The covenant - James A. Michener [96]
'Go back to bed!' Karel pushed her roughly away from the door. 'I want Katje.' And in a few moments came the girlshort, ill-favored when sleep was upon her, with frizzled hair and red face.
'What is it?' she asked peevishly.
'You're to meet Willem.'
'Not like this,' Kornelia said from the rear.
'Come!' Karel cried, agitated beyond control. And he jerked the protesting girl down the passageway and into the predikant's cabin, where with red eyes and sniffling nose she met her intended husband: 'Willem van Doorn, this is your bride, Katje Danckaerts.'
She was a country girl, a daughter of the poor Danckaerts, but a full cousin of Kornelia's and thus someone to be cared for. A year ago when Kornelia had asked, 'Whatever will we do with Katje?' her husband had said impulsively, 'We'll take her with us to the Cape. Willem needs a wife.'
So it had been arranged, and now the ungainly girl, twenty-five years old, stood in the cramped room where so many others were crowded and mistook Van Riebeeck as her betrothed, but when she moved toward him, Karel said sharply, 'Not him. This one!' and even the predikant had to laugh.
At this moment Kornelia appeared, wrapped in a coat and demanding to know what was happening. 'Go back to your room!' Karel thundered, hoping to prevent his wife from learning about the scandal, but she had been ordered about enough and elbowed her way to Katje's side.
'What are they doing to you, Katje?' she asked softly.
'I'm meeting Willem,' the girl whined.
Kornelia surveyed the men and realized immediately that they were making a botch of whatever it was they were trying to accomplish. Willem looked especially inept, so she said gently, 'Well, if you're meeting your husband, let's meet him properly,' and she pushed her cousin forward. Willem stepped up awkwardly to greet Katje, but she held back, and it was prophetic that the second utterance he heard her speak was also a complaint: 'I don't want to get married.'
She had barely finished this sentence when she felt Kornelia's firm hand in the middle of her back, giving her such a sharp push forward that she fairly leaped into Willem's arms. In that brief moment he looked at her and thought: How different from Deborah. But as he caught her he felt her womanliness and knew that he would be responsible for the years of her life. 'I'll be a good husband,' he said.
'I should think so,' Karel muttered, and then sensible Kornelia, who had acquired confidence from associating with the best families of Amsterdam, said forcefully, 'Now I demand to know what you men have been doing,' and Dr. Grotius, realizing that further dissembling was fruitless, directed her attention to the revealing entry in the Bible. She read it carefully, looked up at Willem, smiled, then read it again. Summoning Katje to her side, she showed her cousin the damaging news, then said quietly, 'It seems your husband has had another wife. But that hardly signifies.'
'She's pregnant again,' Willem blurted out.
'Oh, Jesus!' Karel moaned, whereupon Dr. Grotius reprimanded him. 'Neither does that signify,' Kornelia said.
'He's not really married to the slave girl,' Van Riebeeck said reassuringly, and Karel added, 'But they shall be married now.' When everyone turned to stare at him, he added lamely, 'I mean Willem and Katje.'
'They certainly shall,' Kornelia said, and it was she who proposed that the marriage ceremony take place right now, at one in the morning. But the predikant objected that it would be illegal to solemnize any marriage until banns had been read three times, at which Kornelia said, 'Read them.' So Karel rattled off the rubric, repeating it twice: 'Katje Danckaerts spinster Amsterdam and Willem van Doorn bachelor Batavia.'
'Cape,' Willem corrected.
'Marry them,' Karel snarled at the predikant, so the Bible was opened, with three witnesses to verify the sanctity of the rite about to be performed. In flickering light, while Katje and Willem kept their hands upon the open pages, the glowing phrases of the sacrament were intoned.
When the ceremony ended, Willem