The Covenant (96 page)

“Traded for it at Graaff-Reinet.”

“You should have come to me. I’d have given you a proper price.”

“My sheep were in Graaff-Reinet.”

Carleton picked up one of the charred timbers and pointed to a small rubric carved into the wood:
TC
–36 (Thomas Carleton–Wagon 36). Had he been satisfied to work rapidly and without careful attention, this wagon might have been numbered in the 80s.

“You’ll need a new wagon,” he said. “When you trek north.”

Tjaart looked at him strangely. First it had been Jakoba, years ago; then Saltwood, when they were returning from the Xhosa war; and now Carleton—all saying that the Van Doorns must emigrate north, as though there were no alternative.

“Who’s trekking north?” he asked.

“Haven’t you heard? Hendrick Potgieter departed last week.”

“For where?”

“The north. That’s all he said.”

“Alone?”

“No, he had forty or fifty people with him. Sarel Cilliers left with him, you know. And Louis Trichardt left with Van Rensburg. Months ago. Maybe ninety people and seventy or eighty servants.”

Tjaart felt weak. Things were happening at a speed and magnitude he could not comprehend, and reluctantly he conceded that perhaps his neighbors were right.

Saltwood said, “We thought that if men like you and Piet Retief do finally decide to leave us, you must not depart with ill feelings toward us. Hell, Tjaart, you fought with us—side by side.”

So an agreement was made, whereby Saltwood took the warrants of several Boers—among them, Van Doorn and De Groot—promising to send them to Sir Peter in London to collect whatever the government might allow, but in order for the transaction to be legal, it was necessary for the Boers to sign away their rights for one shilling each, relying upon the good faith of their English friends. This the men did with absolute assurance that an honest reporting would be made, for the participants in this arrangement had fought as brothers in defense of their homes. That the Boers were now thinking of quitting those homes was as distressing to the Englishmen as it was to the Boers themselves.

Tjaart was deeply moved by the sympathy shown by Saltwood and Carleton during their visit to his still-ruined farm. In the war he had volunteered to protect the English establishments, yet the government
had shown itself powerless to save Boer farms; hundreds had been ravaged, and now the government sided with the Kaffirs. However, he was convinced that the Grahamstown fighters like Saltwood genuinely sought his friendship and deplored the losses they had suffered. As he moved among the charred timbers of his barn he pondered seriously what he should do. Seeking Jakoba’s counsel, he asked, “Shall we build a new house?”

“We must go north,” she said bluntly. “To seek free land.”

When Lukas and Rachel de Groot came south to report on the sad condition of their farm they fortified Jakoba’s advice: “We haven’t the heart to build again. We’re leaving.”

“To where?”

“Cross the Orange River. Then down into Natal.”

“I think I shall stay here,” Tjaart said deliberately. “This is a good farm in a good region. I think the English will govern it well, one day.”

When the De Groots volunteered to stay and help him rebuild, he had an opportunity to see what a fine lad their boy Paulus had become. He was four, a stocky little man who wore heavy trousers like his father’s. His copious blond hair was cut straight across his forehead, bobbing this way and that when he ran, and his sturdy limbs indicated the strength he already had.

In the repairs to the farm the boy took to himself many tasks that might have gone to men, such as struggling with broken timbers and keeping the cattle to their proper areas. Tjaart, looking at the lad, thought: How splendid it would be if that boy married Minna’s daughter. But when his thoughts ran in this pattern they were sooner or later diverted to that dazzling girl up north, Aletta Naudé, and he wondered if he would ever see her again. He pictured the inadequacy of Ryk, and imagined various ways in which he might come to a bad end: he proved a coward and Xhosa slew him; he stole money and an English officer shot him; he led a hunting party and an elephant crushed him. Always he disappeared, leaving Aletta to be saved by Tjaart van Doorn. The years would pass, but she would never age; never do household tasks. She was forever the nubile girl he had seen in her father’s shop at Graaff-Reinet.

That name came up in the conversation quite often these days. From the first Theunis Nel had felt uncomfortable about living with a girl to whom he was not married, and when she became pregnant he felt downright immoral. But now that he was the father of the
beautiful girl Sybilla, he began to nag Tjaart about taking the family to Nachtmaal, “so that we can become acceptable in the sight of the Lord.” But Tjaart had no wagon and he was loath to borrow a neighbor’s; still, Theunis was so insistent in his desire to sanctify his marriage, that Tjaart had to respect him, for in his own marriages he had experienced the same emotion. He was not an overly religious man, and certainly his two wives were rugged, rough women accustomed to frontier exigencies, but they had felt vaguely uneasy until their marriages were solemnized; there was something about living with a person of the other sex which had mysterious overtones: the passing of the month, the spacing of fertility, the birth of a child, the establishment of a home, the blessing of a barn to prevent lightning. These mysteries deserved attention, and prudent men gauged their lives accordingly. If Theunis Nel, a man of God, found himself enmeshed in these human complications and sought verification, Tjaart van Doorn was not going to ridicule him, even though sanctification lay ninety-two miles away, with no wagon to cover the distance.

