The covenant - James A. Michener [349]
Once clear of the celebration, he guided her behind a set of wagons, and while the accordion filled the night with revelry, pulled her to the ground and hungrily tore aside her clothes. Never before had he known what an overwhelming thing sex could be, and he was so preoccupied with his own violent experience that he failed to notice that Aletta was merely smiling at his ridiculous performance.
When it ended, and he lay back watching her impassive dressing, he made no attempt to reconcile his adulterous action in taking another man's wife with his profound gratitude to God for having protected the Voortrekkers in their laager. These were two unrelated things, and he was not obligated to harmonize them, for as he said to himself: King David had the same problem.
In April 1837 Tjaart encountered once again the man who was to become the memorable figure of the trek, Piet Retief, the frontier farmer with whom he had ridden so often on commando, and they talked of those heroic days: 'Remember how we did it, Tjaart? Fifty of us, two hundred Xhosa, a skirmish, a retreat. I understand that with the Matabele, it was different.'
Tjaart shivered. 'Five thousand coming at once. Six thousand. And every man prepared to die. For hours we fired point-blank into their faces.'
'That's finished,' Retief said. 'You're to come down into Natal with me. The Zulu will leave us alone. They have a sensible king, Dingane by name. We can deal with him.'
'I would hate to leave the plateau. Mzilikazi remains a threat, but I still want to go north.'
'The ones who did, they didn't fare too well. I think they're all dead.'
Retief was right. The toll had been heavy, and he advanced so many other sound reasons in support of Natal that Tjaart wavered, but Jakoba stiffened his determination to cross the Vaal: 'You've always wanted to search out that lake your grandfather spoke of. Do it. Natal is for weaklings like Bronk and Naude.' It was the first time she referred to the family with which her own was so sorely enmeshed, and she said no more.
He accepted her counsel and informed Retief that the Van Doorn party would not go down into Natal, but that evening as he was heading back to his own tent, Aletta Naude appeared mysteriously from behind a row of transport wagons, and almost before he knew what was happening, he was clutching at her, rolling with her in the stubble. When he lay exhausted, she ran her fingers through his beard and whispered, 'We're crossing over the mountains. Come down into Natal with us.'
That night he informed Jakoba that Retief had convinced him; they were moving east. She said, 'It's a mistake,' and in the morning she learned that Ryk Naude and his wife were going, too.
It was a journey into springtime and into some of the most difficult land the Van Doorns would traverse. In their slow migration from De Kraal they had climbed unnoticed from near sea level to well over five thousand feet, so that for some time now they had been operating on what the men called 'the plateau.' It was high land, dipping to lower levels where rivers passed through. But now they were required to climb toward eight thousand feet, then drop precipitously down to sea level. The upward climb would be easy, the downward plunge frightful.
Eleven wagons gathered to make the attempt, and as they climbed the gentle western face of the Drakensberg they could not foresee the problems that awaited them, because Ryk Naude assured them: 'Retief has gone ahead to scout a safe pass down. It can be done.'
But when they reached the summit and saw for the first time what lay ahead, even Tjaart blanched. To take a Voortrekker wagon down those steep slopes would be impossible, regardless of how many oxen a man had to help hold the wagons back. And when the beasts saw