Now some of the izanusi dived in among the crowd and returned dragging along several men. These crawled up until near the King, and lay trembling, their eyes starting from their heads with fear. And now, for the first time, a strange and boding feeling came over me, as I recognised in these some of the Bakoni, who had been at a distance when we stamped flat that disobedient race, and had since been spared and allowed to live among us as servants.
“Well, dogs! What have ye to say?” quoth the King. “Speak, and that quickly, for my patience today is short.”
Whau! Nkose! They did speak, indeed, those dogs. They told how the Red Death was no new thing—at least to them—for periodically it was wont to make its appearance among the Bakoni. When it did so, it presaged the succession of a new chief; indeed, just such a manifestation had preluded the accession to the supreme chieftainship of Tauane, whom we had burned amid the ashes of his own town. The Red Death was among the darker mysteries of the Bakoni múti.
Not all at once did this tale come out, Nkose, but bit by bit, and then only when the Great Great One had threatened them with the alligators—even the stake of impalement—if they kept back aught. And I—I listening—Hau! My blood seemed first to freeze, then to boil within me, as I saw through the ending of that tale. The darker mysteries of the Bakoni múti!—preluding the accession of a new king? The countenance of the Great Great One grew black as night.
“It is enough,” he said. “Here among us, at any rate, is one to whom such mysteries are not unknown. The Queen of the Bakoni múti—who shall explain them better than she?”
The words, taken up by the izanusi and bellowed aloud, soon went rolling in chorus among the densely-packed multitude, and from every mouth went up shouts for Lalusini—the Queen of the Bakoni múti. Then, Nkose, the whole plot burst in upon my mind. Our witch doctors had always hated my inkosikazi, because she was greater than they; even as they had always hated me, because I had old Masuka on my side, and was high in the King’s favour, and therefore cared nothing about them, never making them gifts. Now their chance had come, since old Masuka was dead and could befriend me no more, and my favour in the King’s sight was waning. Moreover, they had long suspected that of Lalusini the Great Great One would fain be rid; yet not against her had they dared to venture upon the “smelling out” in the usual way, lest she proved too clever for them; for the chief of the izanusi had a lively recollection of the fate of Notalwa and Isilwana, his predecessors. Wherefore they had carefully and craftily laid their plot, using for the purpose the meanest of the conquered peoples whose very existence we had by that time forgotten.
Now the shouts for Lalusini were deafening, and should have reached my kraal, which, from where I sat, I could just see away against the hillside. But the shouters had not long to shout, for again a way was opened up, and through it there advanced she whom they sought.
No dread or misgiving was on the face of my beautiful wife, as she advanced with a step majestic and stately as became her royal blood. She drew near to the King, then halted, and, with hand upraised, uttered the “Bayéte” for no prostration or humbler mode of address was Umzilikazi wont to exact from her, the daughter of Tshaka the Terrible, by reason of her mighty birth. Thus she stood before the King, her head slightly thrown back, a smile of entire fearlessness shining from her large and lustrous eyes.
“Greeting, Daughter of the Great,” said Umzilikazi, speaking softly. “Hear you what these say?”
“I have heard them, son of Matyobane,” she answered.