The covenant - James A. Michener [215]
It became apparent that God had sent this girl to comfort him in his old age, but the problem of how a Christian marriage could be performed without a cleric was perplexing. 'You cannot stay here, when I have been so demanding of others that they follow in righteous paths.'
'You demanded, Lodevicus, that's true, but no one obeyed. Everyone to the south lives as they always lived. I'm the one who listened and obeyed.'
This was so similar to his own experience, when Predikant Specx, now dead three years, had preached to scores who did not listen, and to one who did, that Lodevicus had to be impressed, and when he looked at the flaxen-haired girl, so smiling and so different from rigorous Rebecca, he was tempted.
It was really quite simple. Wilhelmina pointed out that since she could not very well return to the south, having run away, there was no alternative but for her to stay at De Kraal, and this she did, moving into the room that Adriaan and Seena had once occupied; and on the third night, as she slept, her door opened and Lodevicus said, 'Are you willing to be married of God? Without a dominee to enter it in the books?' and she replied, 'Yes,' and nine months and eight days later the boy Tjaart was born.
In 1795 news reached De Kraal which stunned the Van Doorns, news so revolutionary that they had no base for comprehending it. A courier from Cape Town had dashed across the flats to Trianon, then over the mountains to Swellendam, then along the chain of farms to De Kraal, and wherever he stopped to give his report, men gasped: 'But how could this have happened?'
'All I know, it's happened. Every Compagnie holding in South Africa has been surrendered to the English. We're no longer attached to Holland. We're citizens of England and must be obedient to her.'
It was incomprehensible. These frontier farmers had only the vaguest notions of a revolution in France or of the new radical republic that now controlled Holland. They knew that France and England were at war, but they did not know that the new government sided with France while the old Royalists supported England. They were bewildered when they heard that their Prince of Orange, William V, had fled to London, and from that refuge had ceded the Cape to his English hosts.
And what they heard next was even more confusing: 'The English warships stood in the bay. But Colonel Gordon behaved valiantly.'
'Was he English?'
'No, Scot.'
'What was he doing in the fort, fighting the English?'
'He was a Dutchman, fighting for us.'
'But you just said he was a Scot.'
'His grandfather was, but he came to live in Holland. Our Gordon is a born Dutchman . . . joined something called the Scots Brigade.'
'So the Scots made him a colonel, in Scotland?'
'No, the Scots Brigade is Dutch. We made him a colonel, and he was in command at the Castle.'
'Did he drive away the English?'
'No, he surrendered like a craven. Never fired one of our guns and invited the English to take everything.'
'But you said he was brave.'
'He was. Brave as a tiger defending her young. Because after the disgrace of surrender, he blew his brains out, as a brave man should.'
Lodevicus and Wilhelmina asked the courier to go over the details again, and at the conclusion the courier returned to the astonishing truth: 'This colony is now English. You are all to be confirmed in the ownership of your farms. And English soldiers will be here soon to establish peace on the border.'
When the young messenger rode on, to spread his confusion among the other trekboers, Lodevicus assembled his family, and with little Tjaart upon his knee, tried to pick out the truths that would govern their new life: 'What do we know about the English? Nothing.'
'We know a great deal,' his wife contradicted, bowing quickly to ask forgiveness for her impertinence. 'We know they don't follow the teachings of John Calvin. They're little better than Catholics.'