CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Monday, 3rd February

Isabelle slept well again and was ready in good time for her appointment.

A Black maid showed her into a gloomy parlour with heavy curtains. A beautiful longcase clock at least six feet tall dominated the room. Fashioned, she thought, from oak, Isabelle could hear the pendulum swinging ponderously in the tower. The dial was highly ornamental: roman numerals to mark the time and, inset into the face, paintings of two figures – a man holding a panel with tiny numbers showing the month, a woman opposite showing the day and date. But what made it exceptional was the tableau of delicate wooden ships, like children’s toys, set above the clock face against the backdrop of a painting of the harbour at Amsterdam seen from the water.

Entranced, Isabelle stepped closer. She did not know Amsterdam well, having been there only once last year, but she could identify several landmarks, including the spire of the church of Sant Nicolas and that of the Oude Kerk just a little way behind. The purpose of her trip had been to retrieve the precious Joubert family journals and writings, not to mention Louise’s prison diary, and arrange for the complete archive to be shipped back to England. The documents had been languishing in storage for many years, having been removed from the house in Warmoesstraat when the property was sold in the early1800s.

‘Miss Lepard, I am sorry to keep you waiting.’

‘Pastor Neethling, not at all. I was just admiring your magnificent clock.’

‘Ah, not mine, I regret. I inherited it from a predecessor, who had it brought here at great expense. Perhaps he was missing his homeland? It is a beautiful piece of work, all the same, and it keeps excellent time.’ He gestured she should sit. ‘Do you know Amsterdam?’

‘I have made one visit,’ Isabelle replied. ‘I was particularly enchanted by the religious community, Begijnhof.’

Neethling nodded. ‘Such an interesting history. After the Alteration of 1578, when the city transferred from Catholic to Calvinist rule in the space of an afternoon, it was the only papist institution allowed to remain for the sisters to continue to live there. Subsequently, the chapel was ceded to the English, I regret to say, rather than the Dutch Reformed Church. There are, I understand, very few beguines left in the community now.’

‘Your knowledge far exceeds mine. My Huguenot ancestors were given sanctuary in Amsterdam during the sixteenth century, so the city holds a place in my heart.’

‘Quite so.’ Neethling rang the bell. ‘Might I offer you a little brandy?’

Although Isabelle felt it was rather early in the day, she accepted.

‘Thank you. If it is not forward of me to say so, your English is very good.’

He smiled. ‘I shared rooms with an English missionary when I was studying in Utrecht. And these days, of course, it is useful to be able to speak the language of the administration.’

The speed with which the maid arrived suggested that Neethling perhaps often had a restorative at this time of day.

Isabelle removed her gloves and hat, and accepted the glass of brandy.

‘Why did your ancestors go to England rather than remain in Amsterdam?’ Neethling asked, once he had taken a sip.

‘It was not by design. My family is part Dutch, by blood as well as adoption. Two of my ancestors came to the Cape after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. One died here, the other was shipwrecked returning to the Netherlands and found sanctuary in England.’

‘On which ship?’

‘The China, which sailed from the Rotterdam Chamber in March 1688 and arrived in Table Bay in August of that same year.’

Neethling frowned. ‘But I do not believe I have encountered the name “Lepard” before . . .’

‘My family name was Joubert.’

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.