The covenant - James A. Michener [469]
'What about Sannah?' the girl asked, and the old woman said harshly, 'Death is upon her.'
And with dreadful speed it came. Her frail body, fourteen years old and at the height of its beauty, wasted so swiftly that even Sybilla, who had anticipated this, was aghast. The child was laughing wanly one day, unable to move the next.
'Oh, Sannah!' the little boy wept. 'I need you.'
'I need you, Detlev, my dear, dear brother.' Limply she extended a hand, and he sat holding it through the night, but before dawn he crept to where Sybilla slept and whispered, 'I think she's dead.'
'Oh, God,' Sybilla sighed.
'Shall I tell Johanna?'
'No, she needs her sleep.' She rose wearily, near fainting from lack of food, and went to the cot on which the dead girl lay and sat beside her, taking her lovely head in her lap. Detlev joined her, not crying, just sitting there in the dark. When he took one of her hands he could feel no flesh, only bones, and as he clasped it the hand grew cold.
'You are very dear to me, Detlev,' Sybilla whispered. 'You are my own son, the son of General de Groot, too. He and your real father, they fight for us, and in the years to come you must fight for us, too. You must remember these nights, Detlev. Never, never forget how Sannah felt in your arms this night. It is nights like this, Detlev, that make a man.'
They were sitting there when the attendants came, but when Johanna, waking tardily, saw them reach down for her beautiful sister, she started screaming 'No! No!' and it was Detlev who had to tell her that the girl was indeed dead. But this time at the grave he could no longer constrain himself, and when the attendants placed her in a box he started shivering as if this were some entirely new experience, and Sybilla took him in her arms.
With three of the Van Doorns dead, and both Johanna and Detlev obviously weaker each day, Sybilla de Groot realized that the salvation of this camp depended upon what women like her accomplished in the perilous days ahead. If they nagged in their dedication, the death of despair could sweep the camp, but if they sustained hope, and encouraged discipline and fortitude, lives of enormous value could be saved. She took as her litmus paper young Detlev: If I can save him, I can save the Boer republics.
Weak though she was, and close to her own death, she rallied the children of the camp about her. 'I am General de Groot's wife,' she told the parents, 'and while he is on commando in the field, you and I are on commando in this prison camp. I want your children.'
With indomitable force she organized a system whereby the children could receive just a little bit larger share of the daily ration. She persuaded Hansie Bronk to steal just a bit more food, then teased him about his notorious grandfather. But most of all she concentrated on the children, instructing them in the legends of their people.
'I was at Blaauwkrantz,' she told them. 'I was no older than you, Grietjie, when Dingane's men came after me. And do you know what I did?' The hollow, ghostly eyes of the children would stare at her as she acted out that night. 'My father placed me under a tree, in the darkest hours, and what do you think he told me?' And she would watch quietly as the children pondered, and always someone, enchanted by the story, would guess that her father had told her to be quiet, and she would smile at that child.
She told them of the long years she and Paulus de Groot had waged their battles, and of Majuba, where she saw the charge up the hill, and of recent Spion Kop, where a handful of Boers had beaten back the entire English army. She sang songs with the little ones, and played easy games that required no motion, for they were too weak, but always