“Not so, for you would ever be my favourite wife.”
“Until you found some other Mystery Queen hidden in a mountain cave,” she said, mocking me. But I took snuff and answered nothing, for a man who undertakes to answer everything a woman says is like one who begins to swim across a flooded river: he knows where he goes in, but cannot tell where he may get out, or if ever—at least, so it is among ourselves; I know not if it is the same among white people.
“And the King?” she said. “How many wives has he?”
“That question is hard to answer. A great many does he possess, yet he cares not for any of them, neither does he love women over-much. A woman, he says, is like the grains of the umbona (maize), which is tender and nice when young, but soon grows hard and tooth-breaking, and needs much pounding to turn it once more into any use at all. Thus has the King often spoken when we have been talking together.”
How Lalusini laughed, and it was good to hear her laugh, even as to hear her talk.
“Yau!” she cried. “I do not think I will enter the isigodhlo of Umzilikazi.”
“But what if no choice is allowed you?”
“But there will be. There is that by which Umzilikazi dare not wed me.”
Now I cried out in wonder, yet was my mind relieved.
“There is,” she went on. “And—I am greater than your King, son of Ntelani.”