CHAPTER XV
THE GREAT COUNCIL
None had seen or heard him come, and though doubtless he had but
crept round the rock and taken his place in the darkness, there
appeared to be something mysterious about this sudden appearance
of Zikali. So the Zulu nobles thought at any rate, for they
uttered a low "Ow!" of fear and wonder.
There he sat like a huge ape staring at the sky, for the
firelight shone on his deep and burning eyes. The moonlight
increased, but now and again it was broken by little clouds which
caused strange shadows to appear about the rock. Some of these
shadows looked as though veiled figures were approaching the
wizard, bending over him and departing again, after giving him
their message or counsel.
"His Spirits visit him," whispered Goza, but I made no answer.
This went on for quite a long time, until the full round of the
moon appeared above the hill indeed, and, for the while, the
clouds had cleared away. Still Zikali sat silent and I, who was
acquainted with the habits of this people, knew that I was
witnessing a conflict between two they considered to be
respectively a spiritual and an earthly king. It is my belief
that unless he were first addressed, Zikali would have sat all
night without opening his lips. Possibly Cetewayo would have
done the same if the impatience of public opinion had allowed
him. At any was rate it was he who gave way.
"Makosi, master of many Spirits, on behalf of the Council and the
People of the Zulus I, the King, greet you here in the place that
you have chosen," said Cetewayo.
Zikali made no answer.
The silence went on as before, till at length, after a pause and
some whispering, Cetewayo repeated his salutation, adding--
"Has age made you deaf, O Opener of Roads, that you cannot hear
the voice of the King?"
Then at last Zikali answered in his low voice that yet seemed to
fill all the kloof--
"Nay, Child of Senzangacona, age has not made me deaf, but my
spirit in these latter days floats far from my body. It is like
a bladder filled with air that a child holds by a string, and
before I can speak I must draw it from the heavens to earth
again. What did you say about the place that I have chosen?
Well, what better place could I choose, seeing that it was here
in this very Vale of Bones that I met the first king of the
Zulus, Chaka the Wild Beast, who was your uncle? Why then should
I not choose it to meet the last king of the Zulus?"
Now I, listening, knew at once that this saying might be
understood in two ways, namely that Cetewayo was the reigning
king, or that he was the last king who would ever reign. But the
Council interpreted it in the latter and worse sense, for I saw a
quiver of fear go through them.
"Why should I not choose it," went on Zikali, "seeing also that
this place is holy to me? Here it was, O Son of Panda, that
Chaka brought my children to be killed and forced me, sitting
where you sit, to watch their deaths. There on the rock above me
they were killed, four of them, three sons and a daughter, and
the slayers--they came to an evil end, those slayers, as did
Chaka--laughed and cast them down from the rock before me. Yes,
and Chaka laughed, and I too laughed, for had not the king the
right to kill my children and to steal their mothers, and was I
not glad that they should be taken from the world and gathered
to that of Spirits whence they always talk to me, yes, even now?
That is why I did not hear you at first, King, because they were
talking to me."
He paused, turning one ear upwards, then continued in a new and
tender voice, "What is it you say to me, Noma, my dear little
Noma? Oh! I hear you, I hear you."
Now he shifted himself along the ground on his haunches some
paces to the right, and began to search about, groping with his
long fingers. "Where, where?" he muttered. "Oh, I understand,
further under the root, a jackal buried it, did it? Pah! how
hard is this soil. Ah! I have it, but look, Noma, a stone has
cut my finger. I have it, I have it," and from beneath the root
of some fallen tree he drew out the skull of a child and, holding
it in his right hand, softly rubbed the mould off it with his
left.
"Yes, Noma, it might be yours, it is of the right size, but how
can I be sure? What is it you say? The teeth? Ah! now I
remember. Only the day before you were taken I pulled out that
front tooth, did I not, and beneath it was another that was
strangely split in two. If this skull was yours, it will be
there. Come to the fire, Noma, and let us look; the moonlight is
faint, is it not?"
Back to the fire he shifted himself, and bending towards the
blaze, made an examination.
"True, Noma, true! Here is the split tooth, white as when I saw
it all those years ago. Oh! dear child of my body, dear child of
my spirit, for we do not beget with the body alone, Noma, as you
know better than I do to-day, I greet you," and pressing the
skull to his lips, he kissed it, then set it down in front of him
between himself and the fire with the face part pointing to the
king, and burst into one of his eerie and terrible laughs.
A low moan went up from his audience, and I felt the skin of
Goza, who had shrunk against me, break into a profuse sweat.
