But Deliver Us from Evil Read online

  Where Beatrice’s father has the features of his grandfather, his skin is light brown, not white, and resiliently stands its ground against the hot sun of the Karoo. In some odd genetic thread from great-grandfather to granddaughter once removed, Beatrice might have walked off that ship with Jan Bloem all those years ago and no one’s head would have turned. Her long dark hair falls in loose curls and she looks out at the world through green eyes set in a light-skinned face. Despite her European characteristics, her heart is Koranna, a heart of unrelenting courage. A heart made for freedom.

  Once on his horse, her father and Maangees move as one; they are the moon in the night sky that the horse is named after. Beatrice watches and feels herself in her father’s place. She senses the strength of the horse between her thighs, the power itching to be let loose; that same power fills her body and she is invincible. In her mind she is at one with the animal.

  Willem, Beatrice’s eldest brother, comes up next to his father on his own horse, nowhere as glorious, but a good horse nevertheless. He is an excellent horseman as all Koranna men are.

  They ready themselves to leave. Beatrice stands with her mother, Khwee, and watches the men on their horses, the excitement of the hunt filling all the spaces.

  ‘We’re off!’ her father shouts into the air in the way he likes to, a call filled with drama and the promise of grand adventure, the things he lives for. The things Beatrice one day hopes to live for too.

  With those words, the women ululate and the island shakes as the hundred men on horseback disappear into the heavy bush-forest. They will cross the river and enter the surrounding farmland, carrying before them their reputation that will leave the interlopers quaking with fear. They will return with the long-horned cattle and fat-tailed sheep taken from the farms illegally occupied by the thieves: the Griqua burghers, given land that was not theirs by the colonial government they bow down to, and the Trekboers, attempting to sneak in and steal what is not theirs so as to dodge their British enemies.

  It’s fine, they can try, but Riet Towenaars, Beatrice’s father, and the Gemsbok Koranna of the Gariep will make life difficult for them. Eventually her father will win, Beatrice knows. Eventually they will move off the islands and back to the land that is rightfully theirs, living the life that they choose – not the one dictated by the colonial government so far away. Justice will finally be theirs.

  Her mother, a small, very light-skinned !Kung woman, heads back to their hut. Riet Towenaars is a respected man, and though his wife had been stolen from her people long ago when she was just a girl, Khwee has grown to love her husband. She is his most senior wife, so her status cannot be questioned, no matter her origins; the stigma of being from a Bushman tribe fell away when she married. Now she is first the captyn’s wife – before all else. She likes that – being ahead of others, better than others. Beatrice knows this, just like everyone does. The sinful pride the missionaries preach is not a sin her mother recognises.

  Once the men are gone, Beatrice slips away into the forest and climbs her tree, a tall karee with heavy branches that swing out over the river. It’s far away from the people, where she can be alone. She likes being alone, against her people’s way. They’re communal and enjoy one another’s company. Beatrice likes the bush and the animals that live there. It is there that she feels most at home, alone with her mind free to be itself. People interfered with that.

  The karee lets her view the spot where the men and their horses will cross, the narrowest section of the Gariep at that moment. The river is a living thing; she moves and changes and she lets only her people, the Koranna, know her secrets. Each day she whispers and the people listen. In this way, only they know where to cross on any day, where to avoid. A spot that was shallow and calm yesterday might be fierce and fighting today. The Koranna know this, and adjust to accommodate the river’s moods. Her temperament and their intimate knowledge of it is what keep the Koranna safe on the islands. The commando units organised by the Boers and the Griqua always trouble them, but they fear the Gariep and cannot follow the Koranna into the middle islands. The river keeps her people safe and her people, especially Beatrice, respect the river for that. The river’s whispers are heard only by a few people. People like her father. And people like her.

