The Map of Bones, page 30
Neethling put down his glass. ‘Joubert?’ he asked, with a new interest. Isabelle knew that the Joubert family – descendants of Pierre Jaubert, who had also sailed on the China – was now one of the most well-known and powerful families in the Cape.
She laughed. ‘I regret I am not related to that Joubert family. My antecedents come from Languedoc, Carcassonne and Puivert. It is a coincidence of name, nothing more.’
‘Yet you are English?’
‘As I mentioned, the ship on which my relative, Suzanne Joubert, was returning to Amsterdam was blown off course in 1689. The Gouw was wrecked off the coast of the Cornwall with the loss of almost everybody on board. Only my ancestor and three or four sailors were saved.’
‘In which case, if you do not think it impertinent, might I ask why you have come, given you have no family in our country now?’
Isabelle gave her most engaging smile, the one that had first persuaded the Editor of The Leisure Hour to publish her journalism.
‘As I mentioned yesterday, I am a writer. I have a commission to produce a travel piece for a London periodical.’
‘I have heard travel writing is quite the rage in England,’ Neethling said as if it was beyond his comprehension as to why anyone would want to read about foreign places. ‘In Germany, I believe they have even begun to produce travel guides.’
‘My articles are published by a periodical that has links with the Religious Tract Society. My father was a clergyman and much engaged with missionary work. Much travel writing these days is in that vein.’
‘Your father has not accompanied you on this voyage?’
‘He went to the Lord last year,’ Isabelle replied, using a form of words she thought Neethling would appreciate.
‘Oh. May he rest in peace.’
She nodded her thanks. ‘I am a stranger in this country, pastor Neethling, so I need a guide to take me over the mountains to Franschhoek. I do not believe there is a hotel there, so I would be grateful for the recommendation of a Christian family who might give me lodgings. I have funds enough to pay. I cannot imagine I will be there for more than three or four days.’
Neethling pressed the tips of his fingers together in thought. ‘Franschhoek is a newer town than Stellenbosch, you understand. First, it was simply land given to Huguenot refugees and German immigrants to cultivate wine and fruit. The community has grown, however, and now there is a church and a chapel, even a school. There are several respectable boarding houses, so accommodation should not be a problem.’
‘That is good to hear.’ Isabelle took a tiny sip of her brandy. ‘Can you help with securing me a guide?’
Neethling nodded. ‘There is a man I think would be suitable for what you have in mind. He is one of your compatriots, who married a local girl of Dutch origin. Leave it with me. You are boarding with mevrouw Müller I believe?’
‘I am.’
‘She is a good woman.’ He drained his glass and stood up. ‘I will send word to you there. Good morning, Miss Lepard. It has been a pleasure to meet you.’
Isabelle also stood, leaving her brandy almost untouched. The next part of her adventure was about to begin.
Isabelle considered herself patient – though she could imagine her beloved father raising his eyebrows at such an assertion – but the thought of sitting in the parlour or her bedroom at the boarding house until there was news did not appeal. She knew from Suzanne’s notebooks that she had felt the same. Besides, she needed to absorb as much local colour as she could for her travel article for The Leisure Hour.
Isabelle resolved to do another circuit of the town. It was hardly likely pastor Neethling would be able to organise what she needed immediately. Even if he did, she had no doubt Mrs Müller would be happy enough to take a message.
Monday was clearly a busy day in Stellenbosch and there was a certain amount of traffic on Dorp Street – carriages, carts, a cooper rolling barrels, a gaggle of geese hissing and spitting. Clusters of bare-footed Black children were playing in the rills and flustered clerks, with starched white collars and sunburnt foreheads, were delivering messages to the professional offices. Outside the bakeries and the butchers’ shops, there were lines of women, mostly Black. Servants, she assumed, from the bigger houses.
As she walked, Isabelle noticed details she had missed on her first perambulation of the town: the elegant gable on La Gratitude and the Schreuderhuis on Van Rynveld Street, with its charming thatched roof and white walls. On Die Braak, Isabelle strolled to the gates of the VOC arsenal, the Kruithuis, with its white domed vault used to house ammunition.
