The covenant - James A. Michener [301]
Shaka listened avidly as the diviners revealed what dark spells had been cast by women who owned cats, and when the indictment was complete he roared, 'Let all with cats be found!' And when these women were assembled, including one of Nxumalo's wives, he screamed at them, demanding to know the poisons they had disseminated through their cats. When the terrified and bewildered women, three hundred and twenty-six of them, could make no sensible reply, he ordered them slain, and they were.
One morning Shaka took Nxumalo aside, seeking to recapture the friendship he knew he needed: 'I'm sorry, trusted guide, that Thetiwe and the other died. It was necessary.' When Nxumalo nodded, acknowledging the king's power, Shaka pointed out: 'I gave you the women. I had a right to take them away.' Again Nxumalo assented, and Shaka said, 'I wanted the world to see how much a son could love his mother.'
And that speech was the beginning of the final tragedy, for when the king endeavored to assure Nxumalo that all was again well between them, the latter thought not of his words but of a gentler king far to the north with whom sanctuary might be found. Shaka noticed his lack of response, and his dissatisfaction with the one man who might have saved him was launched.
Ironically, Shaka decided to cast Nxumalo aside at the precise moment when he was needed most, for the Zulu were beginning to see that the welfare of their recently established nation depended upon a man subject to irrational behavior; they also saw that since he had no sons, he had no direct heirs, and that if he died in one of his paroxysms, the kingdom would be adrift.
Unlucky chance also worked against him, for if the Female Elephant had pushed him to glory, another woman of equal determination was now ready to destroy him. Mkabayi, his father's sisterwhose name meant Wild Cat, an ominous portenthad nursed a smoldering resentment against Shaka from the moment he usurped the Zulu leadership, and now, seeing the disarray of the kingdom, she infected two of Shaka's half brothers with her poison. Dingane and Mhlangana began to meet secretly with her, and after a few tentative discussions, realized that they must enlist the support of some military leader. The fact that Nxumalo had lost two wiveskilled by Shaka's ordersmade him a likely candidate.
The brothers had to approach him with caution, for if he betrayed a single intimation, Shaka would kill them all. So Dingane, a clever, conniving man, asked, 'Nxumalo, has it ever occurred to you that the king might be mad?'
He had been expecting just such an opening from someone, but he, too, had to be cautious, not knowing the true temper of the brothers. 'You saw him at the punishment of the Langeni,' he said. 'He forgot who I was.'
'Advise us straight. If anything happened to the kinghis biliousness, I meanwould the iziCwe run violent?'
'My men love their king.'
'Were . . . two of your wives . . . slain?'
He did not like the devious way Dingane asked his questions, so once more he was evasive: 'Shaka gave me three women. He said he had a right to take two of them back.'
The brothers were satisfied that Nxumalo wanted to join them but was fending them off, so Dingane said bluntly, 'You must know you're to be smelled-out at the next gathering.' Nxumalo only looked at him, unbelieving, so Dingane whispered, 'One witch-seeker said to me, "That Nxumalo, two wives dead. It must be an omen." Your bamboo skewers are being hardened. Before this year is out, you'll hang screaming in the tree.'
Nxumalo properly interpreted this as a suggestion that he take up arms against the king, but even though his allegiance to Shaka the man had begun to erode, his tradition of obedience to the concept of kingship remained, and he could not at this first meeting abandon it, so with great daring, well aware that the brothers might feel they must kill him to preserve their secret, he said, 'Dingane, I know what you're plotting. And I understand. My heart is broken by what Shaka has done to me, and I hate his madness.