Then suddenly Zikali's voice changed one more and became hard and
businesslike, if I may call it so, similar to that of other
professional doctors.
"You have sent for me, O King, as those who went before you have
sent when great things were about to happen. What is the matter
on which you would speak to me?"
"You know well, Opener of Roads," answered Cetewayo, rather
shakily I thought. "The matter is one of peace or war. The
English threaten me and my people and make great demands on me;
amongst others that the army should be disbanded. I can set them
all out if you will. If I refuse to do as they bid me, then
within a few days they will invade Zululand; indeed their
soldiers are already gathered at the drifts."
"It is not needful, King," answered Zikali, "since I know what
all know, neither more nor less. The winds whisper the demands
of the white men, the birds sing them, the hyenas howl them at
night. Let us see how the matter stands. When your father died
Sompseu (Sir T. Shepstone), the great white chief, came from the
English Government to name you king. This he could not do
according to our law, since how can a stranger name the King of
the Zulus? Therefore the Council of the Nation and the doctors--I
was not among them, King--moved the spirit of Chaka the Lion into
the body of Sompseu and made him as Chaka was and gave him power
to name you to rule over the Zulus. So it came about that to the
English Queen through the spirit of Chaka you swore certain
things; that slaying for witchcraft should be abolished; that no
man should die without fair and open trial, and other matters."
He paused a while, then went on, "These oaths you have broken, O
King, as being of the blood you are and what you are, you must
do."
Here there was disturbance among the Council and Cetewayo half
rose from his seat, then sat down again. Zikali, gazing at the
sky, waited till it had died away, then went on--
"Do any question my words? If so, then let them ask of the white
men whether they be true or no. Let them ask also of the spirits
of those who have died for witchcraft, and of the spirits of the
women who have been slain and whose bodies were laid at the
cross-roads because they married the men they chose and not the
soldiers to whom the king gave them."
"How can I ask the white men who are far away?" broke out
Cetewayo, ignoring the rest.
"Are the white men so far away, King? It is true that I see none
and hear none, yet I seem to smell one of them close at hand."
Here he took up the skull which he had laid down and whispered to
it. "Ah! I thank you, my child. It seems, King, that there is a
white man here hidden in this kloof, he who is named Macumazahn,
a good man and a truthful, known to many of us from of old, who
can tell you what his people think, though he is not one of their
indunas. If you question my words, ask him."
"We know what the white men think," said Cetewayo, "so there is
no need to ask Macumazahn to sing us an old song. The question
is--what must the Zulus do? Must they swallow their spears and,
ceasing to be a nation, become servants, or must they strike with
them and drive the English into the sea, and after them the
Boers?"
"Tell me first, King, who dwell far away and alone, knowing
little of what passes in the land of Life, what the Zulus desire
to do. Before me sits the Great Council of the Nation. Let it
speak."
Then one by one the members of the Council uttered their opinions
in order of rank or seniority. I do not remember the names of
all who were present, or what each of them said. I recall,
however, that Sigananda, a very old chief--he must have been over
ninety--spoke the first. He told them that he had been friend of
Chaka and one of his captains, and had fought in most of his
battles. That afterwards he had been a general of Dingaan's
until that king killed the Boers under Retief, when he left him
and finally sided with Panda in the civil war in which Dingaan
was killed with the help of the Boers. That he had been present
at the battle of the Tugela, though he took no actual part in the
fighting, and afterwards became a councillor of Panda's and then
of Cetewayo his son. It was a long and interesting historical
recital covering the whole period of the Zulu monarchy which
ended suddenly with these words--
"I have noted, O King and Councillors, that whenever the black
vulture of the Zulus was content to attack birds of his own
feather, he has conquered. But when it has met the grey eagles
of the white men, which come from over the sea, he has been
conquered, and my heart tells me that as it was in the past, so
it shall be in the future. Chaka was a friend of the English, so
was Panda, and so has Cetewayo been until this hour. I say,
therefore, let not the King tear the hand which fed him because
it seems weak, lest it should grow strong and clutch him by the
throat and choke him."
Next spoke Undabuko, Dabulamanzi and Magwenga, brothers of the
king, who all favoured war, though the two last were guarded in
their speech. After these came Uhamu, the king's uncle--he who
was said to be the son of a Spirit--who was strong for peace,
urging that the king should submit to the demands of the English,
making the best terms he could, that he "should bend like a reed
before the storm, so that after the storm had swept by, he might
stand up straight again, and with him all the other reeds of the
people of the Zulus."
