The covenant - James A. Michener [132]
He took delight in arranging surprises for them: cloves to chew on so their breath would be sweet, and games with string. He let them watch the Van Doorn slaves, great blacks from Angola and Madagascar, and then one afternoon he told them, 'Boys, tomorrow night I have the real surprise. You can try to guess what it's to be, but I shan't tell you.'
At home they discussed with their father what it might be: perhaps a horse of their own, or a slave boy whom they could keep, or a hunting trip. They could not imagine what the old man had for them, and it was with trembling excitement that they crossed the fields at dusk to join the seven Van Doorns.
The old lady was complaining that too much fuss was being made, but even so, no one told the French boys what the surprise was to be, and with some anxiety they sat down for the evening meal, where the old ones talked endlessly as a slave woman and two Hottentots served them.
'Tell me in simple words,' Marthinus said, 'what a Huguenot is.'
'I'm a Huguenot,' Paul said. 'These two boys are Huguenots.'
'But what are you?'
'Frenchmen to begin with. Protestants next. Followers of John Calvin.'
'You believe as we do?'
'Of course. You in Dutch, we in French.'
'I hear you Huguenots were badly treated in France.'
'Tormented and thrown in jail and sometimes killed.'
'How did you escape?'
'Through the forests, at night.' No one spoke. 'And when we were safely in Holland, your brother, Karel . . . He's an important man, you know, in the Lords XVII. He sent me back to fetch the vines I've brought you. I took my son Henri with me to confuse the Catholic authorities. This boy crept through the forest with me to steal the grapevines, and if we'd been caught by the soldiers . . .'
'What would have happened?' young Hendrik asked.
'I'd have been chained to a ship for life. He'd have been put where they turn Huguenot boys into Catholic boys in a jail, and his brother here would never have seen him again.'
'Was it really so cruel?' Marthinus asked.
'It was death to be a Calvinist.'
'It was in our family, too,' Willem suddenly said. 'My great-grandfather was hanged.'
'He was?' Louis asked in awe, all thoughts of the surprise buried in this revelation of family courage.
'And my grandfather died in war, fighting for our religion. And as a little girl my mother used to gather with her family like this and do something that would have caused her execution . . .'
'What do you mean?' Louis de Pre asked.
'She would have been hanged if they had caught her.'
'What did she do?'
'Blow out the candles,' Willem said, and when only one flickered he produced from the next room the old Bible, which he opened at random, and when the children were quiet he read a few verses in Dutch. Then, with his hand spread out upon the pages, he told them, 'In those days your grandfathers died if they were caught reading like this.' Closing the heavy cover, he told the children, 'But because we persisted, God came to comfort us. He gave us this land. These good houses. These vines.'
Young Hendrik van Doorn had heard these tales before, but they had made no impression on him. Now, with the Frenchman telling comparable stories, he understood that tremendous things had happened in France and Holland, and that he was the recipient of a powerful tradition. From that night on, whenever the Dutch Reformed Church was mentioned, he would visualize a young boy creeping through the forest, a man chained to a galley bench, one of his ancestors hanged, and especially a group of people huddled over a Bible at night.
'Light the candles!' old Willem cried. 'And we'll have the surprise!'
'Hooray!' the Huguenot boys shouted as Annatjie left the room, to reappear bearing a brown-gold crock with no handles. As she came to the table she looked momentarily at her father-in-law, who nodded