The covenant - James A. Michener [209]
'Let's go!' she said without hesitation or fear.
He laughed and kissed her. 'Go to sleep. They'll find it in time.'
'Who?'
'The ones who come after.'
Lodevicus and Rebecca never once asked about the northern lands; their preoccupation was in building a paradise at hand; but in the afternoons their children gathered with Adriaan to hear of Swarts, the cave with leaping giraffes on the ceiling, the boisterous blacks who danced at the flash of gunpowder, and of the place he called Vrijmeer.
When the excitement of his return died down, the battle between Seena and Rebecca resumed, with each woman confiding to her husband at night that the other was intolerable, and Adriaan would lie awake listening to his wife's litany of complaint: 'She's a nasty tyrant. She has a withered lemon for a heart. It's her intention to run this entire area, and Lodevicus supports her.'
He shared with her his impression upon first seeing their new home: 'This room with its tight walls is a prison cellwithin the stone house, which is the small prison, within these hateful hills, which form the biggest prison of all.'
'No,' she corrected. 'The big prison is the ideas he wants to enforce. Every person on every farm must behave the way he says. You know, he's started fighting with the Xhosa when they come over the river to feed their cattle.'
When Adriaan asked his son about this, Lodevicus said, 'Three times I've heard you speak poorly about having our farm within these hills. Well, war with the Xhosa is inevitable. They're pressing westward more strongly each month, and soon we'll have real warfare.'
'Let them graze their cattle,' Adriaan said.
'They'll never be content with that. Mark my words, Father, they'll want everything. They'll overrun this farm. That is, if it wasn't protected by hills.'
In 1776 Lodevicus was proved right, for a large group of Xhosa, led by Guzaka, son of that Sotopo with whom Adriaan had spent four days of friendship, became increasingly angered by the constant pressure from the white farmers.
As in the beginning days of Dutch-Hottentot contact, when an attempt was made to confine the settlement so as to avoid irritations, once again the Compagnie, trying vainly to rule an area already ten times greater than Holland, forbade any further barter with blacks. But on the frontier their proclamations were like sand thrown in the wind. Daring white men crossed into the lands occupied by those they called Kaffirs, Arabic for infidels, reasoning that it was simpler to fire their guns and take what land they needed rather than sit out a protracted bargaining session with the Xhosa. No bitter-almond hedge could possibly demark hundreds of miles of borderland; also, Sotopo's people provoked rage, for, when the white men's herds moved placidly within range, they reverted to old ways, sang old songs, sharpened their assegais, and shouted with glee as they stole the trekboers' cattle.
And so the battles began, the blacks claiming land which was theirs by hereditary right, the trekboers grabbing for the same land because it had been promised to the children of God.
Guzaka's men struck south, smiting an isolated farm not far from the sea, killing everyone and driving some five hundred cattle back across the Great Fish. They then rushed northward to the Van Doorn farm set among hills, recognizing it as the major impediment to their westward expansion.
'It will not be easy,' Guzaka warned his men.
'You said that about the other farm,' one said.
'It was not defended. At this place there are the hills.'
'Which means they're trapped inside.'
'It could mean something else,' Guzaka cautioned.
'What?'
'That we will not be able to break in.'
'We have so many. They have so few.'
'But they have the guns.'
'The others had guns.'
'But only two to use them. Here there will be many.'
'Are you afraid, Guzaka?'