The covenant - James A. Michener [194]
'Let us bury him with prayer,' the stranger said, and while the commingled family bowed, he launched into a long supplication, beseeching God to forgive the grievous sins of his wayward child Hendrik, whereupon red-headed Seena began to snicker, for if there had been any Van Doorn who was not wayward, it was Hendrik.
The stranger paid no attention to this irreverence, but continued his endless prayer. The Hottentots who had worked for Baas Hendrik, some from the earliest days, stood respectfully to one side. They had loved the old trekboer as a father, and the old patriarch had often seen them as children, using the whip when he felt it was needed, rewarding the industrious when he returned with cloth and implements from the cattle trading. He never understood why they so readily drank themselves into a stupor, or why their children ran away to become vagrants rather than work for him. He had acknowledged them to be master herdsmen, far better than the pesky Bushmen still out there sniping at colonists with their poisoned arrows. When the prayer finally ended, the stranger said peremptorily, 'Now you can bury him. He's on his way to meet his Maker.'
'He's dead,' Seena said brusquely. 'He had a damned good life and he's dead.'
'I take that you're the daughter of Rooi van Valck. By your red hair, I mean.'
'I am.'
'I have been sent by the Compagnie to bring the word of God to the wilderness. I am Dominee Specx, of Huguenot lineage, and I have been living at the new town of Swellendam. I am commissioned to marry and baptize, and to bring families like yours back to the ways of the Lord.'
'You're welcomed,' Johanna said, as matriarch of the sprawling family.
'You're on your way to a new farm?'
'We are.'
'They're going to collect the rents on farms now.' 'They'll get none from us,' Adriaan said sharply. 'We've farmed where we willed and paid taxes to no one.'
'That's ending,' the stranger said. 'Beginning this year, all will be collected.'
'All but us,' Adriaan said. 'We explored this land. We occupied it alone. And it belongs to us, not the Compagnie.'
Predikant Specx asked if he could ride with them to the new site, and Johanna said, 'Yes, if you will read to us from the Bible.'
And it was in this way that Lodevicus van Doorn memorized the great, stirring passages of the Old Testament, the experiences of Abraham and Joshua in their wildernesses, the love stories of David and Ruth. Night after night, as the tall dominee sat by the candle, intoning timeless stories of men who wandered into strange lands, Lodevicus reflected on how much he had missed in the years when he could not read the Bible, and he asked Specx how long it would take him to learn, and the dominee said, 'One week, if God commissioned you.'
To the surprise of the Van Doorns, he proved to be a congenial traveling companion, eager to share the work, willing to share the hardships. At the riverbanks he was often up front with the Hottentots to guide the oxen across, and he was a strong man with an axe when they settled on their new land and it came time to cut wood. Nor was he reticent, as some predikants were apt to be. He entered any argument, made his statement, and listened to those who tried to rebut him. He was fun at meals, for he had a most voracious appetite and startled the children with the amounts of food he consumed: 'I do believe I could eat that entire bobotie.'
'I'm sure you could,' Seena said. She alone displayed animosity toward the predikant, an inheritance from her father, who had fought the church incessantly, and one afternoon he took her aside and said, 'Seena, I know your father. I've fought with him. Last year he threw me off his farm when I went there to talk with him about God. He roared, "I need no God meddling in my affairs." And now you're roaring at me.'
'We don't need you here, Dominee. We're doing very well.'
'I'm sure you are, Seena. You and Adriaan are falling into the footsteps of your father'
'Not a bad way to fall,' she said sharply.
'I'm sure it isn't. I've shared great love and happiness living with you.'