So, too, said Seketwayo, chief of the Umdhlalosi, and more whom I
cannot recall, six or seven of them. But Usibebu and the induna
Untshingwayo, who afterwards commanded at Isandhlwana, were for
fighting, as were Sirayo, the husband of the two women who had
been taken on English territory and killed, and Umbilini, the
chief of Swazi blood whose surrender was demanded by Sir Bartle
Frere and who afterwards commanded the Zulus in the battle at
Ihlobane. Last of all spoke the Prime Minister, Umnyamana, who
declared fiercely that if the Zulu buffalo hid itself in the
swamp like a timid calf when the white bull challenged it on the
hills, the spirits of Chaka and all his forefathers would thrust
its head into the mud and choke it.
When all had finished Cetewayo spoke, saying--
"That is a bad council which has two voices, for to which of them
must the Captain listen when the impis of the foe gather in front
of him? Here I have sat while the moon climbs high and counted,
and what do I find? That one half of you, men of wisdom and
renown, say Yes, and that the other half of you, men of wisdom
and renown, say No. Which then is it to be, Yes or No? Are we
to fight the English, or are we to sit still?"
"That is for the king to decide," said a voice.
"See what it is to be a king," went on Cetewayo with passion.
"If I declare for war and we win, shall I be greater than I am?
If victory gives me more land, more subjects, more wives and more
cattle, what is the use of these things to me who already have
enough of all of them? And if defeat should take everything from
me, even my life perhaps, then what shall I have gained? I will
tell you--the curse of the Zulus upon my name from father to son
for ever. They will say, 'Cetewayo, son of Panda, pulled down a
House that once was great. Because of some small matter he
quarrelled with the English who were always the friends of our
people, and brought the Zulus to the dust.' Sintwangu, my
messenger, who brought heavy words from the Queen's induna which
we must answer with other words or with spears, says that the
English soldiers in Natal are few, so few that we Zulus can
swallow them like bits of meat and still be hungry. But are
these all the soldiers of the English? I am not sure. You are
one of that people, Macumazahn," he added, turning his massive
shape towards me, "tell us now, how many soldiers has your
Queen?"
"King," I answered, "I do not know for certain. But if the Zulus
can muster fifty thousand spears, the Queen, if there be need,
can send against them ten times fifty thousand, and if she grows
angry, another ten times fifty, every one armed with a rifle that
will fire five bullets a minute, and to accompany the soldiers,
hundreds of cannon whereof a single shot would give Ulundi to the
flames. Out of the sea they will come, shipload after shipload,
white men from where the sun sets and black men from where the
sun rises, so many that Zululand would not hold them."
Now at these words, which I delivered as grandly as I could,
something like a groan burst from the Council, though one man
cried--
"Do not listen to the white traitor, O King, who is sent here to
turn our hearts to water with his lies."
"Macumazahn may lie to us," went on Cetewayo, "though in the past
none in the land have ever known him to lie, but he was not sent
to do so, for I brought him here. For my part I do not believe
that he lies. I believe that these English are as many as the
pebbles in a river bed, and that to them Natal, yes, and all the
Cape is but as a single, outlying cattle kraal, one cattle kraal
out of a hundred. Did not Sompseu once tell us that they were
countless, on that day when he came many years ago after the
battle of the Tugela to name me to succeed my father Panda, the
day when my faction, the Usutu, roared round him for hours like a
river in flood, and he sat still like a rock in the centre of a
river? Also I am minded of the words that Chaka said when
Dingaan and Umbopa had stabbed him and he lay dying at the kraal
Duguza, that although the dogs of his own House whom his hand
fed, had eaten him up, he heard the sound of the running of the
feet of a great white people that should stamp them and the Zulus
flat."
He paused; and the silence was so intense that the crackling of
Zikali's fire, which kept on burning brightly although I saw no
fuel added to it, sounded quite loud. Presently it was broken,
first by a dog near at hand, howling horribly at the moon, and
next by the hooting of a great owl that flitted across the donga,
the shadow of its wide wings falling for a moment on the king.
"Listen!" exclaimed Cetewayo, "a dog that howls! Methinks that
it stands upon the roof of the House of Senzangacona. And an owl
that hoots. Methinks that owl has its nest in the world of
Spirits! Are these good omens, Councillors? I trow not. I say
that I will not decide this matter of peace or war. If there is
one of my own blood here who will do so, come, let him take my
place and let me go away to my own lordship of Gikazi that I had
when I was a prince before the witch Mameena who played with all
men and loved but one"--here everybody turned and stared towards
me, yes, even Zikali whom nothing else had seemed to move, till I
wished that the ground would swallow me up--"caused the war
between me and my brother Umbelazi whose blood earth will not
swallow nor suns dry--"
"How can that be, O King?" broke in Umnyamana the Prime Minister.
