The Covenant (109 page)

“Do you know where Russia is?” Saltwood asked.

As soon as he said this word, an older man moved in to insert
himself between the little prophetess and this English intruder. It was Mhlakaza, but neither he nor Saltwood was aware that they had met one fateful morning back in 1836 on the hill at De Kraal when Tjaart van Doorn was prevented from shooting him.

“Why do you come here?” he asked in good English.

“I come to beg the little girl to stop the cattle killing.”

“The spirits demand it.”

“Who are you?” Saltwood asked.

“Mhlakaza, he who speaks for the spirits.”

“Don’t you realize that you’re all going to starve?”

“There will be two hundred cattle for every Xhosa.”

“Don’t be a damned fool. Your meadows couldn’t hold them.”

“There will be food for all.”

Saltwood was so disgusted with this crazy man that he tried to return to the little girl, but this Mhlakaza would not permit. Keeping himself face-to-face with the Englishman, he nudged him farther and farther away from the pool. In desperation Saltwood asked, “Mhlakaza, do you know who I am?”

“Are you Saltwood of De Kraal?”

“Yes. And Mpedi here will assure you that I’m a friend of the Xhosa. I’ve fought against you in clean battle. I’ve worked with you. Tell him, Mpedi.”

Mpedi nodded, whereupon Saltwood asked, “Mhlakaza, do you know where Russia is?”

“The ships are already on the sea, coming to join us.”

“But do you know what it is? A city? A town? A group of kraals?”

“It is Russia,” the prophet said. “They will be here next week.”

“And what will you do?”

“Greet them at the shore. Then march to Grahamstown.”

Having said this, Mhlakaza spoke in Xhosa to Mpedi: “Take this man away. See that he reaches home safely.” In English he said, “Saltwood, hurry home and leave the country. We do not wish to kill you when the Russians come.”

In frustration and despair Saltwood left the Gxara River and its magical pool. Wherever he moved through Xhosa land he saw the slaughtered cattle, the burning piles of grain. He calculated that about twenty-five thousand blacks would starve in the months ahead, and that figure represented only the western lands which he had seen. In the eastern areas, where white men rarely penetrated, there would be, he supposed, perhaps another fifty thousand. Mpedi would surely
die, and Nongqause the innocent cause, and Mhlakaza the effective cause. The Xhosa nation would be so prostrated that it could never recover, and this was happening in the year 1857 when sensible nations ought to be able to halt such insanity.

When he returned to Grahamstown he dispatched reports to Cape Town and London, warning the governments that by the first week in March starvation would be rampant and that at least fifty thousand deaths must be anticipated. He urged immediate shipment to Grahamstown of all surplus food supplies and suggested that they be doled out slowly, for the starving period was bound to last at least a year and a half.

Tired, weak from inadequate food and sleep, he felt both his advanced age and the dreadful tragedy about to descend upon this region. He wanted very much to hurry back to De Kraal and prepare his farm for the wandering skeletons who would soon be spreading over the countryside, but he felt obligated to go back among the Xhosa, and he was at Mpedi’s desolated village on the evening of 17 February 1857. It was one of those calm, sweet summer nights when birds sang and the earth seemed impatient for the coming of dawn.

The eighteenth was a bright, clear day, with visibility so unsullied that every mountaintop stood clear. If ever there was a day for beneficent miracles, this was it. The sun rose without a cloud across its face; the air was quiet, with no hint of storm; and had any cattle been alive in the valleys, they would have been lowing.

Ten o’clock came, and the sun reached toward its apex, increasing in strength. Since it was generally believed that the dead would rise at high noon, crowds began to gather, looking in various directions to catch the first sight of marching armies and the arriving cattle.

Noon came, and silence. Slowly the sun passed its zenith and began its long descent to the horizon, and with every hour the suspicion grew that neither the chiefs nor the cattle were going to arrive. By five o’clock, when shadows were conspicuously lengthening, Mpedi came to Saltwood and asked, “Will they come in darkness? They wouldn’t do that, would they?”

“They are not coming,” Saltwood said, his eyes touched with tears.