  Beatrice watches the hunting party as they cross. They don’t see it, but a hippo hides in the reeds downstream from where the men are crossing. Beatrice sees her. She closes her eyes and the hippo is there. Beatrice knows then she will be no threat to the men. She’ll wait hidden until they have passed. Hippos of the Gariep are rare now; they have learned that men have guns and even an angry, attacking hippo will fall to a bullet. The Koranna rarely kill the river’s animals. Again, it is the interlopers who do that. Their crimes mount; all must be punished. If not now, then soon.

  Beatrice watches the men until they have all crossed and galloped off on the other side. She wishes she was a man and that she was riding with them, off to farms to face danger and excitement, to be brave and to fight. To shoot and steal. To be both scared and fearless. As a girl, so many of life’s adventures are denied her and she often becomes sad when she thinks of that. She knows, though, that she is not like other girls, and perhaps that will offer her the space to travel a different path. She hopes so. She sees herself in her mind’s eye galloping off on Maangees, her knife dripping with blood, her clothes torn from battle, her muscles aching for the next fight. When the time comes, she will not hesitate because she is a girl. For her, it means nothing; as for the others, she doesn’t care at all what they think.

  She lies back on the wide branch, her arms stretched above her, legs dangling one on each side, and she closes her eyes. She settles her thoughts and opens the window that lets pictures fill her mind in the special way she has. In the darkness of her thoughts she sees her father, because her father is like her; they are always connected in this way, even when he is far away, connected through their mind pictures. He rides hard, driving a herd of brown and red Nguni cattle in front of him, his face proud and confident, jubilant in his success. That picture lives out there in the future. He is returning in her mind and at the same time he has only just left in reality. Now Beatrice only needs to wait for the mind pictures to become the truth.

  That is her specialness: she can see things others cannot. Her father has it too. He chose his name when he moved back to the islands: Towenaars – sorcerers.

  After some time, when the sun is low in the western sky, Beatrice climbs down from the tree. Her thinking time is over. She will spend the rest of the day searching for special things along the river until the men return and the celebrations begin. Maybe she’ll be lucky, she thinks, and she’ll find a diamond stone; she has before. Maybe today is her lucky day. She is nearly sure it is.

  Four days later, Beatrice is in their hut and her parents are arguing.

  ‘I must go. I have a man waiting for me to trade the stones, who’ll take the cattle. I can’t wait. He might leave. You’re being ridiculous,’ Beatrice’s father says, the annoyance in his voice not well hidden.

  ‘No,’ Khwee insists. ‘You can wait. Wait a bit until they leave and go back to the Cape. They always go back. You know the river always defeats them. Let them go first, then you’ll meet the man.’

  The argument is about her father going into Griquatown. The Koranna scouts had heard that the colonial government had sent out a regiment, now bolstered with mounted police and the Frontier Army. Four hundred local Basters and Boers had joined the group as well, a massive army. They want to clear the islands of all Koranna. They appear determined.

  Nine years before, they tried to stop the raiding of the local farms, tried to destroy the Koranna nation, but they failed. They captured a few captyns, took them to Robben Island, but others filled the void, others more powerful, others like Riet Towenaars.

  They did not succeed then and they will not succeed now.

  ‘They will take you, and then what will we do?’ Khwee pleads.

/>   ‘They cannot. I’m protected by the ancestors, by the medicines. I’m invincible.’ His voice booms, ricocheting back and forth through the lean-tos and huts. Beatrice listens carefully. She hears something – is it uncertainty? She’s not sure, since she has never heard it in her father’s voice.

  ‘Do not doubt me.’ It is a warning for Beatrice’s mother and also to the army waiting to destroy them. Beatrice hears the solid strength in his words and realises that she has been wrong. Her father is never uncertain. He will go to Griquatown and return safely.

  He walks out of the hut followed by his angry, mumbling wife. Beatrice trails behind. Her father collects Maangees from the kraal. The horse is ready. He wants to be off as much as his owner.

  Before leaving, her father bends down to his daughter. ‘Beaty, my darling, what should I bring you from Griquatown?’

  Beatrice does not need to think; she knows exactly what she wants. She whispers, ‘A hunting knife.’

