excitement.
Michael Courtney dismounted among the rocks on the highest point of the
escarpment. For a week he had denied the impulse to return to this
place. Somehow it seemed a treachery, a disloyalty to both his
parents.
Far below and behind him in the forest was the tiny speck of
Theuniskraal. Between them the railway angled down towards the
sprawled irregular pattern of rooftops that was Ladyburg.
But Michael did not look that way. He stood behind his mare and gazed
along the line of bare hills to the gigantic quilt of trees that
covered them in the north.
The wattle was tall now, so that the roads between the blocks no longer
showed. It was a dark smoky green that undulated like the swells of a
frozen sea.
This was as close as he had ever been to Lion Kop. It was a forbidden
land, like the enchanted forest of the fairy, tale. He took the
binoculars from his saddle, bag and scanned it carefully, until he came
to the roof of the homestead. The new thatch, golden and un weathered
stood out above the wattle.
Grandma is there. I could ride across to visit, there would be no harm
in that. He is not there. He is away at the war, Slowly he replaced
the binoculars in the saddle, bag, and knew he would not go to Lion
Kop. He was shackled by the promise he had made to his mother. Like
so many other promises he had made.
With dull resignation he remembered the argument at breakfast that
morning, and knew that they had won again. He could not leave them,
knowing that without him they would wither.
He could not follow him to war.
He smiled ironically as he remembered the fantasies he had imagined.
Charging into battle with him, talking with him beside the camp fire in
the evenings, throwing himself in front of a bayonet meant for him.
From the look, out on the escarpment Michael had spent hours each day
of the last Christmas holidays waiting for a glimpse of Sean Courtney.
Now with guilt he remembered the pleasure he had experienced whenever
he picked up that tall figure in the field of his binoculars and
followed it as it moved between the newly planted rows of wattle.
But he's gone now. There would be no disloyalty if I rode across to
see Grandma. He mounted the superb golden mare and sat deep in
thought. At last he sighed, swung her head back towards Theuniskraal,
and rode away from Lion Kop.
I must never come up here again, he thought determinedly, especially
after he comes home.
They are tired, tired to the marrow of their bones. Jan Paulus Leroux
watched the lethargy of his burghers as they off, saddled and hobbled
their horses. They are tired with three years of running and fighting,
sick, tired in the certain knowledge of defeat, exhausted with grief
for the men they have buried, with grief also for the children and the
women with them in the camps.
They are wearied by the sight of burned homes scattered about with the
bones of their flocks.