“You mean …”

“I mean that when the hunger strikes, old friend, come back to De Kraal.”

At six, while there was still plenty of daylight if the chiefs and the
Russians wanted to fulfill their pledges, everyone became anxious, and by seven there was panic. When the sun vanished and the fateful day was gone, many began to wail, and by midnight there was consternation throughout the little villages. All food was gone; the Russians had not come; and slowly the Xhosa realized that on the morning of the nineteenth they were going to face problems more terrible than any they had so far imagined.

The next two months were horror. To the headquarters in Grahamstown came reports that chilled even the most hardened veterans: “I visited six villages and found only seven people alive.” Entire river systems, including even their tiny branches, had not a single person surviving along their banks. Corpses of people rotted in the veld beside the older corpses of their cattle. The land lay devastated, as if Plague had swept in with his Scythe.

Many who survived owed their existence to Richard Saltwood, who marshaled his inadequate food supplies with brilliance, squeezing the maximum good from the mealies allowed him. He organized relief teams, went himself into the bleakest areas, and prevailed upon his neighbors to accept on their farms as many wandering Xhosa as they could.

He became inured to death, and hardened himself to make decisions which meant that this village would survive and that perish. For vast numbers in the Xhosa heartland, there was simply nothing to be done; there death was universal.

When he surveyed the western areas in late April he found that his estimates of the tragedy had been accurate: at least twenty-five thousand corpses could be seen lying about unburied; and he had been correct in guessing that a greater number lay dead in the eastern areas to which he could not go. Seventy, eighty thousand of the finest blacks in Africa had probably died, some two hundred thousand cattle were slain, because a little girl had visions which her unscrupulous uncle had used to reach for goals not even he could fully understand.

In the midst of this desolation Saltwood kept thinking of his old friend Mpedi; the herdsman had not reported to De Kraal, where some fifty Xhosa were being sheltered at Saltwood’s expense, so he set out to rescue Mpedi—if he still lived.

The journey to that village was one he would later try to strike
from his mind: corpses scattered in the sun like dead autumn flowers; pastures forlorn and empty of cattle that should have been producing calves; stench and dust and loneliness. But at the village itself the ultimate horror, for there he found six adults who had survived, and Mpedi off in a hut by himself, trembling and near death from starvation.

“Old friend,” Saltwood cried, tears coming to his eyes despite the fact that he had seen thousands of others dying. Mpedi was an individual man, a good herdsman who had tended De Kraal cattle faithfully, and his death would be a personal grief.

“Old friend,” Saltwood repeated. “Why are you not sharing the food with the others?”

Shivering in terror, the herdsman drew back. He could not trust even his old baas. He wanted only to die.

“Mpedi!” Saltwood said, somewhat irritated at this rebuff. “Why do you lie here alone?”

“They are eating their children,” the old man said, and when Saltwood stormed from the hut and kicked the ashes under the pot and upset everything, he saw human bones.

Mpedi starved to death, as did the fool Mhlakaza, responsible for it all. Nongqause did not starve; as a frail child she required little food, and her admirers supplied that. She lived another forty-one years, a curiosity gossiped about but rarely seen, for the Xhosa eventually realized that she was the instrument of their disaster. In the midst of a later famine she fled for her life when her identity became known. Among her intimates, however, she was pleased to talk about the great days when all the world listened to her preachments, and she seemed to have no realization of what she had done. In later years she assumed a new name, which she felt was more appropriate to her position. She rechristened herself Victoria Regina.

The Crimean War had been in part responsible for agitating the mind of Mhlakaza and creating the fatuous idea that Russia would shortly invade the Cape Colony; one year later it was directly responsible for Richard Saltwood’s new name, Cupid.

When the Russians in Sebastopol stubbornly held out against the British, causing thereby the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade at
nearby Balaklava, a serious crisis developed in the British army. Enlistments at home failed to provide enough new troops to replace those dying from Russian bullets and English malfeasance. Various devices were suggested for replenishing the ranks, but in the end the only thing that made sense was a return to the system used so effectively in 1776 against American rebels and in 1809 against Napoleon: the English army sent recruiting agents to Germany, where for substantial bonuses a first-class mercenary legion was employed.

