‘Dead? But I heard him cry. How can he be dead?’

Zokho didn’t see the hand clamped over the nose and mouth.

‘Give him to me!’

Tau choked the windpipe to make sure, then placed him in Zokho’s arms.

Zokho stared horrified at the dead child.

‘I’ve killed him! I’m cursed!’

‘Stop it, you foolish girl. It’s not your fault. You’ll have a child with Toma and everything will be all right.’

‘I will not have a child with Toma! I’ve grown close to this one here, under my heart. How can he come to me dead?’

‘You’ll have other children, you are young. Now take this and clean yourself. You won’t tell Toma about the softness of his hair.’

Zokho cried as the older woman dug a hole with her hands. The others would have understood, perhaps even Toma if she explained. She’d been forced. She hadn’t done it willingly. Her feeling for the child was strong; she didn’t want to accept that his small soul had departed. She touched the face, warm with her juices, and opened his eyes to see if she could revive him. There was movement in the lashes, but Tau pulled at her arm.

‘Give him here.’

‘I think he’s alive, Tau.’

‘Give him to me, Zokho.’

‘I will not!’

Tau wrenched the child from her arms.

‘Go to Toma. He’s waiting for you.’

The night grew dark and deep, and a short while later a lone figure came through the bushes. It was bad manners to stare, but eyes looked on in naked disappointment. There was no baby in Zokho’s arms, nothing protruding from her cloak.

‘Zokho, you are all right?’ Nani asked as she passed.

Zokho walked stone-faced past her to her skerm where she washed the blood from her hands and legs with a handful of water from the ostrich egg container, then lowered herself onto the kaross where Toma sat staring vacantly into the fire. There was a new firmness around her mouth. She didn’t look at him when she spoke.

‘He was born with no breath.’

Toma sat quietly digesting this news. Then he put his hand on hers, and crawled into the skerm.

In the morning, the men and women came one by one to console the couple, sitting with them at their hearth.

‘You will have other children, Zokho. Toma’s seed is strong.’

‘Yes,’ someone else added. ‘Before long you will have a son.’

Then Koerikei came up with his wife, his quiver of arrows already on his back.

‘You are strong enough, Zokho?’ he asked. ‘We cannot linger where there’s one buried. You don’t have to carry anything, Tau and the others will help.’

Chapter Six

Five years passed. Roeloff was on Dorsbek driving the sheep back to Kloot’s Nek with Ratel and Riempie when Twa came galloping up on a mare, waving wildly at him.

‘Quickly! Vinkie’s fallen in the dam!’

Roeloff raced off in a panic. The dam was full with the recent rain, and his four-year-old half-sister had a fondness for playing with Sanna’s boy, Kleintje, on the grass near the water’s edge. Drieka didn’t like Kleintje—so named for his smallness—and complained bitterly about her daughter playing with Hottentots. His father paid no attention. They’d all been raised with the likes of Sanna and played with their children in their youth, he said. Roeloff knew that Drieka was a frustrated wife and sometimes wondered where she thought she’d grown up that she didn’t know the realities of living a day away from your nearest neighbour. Finding herself with a rifle stuck in her hand on her first day on Kloot’s Nek when the men went out looking for the jackals that had killed the sheep during the night, she discovered in a hurry that the man she’d married wasn’t interested in voorkamer discussions about female sensibilities, and that his only concerns were his crops and grazing land for his animals. Willem Kloot was not a drinking man, and the odd times when he did loosen up with a beaker of brandy, the kitchen warmed with his laughter. The next day he was a tight-faced farmer again. Then Vinkie came along, and a softness was born and Drieka had a new way in. ‘I don’t want that snot-nose infecting my child.’ ‘Roeloff’s too reckless with Vinkie.’ ‘David has no time for his sister.’ Vinkie, with her freckles and dimples and sun-washed hair, had captured Willem Kloot’s heart. He started to listen.

Roeloff arrived at the dam to find Vinkie floating face down on the milky brown water, and Kleintje shivering with fright. He had peed himself wet, stammering to his mother—who’d heard the shouts and come with rolling thighs over the veld with Drieka, and Soela and Diena who were visiting—that he wasn’t to blame.

Roeloff rushed, hat and all, into the dam.

‘She just turned over!’

He reached Vinkie in four strokes and put her over his shoulder. On the bank he laid her down on the grass and pushed his hands down on her chest. Nothing happened.

Drieka gave Kleintje a hard smack to the head.

‘I told you to stay away from my child!’

‘It wasn’t his fault,’ Sanna said, pulling Kleintje towards her, where he cowered behind her huge bum.

‘Not his fault? You monkey, you’re arguing with me?’

‘Stop it!’ Roeloff raised his voice above all of theirs. He had never taken such a tone with his stepmother, but her arguing wasn’t helping and he was frightened himself that he’d come too late to save Vinkie. He knew of one way to resuscitate someone who had breathed in water, but couldn’t think of inserting a smoking pipe up his sister’s rectum. Taking Vinkie by her ankle, he turned her upside down and gave her a thump on the back. If it worked for babies and animals, it should get the air into her lungs.

‘What are you doing?’ his stepmother shouted, pulling him back.

He pushed her away roughly.

‘I’m trying to get her to breathe!’

Vinkie was hung upside down with her dress falling over her head, exposing her bare behind. Roeloff gave her another thump, and she coughed. A thin trickle of water bubbled out.

‘Look, Tante Drieka!’ Diena said.

Roeloff put Vinkie face down on the bank with her head lying sideways on her arm. Slowly, signs of life returned.

‘You’ve saved her, Roff. She’s waking up!’

Vinkie opened her eyes, bewildered by the commotion.

‘It’s all right, Vinkie; it’s me, Roff. Don’t be scared. Cough it out.’

He picked up the exhausted little girl and her head fell back on his arm.

‘I’ll carry her up to the house.’