Now you have to get out of the way. My horse and I are hardly a speck on the horizon. At times you should be able to make out the colour of my eyes – light grey – but this is not a good time. I’m in a hurry.
With all of January’s sweat in my shirt, I join the rebels on Prinsloo’s farm. Everybody is jabbering at the same time. In between the bragging and the foreign French revolutionary slogans I get a grip on what’s happening. Martiens is hoping to assemble a big commando to claim back cattle from the Caffres this side of the Fish. Same old story. He wants to sort them out once and for all and for that he needs a whole stash of guns and a bevy of belligerent farmers. He knew that Adriaan van Jaarsveld was in trouble with the Cape because of some forgery story or other and that nothing could make a horde of farmers hang together like when the English make out one of their number for a rotten swindler. Six farmers recruit twenty others who want to cause shit and this gang bullies and blusters a whole lot of others into joining up.
So then they tell me how Van Jaarsveld was arrested and manacled and was on his way to the Cape with Secretary Oertel and a few soldiers for the trial, when four days later Prinsloo and a few of the men present here today overpowered the soldiers along the way and gave them a good hiding and freed Attie. So now the heroes of the revolution are lazing around picking their noses and calling it having a meeting. As per usual I am the one who has to come up with the plans. I tell the band of mute mules what we need to do with this gang of focking English in the Cape and Graaffe Rijnet. Prinsloo and I write a few letters requesting the burghers in a firm yet friendly fashion to get their backsides to the drostdy on 12 February. We assemble two days before the event at Jan Bosch’s place to ascertain exactly how many ‘we’ are. The meeting soon falls into disarray and fists are flying. I might just have overplayed my hand slightly when I proposed that, given that I was the Caffre king’s new stepfather, we burghers should combine with the Caffres to take Graaffe Rijnet and drive the English back into the sea. That anybody barring our way should be summarily shot to smithereens and their cattle be divided among the Caffres in recognition of their trouble. Well, yes, the brothers in arms were not exactly taken with this proposal.
I’m not far from Ngqika now. Over there, in front of me, lies the Keiskamma. When I pull up to give Glider a breather, you may just think it’s an opportune time to sidle closer. Don’t. As soon as you can smell my breath – meat and charcoal, tobacco, perhaps sweet potatoes – you must know you’re too close. I’ll saddle my horse and rush away and you’ll end up under the stallion’s hooves. In any case. In the end that revolution of Attie and Martiens’ was no more than a goddam letter-writing exercise.
The farmers of the Sneeuberg were grumbling that they had enough problems with the wild Bushmen, and that the English and the Caffres were none of their concern. So a few shitwits like Hendrik van Rensburg and Thomas Dreyer started thinking that we were getting too rough and tried to calm the lot down. I swear it was one of them who went tattling to Landdrost Bresler.
We postpone the whole business to 17 February, by which time we hoped that the Zwagershoek farmers would have joined us. As if things had not got too heavy to handle, I went and wrote a letter to the Zwagershoekers telling them they’d better turn up or otherwise they’d be traitors to land and nation and whatever else and I sign the thing as De Volkstem. I even got my hands on a letter from Bresler to Van Rensburg insinuating – if you were to read it out to the burghers in a certain way leaving out a sentence here and there – that the landdrost was supplying the Caffres with gunpowder and lead. Then the men started guarding the roads so that Bresler was not accorded any help from outside.
On the 17th we’re on Barend Burger’s failing farm near the drostdy. Probably about a hundred and eighty steamed-up farmers. I try to persuade the rabble to sign an accord I drew up. Some or other battle plan with a few words like fraternity and equality and suchlike crud kneaded in between the lines. Doesn’t matter any more: during the ensuing struggle the thing was torn up anyway. The wretched Reverend Ballot turns up and tries, all nervously and stutteringly, to placate us. We give the fellow a bit of a runaround and then we trap him in the house. I make him write a letter to the landdrost asking that His Worship Bresler should please speak to the governor so that my status as a so-called fugitive and outlaw should be revoked, since our minister can find no evil in me and that in his opinion one day I would make an exemplary burgher of their focking little kingdom. The letter ends up Godknowswhere – probably in the postal Hotnot’s little fire on a cold night – and I remain as free as the birds in the Lord’s heaven to be shot to pieces by all and sundry.
We get word that soldiers are on their way. We go and round up His Honour Bresler and make him, with a gun to his mug, also write a letter. This one to General Dundas. Bresler writes that order has been restored, that no reinforcements are necessary and that Van Jaarsveld should be pardoned. Then also the following addendum regarding yours truly:
The Burgher Coenraad de Buys has also appeared in the Village and requested that it may please Your Excellency to repeal the order given by the Earl Macartney to the Landdrost by an Instruction bearing date 14th February, 1798, by which he has been declared an Outlaw, we therefore beg leave to join our request to his that it may please Your Excellency to reinstate him in his former Burgher Freedom, he promising to Conduct himself as becomes a good Burgher and to answer this favour, and we being able to assure Your Excellency that the behaviour of the said Buys has in every respect appeared to us to be more than worthy of this exoneration.
These winged words, too, failed to have any effect whatsoever. Since any beggar with an ounce of lead on his person could at any time blast me to kingdom come and be rewarded for it and this revolution was nothing more than a protracted dictation session with intervals for roast meat, I found my way back to Caffraria.
I notice that you persist in peeking. Be wary of wanting to read too much into the beard’s first grizzling, the new wrinkles, or the numbed left thumb and index finger rheumatically feeling each other up. I push Glider till the saltpetre shows yellow in his flanks. See me shooting through the valley that lies simmering green and balmy among the mountains. Waterfalls cascade around me from the Mount of Calves. Here I ride my horse hell for leather to where the Tyume spills into the Keiskamma. See, there lie the huts of the Rharhabe Caffres, over whom my immense bride and I have dominion.