The Covenant Part 58

'I don't remember any mention of Boers in my Bible,' Frank said, to which De Groot replied, 'That's your Bible.'

For nine days Frank studied these two families, and as he watched them in action he concluded that people like these would never conform to Mr. Rhodes' plans for them. When his departure neared, the Van Doorns announced that the De Groots would come over for a farewell supper with a surprise at the end, and Frank was perched on the stoep, trying to guess which little girl was Anna and which Sannah, when they suddenly cried, 'Here comes Ouma!' and Frank looked across the lake to see the De Groots approaching.

They came in an old cart pulled by one tired horse. General Paulus sat in front, the great bearded patriarch usurping the entire seat, while Sybilla sat deferentially behind, a big woman crammed into a little s.p.a.ce. She sat not on a seat, but in the well of the cart on a pile of animal skins, and Saltwood had to suppress a grin, for she resembled a Queen Victoria of the veld, regal and rugged and triumphant.

When he went to the cart, this impression was reinforced, for she said quietly, 'How pleased we are to be with you again,' and he would have helped her down except that General de Groot calmly intruded, extending his hands as if it was his privilege, and his alone, to help this woman.

It was a substantial supper, one of Mevrou van Doorn's ma.s.sive offerings of lamb stew, and as it ended, each of the four children, and the old people, too, began to show excitement, which reached a peak when Jakob went into the kitchen, reappearing with a brown-gold pot over whose rim showed a crusty pudding marked with citron, cherries and raisins. 'Bread pudding, style of Van Doorn,' Johanna cried, and when Frank tasted it he complimented Mevrou van Doorn.

'Not me! My man!' And she nodded at her husband, reverently touching the old ceramic pot as she did.

'Yes, in our family the men make the pudding,' Jakob said. 'This pot, 1680 maybe. Made in China, no doubt. Came over the mountains. Two farms were burned with it on the shelf. You ever hear of Blaauwkrantz? Well, it went through fire there, too.'

'We're an old people,' General de Groot said. 'We've been here a long time.'

After the meal the family grew quiet, and Van Doorn produced a Bible even older than the crock. 'Amsterdam, I think. Maybe 1630. The first pages were burned away.' And he prayed with his hand on the book.

Frank, who was paying close attention, began to suspect that these two families were trying to warn him about something, and his feeling was confirmed when the old general spoke: 'We were here more than a hundred and fifty years before you came, Saltwood. More than two hundred before Rhodes. We would not like interruptions.' Combing his heavy beard with his fingers, he stared right at the young Englishman, never for a moment conceding that Frank might be just as much a part of Africa as he.

On the last day Frank asked Jakob for a free s.p.a.ce at the table, and there, with the twins looking over his shoulder, he wrote a long report to his employer, the crucial paragraph being this: One cannot talk with these men without becoming convinced that they would again take up arms in a minute if they thought their freedom was endangered. Van Doorn is probably in his fifties, but he would ride forth tomorrow if called upon. The general is well into his sixties, and I suppose he would not actually go into battle, but I am sure he would lend every support. One night we rode into the little town of Venloo, where we met with another forty Boers who said specifically they were at all times ready to mount a commando on one hour's notice. I must therefore caution you doubly and trebly not to allow any of your a.s.sociates to launch unwarranted or headstrong adventures. I would hate to see the rabble of the gold reef go up against these rocklike men, who would be fighting for their independence. I can hear you telling the others: 'Young Frank is frightened.' That would not be correct, because I am terrified. I am terrified that an imprudent or hasty action might bring disaster upon us all. I a.s.sure you that Paulus de Groot alone could take on eleven Australian and American floaters who have no concern with the land except to bleed it, and I suspect he could handle five or six Englishmen, too.

I am off to Zimbabwe. General de Groot was there more than fifty years ago, but he says he can still see every wall, every edifice. I wish he were on our side.

