The covenant - James A. Michener [376]
'We shall do it!' Kreli announced, and for nine months Nongqause and her uncle paraded west and east, to the Xhosa and all adjoining tribes, assuring everyone that the day of revelation was at hand and the miracle about to occur, if only they would slay their cattle and let their fields lie barren. 'The ghosts wait there behind the clouds, all the victorious warriors of the past, eager to help us regain our pastures. But you must do as they command.'
It was a powerful doctrine, made more compulsory when Mhlakaza boldly predicted the precise day on which the miracle would happen: 'On the eighteenth day of February 1857 the ghosts will return, driving millions of plump cattle before them and bringing us untold baskets filled with grain.'
When reports of the cattle killing reached government agencies at Grahamstown, there was initial disbelief that such hysteria could ensnare an entire people, especially on the word of a child who could not possibly know where Russia was or what the name represented, but a tremor did run through the colony, for twice before, fanatic prophets had incited the Xhosa masses, whipping the kraals into a frenzy and leading them to disaster. In the first attack on Grahamstown a prophet had assured his people of victory, and not long ago another prophet had convinced his warriors that white men's bullets would be no stronger than raindrops if only the Xhosa killed all cream-colored cattle.
Now the government received proof indisputable that entire villages were engaging in an orgy of cattle slaughter, and serious attention had to be paid, for the people in Grahamstown had now lived side-by-side with the Xhosa for two generations and knew how much they revered their cattle. 'If they're actually killing them, something desperate's afoot,' a new district officer said, and Major Saltwood of De Kraal was sent for.
'What's it all about?' he asked when he reported for consultations.
'A crazy prophet named Mhlakaza has been preaching that the Xhosa must slay their cattle.'
'Mhlakaza?' Saltwood asked. 'Isn't he that fellow who gave us so much trouble over access to one of the rivers? Ten, fifteen years ago?'
'The same. This time he claims his niece, a stupid little girl of fourteen or fifteen ... I've seen her. Squinched-up face. Doesn't weigh ninety pounds. She claims she was visited by all the dead Xhosa chiefsHintsa, Ndlambe, the lot. She says they told her to slay all the cattle, burn all the crops, and they'd come storming back to throw us English into the sea.'
'What's this about the Russians?' Saltwood asked. He was sixty-eight years old, tall, lean, white-haired, very much an English military man in retirement, and because of his service on the Afghan frontier, perpetually interested in Russian trickery.
'Oh, Mhlakaza seems to have picked up some nonsense about the Crimean War. All he knows is that Russia fought against us. Because of our loss at Balaklava, he's convinced himself that Russia won and that she wants to invade Grahamstown to complete her victory. Frightful mess he peddles.'
'Don't underestimate their prophets,' Saltwood warned. 'They can whip a countryside into frenzy.'
'To what purpose?'
'They're in cahoots with the schemers and plotters in the nation. Men like Kreli. I've survived two wars launched by fanatics, and it's serious business. If they do kill all their cattle, they'll have to find others. I hardly need tell you where they'll start looking.'
'What about the little girl?'
'She's a mystic of some sort. Hears voices. He's using her.'
'As simple as that?'
'Carson's the only one who's actually seen her. What's your story?'
A young Oxford graduate, whose first job had been at Grahamstown, had made a minor name for himself by learning the Xhosa language and something of the tribe's internal politics. The Xhosa trusted him, and on one of his recent trips into the heartland of the region they had allowed him to talk with Nongqause. 'She's illiterate, has no idea of our government at Cape Town, and couldn't possibly have