The Covenant (108 page)

“Aieee, Mhlakaza! How wonderful!”

“Say the ones at the pool, ‘All this is yours if you obey us.’ I saw a million Xhosa ready for battle. And with them came a regiment of strangers who fight alongside us as brothers.” Flecks of spittle hung at the corners of his mouth as he revealed his startling visions: “They will slay the English! They will trample the Boers!”

When the roar of approval died, he added, “The Xhosa will inherit everything. All the farms in this land will be yours. You will never again know a cattle shortage. Your grain baskets will overflow forever.”

Now, it so happened that Mhlakaza had recently traveled through the frontier districts, moving along the fringe of settlement as on that morning at De Kraal when Van Doorn wanted to shoot him. And as he moved about he listened: “In lands beyond the sea there is a body of warriors called Russians. They are like the Xhosa, except they have white skins, but like us, they fight the English.”

“They’re afraid of these Russians,” a servant whispered. “In one
battle they struck down the best commando of the English. Killed six hundred when the English ran at them on horses, with stabbing sticks.”

He picked up what additional information he could about the disastrous charge of the English brigade at Balaklava, and one fact began to burn in his mind: his enemy England had another enemy, the Russians.

Mhlakaza took Nongqause aside and explained the mystery of her visions: “The Xhosa will be reinforced by the white strangers you saw, the Russians. We must hurry to the pool to get further instructions.” And when these words were locked in her childish mind, he took her to the kraal of the great chief, Kreli, where she stood before the councillors of the area: “To prove your faith in the ancestors who spoke with me, you must do two things. Kill all your cattle. Burn all your mealies. Only when you are purified in this way will the ghosts march to help us.”

Chief Kreli, bewildered by such instructions, said, “Step forward, child, and let us see who it is our ancestors speak with.”

Nudged by her uncle, Nongqause moved timidly toward Kreli, her large hazel eyes meeting those of the great chief.

“Tell them the white soldiers are ready to march with us,” Mhlakaza said.

“It is so, my Chief.”

“They have come across the sea to fight for us?” Kreli asked.

“They have,” she said quietly, going on to describe in detail the heroics of the Russians in their battle against the English. As she spoke, a chatter ran through the crowd, for if Mhlakaza vouched for her as a true Mother of Greatness, she must be listened to.

“The cattle are to be killed,” she said again. “The baskets empty. The land bare. When that is done, the Russians and the Xhosa will drive the English and the Boers into the sea.”

The idea of slaughtering all cattle was so infamous, threatening as it did the very existence of the Xhosa, that older councillors scorned both Nongqause and her prophecy. One white-haired advisor protested: “Where was this nonsense seen?”

“At the pool,” Mhlakaza said. “She saw it first. Then I did.”

“This talk of a day when all people, dead and alive, shall come together. Isn’t that what they say at the Christian mission at Golan?” the old man asked. “Isn’t that where you heard it?”

“It is the word of our ancestors,” Mhlakaza insisted.

“You bring us missionary ideas,” the old councillor persisted. “The tribes of the dead coming back to earth, bringing paradise with them.”

“Our ancestors told me. At the pool.”

Chief Kreli, an artful, determined leader, had long sought some tactic that would unite his Xhosa, and he surmised that this young girl’s visions might be the answer. Organizing a pilgrimage to the pool, he allowed his councillors to see Nongqause talking with the departed leaders and hear her speaking with the waiting Russians. When she reiterated the ghostly commands, that all foodstuffs be destroyed, he began to believe that if this were done, the Russians would arrive by ship and unite them with the long-dead chieftains to expel the white men from the land.

“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 chiefs—Hintsa, 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 any concept of Russia. But she has been remarkably consistent in her visions and has told only one clear story: ‘Kill everything, burn everything, and the spirits will come to free us.’ ”

“Does she speak specifically against us?” Saltwood asked.

“Never heard her say as much. She has only a generic enemy, but it’s got to be us.”

“She’s not preaching armed rebellion?”

“The spirits are going to handle that end of it. But of course, the living Xhosa must be prepared to follow them, so I suppose that in the end we must expect armed invasion.”

“Good God,” the new district officer said.

“Do you take it that seriously?” one of the officials asked Saltwood.

“I do. You must remember, gentlemen, that these men you’re talking about have been fighting us for nearly half a century. They’ve learned all the tricks. They’re brave, and when their prophets preach a holy war they can become quite fanatical. I think we’re in for trouble.”

Saltwood’s perceptive observation about blended heroism and fanaticism gained such wide circulation that the government asked him to see what he could do to minimize or even halt the cattle killing, and he left Grahamstown with two Xhosa men who worked for him at De Kraal to enter the regions where Nongqause’s preachments were having their strongest effect.