By the accidents of history, Frank Saltwood was about to traverse in 1895 the route that young Nxumalo had taken in 1457. He left Vrymeer and headed for the Limpopo, near whose banks the copper mine still flourished. Once more high water impeded the crossing, and when the north bank was reached, the baobab trees exerted their magic. 'I was quite unprepared for them,' he wrote his mother. 'Trees which seemed to be planted upside down by some mysterious force, their uplifted roots filled with birds. On two occasions we have slept inside the trees.'

Like Nxumalo, he came upon the great slabs of granite, their layers exfoliated into perfect building blocks, but unlike him, he did not have to carry samples to the king. In proper time he reached the hills from which the ancient city became visible, and there he paused to see for himself, without distraction of any kind, physical or historical, just what it was this strange, lost city represented. Lacking all prejudice, he studied the ruins from afar and saw that they were long overgrown with trees and climbing vines, that they must once have been imposing but were now in poor condition, and that nothing in their sad, majestic profile betrayed their origin.

He descended into a valley leading to the ruins, and came after a while to an impoverished group of blacks led by a Chief Mugabe, who could speak neither the Zulu nor the Sotho language of the bearers, but after a while one was found who had once drifted down to the diamond mines, and he could speak a kind of lingua franca.

'Zimbabwe?' He knew nothing of it.

'Who rules now?' No one, but Chief Mugabe had his kraal on the side of the hill on which the citadel rested.

'Who built the towers?' That had often been discussed. 'Can we inspect it?' Why not?

For two weeks Frank climbed over the ruins, uncovering not a single clue which would indicate origins. The pictures in the Bible his parents had given him on his twenty-first birthday came to mind, but they looked nothing like this. However, suppose that all those pictures had been of Jewish structures? Could not these ruins have been those of the Queen of Sheba, who would have built in a different manner? Or of the Phoenicians, who would have had their own style? And what authority did the pictures in the Bible have? Were they not merely some artist's imagination?

Whenever he pursued such thoughts, he stopped before reaching a logical conclusion, because he had to keep in mind the fact that his employer, Mr. Rhodes, desperately wanted these buildings to be the ancient Ophir, not because that would prove the Bible to have been accurate, but for a much subtler reason: to justify his own wrongdoing.

When he got nowhere with President Kruger in his plan to have a joint English-Boer occupation of the lands north of the Limpopo, he had leapfrogged the Boer republics and thrown his own pioneer column deep into Matabeleland, where Mzilikazi's son was overrun. When resistance developed, he dispatched a private army to crush it, then annexed the entire area. Even at this moment, grateful imperialists in London were proposing that this new British colony be called Rhodesia.

So now, if Rhodes could prove that no black society had ever been advanced enough to have built Zimbabwe, his theft of Matabeleland would seem more palatable. It would, after all, be rather ugly to have stolen a kingdom in order to bring it civilization if that kingdom had once been civilized.

Frank Saltwood was thus obligated to prove that Zimbabwe had been built far back, in the time of the Old Testament, and during his last three days on the site he remained in his tent, drafting another report to Mr. Rhodes: Every indication at Zimbabwe proves that it was of Phoenician origin. The grand design, the shape of the tower, the construction of the high citadel, the way the now-vanished huts of the city must have been arranged, and especially the work of the stonemasons, combine to demonstrate a Mediterranean provenance. I could not find a shred of evidence that would support the claims of some that these walls had been erected by primitive black men, and to so argue seems preposterous.

I put these structures at the late Phoenician period, which means that they could well have been erected by artisans of that nation imported here by the Queen of Sheba in the days when King Solomon ruled in Jerusalem. Since there is strong and viable record of much gold coming from Zimbabwe, I think we can state with certainty that this is Ophir of the Bible and that from it Sheba obtained the gold she took with her on her journey to meet Solomon. The matter is closed.

But when the wagons were packed, and the last photograph taken, and the antelope shot for the food supply, Frank returned to the ruins alone, sickened by the shameful thing he had done, this profanation of everything he had learned at Oriel: 'A man must be true to the facts, and if the facts disprove his preconceptions, he must change his preconceptions, not the facts.'

