The covenant - James A. Michener [383]
It would indeed be possible. Richard knew an English farmer near Bloemfontein who could enlist enough blacks to put on a real battue for the young prince, and all was arranged. Saltwood was at the dock at the Cape when the young fellow landed, and after a round of receptions he sailed with him along the coast to Port Elizabeth, where the royal party disembarked and mounted horses for an adventure inland which would cover twelve hundred miles of saddle-riding over the roughest terrain.
When Saltwood first saw the entourage that proposed to make this journey, he was appalled by its magnitude: the prince, his toothy equerry Friddley, a company of fourteen from the ship, a company of twenty-six from the local government, several score of grooms to tend the spare horses, twenty-seven wagons with drivers to haul the gear, and a professional photographer, Mr. Yorke, to record events on a ponderous camera that required a wagon of its own. All this to enable a boy of sixteen to enjoy a battue.
But it was a no-nonsense expedition, as the riders learned that first day when they rode twenty-two miles without a major stop. The next day they covered forty-six and were dusty-tired when they pulled into De Kraal, where they would rest for two days with the Saltwoods.
It was a splendid respite, with the prince delighted by his first acquaintance with an African farm. De Kraal had been much improved in recent years when the Saltwood fortunes prospered. All the stone buildings dating back to the 1780s had been enlarged and beautified; the grounds had been spruced up with flower gardens; and the fences had been regularized; but the charm of the place, as young Alfred remarked, was still the handsome setting within the hills and the wandering stream that cut diagonally across the holding.
In acreage the farm was somewhat diminished since the days when Tjaart van Doorn operated it: still the nine thousand acres within the hills, but only four thousand outside. 'What I enjoy so much,' the boy prince told Saltwood, 'is the mix of closed-in and open.' He also enjoyed the hunting and proved his reputation by bringing down several smaller antelope.
At dinner on the first night the young man was embarrassed when one of the black maids brought in a bawling white infant to be presented to royalty. 'It's my grandson,' Saltwood explained. 'Seven months old and lord of the manor.'
'What's his name?' the prince asked, holding the baby awkwardly. 'Frank.'
'Frank, I christen thee Sir Bawler,' and that became the child's nickname.
From De Kraal the party headed east to Grahamstown, where Friddley cried, 'What a delightful place! So English. Even the Dutchmen who live here look like our Surrey squires!'
Friddley was a new experience for Saltwood; as the nephew of a duke, he felt entitled to say whatever came into his mind, and he did so in a flush of patriotic emotion which often raced ahead of his grammar. At the opening reception in Grahamstown he gave a far-ranging toast: 'To the loyal citizens of this brave frontier city whose English pluck and heroic perseverance, which shall ever animate our noble race, and who love the queen with a devotion unparalleled and thank her for sharing with you her son, the gallant Sailor Prince . . .' He dropped that sentence and launched fervently into another: 'I say, it was your loyalty to our beloved queen and her beloved consort, the father of our beloved Sailor Prince who does us such honor by this timely visit to the most loyal of his mother's colonies, and I have seen him barefooted on the deck of his ship,