The Covenant (99 page)

Dawn came without any sign of Mzilikazi’s men, but toward nine Tjaart heard a dreadful hissing sound to the east and then the ominous stamping of heavy feet on the earth, and a deafening cry of “Mzilikazi!” followed by a titanic rush of near-naked soldiers and a flight of deadly spears.

“Do not fire!” he ordered the thirteen trekkers and the seven Coloureds. “Let them come closer … closer.” And he heard the hissing sound again, the stomp of many feet and the same cry “Mzilikazi!” Also, he heard one lonely voice inside the laager praying: “Almighty God, we are few, but we wear Your armor. We are not afraid, for we have tried to be righteous men. Almighty God, they are many but You are with us. Guide us in this battle.” It was Theunis Nel, gun in hand, waiting for the charge.

“Mzilikazi!” shouted the warriors, rushing at the small concentration of wagons, expecting to overrun it.

“Fire!” Tjaart cried, and twenty guns blazed directly into the face of Mzilikazi’s men.

The carnage was horrendous, but after the first ranks fell, wave after wave replaced them.

“Fire!” Tjaart cried again, and then the Voortrekker men passed along their empty guns, reaching back for the next loaded one.

“Fire!” Tjaart cried again and again, but still the intrepid enemy kept rushing at the laager.

“Tjaart!” a boyish voice called. “Under the wagon!” But before Paulus could attract his captain’s attention, Jakoba had chopped at the head of a black crawling into the laager, cleaving his skull.

For ninety terrible minutes the assault continued, with every man holding his position between the wheels of the wagons, continuing to fire while women loaded the rifles.

When the Matabele warriors slowly retreated, a few infuriated veterans of other battles refused to believe that this handful of trekkers had been able to stand them off. Enraged by their defeat, they re-formed at a safe distance, shouted for the last time “Mzilikazi!” and dashed right into the muzzles of the guns. They died with their hands touching the wagons, but none broke through.

At dusk Tjaart went out with little Paulus to find the dead and count them: “One hundred and sixty-seven. On our side, none.”

Theunis Nel, hearing these figures, called upon the entire party to kneel, and as they did he intoned an impassioned prayer, rocking back and forth, daubing his left eye now and then with his fingers. He reviewed the godliness of the Voortrekkers, the loyal faith of their grandfathers, their heroism in entering a strange new land, and he concluded:

And every man and woman and child listening, even the seven servants not included in the prayer, knew that what Theunis was saying had to be true.

But when the final tally was taken, the Voortrekkers had gained no victory. Not at all. Of the two companies camping to the west, one had been overrun, the other had not been annihilated but had lost four men. And at the De Groot camp, which had refused to go into laager, all fifty-two people were slain—children, Coloureds, former slaves—and all were horribly mutilated.

“You mustn’t go there, Paulus,” Tjaart said, tears in his eyes at the horror of the massacre. “Your father and mother and sisters are dead.”

“I want to go,” the little survivor said, and he rode back with Tjaart and the gravediggers to see what was left of his family. He recognized them, and did not vomit at the sight the way some of the adults did. He walked solemnly along the line of their eight bare feet, for they were stripped naked, and saw the manner of their deaths. Not a tear came to his eyes, and as the shallow graves were dug—just enough to keep the hyenas away—he placed a stone upon the chest of each person he had loved.

The rampaging of Mzilikazi’s regiments forced all Voortrekkers to change their plans. The few like Tjaart who had ventured north of the Vaal River had to retreat hastily well beyond the south bank, and all along the line of advance the emigrants took stock of their perilous state as they awaited the Great Bull Elephant’s next move.

Two members of a black tribe suppressed by Mzilikazi crept down with reports that the Matabele were assembling a mighty army that would overwhelm the Boers, with a superiority of one hundred and fifty blacks to one Voortrekker.

The English government chose this moment of dread to deliver, by means of late arrivals at the camp, its latest proclamation against the Voortrekkers; it stated that even though the fugitives had fled English soil, they must not think that they had escaped English law, because any wrongdoing committed south of the twenty-fifth parallel would be construed as having taken place within English jurisdiction and would be punished accordingly. Since the Vaal River lay well south of that parallel, the battle in which the Van Doorns had defended themselves could be interpreted as an unwarranted aggression, and Tjaart could be hanged.

The document was of course printed in English, but after it had been translated to the astonished Voortrekkers, Tjaart asked to see it. Even though his English was sparse, he could pick out some of the insulting words, and as his lips framed them they created in him a violent bitterness, for he could still envision the mutilated bodies of Lukas de Groot and his people.

It was typical of Tjaart’s slow, stubborn awakening to any problem that for two days he said nothing, just carried the proclamation with him, pausing occasionally to reread the offensive lines, but on the third day he assembled all members of his party, and such others as he could reach, to deliver his judgment:

Somberly the members of the party whispered, “I swear!” And all knew that any further compromise with any Englishman had become impossible. From that day, the break must be total.

But on the very next day a smous arrived from Thaba Nchu, and Tjaart was thrown into sad confusion. The peddler brought not only supplies, but also small packets addressed to Tjaart van Doorn and Lukas de Groot.

“Major Saltwood in Grahamstown asked me to deliver these,” the nervous little trader said.

“De Groot’s dead.”

“Oh, dear!” The smous was terrified. “Mzilikazi?”

“Yes. What shall we do with this?”

“Did any of his family survive?”

“His boy, Paulus.”