The Braak was the largest remaining open green space within the town. Lined with the ubiquitous oak trees, it was used as a military parade ground and for any large municipal celebrations. Dodging carts and carriages with their hoods raised against the fierce sun, Isabelle walked across to admire the Rhenish Mission Church. An imposing white building with a thatched roof, neo-classical gables and a double campanile, it was some sixty years old and dominated the square. Its Anglican neighbour, St Mary’s, was smaller and more modest, built ten years previously with donations from England and English-speaking local residents, Mrs Müller included. Isabelle knew how important subscriptions to a cause could be. Without them, her own plan to create a Joubert Family Archive and Reading Room would come to nothing.
Knowing her father would wish her to pay her respects, Isabelle doubled back across the square towards the church. Suddenly, she had that same sensation that she was being watched. The short hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Pretending to consult the list of sights Mrs Müller had provided, Isabelle slowly stepped into the shade beneath a towering oak, and feigned interest in the paper in her hand whilst gazing surreptitiously around the square.
At first she saw nothing to disturb her, just the people of Stellenbosch going about their ordinary everyday business. But then, standing slightly apart from a group of men close to the stream and the water mill, she saw him. Her heart contracted. She would not swear that it was the man she had noticed in Cape Town, but it was certainly the same man who had been staring at her in the Lutheran church yesterday.
Her initial alarm gave way to fury. She would not be intimidated. Striding out of the shadows, she started to walk towards the stream. The man at first pretended not to see her then, when it became clear that she intended to confront him, he slipped away.
Isabelle picked up her pace, determined to catch him, but he was faster and clearly knew the town well. By the time she got to the corner, he had vanished.
Later, in her room, she tried to rationalise what she had seen. What she thought she had seen. Why would anyone be following her? She was one of increasing numbers of English visitors to the Cape, nothing marked her out. She had told no one but pastor Neethling of her Huguenot antecedents and, even if he had been loose-lipped, the man had already been on her tail in Cape Town.
Isabelle sat up late in her room that evening, drinking a rather blowsy red wine and writing her notes by the light of a candle. Only when fingers of light started to slip through the shutters did she extinguish the flame and creep into bed. Her dreams were full of images of pursuit and chase. Running through the fynbos and rows of vines, unable to see where she was going. Images of lions and hyenas and jackals, a leopard with red-tipped claws and sharp teeth, with the face of a man.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Monday, 17th February 1862
‘It is a day’s ride, no more,’ said John Turner. True to his word, pastor Neethling had secured the services of an Englishman, who was married to the youngest daughter of a manager on the Spier wine farm, one of the oldest in Stellenbosch.
The interview was taking place in the stuffy parlour of Mrs Müller’s boarding house. Turner was a presentable man in his mid-twenties, with a mop of blond hair and an appealing, boyish face. Isabelle had taken to him straight away.
‘And will we break the journey?’ she asked. Though Isabelle was a competent horsewoman, she had grown up in London and most of her riding had been in Hyde Park or on the Sussex Downs between one country house and the next. She had never before trekked through mountain passes nor over such wild terrain. She was not anxious as such – it would all be good copy – but she did want to be clear as to what she was letting herself in for.
‘There is a farm halfway between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek,’ Turner replied. ‘My wife’s family lives there, and will be happy to provide us with a bed for the night. It’s a pretty place, though rather isolated. Nothing fancy, mind, but it will be clean and comfortable enough. My proposal is that we should leave here at midday on Wednesday, stay one night at Klein Bethlehem, then ride on to Franschhoek, arriving at the end of that same day.’
Recalling Suzanne’s account of her own arrangements to travel from Stellenbosch to Franschhoek, Isabelle smiled.
‘That sounds just the ticket, John, thank you. Please confirm the arrangements. And we must agree an advance payment for your services, too. You must let me know how much you need.’
The young man blushed. ‘Thank you, miss. Glad to be of service.’