  Her mother might have complained, but not her father. He knows her. If Beatrice says she needs a hunting knife, then a hunting knife she will get.

  He is on Maangees and gone before any more protest can be heard. The men follow, herding the stolen cattle ahead of them. They will come back rich.

  ‘This will not end well,’ her mother says. ‘I feel danger everywhere.’

  The words leave her mother’s mouth and enter Beatrice’s mind and the window is opened. The pictures try to form but then they’re wiped clean and all she sees is the colour red. A pulsing, menacing red. Beatrice stands firm against it. No, today her mind pictures are wrong. Her father said he will not be defeated. He proclaimed that and so it must be, no matter what Beatrice might see of their future.

  Chapter Three

  Beatrice knows her father has taken the two diamond stones she found along the river. She hopes he will have enough money to buy her the best sort of knife. The one in a leather case with a steel blade she can sharpen to the thinnest edge against a stone. She needs it for her walks into the bush. To cut off the heads of the fish she catches. To cut the meat she roasts. She will use her knife like she sees her father do. Cut the meat and put bits on the end to roast in the fire, and then she will take it off the sharp end with her lips, adeptly and without fear. Never cutting herself. Her mother detests the custom and never allows Beatrice to try it with other people’s knives, but when she has her own knife she will do as she likes.

  A knife will make her braver than she already is; it will open her world in new ways. Danger is lurking in the air. She feels it; she smells its greasy stench. She sees its red palette wiped across her mind. With a knife, she will be ready for its arrival.

  Her father returns the next day and her mother finally smiles after wearing an angry face the entire time of his absence. When she sees the red European dress he’s bought for her, she puts it on immediately and prances around. She never hides her beauty; she sees no reason to. In the dress everyone can see she is a beautiful queen. They must bow to her. She twirls and dances and ignores the jealous eyes of others. Beatrice smiles as she looks at her mother, happy and carefree now that her husband has returned safely. The red dress flashes this way and that in the sunlight, and Beatrice lies to herself and decides that the red mind pictures were the dress, nothing more.

  ‘Beaty, come, I have something for you,’ her father says.

  They move aside, for they both know people will think a seven-year-old girl with such a knife is madness. She and her father think otherwise. He hands her a package wrapped in white tissue paper. She opens it and it is just as she knew it would be, as she saw it in her mind. It is small, which is fine since her hands are still small. It has an ivory handle, smooth and cool, and a shiny, sharp steel blade. Its case is stiff brown leather engraved with the head of a wild, untamed horse, teeth gnashing, neck veined, mane blowing. It is perfect.

  ‘It’s Maangees,’ she says, running her finger over the edges of the horse’s strained neck, christening her knife. She finally has her own Maangees.

  Her father smiles. ‘Yes, I thought so too.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s perfect, Father.’

  ‘Use it with care, Beaty, my wise, wild daughter of the bush.’

  She kisses her father. Before he arrived, she had prepared thin strips of leather that she’d braided into a string. She goes out to her secret place in the trees to recover it. The knife slips into its case and a strap holds it in place. Beatrice pushes her leather string through a loop at the top of the strap where it bends over, then ties the two ends together. She puts the knife on its string around her neck. The weight feels good. She drops the knife under her dress and checks whether it is visible. It is not, just as she has planned. It will always be with her, night and day, lying near her heart, ready to protect her. She and her Maangees are now one.

  She starts to walk back to the camp, but stops a short distance away. Something is not right. It’s too quiet. The birds are gone. The fallen leaves are not crunching against bare feet. The encampment is silent. Something is happening and Beatrice knows it is not good. It is the dread they have been waiting for. It will not be passing them by after all.

  She sneaks forward, hiding in the shadows. A group of white men has arrived on horses, with a larger group of mixed Griqua and Basters behind, all mounted, all armed. Beatrice wonders how they managed to cross the Gariep. There should have been Koranna scouts watching to warn the people. What went wrong? Could the excitement of the men returning from town have brought the scouts to the camp, leaving their lookout posts unattended? It doesn’t matter. These men are here now.

