The covenant - James A. Michener [138]
This made sense, and when De Pre saw that the Van Doorns were wavering, he dispatched Henri to fetch a bundle by the door, and when the lad rolled in the wrapped parcel, Paul carefully folded back the covering to display a beautifully made oaken cask, capable of holding a leaguer of wine, which Bezel Muhammad had decorated with a most handsome replica of the gabled house and the single word trianon.
Old Willem accepted the cask, and after he had studied it in various lights, said: 'We'll call it Trianon. Because my wine wasn't worth a stuiver till this fellow came along.'
In the years that followed, when the wine of Stellenbosch was gaining favorable attention both in Java and Europe, Bezel Muhammad continued to build, but only occasionally, his wall cupboards of the two contrasting woods, and whereas he took great pains to design each one in lovely balancemaking his art the only one of high degree that flourished in the colony in these decadeshe never exceeded that first handsome design. It stood in the bedroom to the left as one entered Trianon and was admired by all.
His cupboards were sold as soon as he could finish them, and at various farms in the Stellenbosch area they were prized. The slave who made them was in great demand when it came time to build a gable or enlarge a house, and this caused Annatjie some uneasiness, for although she was quite willing that her family profit from the work of their slaveMarthinus sold the cupboards and kept all but a few rix-dollars on eachshe was not content that this skilled man should be without a wife, and it perplexed her as to how she might find him one.
When she raised the question at supper one night, Marthinus said, 'Most men who come out here live without women for years. Look at De Pre.'
'Yes,' she said, 'and I wonder about him, too.'
'Let him get one of the King's Nieces. The way I did.'
When next De Pre ate with them she raised the question: 'Paul, it's time you should ask the Compagnie to bring you a wife. You could write to Karel. He'd find you someone.'
'He'll not deal with that one,' Willem said sternly.
'But he can't always live alone,' Annatjie said, and she was so persuasive that De Pre drafted a careful letter to his old employer, asking for a wife. A year later Trianon received word that Karel van Doorn had died, his estate going to the Widows Bosbeecq.
So Annatjie turned her attention to Bezel, dispatching letters to the Cape to ascertain if there were any Muslim slave girls, or black ones, for that matter, seeing that he was half-black, who might be purchased, but there were none, and Bezel continued to live alone, building the houses and the furniture that became a feature in the elegant town of Stellenbosch.
It had a fine church now, broad streets lined with young oak trees, and a score of tidy small houses whose floors were smoothed brown with cow manure. It looked nothing like Holland, not too much like Java; it was a unique little gem of a town born of the South African experience, and no house excelled that one called Trianon.
And then a farm family moved nearby with a marriageable daughter, Andries Boeksma and his pretty child Sibilla. 'She's God's answer to our prayers,' Annatjie told Paul as soon as she heard the good news. Using the excuse of taking spiced apples to the newcomers, she studied Sibilla and drove back to Trianon, exultant'Paul, Marthinus! She's just what we've prayed for'and she insisted that the two men dress properly, kill a lamb and take it to the Boeksmas. She very much wanted to go along, but felt that to do so might betray her interest in having Sibilla meet the Huguenot widower.
'What happened?' she asked breathlessly when she and her husband were alone.
'I don't really understand,' Marthinus said. 'They took an instant dislike. They were barely civil.'
'What could have happened?'
'Well, Boeksma walked to the cart with me, and while Paul was