"How can any of your race sit in your seat while you still live?
Then indeed there would be war, war between tribe and tribe and
Zulu and Zulu till none were left, and the white hyenas from
Natal would come and chew our bones and with them the Boers that
have passed the Vaal. See now. Why is this Nyanga (i.e.
witch-doctor) here?" and he pointed to Zikali beyond the fire.
"Why has the Opener of Roads been brought from the Black Kloof
which he has not left for years? Is it not that he may give us
counsel in our need and show us a sign that his counsel is good,
whether it be for war or peace? Then when he has made divination
and given the counsel and shown the sign, then, O King, do you
speak the word of war or peace, and send it to the Queen by
yonder white man, and by that word we, the people, will abide."
At this suggestion, which I had no doubt was made by some secret
agreement between Umnyamana and Zikali, Cetewayo seemed to grasp.
Perhaps this was because it postponed for a little while the
dreadful moment of decision, or perhaps because he hoped that in
the eyes of the nation it would shift the responsibility from his
shoulders to those of the Spirits speaking through the lips of
their prophet. At any rate he nodded and answered--
"It is so. Let the Opener of Roads open us a road through the
forests and the swamps and the rocks of doubt, danger and fear.
Let him give us a sign that it is a good road on which we may
safely travel, and let him tell us whether I shall live to walk
that road and what I shall meet thereon. I promise him in return
the greatest fee that ever yet was paid to a doctor in Zululand."
Now Zikali lifted his big head, shook his grey locks, and opening
his wide mouth as though he expected manna to fall into it from
the sky, he laughed out loud.
"O-ho-ho," he laughed, "Oho-ho-ho-o, it is worth while to have
lived so long when life has brought me to such an hour as this.
What is it that my ears hear? That I, the Indwande dwarf, I whom
Chaka named 'The-Thing-that-never-should-have-been-born,' I, one
of the race conquered and despised by the Zulus, am here to speak
a word which the Zulus dare not utter, which the King of the
Zulus dares not utter. O-ho-ho-ho! And what does the King offer
to me? A fee, a great fee for the word that shall paint the
Zulus red with blood or white with the slime of shame. Nay, I
take no fee that is the price of blood or shame. Before I speak
that word unknown--for as yet my heart has not heard it, and what
the heart has not heard the lips cannot shape--I ask but one
thing. It is an oath that whatever follows on the word, while
there is a Zulu left living in the world, I, the Voice of the
Spirits, shall be safe from hurt or from reproach, I and those of
my House and those over whom I throw my blanket, be they black or
be they white. That is my fee, without which I am silent."
"Izwa! We hear you. We swear it on behalf of the people," said
every councillor in the semi-circle in front of him; yes, and the
king said it also, stretching out his hand.
"Good," said Zikali, "it is an oath, it is an oath, sworn here
upon the bones of the dead. Evil-doers you call them, but I say
to you that many of those who sit before me have more evil in
their hearts than had those dead. Well, let it be proclaimed, O
King, and with it this--that ill shall it go with him who breaks
the oath, with his family, with his kraal and all with whom he
has to do.
"Now what is it you ask of me? First of all, counsel as to
whether you should fight the English Queen, a matter on which
you, the Great Ones, are evenly divided in opinion, as is the
nation behind you. O King, Indunas, and Captains, who am I that
I should judge of such a matter which is beyond my trade, a
matter of the world above and of men's bodies, not of the world
below and of men's spirits? Yet there was one who made the Zulu
people out of nothing, as a potter fashions a vessel from clay,
as a smith fashions an assegai out of the ore of the hills, yes,
and tempers it with human blood.* Chaka the Lion, the Wild
Beast, the King among Kings, the Conqueror. I knew Chaka as I
knew his father, yes, and _his_ father. Others still living knew
him also, say you, Sigananda there for instance," and he pointed
to the old chief who had spoken first. "Yes, Sigananda knew him
as a boy knows a great man, as a soldier knows a general. But I
knew his heart, aye, I shaped his heart, I was its thought. Had
it not been for me he would never have been great. Then he
wronged me"--here Zikali took up the skull which he said was that
of his daughter, and stroked it--"and I left him.
