The covenant - James A. Michener [107]
He never discovered Karel's reason for proposing that Willem be allowed, even encouraged, to leave the fort. For some undisclosed family complication, it was to Karel's advantage to get rid of Willem, and sending him into the assegais of the Hottentots might be the most practical way. Maps were produced, sketchy affairs which represented almost nothing correctly, and the two men selected an area where a frontier post might profitably be established, supposing that Willem survived the bleak initial travel and the threats of Bushmen and Hottentots.
It lay to the east, where a lively river debouched from the first range of mountains; exploring parties had commented upon it favorably, and here Karel outlined an area of some sixty morgen: 'Let him try to raise his grapes there. God knows we could use the wine.'
'How was the last batch he sent to Java?'
'Barely acceptable for the hospital. But each year it gets a little better.'
When arrangements were completed, the two officials summoned Willem, who limped sideways into the fort. 'Willem! We've great news!'
'How's Mother?'
'Oh, she died two years ago.'
'Her house? The garden?'
'The Compagnie took it back. It was theirs, you know.'
'Did she . . . was she in pain?'
'She died easily. Now, what we wanted to see you about . . . You tell him, Commander.'
The German said, 'We are going to allow you to become a free burgher. Far across the flats. Here.'
'That's about where I've decided to go,' Willem said softly.
The two officials ignored this rebuke to their authority. 'Look!' Karel said. 'We're giving you sixty morgen.'
'You don't need sixty morgen to grow grapes. I could do it on twenty.'
'Willem!' Karel said with some harshness. 'Anytime the Compagnie offers you something free, take it.'
'But I can't farm it.'
'Take it!' Karel shouted. A Lord XVII was offering a laborer sixty morgen of the choicest land, and the laborer was raising objections. This Willem was beyond salvation; the only good thing about this visit was learning that his brother's two bastard children had vanished somewhere in the desert. It reminded him of Hagarbut did her bastards die?
The meeting between Katje and her cousin Kornelia was equally cold, and shrewd Katje warned her husband, 'There's something wrong about them, Willem. They've done something wrong and are ashamed to see us.' She brooded about this for some time, then one evening at supper snapped her fingers: 'Willem, they've sold your mother's house and are keeping the money to themselves.'
'Let them have it,' Willem said, but Katje was the niece of a merchant, and it galled her to think that she might have been defrauded of property that was duly hers, or at least her husband's, so she went to the ship and confronted the older Van Doorns: 'Did you sell your mother's property?'
'No,' Karel said carefully.
'What happened to it?'
'It was Compagnie property. You know that. Like the house you're living in'
'It's a hut.'
'But it's Compagnie property.'
'I think you sold'
'Katje!' Kornelia said sharply. 'You forget yourself. You forget that you were a poor farm girl'
'Kornelia, you're a thief. You're stealing Willem's share.'
'We will hear no more!' The commissioner did not intend to sit by and listen to a member of his own family, an impoverished member at that, charging him with defalcations. 'Take her back to shore,' he directed the sailors, and during the remainder of the visit he refused to meet with his brother.
His farewell was a gala. There were fulsome speeches from the German commander and his staff, gracious responses from Karel and his wife. The new Lord XVII, the first to have had extended experience in the East, assured his listeners that the Compagnie would always have close to its heart the welfare of the Cape:
'We're going to find you additional settlers, not too many, never more than two hundred living here. It was I who proposed the hedge, and it seems a salient idea. Makes this a comfortable little establishment with enough room for your cattle and vegetables. I'm told that my brother