The Induna's Wife. Mitford Bertram

a few quick muttered words of wonderment. That was all then, but when snug out of the drizzling rain, warmed by a measure of whisky, and squatting happy and comfortable in a dry blanket, snuff-box in hand, he began a story, and I—well, I thought I was in luck’s way, for a wet and cheerless and lonely evening stood to lose all its depression and discomfort if spent in listening to one of old Untúswa’s stories.

Chapter One.

       Table of Contents

      The Tale of the Red Death.

      There was that about the look of your oxen just now, Nkose—shadowed like black ghosts against the mist—that brought back to my old mind a strange and wonderful time. And the night is yet young. Nor will that tale take very long in telling, unless—ah, that tale is but the door opening into a still greater one; but of that we shall see—yes, we shall see.

      I have already unfolded to you, Nkose, all that befell at the Place of the Three Rifts, and how at that place we met in fierce battle and rolled back the might of Dingane and thus saved the Amandebeli as a nation. Also have I told the tale of how I gained the White Shield by saving the life of a king, and how it in turn saved the life of a nation. Further have I told how I took for principal wife Lalusini, the sorceress, in whose veins ran the full blood of the House of Senzangakona, the royal House of Zululand, and whom I had first found making strange and powerful múti among the Bakoni, that disobedient people whom we stamped flat.

      For long after these events there was peace in our land. The arm of Dingane was stretched out against us no more, and Umzilikazi, our king, who had meditated moving farther northward, had decided to sit still in the great kraal, Kwa’zingwenya, yet a little longer. But though we had peace from our more powerful enemies, the King would not suffer the might of our nation to grow soft and weak for lack of practice in the arts of war—oh, no. The enrolling of warriors was kept up with unabated vigour, and the young men thus armed were despatched at once to try their strength upon tribes within striking distance, and even far beyond the limits of the same. Many of these were mountain tribes, small in numbers, but brave and fierce, and gave our fiery youths just as much fighting as they could manage ere wetting their victorious spears in blood.

      Now, although we had peace from our more formidable foes, yet the mind of the King seemed not much easier on that account, for all fears as to disturbance from without being removed, it seemed that Umzilikazi was not wholly free from dread of conspiracy within. And, indeed, I have observed that it is ever so, Nkose. When the greater troubles which beset a man, and which he did not create, beset him no longer, does he not at once look around to see what troubles he can create for himself? Whau! I am old. I have seen.

      So it was with Umzilikazi. The fear of Dingane removed, the recollection of the conspiracy of Tyuyumane and the others returned—that conspiracy to hand over our new nation to the invading Amabuna—that conspiracy which so nearly succeeded, and, indeed, would have completely, but for the watchfulness and craft of the old Mosutu witch doctor. Wherefore, with this suspicion ever in the King’s mind we, izinduna, seemed to have fallen upon uneasy times. Yet the principal object of dislike and distrust to the Great Great One was not, in the first place, one of ourselves. No councillor or fighting man was it, but a woman—and that woman Lalusini, my principal wife.

      “Ha, Untúswa!” would the King say, talking dark, but his tone full of gloomy meaning. “Ha, Untúswa, but thine amahlose (Tutelary spirits) watch over thee well. Tell me, now, where is there a man the might of whose spear and the terror of whose name sweeps the world—whose slumbers are lulled by the magic of the mighty, and who is greater even than kings? Tell me, Untúswa, where is such a man?”

      “I think such is to be found not far hence, Great Great One. Even in this house,” I answered easily, yet with a sinking fear of evil at heart, for his words were plain in their meaning; my successes in war surpassed by none; my beautiful wife, the great sorceress of the Bakoni, the wandering daughter of Tshaka the Terrible. And his tone—ah, that, too, spoke.

      “Even in this house! Yeh bo! Untúswa—thou sayest well,” went on the King softly, his head on one side, and peering at me with an expression that boded no good. “Even in this house! Ha! Name him, Untúswa. Name him.”

      “Who am I that I should sport with the majesty of the King’s name?” I answered. “Is not the son of Matyobane—the Founder of Mighty Nations—the Elephant of the Amandebeli—such a man? Doth not his spear rule the world, and the terror of his name—au!—who would hear it and laugh? And is not the bearer of that name greater than other kings—greater even than the mighty one of the root of Senzangakona—whose might has fled before the brightness of the great king’s head-ring? And again, who sleeps within the shadow of powerful and propitious magic but the Father and Founder of this great nation?”

      “Very good, Untúswa. Very good. Yet it may be that the man of whom I was speaking is no king at all—great, but no king.”

      “No king at all! Hau! I know not such a man, Father of the World,” I answered readily. “There is but one who is great, and that is the King. All others are small—small indeed.”

      I know not how much further this talk would have gone, Nkose; and indeed of it I, for my part, was beginning to have more than enough. For, ever now, when Umzilikazi summoned me to talk over matters of state, would he soon lead the conversation into such channels; and, indeed, I saw traps and pitfalls beneath every word. But now the voice of an inceku—or household attendant—was heard without singing the words of sibonga, and by the way in which he praised we knew he desired to announce news of importance. At a sign from the King I admitted the man.

      “There are men without, O Divider of the Sun,” he began—when he had made prostration—“men from the kraals of Maqandi-ka-Mahlu, who beg the protection of the King’s wise ones. The Red Magic has been among them again.”

      “Ha! The Red Magic!” said Umzilikazi, with a frown. “It seems I have heard enough of such childish tales. Yet, let the dogs enter and whine out their own story.”

      Through the door of the royal dwelling, creeping on hands and knees, came two men. They were not of our blood, but of a number whom the King had spared, with their wives and children, and had located in a region some three days to the northward as far as a swift walker could travel. It was a wild and mountainous land—a land of black cliffs and thunderous waterfalls—cold, and sunless, and frowning—a meet abode of ghosts and all evil things. Here they had been located, and, being skilled in ironwork, were employed in forging spear-heads and axes for our nation. They were in charge of Maqandi-ka-Mahlu—a man of our race, and a chief—and who, having been “smelt out” by our witch doctors, the King had spared—yet had banished in disgrace to rule over these iron-workers in the region of ghosts and of gloom.

      Their tale now was this: The stuff which they dug from the bowels of the earth to make the metal for our spears and axes was mostly procured in a long, deep, gloomy valley, running right up into the heart of the mountains. Here they bored holes and caves for digging the stuff. But, for some time past, they had not been able to go there—for the place had become a haunt of tagati. A terrible ghost had taken up its abode in the caves, and did a man wander but the shortest space of time from his fellows, that man was never again seen.

      He was seen, though, but not alive. His body was found weltering in blood, and ripped, not as with a spear, but as though by the horn of a fierce and furious bull. This had befallen several times, and had duly been reported to the King—who would know everything—but Umzilikazi only laughed, saying that he cared nothing that the spirits of evil chose to devour, from time to time, such miserable prey as these slaves. There were plenty more of them, and if the wizard animals, who dwelt in the mountains, wanted to slay such, why, let them.

      But now, the tale which these men told was serious. They could no more go to that place for the terror which haunted it. They had tried keeping