The Germans had to be under twenty-five years old, over sixty-two inches tall, and unmarried. They proved a superb lot, and would surely have conducted themselves bravely in the Crimea except that peace came before they could be shipped out of England. This created a serious problem; the English had an army, trained and paid for, with no war in which to engage it.

Queen Victoria, herself of German extraction, and her husband Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha were naturally concerned about what might happen to their young compatriots and were delighted when plans were announced whereby the entire contingent was offered passage to the Cape as military settlers, to establish homes and secure posts along the recently disrupted Xhosa frontier. A strategy somewhat like this had been advocated in 1820 with English colonists, and there was no reason why it could not be duplicated in 1857 with Germans.

A vast scheme was initiated whereby nine thousand of the mercenaries, plus such new wives as they could acquire, would be shipped to the same port used by the English when they landed. But now a snag developed. The Germans had such an excellent reputation for soldiering that numerous other nations were eager to employ them; they received offers from the King of Naples, the Dutch in Java, the Argentinian government and seven revolutionary juntas across Europe, who felt that if only they could enroll these crack troops, they could overthrow reactionary governments. About a quarter of the recruits, 2,350 officers and men, were left over to emigrate to the Cape.

Since Queen Victoria and her husband were most eager that this settlement prove successful, they wrote to South Africa, asking that Major Richard Saltwood, who had distinguished himself during the cattle killing, come to London to supervise the emigration. He was delighted with this opportunity to visit with his brother Sir Peter, and within two days of receiving the invitation, was on his way.

To his astonishment, when he disembarked at Tilbury, he was
whisked immediately to Buckingham Palace, where the queen herself discussed the emigration. She was a shortish, round woman with no chin, and when meeting strangers, liked to defer to her husband’s judgment; they both displayed a keen interest in her South African colonies—Cape and Natal—and were enchanted by the various stories told of Saltwood’s life on the frontier. They said that he must hurry to Southampton to make certain that the German embarkation moved smoothly, and Victoria added that she would hold Richard personally responsible.

She was in the process of adding that she preferred only married emigrants, for this ensured family stability, when a charming boy of thirteen burst into the room, stopped in embarrassment, and started to withdraw. “Alfred, come here,” the queen said, “this gentleman is from the land of lions and elephants.” The lad stopped, and bowed low like a Prussian officer.

“I am most pleased to meet you, sir,” he said, whereupon Major Saltwood extended his hand, took the boy’s, and drew him back into the room.

“You must come to my farm one day, and see the animals.”

“That I should like to do,” Alfred said, and the brief meeting ended.

In Southampton the authorities were mustering the mercenaries for the voyage to the Cape, and they found themselves with a sterling group of husky young men, but they were not having much success with getting wives. This omission worried Saltwood, since the queen had specifically stated that she preferred complete families in her colonies, so he made a special effort to visit all the nearby towns, seeking women for the young Germans. He was not successful, and when the last of the ships was ready to sail, the rickety old
Alice Grace
, he informed the captain that it must not depart until a final effort had been made to find more brides.

“Who am I?” the captain demanded. “Cupid?”

“No,” Saltwood replied evenly, “but you do have a commission to perform.”

“My commission is sailing this ship,” the captain replied. “Not finding wives,” and the adventure would have ended poorly had not Saltwood been a man of ingenuity and humanity.

“You have over two hundred fine young men aboard this ship,” he told the captain. “I want them all on deck. Now!”

When they assembled on the afterdeck he told them bluntly,
“Men, it would be most improvident to travel to the Cape without women, so the captain has agreed to hold his ship here for two days. You must circulate through the town and find wives. You’ll be married before we sail.”

Saltwood added his own imaginative touch to the quest. Finding himself only a short distance from Salisbury, he hurried there by train, burst into Sentinels and cried, “I can use all the spare women in town.” His brother was absent, attending Parliament, but his wife was there, and she organized a hunt which produced five young women who had only bleak prospects at home. One ill-favored lass named Maggie began to whimper, “I don’t want no South Aferkee.”