The Covenant Part 41

Toward midnight, as Shaka sat drinking beer with Nxumalo, he began to feel pity for the impaled men. 'It would be too cruel to leave them hanging through the night,' he said, and he directed his people to gather huge mounds of gra.s.s and sticks to pile under the dangling men. 'See,' he cried to his victims, 'I no longer hold bitterness against you.' And he lit the gra.s.s so that the men might die quickly and escape the terrible agonies that would otherwise have come with the morning, when the hot sun began to s.h.i.+ne upon them.

As a gesture of conciliation Shaka absorbed the Langeni regiments into his growing army, launching a policy that would result in a powerful force. When Dingiswayo, to whom he still owed nominal allegiance, died in battle with a northern tribe, the entire iziCwe contingent marched over to the Zulu, and Shaka said, 'Nxumalo, my truest friend, from this day you eat with the iziCwe.' This thrilling announcement had nothing to do with the manner in which the new general of the regiments would take his meals; it referred to the terrifying battle cry that would soon echo through the land whenever a Zulu warrior killed an enemy: 'I have eaten!'

In every direction Shaka lashed out with devastating speed, devouring small clans, and one morning he cried brusquely, 'Today we destroy the Ngwane,' and within a few hours the regiments had crossed the Umfolozi River and were das.h.i.+ng north to the kraals of a tribe which had given repeated trouble. Without signals or warning, other than the cries of astonished herd boys who saw the amazing army approaching, the Zulu took battle position, body-arms-head, and fell upon the community.

The Ngwane, like all subsidiary tribes in this region, were stalwart men and they did not propose to lose their cattle easily, for they supposed this to be another cattle raid in which two or three men might get hurt. So they quickly formed into their rude battle formations, with their throwing a.s.segais at the ready. They saw the body of Shaka's army, and it looked much like any traditional raiding party, but as they moved forward to engage it, they suddenly discovered that the wings were widespread, like the horns of some enraged buffalo, so that wherever they turned they confronted swift-running Zulu.

'They'll take all our cattle!' the Ngwane commander shouted, but it was not cows that the Zulu sought this time. With terrifying force they fell upon the Ngwane, stabbing and killing, and when the latter bravely tried to regroup and fight in earnest, from out of nowhere sprang the iziCwe, their brutal a.s.segais slas.h.i.+ng like the knives that slaughtered oxen for the sacrifice.

Under this tremendous onslaught the Ngwane defenses crumbled, and those warriors who were spared the Zulu cry 'I have eaten!' scattered and kept on running. In their flight from terror they would become outlaws, seeking in the blood of others vengeance for their own crus.h.i.+ng defeat. The kraals from which they fled were now in ashes, their herds driven off, their boys dragooned into Zulu regiments and their women distributed among the Zulu kraals.

The old people were 'helped along to the other place,' their slayers killing them with joy, for the Zulu saw nothing cruel in shortening the days of any who were aged or infirm. But when this savage battle was over, the Ngwane had ceased to exist as a clan.

Their extinction had been made possible by the disciplined performance of the iziCwe, and when the regiments returned to the Zulu kraals, Shaka praised the men and told them, to the envy of the other warriors, 'You may now enjoy the pleasures of the road.'

Shaka had introduced his own variation of that s.e.xual custom: no warrior could marry until his chief gave him permission, and this was usually delayed until the soldiers were in their mid-thirties and growing too old for the crack regiments. Then, in a grand ceremony, they were permitted to search the woods for a combination of vine, gut and gum, from which they made a wide headband, woven into the hair when moist and worn for the rest of life as proof of marriage.

But since it was illogical to expect grown men, and the bravest warriors at that, to remain continent till they donned their headbands, the soldiers were granted the 'pleasures' after any battle.

So Nxumalo's warriors fanned out through the community, looking for young women, and the girls, long wondering about husbands and lovers, eagerly allowed themselves to be found. For three long days the men reveled in the glades, loving the women with pa.s.sion born on the battlefield, yet practicing an almost savage restraint because they knew the fearful penalty they must pay if they got the women pregnant.

Nxumalo, no less excited about the fraternizing reward than his men, had gone seeking his pleasure of the road at a kraal whose daughter he had been noticing for some time. He was now a powerfully organized man who had been in the forefront of seven battles; he had a right to a.s.sume, therefore, that one of these years he would win permission to take a wife, but he knew that in Shaka's regime, s.e.x was utilized as the ultimate weapon of control.

So he was determined to excel in battle so that he could go to Thetiwe to ask her to be his wife. Thetiwe, sixteen years old and the daughter of a neighboring chieftain, a girl of lovely demeanor and flas.h.i.+ng eyes, had expected the iziCwe to perform well, which meant of course that its commander would come calling. So she waited alone, and when night fell she heard his steps.

'How was the battle?' she asked as he led her into a scattered wood beside the river.

'They are no more, the Ngwane.'

'They were a troublesome people.'

'No more.'

They spent three exciting days together, and often they talked of how soon Shaka might allow them to marry. Nxumalo, better aware than most of Shaka's intentions, was not overly hopeful: 'Consider the situation. More than anything else, Shaka wants to build the Zulu into the commanding nation, of which he will be king. To achieve this, constant warfare is necessary. And in battle he must have one regiment he can rely on. It'll always be the iziCwe. And I shall be fighting at its head until I'm fifty.'

