The covenant - James A. Michener [372]
Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever . . .
Cleverly the Voortrekkers reconciled this Biblical injunction with the new English law: No slavery, but if a black child is left orphaned in battle, it must as an act of charity be taken into a white home, where it shall serve as helper till the age of twenty-one, without wages but with Christian instruction and wholesome Kaffir food. After that, of course, the black would have nowhere to go, really, so it would be logical for him to stay on, at whatever compensation the master saw fit to offer.
So the sensible thing to do on commando was to see that there were orphans, and Balthazar Bronk had done so. Tjaart argued mildly against what seemed to him an evasion, but his wife was so pleased to receive the two children assigned to her that he said nothing, for even though he was disposed to ask Aletta not to keep them, there in his Bible were the instructions commanding him to keep the children, and to accept others when they came his way.
Now that the great fixed battles had ended, Tjaart could think of the blacks against whom he had fought so incessantlyXhosa, Matabele, Zuluas men of enviable courage. He had been awed by their willingness to keep coming forward into the face of certain death, and he prayed that the time had come when blacks and Voortrekkers could share peace. In both religion and tradition he had been taught that no black could ever attain the cultural or moral level achieved by the most ordinary white man, and he was now satisfied that they were intended to be servants. The Boer leaders referred to them as 'the inferior race,' and he saw no reason to alter that assessment, but he also knew they could be wonderful friends and trusted associates. In his lifetime he had been forced to kill well over one hundred and sixty individual blacks himself, and he could think of not a single instance in which he had been in any way at fault. It was strange that not once did he fire a gun at a black without having at his elbow one of his Hottentot or Xhosa servants, who had helped him track the enemy and prepare the guns. And no matter where he traveled, in peace or war, he never went anywhere without blacks who had elected of their own volition to stay with him. On numerous occasions he risked his life to preserve his personal freedom, but if anyone had told him that blacks would do the same, he would have been dumfounded, for he believed that they welcomed the coming of the white man and preferred an orderly progress in servitude and self-development, much as the oxen yoked to his wagon liked to be told where to go.
Aletta was now completely disenchanted with Tjaart, finding him a monotonous, single-minded man whose rigorous attitudes toward life grew tedious. He had been exciting as an alternative to her pusillanimous Ryk Naude, but as a legal husband, he was tiresome. Much more to her taste was a man like Balthazar Bronk, younger, livelier, more fun by the lakeside, and before long she was seeing this flamboyant gentleman with some regularity.
Paulus alerted his father as to what was happening: 'Aletta goes to the fields.'
'Who with?' 'Balthazar.'
As always, Tjaart studied the matter cautiously, and when he proved to his satisfaction that his wife had returned to her customary deceptions, he went into seclusion for several days, during which he calculated the remaining probabilities of his life: I'm an old man now, and all my children are dead. My two sons slain at De Kraal. Minna dead at Blaauwkrantz. If I lose Aletta, I'll never leave any sons. This Paulus is a man among boys, finest lad I've ever known. I'll care for him and get him