The Ghost Kings by H. Rider Haggard (novels to read in english txt) 📕

"But this girl thou didst not kill, O King, for I saved her."

"It is so, White One. I have heard lately how thou didst call down the lightning and burn up my soldier who followed after her, so that nothing of him remained."

"Yes," said Rachel quietly, "as, were it to please me, I could burn thee up also, O King," a saying at which. Dingaan looked afraid.

"Yet," he went on, waving his hand as though to put aside this unpleasant suggestion, "the maid is mine, not thine, and therefore I took her."

"How didst thou learn that she dwelt at my kraal?" asked Rachel.

The King hesitated.

"The white man, Ishmael, he whom thou callest Ibubesi, told thee, did he not?"

Dingaan bowed his head.

"And he told thee that thou couldst make what promises thou wouldst to me as to the girl's life, but that afterwards when thou hadst called me here to claim it, thou mightest kill her or keep her as a wife, as it pleased thee."

"I can hide nought from thee; it is so," said Dingaan.

"Is that still in thy mind, O King?" asked Rachel again, beginning to play with the little wand.

"Not so, not so," he answered hurriedly. "Hadst thou not come the girl would have died, as she deserved to do according to our law. But thou hast come and claimed her, O Holder of the Spirit of Nomkubulwana, and she sits in thy shadow and is clothed with thy garment. Take her then, for henceforth she is holy, as thou art holy."

Rachel heard, and without any change of countenance waved her hand to show that this question was finished. Then she asked suddenly:

"What is this great matter whereof thou wouldst speak with me, O King?"

"Surely thy wisdom has told thee, White One," he answered uneasily.

"Perchance, yet I would have it from thy lips, and now."

Now Dingaan consulted a little with his council.

"White One," he said presently, "the thing is grave, and we need guidance. Therefore, as the circle of the witch-doctors have declared must be done, we ask it of thee who art named with the name of the Spirit of our people and hast of her wisdom. Thou knowest, White One, of the fights in past years between the white people of Natal and the Zulus, in which many were slain on either side. But now, when we are at peace with the English, we hear of another white people, the Amaboona" (_i.e._ the Dutch Boers), "who are marching towards us from the Cape, and have already fought with Moselikatze--the traitor who was once my captain--and killed thousands of his men. These Amaboona threaten us also, and say aloud that they will eat us up, for they are brave and armed with the white man's weapons that spit out lightning. Now, White One, what shall we do? Shall I send out my impis and fall on them while they are unprepared, and make an end of them, as seems wisest, and is the wish of my indunas? Or, shall I sit at home and watch, trying to be at peace with them, and only strike back if they strike at me? Answer not lightly, O Zoola, for much may hang upon thy words. Remember also that he whose name may not be spoken, the Lion who ruled before me and is gone, with his last breath uttered a certain prophecy concerning the white people and this land."

"Let me hear that prophecy, O King."

"Come forth," said Dingaan pointing to a councillor who sat in the circle, "come forth, thou who knowest, and tell the tale in the ears of this White One."

A figure rose, a draped figure whose face was hidden in a hood of blanket. It came forward, and as it came it drew the blanket tighter about it. Rachel, watching all things, saw, or thought she saw, that one of its hands was white as though it had been burned with fire. Surely she had seen such a hand before.

"Speak," she said.

"Name me by my name and tell me who I am and I will obey thee," answered the man.

Then she was sure, for she remembered the voice. She looked at him indifferently and asked:

"By what name shall I name you, O Slayer of a King? Will you be called Mopo or Umbopa, who have borne them both?"

Now Dingaan stared, and the shrouded form before her started as though in surprise.

"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 fashion 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 assegai--let me look, let me look into your heart--yes, with a little assegai handled with the royal red wood, an assegai that had drunk much blood."

Now a low moan broke from the lips of Dingaan, and those who sat with them, while Umbopa shivered 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.

"She takes counsel with the Heavens, she who is their daughter," muttered one of the indunas in a low voice.

As he spoke it chanced that a bright meteor travelling from the south-west swept across the sky to burst and vanish over the kraal of Umgugundhlovo.

"It is a messenger to her," said one. "I saw the fire shine upon her hair and vanish in her breast."

"Nay," answered another, "it is the Ehlose, the guardian ghost of the Amazulu that appears and dies."

"Not so," broke in a third, "that light shows the Amaboona travelling from the south-west to be eaten up in the blackness of our impis."

"Such a star runs ever before the death of king. It fell the night ere the Black One died," murmured a fourth as though he spoke to himself.

Only Dingaan, taking no heed of them, said, addressing Rachel:

"Read thou the omen."

"Nay," she replied upon the swift impulse of the moment, "I read it not. Interpret it as ye will. Here is my answer to thy question, King. _Those who lift the spear shall perish by the spear."_

At this saying the captains murmured a little, for they, who desired war, understood that she counselled peace between them and the Boers, though others thought that she meant that the Boers would perish. Dingaan also looked downcast. Watching their faces, Rachel was sure that not even her hand could hold them