim,’ Saltwood growled. ‘You don’t have more than one wife.’

  ‘These two,’ the Desais said. ‘Our wives’ sisters.’

  ‘They can’t sail with you. Men only. You work ten years, then come back to your wives.’

  There was no great wailing. Life in India, especially after the mutiny, was difficult, and if this was the way these men were to earn their living, so be it. But that night at Government House, Saltwood raised the quest
ion with an official, who coughed and said, ‘Well, there is some rubbish in the law about taking wives to Natal. But you certainly don’t want that, do you? Take wives along, every man will have ten children in ten years.’

  ‘Do you want them to live without women for ten years?’

  ‘Do some of them good.’

  ‘We have found in South Africa that it’s inhuman to keep men separated from their women, and I’ll have none of it.’ His arguments prevailed; the government conceded that in future, women should accompany their men and work with them in the sugar fields, and it was then that some wag posted a letter to Punch detailing the further adventures of Cupid Saltwood, and soon the caricaturist had a new series showing the diapered Saltwood hovering with his bow and arrow over Indian couples working the sugar in the fields of Natal.

  His successful mission to India, and the subsequent landing of young, healthy coolies with their wives, added the final complexity to the South African racial crucible: Bushman, Hottentot, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaner, Englishman, Coloured, and now the Indian.

  When the cane workers, arriving under contract, were in place, ‘passenger Indians’ who paid their own way to Natal set themselves up as shopkeepers, and together, these initial groups grew to three-quarters of a million within the century. And though all were repeatedly offered free passage and bonus money if they would return to India, few were foolish enough to accept. They had found life so sweet in the land of Shaka that they intended staying.

  Richard had succeeded beyond expectations. The Indians were happy to be in Natal and the white farmers were glad to have them. For his enterprise in handling this migration, and especially his foresight in also bringing wives, he received from the queen herself a letter which formed the capstone in his life: ‘Because of your generous services to the Royal Family and the Throne, and in so many capacities, we wish you to come to London to receive a knighthood from our hands.’

  When the ceremonies at court ended, Sir Richard Saltwood of De Kraal boarded his first train and rode down to Salisbury, where in the ancient hang-tile house beneath the sentinel oaks and chestnuts he sat with his older brother, Sir Peter, looking across the river at the still-glorious cathedral. They spoke of many things; Sir Peter was no longer in Parliament, having surrendered that seat to his son, but like all the Saltwoods, he was interested in everything.

  ‘Tell me, Richard, what’s to be done with the Dutchmen out there?’

  ‘The Boers, or Afrikaners as some call them. They’re a special breed. A real Dutchman came out not long ago, a clergyman from Amsterdam, intending to make his life there. I knew him well, and after six months he sat in my house and said, “I’m going back to civilization. These people don’t even speak proper Dutch. They worship in a fashion we discarded two centuries ago. Few have read any book but the Bible, and even there, only the Old Testament.” And he returned to Holland.’

  ‘What did the locals say?’

  ‘That’s where it gets complicated. You’ve got to understand that the visiting Dutchman was talking about emigrant farmers who trekked—maybe fourteen thousand of them. But you must remember there were other thousands who did not trek. They still form the majority in the colony, and they don’t know whether to love or hate their brothers up north. Our Amsterdam clergyman was trying to change the trekker Boers, but they are set in their ways. It’ll take more than a Holland predikant to push that lot into the nineteenth century.’

  ‘Are their ways so old?’

  Sir Richard sat with his fingers propping his chin, and hesitated about answering, because what he said next would determine the nature of his reply to Sir Peter’s major question about the probable future, and he knew that Peter still carried much weight in London. Very carefully he said, ‘The ways of the Boer are very old indeed. And the ways of the Englishman are very modern. Sooner or later the two must come into real conflict.’

  ‘War?’

  ‘I don’t know. If somehow we could maintain relations with them, the chasm could be bridged. But look at what happened to Tjaart van Doorn, the man who sold me his farm. Peter, you should come to South Africa and see it. No cathedrals visible from it, but a glorious place.’

  ‘What about Van Doorn?’

  ‘Same age as me. Same degree of energy. Splendid fellow—he stood at my side in forty skirmishes against the Kaffirs.’

  ‘But what about him?’

  ‘When he emigrated from our area … wrote a first-class letter giving his reasons. He battled Mzilikazi, then stormed down into Natal and helped destroy Dingane. Then fled to some valley far and gone. Lives there with Kaffirs, a few families like his own. No books, no newspapers, no ideas. None of the children can read. Lost. Lost.’

  ‘But if he’s fallen back into the bush, why fear him?’

  ‘Because the Tjaart van Doorn I knew was a powerful man. You don’t have men like that in England. Carved out of solid rock. Peter, if your government insults this man, or enrages him, there could be hell to pay.’