Slowly, slowly in the rugged mind of this stubborn Boer his enthusiasm for rebuilding De Kraal waned and another stratagem began to coalesce: If we did go to Nachtmaal, Theunis and Minna could be married and Sybilla baptized, and we’d already be well on our way to the north. Three days’ turning to the east, we’d be on the track the others took. The De Groots could ride in their good wagon. And I’m sure he’d help me build something usable on the burned frame.

Once he came close to weeping when he thought of that fine wagon, charred to dust in the ruin of his farm. But something could be built. The rims of the wheels were there, some of the fittings.

Very cautiously he said to Theunis, “You are right. We must have a marriage and a baptism. In Graaff-Reinet.” That’s all that was said, but everyone within the enfolding hills at De Kraal understood that the Van Doorns were preparing to abandon the farm they had spent sixty years in perfecting. The women began to sort away things for which they would have no space. The men sold off the weaker cattle. And little Paulus, approaching five, carried a hammer and banged away at everything.

No one mentioned a date for their leaving, but someone said casually that Nachtmaal would start in seven weeks. No one picked up the comment, yet day by day departure became more inevitable, and one day when Tjaart came upon his wife gathering eggs he saw that
she was close to weeping. “What a woman! You shout at me, ‘Go north!’ and when I start, you weep.” She denied this.

He had a bad moment himself one morning when two Coloured herdsmen shouted, “Baas! Baas! Look what come!” There, entering the farmlands from the hills at the southwest, came seventeen sable antelope, the most beautiful creatures in Africa, stately dark animals with white blazes across their faces and incredible scimitar horns that curved backward from the head, reaching forty, fifty inches. No purpose for these horns had ever been demonstrated; they swung so far back that they could not possibly be used in fighting. Perhaps, just perhaps, they were intended merely to be beautiful.

All the Van Doorns came from the house to witness this elegant parade. “They must be the last ones south of the Orange River,” Tjaart said. “See how gently they lift their feet.” How beautiful they were, how stately, this remnant of a great herd now diminished. Never before had they been seen at De Kraal, and their quiet passage across the farm seemed to presage a similar movement of the Van Doorns.

That night, while the majesty of the sables lingered in the valley, Tjaart said simply, “We’ll be following them north. Our life, too, has been used up here,” and once these words were thrown into the air, Jakoba and Minna felt free to weep.

If ever a group of people entered their exile with heavy hearts and moral reluctance it was the Van Doorns, and they spent one night drafting a letter of justification to their English neighbors in Grahamstown and their Boer friends in Graaff-Reinet. Tjaart began by saying, “I think we’ve all heard the statement the Americans made when they broke away from England. I’m sure we must do the same.” And with ample guidance from Theunis, plus an occasional strong remark from Lukas de Groot, he compiled these thoughts which appeared in the papers of each community:

Well after midnight, when five of the six participants judged that they had made a complete and honest statement, Jakoba startled them by pointing out that they had omitted their most important grievance, and when Tjaart asked, “What might that be?” she explained. And after prayerful discussion her husband obediently added this paragraph, which came closer to the truth than any of the others; for that reason it would be widely quoted throughout the world:

At four that morning the Van Doorns and De Groots, a trivial group in the large movements of mankind, confirmed with prayer the fact that they were heading not only to the Nachtmaal at Graaff-Reinet, but on to a world they could not even imagine. The Great Trek was under way. The Voortrekkers were in motion.

On the afternoon that Tjaart’s letter appeared in the
Graham’s Town Journal
, Major Richard Saltwood and Thomas Carleton saddled their horses, rasped out a series of orders to their servants, and galloped westward to intercept the Voortrekkers before they left De Kraal.

They arrived in time to see the wagons loaded, and they stood in shock to witness the pitiful thing in which Van Doorn proposed to carry his worldly goods into exile: “Those wheels won’t get them to Graaff-Reinet.” But of this they said nothing.

“We can’t let you go away like this,” Saltwood said. “You’ve been our brothers-in-arms.”

With a sweep of his hand Van Doorn indicated the ramshackle buildings: “This is what is left of generations of Van Doorns.”

“I know,” Saltwood said.

“And the slave money. Will we ever get our share?”

“There’s no word from London, Tjaart. These things take time.”

“We have no more time.”

“Tjaart, how old are you?”

“Forty-seven.”

“I thought so. You and I are twins. Same year. You are my brother, and I want to buy your farm, because I respect it.”

“This?” The two men looked about them.

“Yes. I can finish rebuilding it. I want my home here.”

“You would pay for this?”

“Yes. We made a kind of deal, last year. It wasn’t your fault the facts changed.”

So they spent that day discussing what a fair price would be, and
where the road north would take them, and whether they would ever return. Evening prayers were held, with Theunis Nel translating the Bible in his own inspired way, one-third Bible, two-thirds Theunis.

In the morning it became apparent that for some reason the Englishmen were reluctant to depart, and their stay was so protracted that finally Jakoba asked bluntly, “When are you leaving?” and Carleton said, “We have a present for you,” and after a painful hour, over the eastern rim of hills appeared twelve oxen dragging a new Carleton wagon with a tidy disselboom, a fine set of patented brakes, and a double canvas cover to keep out the rain and heat. On a board under the body was burned the rubric
TC
–43.

“I need my sheep for the journey north,” Tjaart said.