Tuesday, 18th February
In the next two days, Isabelle was very busy. She was in good spirits, heartened by the fact that there had been no further sightings of the man who been following her. She came to an arrangement with Mrs Müller to store her excess luggage and keep her room for another few days during the first week in March on her return from Franschhoek. She acquired a printed map of the region, clearly showing the terrain between the two towns and the mountain passes. On the Tuesday afternoon, she paid a visit to pastor Neethling to thank him for his assistance.
From him, she learnt that the wine farm at Bethlehem – where she and John Turner were to lodge for the first night – had first been granted to Pierre Simond, the French Huguenot pastor who had sailed to the Cape on a ship docking two weeks after Suzanne’s ship, the China. Isabelle had tried to converse in French with a few of the French-named shopkeepers in Stellenbosch and discovered that the language simply was not spoken any more. In a matter of a few generations, it had died out almost completely.
‘How did that happen? I would have thought they would have fought tooth and nail to preserve their heritage.’
‘It is an irony,’ Neethling agreed. ‘Your ancestors fled here to be allowed to worship in their own language, yet the VOC was determined that they should fully integrate. Within a hundred years, all teaching in schools and seminaries was in Dutch. Only the French names remain.’
‘That seems a dreadful pity.’
Neethling nodded. ‘Though bear in mind that many of your forebears did not really speak French at all. Pierre Jaubert, from whom you are not descended –’ he paused to allow Isabelle to smile at his joke – ‘Jaubert and his co-religionists spoke Provençal. Others Flemish or Occitan.’
‘Will this be the case in Franschhoek, too?’ The town’s name – meaning ‘the French corner’ – had given Isabelle to hope that she might be able to communicate more directly with its inhabitants. She had discovered there was resistance to speaking English and she had no more than a few words of Afrikaans, certainly not enough to ask the questions she needed to.
‘There are perhaps more French speakers there than in Stellenbosch, to be sure,’ he replied. ‘But it is rare. Now, may I offer you a little something?’
Wednesday, 19th February
As the mission bell rang for eleven o’clock, Isabelle set out from Stellenbosch in the company of John Turner. She was riding a pretty piebald mare, Ana; Turner, a bay called Minx.
She took little with her, only what she could not have borne to lose – her father’s bible, Minou’s journal and Suzanne’s dagger with the red garnet in its hilt. The blade was blunt, and its use more decorative than protective, but Isabelle liked to have it with her.
John Turner was, as she had hoped, pleasant company, neither too talkative nor overly taciturn. The sun was not too fierce and their ride from Stellenbosch towards Klein Bethlehem was enjoyable. The open terrain between the towns was, she realised, relatively unchanged since Suzanne had made the same journey. The significant difference was the lack of Khoi clans or San, who had been driven north by the colonisers, their communities decimated by smallpox, and conscripted as foot soldiers in the wars between the Boers and the British.
They rode on, mile after empty green mile. Isabelle had glimpsed a distant lion on the Cape Flats when leaving Cape Town a couple of weeks before. Now, while they had seen various species of antelope, she had yet to see either a leopard or an elephant. Since the Huguenot settlers started to farm the land along the Berg River in Olifantshoek, the big game had moved to a safer place to avoid the hunters and their guns.
‘It is baboons that cause the most mischief,’ Turner said, ‘and snakes that are the most dangerous. Cobra, puff adder, boomslang, black mamba, they all can be found hereabouts.’
‘What should I do?’
‘Watch where you put your feet,’ he replied with a grin.
Remembering Suzanne’s near fatal accident, Isabelle whistled. This was one way in which she did not want to mirror her ancestor’s experience.
KLEIN BETHLEHEM
They arrived at Klein Bethlehem at dusk, when the mosquitoes were out in force. Isabelle was glad of the protection of her gloves and the netting around her hat.
John dismounted, then held her piebald so she could jump down from her saddle. An enormous red wheaten ridgeback dog came bounding towards them. John caught the dog’s muzzle in his hands to stop him jumping up at Isabelle.
‘He is friendly,’ he said, ‘just rather boisterous.’