  ‘What do you want us to do?’

  ‘Conciliate.’

  ‘Bosh.’

  Without discussing the matter openly, the brothers agreed that since this would probably be the last time they would ever meet, they ought to take a traditional family excursion to Stonehenge and perhaps on to Oriel College in Oxford, where Sir Richard’s grandson would one day be a student, like the three grandsons of Sir Peter. They arranged their schedules, told the grooms to prepare the horses, and one morning Peter said, ‘Shall we saddle up and see the Stones?’

  ‘Capital!’ And within the hour they were on their way with a small retinue of servants.

  They halted at Election Elm at Old Sarum, and under its branches Sir Peter said, ‘I was the last member of Parliament to come from this wonderful borough. Back in 1832 I think it was. When Sir John Russell proposed his bill outlawing the rotten boroughs, I amazed everyone by supporting it. The day for that kind of privilege had passed.’ He sighed. ‘But this old tree sent some sterling men to Parliament, none better than Father.’ He chuckled. ‘Did you hear how I got the seat?’ He told how the Proprietor had brought him here, grumbling all the while, then handed him the ballot with his name inscribed. ‘He said he feared I was one of those young radicals. I must have been forty, but he liked members to be in their seventies. Said that by then they had some sense.’

  By the time they reached Stonehenge the two old men were tired, and they decided not to try the longer ride to Oxford. ‘It was a dear place,’ Sir Peter said. ‘I collected all my ideas at Oriel. They weren’t very good, really, but they sufficed. My son feels the same way. And your grandson will, too. How old is the boy?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Is he bright?’

  ‘Average, like all of us.’

  After Richard said this the brothers fell silent, and finally Peter, with tears in his eyes, asked, ‘Did you ever hear anything about David in America?’

  ‘He disappeared somewhere in Indiana.’

  There was prolonged silence as the brothers looked at the fallen stones on which their mother and their grandmother had sat during family picnics. Then Peter said, ‘Tell me about Hilary,’ but before Richard could speak, he added, ‘You know, I suppose, that his visit home with that nigger wife was a disaster.’

  ‘It was a disaster everywhere,’ Richard said. ‘Poor fellow, they both had their throats cut one night. No one ever knew who did it.’

  ‘Those two dead. We two, knights of the realm. I think Mother would have been satisfied. She was dreadfully practical, you know.’ He stared at the ancient stones so loved by his family and repeated what he had told Richard almost sixty years ago: ‘This is always to be your home. I mean, here and Sentinels. Do come back.’ But each brother knew there would be no revisiting, not for them. But for their children’s children this would always be a lodestar.

  When Frank Saltwood, grandson of Sir Richard, attended Oriel College during the years 1879–1881, he found it to be a luminous center for th
eological discussion, but like his forebears, he avoided any deep intellectual discussion. In the Michaelmas Term of his final year he began to take notice of a curious scholar who flitted in and out of Oxford, now attending lectures, now arguing in pubs, and then disappearing for months. Frank was not even certain what college this person belonged to, or whether he was a tutor or a fellow student.

  Since he appeared so much older, Frank assumed he must be some itinerant lecturer attached temporarily to a prestigious college like Balliol or Christ Church, a retiring man of poor family whose clothes seemed out of place, whose coat was always buttoned to the chin, and whose trousers were invariably of an odd fabric. He had dark reddish hair, a heavyset body and watery blue eyes, which he shifted away from any direct stare.

  As the time approached when he must take his final examinations and leave Oriel, Frank felt keenly the unique beauty of Oxford, and on days when he should have been studying he wandered along the Thames, listening to birds he had not known in South Africa, and wasted his time looking back at the profile of the city, with its domes and towers standing as proudly as they had four hundred years ago. He was oppressed by the ancient dignity of this place as compared to the raw youth of his homeland, and he began to generate that ambivalence which all South Africans experienced who came here for their studies.

  In fact, he fell into quite a funk, the sharp direction which he had known up to now blunted by his oscillations between Oxford and De Kraal. For whole days he wandered the streets of Oxford, leaving his rooms at Oriel and aimlessly visiting the nearby colleges, not for intellectual enrichment in preparation for his exams, but rather to look at the great quadrangles as if he were leaving a place he cherished, never to see it again.

  He would enter the gateway to some college in which he had never attended a lecture and stand there like a tripper down from London, staring at the beautiful façades of the buildings that outlined the square, imagining the great men who had lived in those rooms or studied in those halls. He was not good at political or literary history, and he certainly could not associate the notable graduates of Oxford with their colleges, but from the conversation of his father and from hints picked up during his residence at Oriel, he vaguely knew that great men of England had come to their studies in this city: Samuel Johnson, Cardinal Wolsey, Charles James Fox and the two Williams, Penn and Pitt, who had left Oxford to represent Old Sarum in Parliament.