What have I done? he asked himself as he studied the silent stones whose messages were crying out to be understood. Have I debased myself to curry favor with an irascible man who perverts everything to his own purpose?

Cautiously he climbed a platform next to the tower to inspect once more the stonework, which now seemed so primitive, so unlike anything the Phoenicians or the Jews of Solomon's time might have done. After all, the basic stonework of Rome was being laid down in that age, and Greek masons already knew the major principles. Men trained in those schools could never have built these edifices.

But he found no proof of anything until the final moments, when he had left the tower and was standing at a point where two walls ab.u.t.ted, and he saw with amazement that the stones were not interlocked, as they would have been in any Mediterranean building: that is, the stones of the wall running east and west did not bind themselves into the stones of the wall running north and south, making each wall stronger. In crude fashion, one wall merely leaned against the other, acquiring only such added strength as proximity provided, and it occurred to him that masons had not used that childish device in Rome or Greece or Phoenicia or the Holy Land or Persia or Arabia for the past four thousand years.

'My G.o.d!' he whispered. 'They're right. These buildings were erected by black men who never heard of Ophir or the Queen of Sheba,' and he ran to all the corners where walls ab.u.t.ted, and in every instance one wall merely leaned against the other. With this knowledge, he hastened to the foot of the steep hill on which the citadel rested, and, though exhausted, ran up, breathing furiously until he reached the lonely top where the goldsmiths had worked and the great Mhondoro conversed with spirits. And there, too, the walls leaned one upon the other, and the stonework was primitive, with no sign of Mediterranean sophistication. These buildings, too, had been built by the ancestors of the Xhosa and the Zulu. The nonsense about the Queen of Sheba was a fatuous dream generated by men who had never seen the stones, and kept alive by fancifiers who loved the idea of ancient royalty and despised the actuality of black builders.

As he was about to leave the citadel he saw, partly hidden by the rubble, something he had missed on his earlier explorations: a beautifully carved narrow stone about six feet high, its bottom squared off for fitting into a socket, its top an intriguing bird, something like a falcon, something like an eagle. In not a single line did it betray Mediterranean influence; this was an artwork of black men, and when he called for servants to carry it down the hill for delivery to Mr. Rhodes, he thought: I have been forced to write that Zimbabwe is Phoenician, but this bird will proclaim the truth.

Back in his tent as it was about to be folded, he looked at his report and was tempted to destroy it, but he was restrained by the fact that Mr. Rhodes would like it in its present form and would be most distressed if he, Frank, modified it in accordance with his final discovery: I know what the truth is. Does what Mr. Rhodes thinks do any harm? And he carefully filed the papers that would set the intellectual patterns for the next eighty years. Zimbabwe had been stolen from the blacks.

When he neared civilization he began to hear rumors of turmoil, but exactly what caused them he could not ascertain. Black members of his safari spoke of a battle, but the white members could make nothing of this until a terrified English miner, obviously running for his life, intercepted them with the shocking news that Mr. Rhodes had shortly before declared war on the Boer republics. His ragtag army, led by the mercurial Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, had tried to take over the government but had been roundly defeated.

Anxiously, Frank interrogated the fugitive, who gave confirming details: Mr. Rhodes had done all the things which Frank had warned him against, and the consequences had been the disaster he had predicted.

When the safari reached Pretoria it was approached by an armed Boer commando whose leader shouted in English, 'You have a man named Saltwood?' and when Frank stepped forward, three Boers pinioned him, took his papers, and carted him off to jail.

'What's the charge?' Frank protested.

'You'll hear. Just before they hang you.'

He was thrown into a cell that contained an Australian member of Mr. Rhodes' revolutionary force, two Englishmen and a breezy, even-tempered American mining engineer named John Hays Hammond, who had helped organize the ridiculous affair. 'What happened?' Frank asked.

