The covenant - James A. Michener [158]
'They will not remove me from these fields,' Annatjie said.
'They will try. But we have two very strong points in our favor. The wines that De Pre blended three years ago are still in our casks. They'll protect us at the beginning.'
'But when they've been shipped?' Annatjie asked.
'By that time we'll have our second protection.'
'What?'
'Sarel. Yes, Annatjie, by the time Amsterdam orders you and me off the place, because a man must run a vineyard, we will put Sarel forth, and convince the authorities that he can run this place better than any other man they might propose.'
'Could he do that?'
'We shall help him do it,' Geertruyd said. And then, looking away, she added, almost in a whisper, 'Each night of my life I shall seek God's help to become pregnant. When Sarel realizes that he is to be a father . . .' Suddenly she whipped about and caught Annatjie's hands. 'He is a good man, Annatjie. We shall prove to him that he can run this vineyard.'
Geertruyd was right in expecting that the men of the system would resent leaving two women in charge of a property upon which the Compagnie depended for revenue, but she was quite wrong as to where that animosity would originate. Their good neighbor, Andries Boeksma, who could not resist sticking his nose into everything, including his maids' sleeping quarters, began raising doubts both at Stellenbosch and at the Cape.
'The young wife knows nothing, an Amsterdam castaway, and as you know, the boy's an imbecile. The old lady was capable, but she's dying, and I ask you, what's to happen with this valuable property?'
Carrying his concern to the officials at the Castle, he encouraged them to ask the very questions that Geertruyd had anticipated, and one night after drinks when the governor asked Boeksma, 'Who could we get to run the vineyards,' Andries said boldly, 'Me. I know the wine business better than De Pre ever did. We don't need Huguenots to teach us how to make wine.'
'That's a sensible idea,' the governor said, and next morning he dispatched letters of inquiry to both Java and Amsterdam.
No one warned Geertruyd that her good neighbor Andries Boeksma was plotting to steal Trianon, but one day as she came from the fields where she had been inspecting grapes, she saw him with his wagon stopped beside their fields, inspecting them, and when she walked over to speak with him, she saw that he was smiling and nodding his head as if engaged in pleasing calculations.
Hurrying home, she sought Annatjie, and found her in bed, too weak from illness to rise, and for a moment the perilous position in which Geertruyd found herself overwhelmed her, and she fell into a chair beside the bed and wept. When Annatjie asked what had happened, she whimpered, 'Now I lose your help, my dear, lovely mother, when I need it most. I just saw Andries Boeksma spying out our land. Annatjie, he intends stealing it from us, just as I warned.' She wept for some moments, then broke into sardonic laughter: 'Stupid me! I thought the enemy would be in Java or Amsterdam. And he was waiting in the next village.'
'My fever will subside,' Annatjie assured her. 'If we can hold off the Lords XVII, we can hold off Andries Boeksma.' And from her bed, which held her prisoner far longer than she had expected, she took charge of everything, dispatching slaves to perform specific tasks and explaining to Sarel her reasons for each act.
She was especially eager to have the Compagnie import large numbers of new slaves to replenish the work force, but in this she was disappointed; a young official from Amsterdam had landed at the Cape during the last stages of the epidemic and had seen it not as a vast destruction but as a heaven-sent opportunity for reform. In his report to the Lords XVII he wrote:
The pox, which did have grievous consequences, offers an opportunity to set Africa on the right path. Our Dutch farmers living there have accustomed themselves to a life of ease. Their daily routine carries them away from their