Back at the house, Willem sat at the table, trying to close his ears to the commotion in the yard.
Vinkie came to stand at his elbow.
‘He didn’t do it, Pa. Hennerik knows what happened. Why don’t you ask him? Hennerik’s scared of David, that’s why he won’t talk. Stop Roff before he goes. He’s not going to come back if you let him go.’
Willem got up and went to his room.
Vinkie turned to her mother, who was busy piling wood on the hearth.
‘Ma? You heard what Sanna said. You have to tell him.’
Drieka pursed her lips and stirred the fire vigorously.
The day was long. Roeloff was brooding and silent, and Twa wisely held his tongue when they passed the same cluster of rocks for the second time. Towards evening they stopped under a kareeboom and struck camp for the night.
‘You have lost your spirit, Kudu. Sleep. Tomorrow, a new day will come.’
Roeloff slumped with his back against the tree, his hat pulled down over his face. The shock of betrayal sat like a stone in his chest. Brothers fought and had disagreements, but blood was blood, one didn’t cut the breath of the other. David had got him removed from Kloot’s Nek. His father had condemned him. He was banished, his life reduced to a tongue of flame on the open veld and the clothes on his back. Where would he go? How would he live? He’d been falsely accused and cast out. His father had thought him capable of a heinous crime. Nothing would lessen that pain. If his father were to prostrate himself before him and pour out a thousand words to express how sorry he was, Roeloff might be obliged, as a Christian, to forgive him, but he would never forget what his father had done. He looked at Twa lying next to the fire. Roeloff wished he could be like Twa and just throw himself down anywhere. Twa had no worries. For him, there was no tomorrow. Were the Sonqua the true owners of freedom?
‘I’ve decided what we will do, Twa. We’ll go south and look for work. When we have enough money, we’ll buy a wagon and travel down to the Cape.’
‘Who will give us this work and this money? And have we left one farm to make ourselves slaves on another?’
‘We can’t do anything without money.’
‘We don’t need it if we turn around and go up to the river.’
‘I can’t live forever with my arse in the wind.’
‘You have lived with your arse in the wind, what’re you talking about? You’re one of us. But your spirit is low today. It’ll come back, you’ll see. The world will be all yours again.’
The day broke with a wave of heat, and by noon they were walking alongside the mare carrying their belongings as Dorsbek had developed a sore under the saddle. The night rain had done little to change things, and the earth was parched, with no trees or cover in sight.
‘We’re not making much progress,’ Roeloff wiped the sweat from his neck. ‘We’ll have to stop soon to look for something to eat. There are only a few pieces of biltong left.’
Twa looked around him.
‘We’ll be lucky to find a dassie in this heat.’
‘Do you know how to catch them? They’re fast.’
Twa smiled. ‘You’re talking to Twa. If there’s a dassie anywhere among these stones, Twa will find it.’
The next day was slower because of a steep mountain and Twa’s refusal to cross it on an empty stomach, and they stopped early to pay serious attention to obtaining a meal. Roeloff felled a bird with his sling, saw too late that it was a vulture, and refused to eat it. Twa chopped off the head, took out the guts and threw it, feathers and all, onto a fire. When he couldn’t entice Roeloff with the roasted meat, he finished it off himself, licking his fingers and rubbing his belly to show he was whole again.
The third day, coming down the kloof, they found water in a deep hollow in the rocks, and replenished their dwindling supply. By noon the temperature was unbearable, and Roeloff was stripped to the waist, his long hair tied back with a leather thong.
‘This land’s so flat, you can see to the end of the earth. Not even a hill in front of us. Nothing. We could have been far away by now if the mare didn’t have this wretched sore on her back. I should have checked that saddle before I put it on her. Our weight on it made it worse.’
‘Kudu, look!’
Roeloff looked behind him to where Twa was pointing. He couldn’t see anything on the kloof they’d descended.
‘Someone’s following us!’
‘What?’
‘Yes. By all that’s good in me, it’s Smoke in the Eyes!’
‘Zokho? Are you sure? What’s she doing out here?’
‘She’s walking with a purpose.’
Roeloff watched in amazement as the figure materialised out of the heat shimmer. Zokho saw him, and came running. The next moment, he felt her warm breasts against his chest and his arms went about her instinctively.
‘I left you just a few days ago. What are you doing out here all by yourself?’
‘I ran away.’
‘You ran away? Why?’
‘To come to you.’
‘To me?’
‘Yes.’ Her head had been shaved and the new hair was just coming out, making her look like a boy. ‘I saw in your eyes that you wanted me to come to you.’
Roeloff released her.
