“Good! Had she wept she had been slain also. Who was with her?”
“The Mother of the Heavens.”
The brow of Chaka darkened. “Unandi, my mother, what did she there? By myself I swear, though she is my mother—if I thought”—and he ceased.
There was a silence, then he spoke again. “Say, what is in that mat?” and he pointed with his little assegai at the bundle on my shoulders.
“Medicine, king.”
“Thou dost carry enough to doctor an impi. Undo the mat and let me look at it.”
“Now, my father, I tell you that the marrow melted in my bones with terror, for if I undid the mat I feared he must see the child and then—”
“It is tagati, it is bewitched, O king. It is not wise to look on medicine.”
“Open!” he answered angrily. “What? may I not look at that which I am forced to swallow—I, who am the first of doctors?”
“Death is the king’s medicine,” I answered, lifting the bundle, and laying it as far from him in the shadow of the fence as I dared. Then I bent over it, slowly undoing the rimpis with which it was tied, while the sweat of terror ran down my face blinding me like tears. What would I do if he saw the child? What if the child awoke and cried? I would snatch the assegai from his hand and stab him! Yes, I would kill the king and then kill myself! Now the mat was unrolled. Inside were the brown leaves and roots of medicine; beneath them was the senseless babe wrapped in dead moss.