“Do you? Well, I won’t. I am comfortable here also, and shall be more so as the husband of the Inkosazana. This is a very pretty kraal, and it is quite big enough for two,” he added with an amorous sneer.
Now for a minute at least Rachel sat still and rigid. When she spoke again it was in a kind of gasp:
“Never,” she said, “have you gone nearer to your death, you wanderer without name or shame. Listen now. I give you one week to arrange my escape home. If it is not done within that time, I will pay you back for those words. Be silent, I will hear no more.”
Then she called out:
“Rise, men, and bear the message of the Inkosazana to Dingaan, King of the Zulus. Say to Dingaan that this wandering white dog whom he has sent into my house has done me insult. Say that he has asked me, the Inkosazana-y-Zoola, to be one of his wives.”
At these words the counsellors and captains uttered a shout of rage, and two of the latter seized Ishmael by the arm, lifting their spears to plunge them into him. Rachel waved her wand and they let them fall again.
“Not yet,” she said. “Take him to the King, and if my word comes to the King, then he dies, and not till then. I would not have his vile blood on my hands. Unless I speak, I, Queen of the Heavens, leave him to the vengeance of the Heavens. My mantle is over him, lead him back to the King and let me see his face no more.”
“We hear and it shall be so,” they answered with one voice, then forgetting their ceremony hustled Ishmael from the kraal.
“Have I done well?” asked Rachel of Noie, when they were alone.
“No, Zoola,” she answered, “you should have killed the snake while you were hot against him, since when your blood grows cold you can never do it, and he will live to bite you.”