‘It won’t come yet.’

Roeloff turned to Wynand Roos. ‘Do you want us to fetch the doctor, Oom?’

Wynand blinked.

‘We’ll also get the wid …’

Neeltje kicked his foot.

‘Don’t tell him that,’ she whispered. ‘He’ll get worse. We’ll leave at dawn, Pa. Zokho will stay with you in the house. Twa will look after things.’

‘He’s handy with a gun,’ Roeloff added. ‘We won’t be away long.’

That evening Neeltje put a few things together for the trip.

‘You’ll be all right by yourself, Zokho, you and Twa?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s soup in the pot. Give Pa the soup in the morning. You and Twa take the meat.’

‘Your father won’t open his mouth if he knows what it is.’

‘Don’t tell him.’

Zokho watched her wrap a few strips of biltong and bread into a cloth.

‘You’ll be back by sunset tomorrow?’

Neeltje looked up.

‘The day after. Why, are you afraid?’

‘No.’

‘What then?’

‘I’m thinking that—I’m thinking it will be quiet around here.’

‘That’s not it, Zokho. What is it?’

Zokho looked down at her hands.

‘Something will happen on this journey.’

‘What?’ Neeltje came to stand in front of Zokho and put her hands on her shoulders. ‘You’re talking strange things, Zokho. What will happen?’

‘I don’t know. I feel it in here, under my heart.’

Neeltje laughed.

‘You’re feeling the baby. You’ve said yourself he was kicking your insides. What can happen on this journey? I’ve been over these mountains twice since I was born.’

Zokho said no more.

Roeloff and Twa came into the kitchen.

‘I’ve asked Twa to have my horse saddled first thing. We’ll have to go on one horse, the mare’s getting ready to foal. The oubaas’s horse will stay in case Twa needs it to go after the sheep. I told him to keep an eye on things. He and Zokho are in charge.’

‘That’s all right with you, Twa?’ Neeltje asked.

Twa’s face wrinkled into a smile.

‘Twa will do it.’

*

The next morning, Zokho was up early to help Roeloff and Neeltje get under way. She watched them ride off on one horse into the darkness of dawn. Her heart was heavy. The journey for the doctor would bring change.

Neeltje had said to keep the house warm and to give her father soup. She entered the kitchen and went to the hearth. She bent over to pick up some wood, and a pain shot across her belly. The baby had dropped lower, and a cramp was working itself up her leg. When it subsided, she went behind the partition to tend to the oubaas. He was still asleep, but opened his eyes at her approach. She looked at him in the half dark, helpless, at her mercy. In his own bed she could put a sack over his face and smother him. Hold her hand over his nose and mouth the way Tau had done with her baby. Zokho had seen her do it, but pretended it hadn’t happened. It would be over by the time his eyes rolled back in his head. She could take his sheep for her people. They would forget her past and welcome her back.

Boet got up from where he was dozing at the foot of Neeltje’s bed, and licked her ankle. She bent down to touch him, ashamed of her thoughts.

‘You’re ugly, hairy one,’ she rubbed his fur. ‘You can see in Zokho’s heart?’

The dog licked her with a slobbering affection. She was surprised, amazed as always by white people’s feeling for animals. Boet was Neeltje’s dog, and she treated him almost like a human, feeding him from her plate. Roeloff had had two dogs on Kloot’s Nek, and shared Boet’s affections with Neeltje.

‘You are stupid, Zokho,’ she chastised herself. ‘Why are you crying, you foolish girl? He’s waiting for you to empty your belly so he can feel you again. Be strong. He is yours.’

She gave the oubaas his soup, then settled his blankets, and went to her own quarters and climbed into the bed Roeloff had vacated less than an hour before. She stayed there all morning, whimpering in her sleep. A dull ache woke her in the afternoon. She got up and went to the barrel outside for water. She hadn’t yet reached the door when a knifelike pain cut across her belly, bringing her to a halt. She recognised it; the first of the pains. She looked around the room she shared with Roeloff—the small trestle table, the powder horn, the extra gun, his clothes and books neatly stacked on a ledge in the wall. His presence was everywhere in the room. But where was he? Where was he when she needed him with her? He was crossing some mountain with the oubaas’s daughter, and she was by herself. She had said he could go, and had wanted him to so that the oubaas could recover, but she had also expected more concern for her and for the baby that would come. Who was there to help her? She, Zokho, was alone. As she’d always been. At least with her people, Tau had come to her aid, and the others were there as support. She missed them. Karees with her questions—she’d enjoyed talking to her. Was Karees with Toma now? And Limp Kao? Was he still there? And where were they? Behind the Hantam, or in the land of great dryness below the yellow river? It was far, far away. She started to cry, slowly at first, then sobbing desperately into her hands with the longing for familiar smells and family fires. A sudden contraction drove her back to bed.

The ride to Jan Dissels Vlei was quick and uneventful. They stopped once along the bank of the Olifantsrivier to have something to eat and stretch their legs. Roeloff talked a little about his sister, Vinkie, his life on Kloot’s Nek. Neeltje told him how lonely it was without brothers or sisters in the Cederberg. Otherwise their conversation was strained. Both seemed aware of the other’s presence.

Neeltje knew the way to the widow Reijnhardt’s farm, a lonely little house in a dusty bowl of bush and rock in the valley. When they arrived there, they were informed by a Koi-na servant that the widow had left a day before to visit relatives. She was not expected back for a few days.

‘We have come all this way for nothing,’ Neeltje said forlornly.

‘Never mind. There is still the doctor. Hopefully, we will find him in.’

Otto Lieberband was home when they arrived, and came limping out with his wife to greet them. Visitors were always a welcome change, although he got more than most because he was a doctor and people showed up unexpectedly for his help.

‘Neeltje! What a surprise! You’ve married then, since I saw you.’

Neeltje blushed.

‘No, Oom, I’ve not married. This is Roeloff Kloot. He’s a bijwoner on the farm.’

Roeloff greeted the doctor and was introduced to Johanna, his wife.