The covenant - James A. Michener [102]
Willem had toiled faithfully at the vineyard and deemed himself eligible to become a free man, but he had to acknowledge that the Compagnie retained total control over all he did, so three times he prayerfully petitioned the commander for permission to proclaim himself a burgher, and three times Van Riebeeck refused, for his own release from this semi-prison depended largely upon Willem's success.
'You're needed where you are,' Van Riebeeck said.
'Then give me another slave to help propagate the vines.'
'You have Jango.'
'Then strike off his chains ... so he can really work.'
'Won't he run away again?'
'He has a woman now.'
Willem said these words with pain, for on those days when Katje upbraided him most sorely, he could not refrain from contemplating what his life might have been like had the Compagnie allowed him to marry Deborah. On trips to the fort he would see her with her two half-white sons, moving through her tasks with placid gentleness as she softly sang to herself, and he would return to his hut and by candlelight finger through the great Bible until he came to that passage in Judges which the ship captain had read to him during the long passage from Malacca: 'Awake, awake, Deborah, awake, awake, utter a song.' And he would lower his head into his hands and dream of those golden days.
And then one day he learned at the fort that Deborah was pregnant again, not with his child this time but with Jango's, and as an act of compassion for her he insisted that Jango's chains be struck off, and the next day Jango, Deborah and their boys headed for freedom.
It was incomprehensible to the soldiers that these slaves would dare such a venturepregnant woman and two childrenbut they were gone, headed north for the most dangerous roaming ground of the Bushmen and their poisons. Van Riebeeck, furious at having been talked into unshackling Jango, ordered a troop of soldiers to bring him back at any cost, and for seven days the fort spoke of little else.
No one was more apprehensive than Willem. He wanted Deborah to survive. He wanted his sons to live into manhood so that they could know this land. And curiously, he hoped that Jango would escape into the freedom he had so courageously sought through all the years of his captivity. Indeed, he felt a companionship with this slave who had tended the grapes so faithfully, dragging his chains behind him. Willem, too, sought freedom, escape from the bitter confines of the fort and its narrow perceptions. No longer did he merely want to be a free burgher; he now wanted absolute freedom, out beyond the flats toward those green hills he had first seen from the crest of Table Mountain fourteen long years ago. He was hungry for openness, and bigness, and at night he prayed that Jango and Deborah would not be taken.
'They caught them!' Katje exulted one morning as she returned from the fort, and against his will he allowed her to take him to the gate when the fugitives were dragged in. Jango was quietly defiant. Deborah, not yet visibly with child, held her head up, her face displaying neither anger nor defeat. It was Van Riebeeck who responded in unexpected ways; he absolutely forbade his soldiers to mutilate the slaves. In his regime there would be no cropping of ears, no branding, no nose lopped off. Back went the chains, on Deborah too, but that was all. Physically, Van Riebeeck was a smaller man than any to whom he gave these orders; morally, he was the finest servant the Compagnie would ever send to the Cape.
The more Willem had observed Van Riebeeck, the higher became his opinion of the man's ability. The Lords XVII had assigned him impossible tasks; like the ancient Israelites, he was supposed to build great edifices with faulty bricks. He was given a dozen things to do, but no funds with which to do them, and he was even begrudged his manpower.