Part 18 (1/2)

”Why do you seek to mock me?” she went on. ”Can a blanket of bark hide that face of yours from these eyes of mine which saw it a while ago at Ramah, when you came thither to judge of me, O Mouth of the King?”

Now the man let the blanket slip from his head and looked at her.

”It seems that it cannot,” he answered. ”Then I told thee that I had dreamed of the Spirit of our people, and that thou, White One, wast like to her of whom I had dreamed. Canst thou tell me what was the fas.h.i.+on of that dream of mine?”

Now Rachel understood that notwithstanding his words at Ramah, this man still doubted her, and was set up to prove her, and all that Noie had told her about him and the secret history of the Zulus came back into her mind.

”Surely Mopo or Umbopa,” she replied, ”you dreamed three dreams, not one.

Is it of the last you speak?--that dream at the kraal Duguza, when the Inkosazana rode past you on a storm clothed in lightning, and shaking in her hand a spear of fire?”

”Yes, I speak of it,” he replied in an awed voice, ”but if thou art but a woman as thou hast said, how knowest thou these things?”

”Perchance I am both woman and spirit, and perchance the past tells them to me,” Rachel answered; ”but the past has many voices, and now that I dwell in the flesh I cannot hear them all. Let me search you out. Let me read your heart,” and she bent forward and fixed her eyes upon him, holding him with her eyes.

”Ah! now I see and I hear,” she said presently. ”Had you not a sister, Mopo, a certain Baleka, who afterwards entered the house of the Black One and bore a son and died in the Tatiyana Cleft? Shall I tell you how she died?”

”Tell it not! Tell it not!” exclaimed the old man quaveringly.

”So be it. There is no need. Yet ere she died you made a promise to this Baleka, and that promise you kept at the kraal Duguza, you and the prince Umhlangana, and another prince whose name I forget,” and she looked at Dingaan, who put his hand before his face. ”You kept that promise with an a.s.segai--let me look, let me look into your heart--yes, with a little a.s.segai handled with the royal red wood, an a.s.segai that had drunk much blood.”

Now a low moan broke from the lips of Dingaan, and those who sat with them, while Umbopa s.h.i.+vered as though with cold.

”Have mercy, I pray thee,” he gasped. ”Forgive me if at times since we met at Ramah I thought thee but a white maiden, beautiful and bold, as thou didst declare thyself to be. Now I see thou hast the spirit, or else how didst thou know these things?”

Noie heard and smiled in the shadow, but Rachel stood silent.

”I was bidden to tell thee of the last words of the Black One,” went on Umbopa hurriedly; ”but what need is there to tell thee anything who knowest all? They were that he heard the sound of the running of the feet of a great white people which shall stamp out the children of the Zulus.”

”Nay,” answered Rachel, ”I think they were; _'Where-fore wouldst thou kill me, Mopo?'”_

Again Dingaan moaned, for he had heard these very words spoken. Umbopa turned and stared at him, and he stared at Umbopa.

”Come hither,” said Rachel, beckoning to the old man.

He obeyed, and she threw the corner of her cloak over his head, and whispered into his ear. He listened to her whisperings, then with a cry broke from her and fled away out of the council of the King.

When he had gone there was silence, though Dingaan looked a question with his eyes.

”Ask it not,” she said, ”ask it not of me, or of him. I think this Mopo here had his secrets in the past. I think that once he sat in a hut at night and bargained with certain Great Ones, a prince who lives, and a prince who died. Come hither, come hither, thou son of Senzangacona, come from the fields of Death and tell me what was that bargain which thou madest with Mopo, thou and another?” and once again Rachel beckoned, this time upwards in the air.

Now the face of Dingaan went grey, even in the moonlight it went grey beneath the blackness of his skin, for there rose before his mind a vision of a hut and of Mopo and of Umhlangana, the prince his brother whom he had slain, and of himself, seated in the darkness, their heads together beneath a blanket whispering of the murder of a king.

”Thou knowest all,” he gasped, ”thou art Nomkubulwana and no other. Spare us, Spirit who canst summon our dead sins from the grave of time, and make them walk alive before us.”

”Nay, nay,” she answered, mockingly, ”surely I am but a woman, daughter of a Teacher who lives yonder over the Tugela, a white maiden who eats and sleeps and drinks as other maidens do. Take notice, King, and you his captains, that I am no spirit, nothing but a woman who chances to bear a high name, and to have some wisdom. Only,” she added with meaning, ”if any harm should come to me, if I should die, then I think that I should become a spirit, a terrible spirit, and that ill would it go with that people against whom my blood was laid.”

”Oh!” said the King, who still shook with fear, ”we know, we know. Mock us not, I pray. Thou art the Spirit who hast chosen to wear the robe of woman, as flame hides itself in flint, and woe be to the hand that strikes the fire from this stone. White One, give us now that wisdom whereof thou speakest. Shall I fall upon the Boers or shall I let them be?”

Rachel looked upwards, studying the stars.