'Very simple,' Hammond explained. 'We had five hundred hand-picked men under Dr. Jameson, many more waiting in Johannesburg, but with no communication between them. We marched forth to capture the country, but suddenly Boer hors.e.m.e.n appeared from everywhere, led by this great whiskered brute of a man, General de Groot, riding a little Basuto pony. He said, "All right, boys, put down your guns." So our men put them down, and here we arein jail.'

'You mean De Groot defeated your whole army?'

'Have you ever seen De Groot?'

'I have. They call him the Hero of Majuba.'

'He's a formidable man,' Hammond said.

'But what am I doing here?' Frank asked. 'I was north of the Limpopo when this happened.'

None of the prisoners, cell after cell of Uitlanders, who had called themselves Reformers, could explain why Saltwood had been arrested, but after days in the crowded jail he heard enough from the conspirators to a.s.sure himself that they were indeed guilty of insurrection and that the venture had been sorely botched.

'How could Mr. Rhodes have stumbled into this?' he asked repeatedly, and finally the Australian said, 'Because he had contempt for the Boers, like all of us did.'

'After what I wrote him?' Frank blurted out, and when these words echoed in the cell, all the prisoners looked at him.

'Oh,' one of the Englishmen said, 'you're the spy they kept asking about.'

'Spy?' Frank repeated. He suddenly realized that his prying visit to General de Groot, his chain of persistent questions and his note-taking could be interpreted as spying.

And at the trial, General de Groot and Jakob van Doorn both testified, with regret, that he had come to them some months before the raid as a friend, asking a series of probing questions relating to the rebellion. Van Doorn in particular could verify that he had written a long report which he admitted he was sending to Cecil Rhodes, and from hints that Van Doorn picked up, it concerned the military capabilities of the Boers.

'Did Mr. Saltwood appear at your farm in military uniform?'

'No, sir, he came as a spy.'

'Did he inform you that he was serving as the agent of a rebellion?'

'No, sir, he functioned as a spy.'

When the trial ended, the grim-faced judge placed on his head a small black cloth. One by one the prisoners were brought before him: 'John Hays Hammond, the court finds you guilty, and for your treasons you will be taken from jail and hanged.'

Frank felt his knees buckling as an ashen-faced Hammond was returned to the jail, and if the Australian had not held him, he might have collapsed. The Australian was sentenced, then the two Englishmen, and now it was Saltwood's turn, but as he was led into the dock a rude commotion erupted at the rear of the courtroom. Two policemen were trying to restrain an elderly Boer who was struggling with some heavy object.

When they led him before the bench, the judge looked down severely: 'Lang-Piet Bezuidenhout, what is this nonsense?'

'Forgive me, your Honor. But I bring something that might help your Honor punish these men.'

'Lang-Piet, this is a court for justice, not a place for cheap revenge. Go before I get angry.'

'But, your Honor, the men of my commando have been in the saddle many days to bring you this thing.'

'What thing?'

'Die balk van Slagter's Nek, Oom Gideon.'

And that was precisely what had happened. Lang-Piet Bezuidenhout and his cronies had ridden down to Graaff-Reinet to buy the wooden beam of the Slagter's Nek gallows from a family who had preserved the grim relic for some eighty years.

'The rebels must hang from this very beam,' the old man shouted as his cronies cheered. 'We want justice.'

The judge, Oom Gideon de Beer, said quietly, 'Lang-Piet, in these days we dispense a fairer kind of justice. Sit down and be silent.' Then he turned his attention to the man waiting in the dock: 'For your crimes you will be taken from jail and hanged.'

In this extremity, Maud Turner came to Frank's rescue. With bars separating her from the man she considered her fiance, she listened intently as he told her every detail of what he had done since she had said farewell to him at Kimberley. When he explained what he had written in his Vrymeer report to Rhodes, she cried, 'But that would exonerate you!' And when he told her of the Zimbabwe report, which the Boer commando had taken from him, she was exultant: 'It proves you honestly were doing scientific work. That makes your Vrymeer questionings legitimate.'