A small, plump woman in a pale blue-and-white-striped dress, and a hard-working apron that told the story of many meals cooked, came bustling out to greet them.
‘Hallo, hallo!’
‘Miss Lepard, may I introduce you to my aunt? Griet van Aarnhem.’
‘Please to meet you, Miss Lepard,’ Griet said in hesitant English.
Isabelle smiled. ‘The pleasure is mine, mevrouw Van Aarnhem. It is kind of you to let me stay.’
‘She is my wife’s aunt rather than my own.’ Turner put his arm around Griet’s shoulders. ‘They can trace their ancestors right back to the days of Simon van der Stel.’
Isabelle smiled, then gestured at the land lying around them. ‘Is this Pierre Simond’s original wine farm?’
She had thought that it would be far grander and more substantial. Simond had not only become a successful wine maker, but also a significant slave owner. How this squared with his Christian beliefs, Isabelle could not imagine.
Turner translated for his aunt, who laughed and rattled a reply in Afrikaans.
‘Geen, geen.’ No.
‘This is Klein Bethlehem, little Bethlehem,’ he replied. ‘The actual farm is further up the valley. This patch of land was granted to a relative of my aunt some fifty years ago, an overseer who had served a previous owner faithfully. They grow only what they need for themselves. My cousins and uncle work in the vineyards belonging to the main farm.’
Griet gestured for Isabelle to follow. ‘You come. Come.’
She was shown to a very basic, but clean, little cottage with a single pallet bed, a net over the window, a chair on which to put her things, a washing bowl and jug, and a beef tallow candle, set on a spindly legged table.
‘If you come back to the house when you are ready, miss,’ Turner said, ‘my aunt has prepared us some supper. You can meet the rest of the family.’
When they had gone, Isabelle’s spirits dipped a little. It was more of an outhouse than a cottage, though she supposed this was what she had determined upon. This was her first true experience of the real adventurer’s life. She pressed her hand to the mattress. It was hard, but would be comfortable enough. The pillowcase smelt of fresh air and soap, and the embroidered covering looked as if it had been put on that day.
Isabelle washed her face and hands, tidied her blonde hair into a bun at the nape of her neck, then took her satchel and went to join the others. Suzanne’s notebooks had prepared her for the fact that a day in the saddle was hungry work.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Isabelle passed a pleasant evening in the company of the Van Aarnhem family. Griet’s husband Hans was a big, comfortable man with skin the texture of cracked leather from working in the fields. He had risen to a senior position in the Bethlehem wine farm and was highly valued. His English was good, thanks to his having to negotiate with the British, and he explained that this was the busiest time of the year, bringing the grape harvest in. The two sons – Piet and Jan – smiled shyly when she caught their eye. They were as broad and sandy-haired as their father, and Isabelle found it hard to tell them apart.
The kitchen was plain but welcoming. Dried herbs hung from the rafters, both medicinal and for cooking: buchu, wild wormwood, blue sage, wild sorrel and bunches of bokkom, strips of dried and salted mullet. Beside the hearth stood a large vetpot, used for storing rendered animal fat. On a sideboard, Isabelle saw metal moulds filled with beef tallow, much like the candle in her cottage.
Waving away Isabelle’s offer to help, Griet served a platter of poached red prickly pears and blackberries from wild brambles. Rather than wine, they drank Arak, a strongly flavoured rice spirit of brandy and anise that made Isabelle’s head spin. There was also tameletjie, a kind of sweet toffee confection, which Griet explained was made with pine nuts, dried ginger, butter and water.
‘You should not have gone to so much trouble,’ Isabelle protested.
Griet smiled, then spoke to her husband.
‘She says she likes to cook,’ John translated, ‘and you have a good appetite for an Englishwoman!’
As soon as the meal was over, and Van Aarnhem had finished his pipe, he got to his feet.
‘We must be back at the farm before first light. At this time of the year, there can be sudden rainstorms, so we have to bring in the grapes as quickly as possible. This is a good farm. The owner allows us to have regular breaks. So, if you will excuse us?’