[*--The old Zulu smiths dipped their choicest blades in the blood
of men.--A. Q.]
"He was not wise, he should have killed one whom he had wronged,
but perhaps he knew that I could not be killed; perhaps he had
tried and found that he was but throwing spears at the moon which
fell back on his own head. I forget. It is so long ago, and
what does it matter? At least I took away from him the prop of
my wisdom, and he fell--to rise no more. And so it has been with
others. So it has been with others. Yet while he was great I
knew his heart who lived in his heart, and therefore I ask
myself, had he been sitting where the King sits to-day, what
would Chaka have done? I will tell you. If not only the English
but the Boers also and with them the Pondos, the Basutos and all
the tribes of Africa had threatened him, he would have fought
them--yes, and set his heel upon their necks. Therefore,
although I give no counsel upon such a matter, I say to you that
the counsel of Chaka is--fight--and conquer. Hearken to it or
pass it by--I care not which."
He paused and a loud "Ow" of wonder and admiration rose from his
audience. Myself I nearly joined in it, for I thought this one
of the cleverest bits of statecraft that ever I had heard of or
seen. The old wizard had taken no responsibility and given no
answer to the demand for advice. All this he had thrust on to
the shoulders of a dead man, and that man one whose name was
magical to every Zulu, the king whose memory they adored, the
great General who had gorged them with victory and power.
Speaking as Chaka, after a long period of peace, he urged them
once more to lift their spears and know the joys of triumph,
thereby making themselves the greatest nation in Southern Africa.
From the moment I heard this cunning appeal, I know what the end
would be; all the rest was but of minor and semi-personal
interest. I knew also for the first time how truly great was
Zikali and wondered what he might have become had Fortune set him
in different circumstances among a civilized people.
Now he was speaking again, and quickly before the impression died
away.
"Such is the word of Chaka spoken by me who was his secret
councillor, the Councillor who was seldom seen, and never heard.
Does not Sigananda yonder know the voice which amongst all those
present echoes in his ears alone?"
"I know it," cried the old chief. Then with his eyes starting
almost from his head, Sigananda leapt up and raising his hand,
gave the royal salute, the Bayete, to the spirit of Chaka, as
though the dead king stood before him.
I think that most of those there thought that it did stand before
him, for some of them also gave the Bayete and even Cetewayo
raised his arm.
Sigananda squatted down again and Zikali went on.
"You have heard. This captain of the Lion knows his voice. So,
that is done with. Now you ask of me something else--that I who
am a doctor, the oldest of all the doctors and, it is thought--I
know not--the wisest, should be able to answer. You ask of
me--How shall this war prosper, if it is made--and what shall
chance to the King during and after the war, and lastly you ask
of me a sign. What I tell to you is true, is it not so?"
"It is true," answered the Council.
"Asking is easy," continued Zikali in a grumbling voice, "but
answering is another matter. How can I answer without
preparation, without the needful medicines also that I have not
with me, who did not know what would be sought of me, who thought
that my opinion was desired and no more? Go away now and return
on the sixth night and I will tell you what I can do."
"Not so," cried the king. "We refuse to go, for the matter is
immediate. Speak at once, Opener of Roads, lest it should be
said in the land that after all you are but an ancient cheat, a
stick that snaps in two when it is leant on."
"Ancient cheat! I remember that is what Macumazahn yonder once
told me I am, though afterwards--Perhaps he was right, for who in
his heart knows whether or not he be a cheat, a cheat who
deceives himself and through himself others. A stick that snaps
in two when it is leant on! Some have thought me so and some
have thought otherwise. Well, you would have answers which I
know not how to give, being without medicine and in face of those
who are quite ignorant and therefore cannot lend me their
thoughts, as it sometimes happens that men do when workers of
evil are sought out in the common fashion. For then, as you may
have guessed, it is the evil-doer who himself tells the doctor of
his crime, though he may not know that he is telling it. Yet
there is another stone that I alone can throw, another plan that
I alone can practise, and that not always. But of this I would
not make use since it is terrible and might frighten you or even
send you back to your huts raving so that your wives, yes, and
the very dogs fled, from you."
He stopped and for the first time did something to his fire, for
I saw his hands going backwards and forwards, as though he warmed
them at the flames.
At length an awed voice, I think it was that of Dabulamanzi,
asked--
"What is this plan, Inyanga? Let us hear that we may judge."
"The plan of calling one from the dead and hearkening to the
voice of the dead. Is it your desire that I should draw water
from this fount of wisdom, O King and Councillors?"