But how to get possession of the two doc.u.ments? The first was held by Rhodes, who would be further incriminated if its contents were revealed. The second was held by the Boers, who would not likely deliver it. There seemed no way to obtain the papers.

With no other recourse, and with the death of her fiance imminent, she took the bold step of going directly to the president of the Boers, and she found him sitting on his stoep, wearing a top hat and making himself available to any complaining citizen. At first he terrified her: that face of monumental ugliness, the deep voice that rumbled like a volcano, the flecked beard that rimmed his features, the tight-fitting black frock coat. But after he heard her out, he spoke to her, in English, with a warmth that surprised her.

'You want me to save the young man's life?'

'I do!' she cried.

'You sit down here. You say two doc.u.ments are in existence?'

'They are! They are!'

'And if I could see them, they would exonerate him?'

'They would, sir.'

'Then why don't you produce them?'

She took a deep breath. 'Because Mr. Rhodes has one. And you have the other. And you are both very stubborn men.'

He halted his interrogation and called for his wife to fetch them coffee, and when Mevrou Kruger appeared on the stoep, a heavy, wheezing housewife, she seemed more like a kindly grandmother than the first lady of a republic. Her Coloured servant handed Maud a gaudy cup and saucer, with a second saucer to hold a helping of rusks. To her husband, Mevrou Kruger handed a double portion of rusks, then sat beside him with hands folded.

'You say you are Miss Maud Turner?' the president asked.

'Yes.'

'And you planned to marry this young man? Before he was caught as a spy?'

'He was never a spy, sir.'

'But you yourself told me that in his first report he informed Mr. Rhodes of our strength.'

'That he did, but if you remember, he also warned Mr. Rhodes against any military adventure.'

Mevrou Kruger broke in: 'Do you still want to marry him?'

Before Maud could respond, President Kruger astounded her by breaking into a hearty laugh. 'My dear young lady! Do you think we Boers want to give the English a motive for revenge, such as they gave us at Slagter's Nek?' He paused. 'Have you ever heard of Slagter's Nek?'

'I've been there, twice. Do you know the role played by Frank's ancestor? Reverend Saltwood the missionary? Who tried to halt the hangings?'

'We Boers do not cite missionaries as evidence,' Kruger said, and again he broke into laughter. 'Miss Turner, early this afternoon I commuted all the sentences.' He reached over and patted her knee as Mevrou Kruger offered fresh coffee to both her husband and his guest.

'Yes,' Kruger said as Maud daubed at her eyes. 'He's free, if he can pay his fine.'

'How much?'

'Twenty-five thousand pounds.'

She gasped. This was more money than she had ever visualized, a vast fortune really, but she firmed her chin and said, 'Somehow I'll get it.'

'No need. Mr. Rhodes has already informed us that he'll pay it.'

'Then Frank is free?'

'Yes.'

Her fort.i.tude deserted her. With trembling hands she put the saucers aside and buried her face in her hands. After a few moments Mevrou Kruger came to her side and helped her to her feet. 'He was free when you arrived,' she said. 'My husband likes to talk with pretty women.'

When Mr. Rhodes learned that Frank was determined to marry Miss Turner, he was deeply distressed. The loss of any of his young gentlemen to matrimony was a calamity, but to have Frank leave when he was going to be so sorely needed was intolerable. Summoning Miss Turner to his offices in Kimberley, he put it boldly to her that she was ruining the young fellow's life by insisting upon marriage.

'Seems to me,' she snapped, 'it's you who've done the ruining.'

'Don't be pert, young woman,' he replied.

'I didn't land him in jail,' she retorted, and the debate was on.

Rhodes pointed out that if Frank stayed with him he would always have a fine job, at the center of things, helping to decide affairs of great moment, to which she replied, 'He decided how to get himself hanged.'

'I saved him,' Rhodes said, and he proceeded to depict the bright future that awaited this brilliant chap 'He's not brilliant,' she cut in. 'He's not even bright, if you ask me, getting involved in your daydreams.'