  Two white men, English it seems, are standing on the ground alongside her father. They are tying his hands behind his back. The Griqua and Basters keep their guns levelled at the people. This accounts for the silence; this is why Beatrice was not aware of the invasion until that moment.

  Though she’s afraid, she steps out of the bush. She cannot leave her father with no one to save him. The others are cowards.

  ‘Leave my father alone!’ she shouts in her language.

  The men who understand the Koranna language laugh at this wild girl who thinks she can take on the entire colonial armed forces. Then one of the Griqua men points at her excitedly.

  ‘That’s the girl, the one I told you about,’ he says. ‘I knew she was here. She’s dirty and her hair is matted but underneath it all she is the one.’

  A man on a palomino gelding dismounts and approaches her. ‘Kan jy Afrikaans praat?’ he asks.

  Beatrice says nothing, although she knows Afrikaans as well as both her father’s and her mother’s languages. She will not speak to this white man, though – not in his language.

  ‘Where is your mother?’ he asks, again in Afrikaans. Despite deciding not to speak to him, Beatrice points at Khwee who stands defiantly, still in her new red dress.

  The white man looks at Khwee and shakes his head. ‘No, your real mother.’

  Khwee runs up and spits at the man, and a Baster soldier jumps from his horse and slaps her with force. Beatrice’s father shouts and he is struck with a stick. Khwee does not make a sound when the man’s hand hits her face. She stands her ground, as if the force of the blow meant nothing. Her pride is very deep and can be used to bolster her courage.

  The Griqua man says in Afrikaans, ‘I know the girl was stolen during a raid on a Boer farm. Look at her! Under all that dirt she’s white, an Afrikaner – pure-bred I tell you. I’ll bet my life on it. She should not be living out here with these savages. Look at her! I’ve seen her in town with them. I swore one day I’d save her. I swore it and here I am.’

  The white man looks Beatrice over. ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right. But we’ll not find her family now. Between the drought and the raids, most Boer families have gone off east. It’s better we take her to the mission station. They can see what to do with her. Her family will find her there if they come back looking for her.’

  The man reaches forward to lift Beatrice onto
his horse and she bites his hand, drawing blood. He pulls his hand back and wraps a handkerchief from his pocket around it.

  ‘Look at her! She’s already quite wild; they’ll have a time with her at the mission,’ he says. ‘Tie her up, Wilhelm. You take her to the mission station – let them know the situation.’

  She kicks and bites the Baster called Wilhelm. He hits her only once before the Englishman stops him.

  ‘She’s a child. A confused, lost child. Have mercy.’

  Wilhelm lays her over the saddle, strapping her down, and her mouth is gagged once they are away from the Englishman and his misguided kindness. As they’re preparing to leave, Beatrice hears the man tell the others in Afrikaans that Towenaars will go to Robben Island. The rest will be taken to the prison in Cape Town. They cannot be allowed to live on the islands; it’s too difficult to find them, to control them, to arrest the cattle rustlers and thieves, to collect the stolen property.

  The time of the Koranna on the islands in the Gariep is over, he says.

  ‘There is no room in a modern world for such wild people, for such savages,’ he says. ‘They must be tamed and civilised, and if they refuse, they must rot in jail until they die.’

  The words stay in Beatrice’s ears. They will be a challenge to her. She will make sure his words never come true. They can tie her and drag her off as far as they want, but she will return. She will return and reclaim what the Koranna are entitled to. As long as she lives, the Koranna will survive.

  Chapter Four

  As soon as Mma Nthebolang wakes the next morning, she can feel the change in the air. The village has turned its back on them. She decided during the night she would leave Nthebolang behind when she goes to the kgotla for the trial. Now she changes her mind. Her daughter will not be safe alone at home. The scent of witchcraft makes sane people mad, and now they’re covered in it, all three of them. Her daughter could be harmed or worse.