He was not prepared for what he saw. Entire fields lay covered with dead animals, and anyone who knew the Xhosa had to be appalled at this wanton sacrifice. On two different occasions his Xhosa companions broke into tears at the sheer waste, but when Saltwood talked with the men who had done the killing, he found them in a state of euphoria—smiling, happy, marking time till the eighteenth of February when every dead animal would be returned a hundredfold.

“Tell them it cannot happen,” Saltwood urged his men, but when they endeavored to persuade the other Xhosa not to kill any more
cattle, the tribesmen smiled benignly and said, “You wouldn’t understand,” and the slaughter continued.

At the end of five days Saltwood had seen more than twenty thousand dead animals, and he sent one of his companions running back to Grahamstown with this brief message: “The rumors we heard were one-tenth of the story. I truly fear that all cattle may be slain and that thousands of people will face starvation. Begin to assemble foodstuffs immediately.”

Distraught, uncertain, he decided to seek out a village where one of his former workers lived, a man named Mpedi, fine and trustworthy, hoping to use him as a wedge into the heart of the problem. But when he reached Mpedi’s hut he found the man, a sensible fellow in his sixties, mesmerized by the glorious thing that was about to happen: “Baas, you cannot know what we shall be doing. All the great chiefs coming back to help us. A hundred … a thousand warriors waiting in the rivers to rise up and lead us into our inheritance.”

“Mpedi, wake up!” Saltwood begged. “Do you think your dead cattle will be replaced? Do you think food will come from the sky?”

“It will come, Baas.”

“Can’t you see that you’re about to starve?”

“There will be food for all, Baas.”

“Goddamnit!” Saltwood raged. “Open your eyes!”

“They are open, Baas. And on the eighteenth of February yours will be opened, too!”

Saltwood shook his old herdsman, a man who loved cattle. “Mpedi, if you kill the rest of your cattle, you’re going to starve.”

“Baas,” the herdsman said with deep affection, “I want you to leave this village and go back across the Great Fish, where you belong. Go to De Kraal and get your family. Hurry to Port Elizabeth and get aboard a ship and go away. Because the risen chiefs are going to march right to headquarters and kill all the white people who have stolen our land from us. I don’t want you to die, Baas, because you’ve been a good man to us.”

Saltwood was so shaken by his inability to bring sense into the discussion that he tried a new tack: “Mpedi, I’m not here as your friend. Remember how many times I went out on commando against your men.”

“Ah!” the herdsman said with a broad smile. “That was war, Baas. I shoot you. You shoot me. Who cares? It was in peace that you were so good to us. Now please leave.”

And while Saltwood stood there, this man whose life had centered upon the building up of a small herd of cattle went back into his fields and resumed slaying the docile creatures whose existence represented the only chance of keeping that village alive in the awful days that loomed.

During the first two weeks of February, Saltwood penetrated to most areas of the western Xhosa, and what he saw sickened him so that he returned to Mpedi’s village, now stripped of all food except what was in the pots for the few days remaining till the miracle. “Can you take me to Nongqause?” he asked his former workman.

“No good, Baas. She sits by the pool waiting for the generals to rise from the waters.”

“I must talk with her.”

“No good, Baas. She just sits there, waiting!”

“Damnit, Mpedi. I’m trying to save enough animals to keep you idiots alive.”

“No good, but if you want to hear from her own lips …”

He led Saltwood a day’s journey eastward to the Gxara River, where a delirious crowd of Xhosa had gathered to be near the prophetess when the chiefs rose to greet her, and enough people knew Saltwood’s good reputation to allow him to pass through the multitude to talk with the little girl. She had a pinched face, no beauty whatever, and large watery eyes. She was quite oblivious of the furor she was causing, and when Saltwood had been in her presence only a few minutes he was satisfied that she did indeed see visions. When he spoke to her, she did not respond coherently but rather with a dreamy indifference, for she knew that the day of revelation was at hand.

“Nongqause, there’s still time to save enough cattle to feed the people during the coming winter. Stop the killing, I beg you.”

“When all are dead, then the new will arrive.”

“Can’t you see that you’re bringing desolation to the Xhosa?”

“When the grain is all burned, the new will arrive.”

“Nongqause! You’re destroying your people.”

“When the chiefs arise, it is the enemy who will be destroyed.” She pointed to the calm, dark surface of the pool as if she expected Saltwood to see what she saw: the cattle waiting to fill the pastures, the boundless supplies of grain, the great chiefs dressed in battle array, with the Russians somehow behind them.