Willem Kloot stopped with his spoon halfway to his mouth. He looked at his son. The humour had gone from David’s eyes.
‘Well, isn’t anyone going to eat? Dish up more food, Sanna,’ Soela said. ‘Give the kleinbaas an extra helping. He needs his strength.’
Sanna looked at her from the fireside, her eyes begging Soela to stop.
‘Don’t you?’ Soela looked at David directly.
David said nothing. That night he didn’t come to bed.
Two weeks later, Sanna informed them that Katrijn had given birth during the night and would have the day off. Soela tried to concentrate on her work, but she couldn’t get Katrijn out of her mind. In the afternoon, she went to the hut. She found the servant lying on a coir mattress in the dark, the infant at her breast. Katrijn was not the ugliest Hottentot Soela had ever seen, but it was perhaps the girl’s cunning that repulsed her. Still waters hide wild undercurrents, and despite being so young, she already had two children.
Katrijn was surprised to see Soela enter the hut. Quickly she pulled the blanket over the infant’s head. Soela leaned forward and pulled it back. The baby’s colouring and straight hair screamed out at her. She looked at the girl on the mattress and ripped off the blanket.
‘Out!’
Katrijn lay there with her breasts and belly exposed. She struggled to her feet.
Soela smacked her across the face, then beat her about the arms and head.
‘No, Kleinnooi, no …’ Katrijn cried.
‘Get out, and don’t come back!’
Katrijn stood trembling with the child in her arms, fending off the blows, blood dribbling down the inside of her legs.
‘What’s going on here?!’ David’s voice boomed behind them.
Soela stopped with her hand in the air.
‘You slept with this slut!’
David’s fist smashed into her face.
‘You want more?’
Soela looked at him with a dazed expression. Her face numb. He had struck her in front of the servant. She couldn’t see through the tears in her eyes, and the taste on her lips was her own blood.
‘I hate you!’ she screamed.
His fist came straight for her eyes, breaking the bone of her nose. Blood gushed from her mouth. Soela collapsed in a heap on the floor. David grabbed her hair and pulled her through the entrance like a sack of potatoes, dropping her outside. Her head fell back with a thud in the dust, a red pool of blood collecting under her ear.
‘You’re on Kloot’s Nek now, Soela Joubert. Your mother can’t help you here!’
Chapter Eleven
Neeltje sat with her back against a rock, soaking up the warm sunshine. She’d taken off her boots and set them to one side. She liked exploring the hooks and hollows of the mountain after rain. This was one of her special spots, out of the wind. She was telling all her secrets to Boet. Boet did not understand the words, but wagged his tail at the tone of her voice.
‘A boy or a girl, Boet? What do you think it will be?’
Boet opened his eyes, then closed them again.
She smiled, content to just sit there and feel the heat draw into her toes, spread up her legs, travel all the way to her heart. She felt good. Perhaps it was the swell of new vegetation, perhaps the quickening of her pulse when she saw Roeloff bare-chested and lean, his pants held up by leather thongs wound twice round his waist, working her father’s land. He still wore the same pants in which he’d arrived and Zokho hadn’t thought to patch the knees. Soon he would rub through them and stand naked before them in his boots.
A shadow fell across her and she opened her eyes.
‘Zokho! You startled me.’
‘Your father fell from his horse. Roff wants you to come.’
‘What?’
‘He says you must hurry.’
Neeltje pulled on her boots and ran off, leaving Zokho, in her last month of pregnancy, to follow at a more leisurely pace. She arrived at the house to find her father on his bed, and Roeloff bent over him.
‘What happened?’
‘We were riding along and I turned to speak to him, when there he was, lying on the ground.’
‘Was the horse frightened by something?’
‘No. One moment we were riding side by side, the next he was down. He just fell off.’
‘He’s very still.’
‘I’ve checked his bones. Nothing’s broken, but his breathing’s weak.’
‘What if it stops?’
