The covenant - James A. Michener [131]
'We'll put it here,' he said, and when several of the Van Doorns started to protest the obvious unwisdom of such a location, old Willem quieted them: 'Look! If the house is put here, it balances ours over there. The valley looks better.'
'Why, so it does,' Paul said, and soon the building commenced. The Van Doorns sent their slaves to work on the walls, as if the house were to be their own, while the three De Pres toiled alongside the swarthy Madagascar.
'De Pre's a Frenchman,' Willem said approvingly. 'He knows how to work for what he wants.' And as the house grew, its mud bricks neatly aligned, the Van Doorns had to concede that it was not only spacious, but also solid and attractive.
'It's a house that needs a woman,' old Katje said, and on the next evening when the Frenchman ate at her house, she asked him bluntly, 'What are your plans for finding a wife?'
'I have none.'
'You better get some. Now, you take Marthinus'she pointed to her sturdy son'he was bomat the Cape when there were no women, none at all available for young men. So we moved out here to Stellenbosch, except it wasn't named that in those years, and here I wasthe only woman for miles around. So what to do?'
Paul looked at Marthinus and then at Annatjie, and asked, 'How did he find her?'
'Simple,' Katje continued. 'She was a King's Niece.'
This news was so startling that Paul stared in a most ungentlemanly manner at the tall, ungainly woman. 'Yes,' Katje said, 'this one was a King's Niece, and you'd better be sending for one of them, too.'
'What do you mean?'
'Orphans. Amsterdam's full of girl orphans. No one to give them in marriage, no dowry, so we call them the King's Nieces, and he gives them a small dowry and ships them out to Java and the Cape.'
'How did . . .'
'How did Marthinus know that Annatjie was his? When news of the ship reached out here, we supposed all the girls would be gone. But I told Marthinus, "Son, there's always a chance." So he rode at a gallop, and when he got to the wharf all the girls were gone.'
She placed her work-worn hands on the table, then smiled at her husband. 'I was what you might call a King's Niece also. My rich uncle shipped me out here to marry this one. Never saw him before I landed. Thirty years ago.'
'But if the girls were all gone, how did your son . . .'
Old Katje looked at Marthinus and laughed. 'Spirit, that's what he had. Like his father. You've heard that Willem chopped down four bitter almond so we could escape from the Cape. I predicted he would be hanged. I said, "Willem, you'll be hanged." '
'What did Marthinus do?'
'Got to the ship, all the girls gone. But before he rode back empty-handed he heard that one of the men at the fort didn't like the girl he got, so he shouted, "I'll take her!" And one of the other men said, "You haven't seen her!" But Marthinus shouted again, "I'll take her," and the girl was sent for, and there she is.'
Paul could not determine in what spirit the woman pointed to her daughter-in-law, whether in derision for being so much older than her son, or in disgust at her being so ungainly, or in pride for having had the strength to surmount such a poor beginning. 'Look at her fine children,' the old woman said, and Paul noticed that the three youngsters were looking at their mother with love. He would never have told his children such a story, but when he got his sons back into their house, he was startled to hear Henri say, 'Father, I hope that when you go to the ship, you get someone like Annatjie.'
The Huguenot boys were finding their new home even more exciting than the canals of Amsterdam. The spaciousness enchanted them; they loved the flashing sight of animals moving through the swards of long grass; and playing with the Van Doorn children