The covenant - James A. Michener [310]
Was there any truth in these charges? Some. Was there gross exaggeration? A great deal. But from the indictment came a law which radically altered life on the frontier. 'Look what Keer and his fellow saints have done to us!' De Groot raged as he showed Tjaart the new provisions. 'It makes the Coloureds, the Hottentots, the Bushmen the exact equal to us Boers. They have all the rights we have. No further apprenticeship of the young. No work contracts. They don't have to have fixed abodes. Magistrates can no longer whip them as won't-works. From now on, damnit, Van Doorn, a man of color has all the rights I have.'
'That's terribly wrong!' Jakoba interrupted as the men talked. 'That's not what God intended at all.'
What Reverend Keer intended was a softening of the harsh laws that restricted servants; what he got was a disastrous dislocation; and the immediate burden fell on Lukas and Rachel de Groot, for when their herders and farm hands got word of their new status, twenty of thirty-six laborers took off, and it was a group of these homeless, roaming vagrants who ravaged their daughter.
To the big Boer she was Blommetjie, 'Little Flower,' a fragile girl of fourteen who spent most of her time among the trees and blooms of the veld. The three men found her beside a small stream, humming softly. She did not get home for the midday meal, and when she still wasn't back by late afternoon, De Groot went looking for herand found a wild, deranged creature dragging herself across a mealie field.
He left the child with Rachel, said not a word and asked no one to accompany him as he rode out at dusk. Two of the guilty men had fled and would never again be seen in that district, but the third lay drunk in one of the deserted huts on De Groot's farmand when the Boer discovered him, he pulled the man into the open, and for a moment stood over him.
'Get up, you devil!' he said grimly, and the man stood, swaying unsteadily, looking dazedly at his baas. With a wild cry of anguish, De Groot brought his gun up, and then the man realized what was happening, but as he backed away, a bullet slammed into his chest. He fell to the ground, not quite dead, and as he lay there De Groot pumped bullets into him, again and again.
As veldkornet, it was Tjaart's duty to report on the incident, and he duly swore that the vagrant had been shot while attempting to flee after having stolen mealies. The case was closed, but the wound in De Groot's heart remained open.
The seasons passed and no one said much about Blommetjie; they trusted that one day soon she would be able to move about the veld again. There was no improvement, either, in the labor situation, and increasingly Tjaart and his sons had to go out with the herds, much like the Van Doorns of four generations ago. And then, on a certain day in October when spring flowers made the veld a garden, Tjaart said at table, 'We shall go to the next Nachtmaal.'
The news created wild happiness among the women: Jakoba would be able to see friends she had not talked with for two long years; the slave women who would go along to do the cooking would enjoy the chance to meet with other slaves and to cook dishes they preferred; and little Minna, now thirteen and already worrying about how she would find a husband in this great emptiness, conjured up visions of a bright lad named Ryk Naude, whom she had last seen at the Nachtmaal: 'May I have a new dress, Mama? I mustn't go in my old one.'
So the slave women, who cherished the girl, set about the pleasant task of fitting her out for a dress which would compare favorably with the fashions in Grahamstown: turned-down collar, wide sleeves fastened at the wrists, flounces