“Then we’d better give it to him. Because I made a solemn promise to deliver …”

They called Paulus and handed him the last message ever sent to his father, and when the boy opened the wrapping, there lay a pile of crisp English pounds. Every penny owed for the De Groot slaves had been paid in full, with no commission subtracted.

When Tjaart opened his packet he found the same. He was perplexed. His English friends had proved their trustworthiness, yet he had sworn open enmity toward them, and he did not know what to say, but after he gave Jakoba the two bundles of money for safekeeping he walked for long hours alone, then sought out the smous and asked, “Did Major Saltwood pay you for bringing me the money?”
And the peddler said, “Yes, two pounds.” Awkwardly Tjaart translated this into rix-dollars, and he was amazed that Saltwood had spent so much of his own money to forward the funds.

He was confused on other matters, too, for in these days of anxiety when no one knew how soon Mzilikazi would strike again, he learned to his disgust that Ryk Naudé had not crossed the Drakensberg but had encamped some miles away. On several nights Tjaart had ridden over to seek Minna, and again spied on their love-making and he was bewildered: Why would a man with a wonderful wife like Aletta bother to plow the furrow with someone like Minna? He loved his daughter and had worked diligently to find her a husband, but he could never delude himself into thinking that she was in any way the equal of Aletta. Yet here was this young no-good imperiling his marriage by sneaking out at night to make love to a plain and married woman.

Tjaart became so disturbed by his daughter’s misbehavior, relating it always to his own renewed infatuation for Aletta, that one day he resolutely confronted Ryk to upbraid him for his adultery: “Ryk, we’re about to engage Mzilikazi in a battle where we might all die. If God turns against us for our sins, we might perish. Don’t you feel any responsibility?”

“I feel love for your daughter.”

“Love?”

“Yes, I should have married her, as she said.”

“But you have a beautiful wife …”

“Old man, tend to your battle. Guns will win it, not commandments.”

This was so blasphemous that Tjaart could not decide how to respond, but Ryk saved him: “In two days we march north—to face Mzilikazi. We may all be killed, but I’ll be happy knowing that Minna …” He did not finish this extraordinary statement, just walked off to prepare his horses.

Tjaart was angered by the young man’s insolence, and surprised, too, for he had not thought of Ryk as brave enough to oppose an elder. More tantalizing were some of the deductions that could be made from what the young husband had said: if Ryk did not think much of his wife, if he did not want her, what wrong could there be if someone else approached her? None, he concluded, and as to the adultery he would be committing, he avoided any consideration of this by simply erasing Jakoba from his mind.

So he resumed his old habit of placing himself in Aletta’s path, a foolish, dumpy man in belt and suspenders offering himself to the most beautiful young woman among the trekkers. He was ridiculous, and he knew it, but he was powerless to stop. One afternoon he waited till she was apart from the others, then grabbed her, pulled her behind some wagons, and started kissing her furiously.

To his surprise, she did not resist, nor did she participate. She simply leaned against him, even lovelier than in his dreams, smiling between the kisses and whispering at the end, “You’re not such a silly old man, after all.” And with that she walked slowly away, completely untouched by his embraces.

The encounter was an agony for Tjaart. During one spell he railed silently against his son-in-law: Why doesn’t that damned fool Theunis manage his wife? Where in God’s hell did I find such a man to bring into my family? And for more than an hour he mentally reviled the little sick-comforter as the cause of his own malaise.

Then he envisioned the forthcoming battle against Mzilikazi, and when he recalled the fearlessness with which those first Matabele had kept storming the laager, he grew frightened: If twice that many, three times that many, come at us, what shall we do? Then he recalled the mutilated bodies of De Groot’s people, and a sickening rage overcame him: We must slay them, slay them! No Voortrekker ever raised a finger against Mzilikazi, and he did that to us. We must destroy him.

And then he paused, and like all Boers, reflected on the fact that even self-protection, let alone victory, would be impossible without God’s help, and became totally contrite, taking upon himself the burden of sin that he had tried to throw upon the adulterous Ryk Naudé. Lighting an oil lamp, he took down his Bible and looked through Proverbs till he came upon the passage which spoke definitively of his transgression:

He was about to close the book when he realized that he required much more help than he could find by himself, and he sought out Theunis Nel, sleeping alone, for his wife was away committing sin, and he said to the sick-comforter, “Come read the Bible with me and instruct me.”

Always prepared for such calls, Theunis rose, wrapped himself in a blanket, and accompanied Tjaart to where the Bible stood open under the lamp, and he grasped at once the significance of Tjaart’s having been reading Proverbs Six. But he said nothing of adultery or lusting in one’s heart.

“Theunis, this time we face terrible odds.”

“We did last time.”

“But then we didn’t know. Now, with the De Groots dead, we do.”

“God rides with us.”

“Are you sure?”

The little man quickly turned the pages from Proverbs and closed the book, then placed his hands upon it and said, “I know that God intends our people to establish a new nation in His image. If He sends us on this mission, surely He will protect us.”

“Then why didn’t he send his predikants to accompany us? To give us guidance in His word?”

“I’ve wondered about that, Tjaart. I think He sent common folk like you and me because He wanted His word to work up slowly from the ground. Not thundering down in sermons written by learned Scottish predikants.”

“Is that a possibility?”

In the flickering shadows the sick-comforter said, “If we had with us a learned dominee, we’d put all the burdens on him, let him tell us what God intended. This way, it’s simple people like you and me. And when we work out our solutions, they will come from the heart of the Voortrekker, not from outside.” Rising and striding about the tent, if a man so slight could be said to stride, he told Tjaart, “You will gain victory. You will slay the Canaanites. You will lead us across Jordan into our inheritance.”