“Wherefore this heaviness, holder of the White Shield?” she said. “Do you forget that you have a sorceress for inkosikazi?”
For a while I made no reply, but stood gazing at her with a glance full of admiration and love. For, standing there, tall and beautiful and shapely, it seemed to me that Lalusini looked just as when I first beheld her in the rock cave high up on the Mountain of Death. Time had gone by since I had taken her to wife, yet she seemed not to grow old as other women do. My two former wives, Fumana and Nxope, were no longer young and pleasing, but Lalusini seemed ever the same. Was it her magic that so kept her? She had borne me no children, but of this I was rather glad than otherwise, for we loved each other greatly, and I desired that none should come between to turn her love away from me, as children would surely do. For my other wives it mattered nothing, but with Lalusini it was different. I loved her, Nkose, as some of you white people love your women. Whau! Do you not allow your women to walk side by side with you instead of behind? This I have seen in my old age. And those among us who have been at Tegwini (Durban) tell strange tales of white men who go out with their women, that they might load themselves with all the little things their women had bought from the traders. Few of us could believe that, Nkose—the tale is too strange; and yet it was somewhat after this manner that I loved Lalusini—I, the second induna of the King’s warriors, I, who since I was but a boy had slain with my own hand more of the King’s enemies than I could count. I, moreover, who had known what the ingratitude and malice of women could do, in the person of my first wife, Nangeza, for whom I had sacrificed my fidelity to the King and the nation—even my life itself. But with Lalusini, ah! it was very different. No evil or sullen mood was ever upon her; nor did she ever by look or word give me to understand that a daughter of the House of Senzangakona, the royal house of Zululand, might perchance be greater than even the second induna of a revolted and fugitive tribe, now grown into a nation. Even her counsels, which were weighty and wise, she would put forward as though she had not caused me to win the White Shield—had not saved our nation at the Place of the Three Rifts.
“It seems to me, Lalusini,” I said at last, “it seems to me that in this nation there is no longer any room for us two. I have served Umzilikazi faithfully and well. I have more than once snatched back the life of the King, when it was tottering on the very brink of the Dark Unknown, but kings are ever ungrateful; and now I and my house are promised the death of the traitor. The destruction of the Red Terror, which is my ordeal, is no real trial at all—it is but a trick. The King would be rid of us, and, whether I succeed or whether I fail, the Dark Unknown is to be our portion.”
Lalusini bent her head with a murmur of assent, but made no remark.
“And now I am weary of this ingratitude,” I went on, sinking my voice to a whisper, but speaking in a tone of fierce and gloomy determination. “What has been done before can be done again. I have struck down more of the enemies of our nation than the King himself. One royal spear—one white shield is as good to sit under as another; and—it is time our new nation sat down under its second king.”
“Great dreams, Untúswa,” said Lalusini, with a smile that had something of sadness in it.
“Great acts shouldst thou say rather, for I am no dreamer of dreams,” I answered bitterly. “Ha! do I not lead the whole nation in war? for, of late, Kalipe is old, and stiff in the limbs. One swift stroke of this broad spear, and the nation will be crying ‘Bayéte’ to him who is its leader in war. Ah! ah! What has happened before can happen again.”
But here I stopped, for I was referring darkly to the death of that Great Great One, the mighty Tshaka, from whose loins my inkosikazi had sprung. Yet no anger did she show.
“So shall we be great together at last, Lalusini, and my might in war, and thy múti combined, shall indeed rule the world,” I went on. “Ha! I will make believe to go on this tagati business, but to-night I will return in the darkness, and to-morrow—whau!—it may indeed be that the appearance of the Red Death has presaged the accession of a new King—even as those dogs, who were burnt to-day, did declare. How now for that, Lalusini?”
“The throne of Dingiswayo is older than that of Senzangakona, and both are older than that of Matyobane,” she answered. “Yet I know not—my múti tells me that the time is not yet. Still, it will come—it will come.”