'Oh, no!' Pressing her small hands against her face, she pondered the empty years till Nxumalo could claim her, and with great sadness, asked, 'Doesn't he know that his men should marry?'

'Thetiwe,' he replied gravely, 'you must never let anyone hear you ask such a question.'

'But why not?'

'Because Shaka is different. He doesn't think of families. He thinks only of armies and the glory to come.' He paused, wondering if he dare discuss this matter honestly with an untested girl of sixteen, but his pa.s.sion for her was so intense that he felt he must. 'How many wives does the chief have now?'

'In the various kraals, sixty ... I think.' 'Are any of them pregnant?' 'Oh, no!'

'But the last chief. Shaka's father. Were his wives usually pregnant?' 'He had scores of children.'

'The difference is that Shaka never sleeps with his wives. You know what he calls them? "My beloved sisters." Always he calls them his sisters. You see, he fears women for two reasons. He wants no children, especially no sons.'

'Why not? You want sons, don't you?'

'I do. I would quit the army now . . .' He dropped that dangerous topic and continued speaking of his chief: 'And the other reason he fears women . . . it goes back to when he was a boy. The others teased him. Told him he could never have babies. They laughed at him constantly and said no wife would ever want him.'

'Now he has sixty wives,' Thetiwe said, 'and they'll probably put twenty of the captured Ngwane girls aside for him.'

'But you mustn't speak of this to anyone,' Nxumalo warned, aware of what might happen to her and to him if Shaka suspected them of irreverence.

She laughed. 'I've known everything you've said. What do you think the women in the kraals joke about when no one can spy on them? That Shaka keeps his beloved sisters aside till a real man comes along to claim them.'

'Thetiwe! Never speak of that.' And having observed the wrath of Shaka, the lovers were afraid even to think such thoughts, let alone voice them.

Shaka had now absorbed four troublesome tribes, 'embracing them in my arms,' as he said. In his utilization of the body-arms-head tactic he had become incredibly deft. Sometimes he sent one of his flanks far out and thinly s.p.a.ced, their broad s.h.i.+elds with the edges forward and thus nearly invisible. Hidden in the gra.s.ses behind lurked a second group. As his army advanced, the opposing general spotted the undermanned flank and wheeled his princ.i.p.al force against it, but when the enemy was committed, Shaka flashed a signal, whereupon the front line of Zulu whipped their s.h.i.+elds front forward, while the hidden men leaped into position, showing the full width of their s.h.i.+elds also. In an instant, what had been a line of stragglers became a solid phalanx looming two or three times larger than it actually was. Often this struck such terror that the enemy soldiers who had been marching confidently to engage an outnumbered foe fled in panic, disrupting the lines behind and inviting the ma.s.sive body of the Zulu army to overwhelm them.

Zulu messengers, in reporting victories, gave details in rigorous order: so many cattle taken for the chief's pastures, so many boys for his regiments, so many girls for his kraals. The watchmen of the women selected twenty or thirty of the choicest maidens and turned the others over to the clan, and although Shaka appeared to pay little attention to his wives, any male caught lurking about the women's compound was instantly strangled, and if the girl to whom he had been making advances could be identified, she, too, was slain.

Nxumalo, obedient to each rule Shaka promulgated, spent whatever time was legally allowed with Thetiwe, and told her many things: 'Shaka is the greatest man who ever lived. A genius like no other. I've known four chiefs, and beside him, they were boys. It's in his plans for our nation that he excels. All tribes combined into one. From the rivers on the north to the rivers on the south. One family, one king.' He paused as he said this, then added, 'Shaka, King of the Zulu.'

'But you said he almost impaled you.'

'It was the evil spirits, not Shaka himself. They came and blinded him, but as soon as I told him who I was and his eyes opened, he spared me.'

'But didn't you often tell me that when the tribes were united, there'd be no more war?'

It was the kind of probing question that Thetiwe often asked him. But he knew there must be an answer: 'It's like this. We're still faced by many tribes that we must defeat. This will go on for some years, but one day there will be peace. Shaka has said so.'

The king's next actions belied this, for he authorized the formation of two new regiments. The first was composed only of girls Thetiwe's age, and because of her impeccable lineage and her bright intelligence, she was made vice-commander of this new regiment. The girls were not intended for battle; they were kept to the rear, performing services such as cooking, the mending of weapons and the nursing of the wounded, and quickly they learned the basic rule of Shaka's battle plan: 'If a Zulu is wounded, speak to him. If he can understand what you're saying, mend him. If he can't, call the guards.' When the girls did summon the k.n.o.bkerrie men, the latter studied the case briefly, then usually took the wounded man's a.s.segai and plunged it into his heart, for as Shaka said, 'If he can't walk, he can't fight.' And this the nurses understood.

The second new regiment was of quite a different character. It was almost laughable to look at, a collection of older men halt of leg and bad of eye. It was inconceivable that they could move with the alacrity demanded of Shaka's regiments, but gradually the king's strategy became evident: 'These men are to receive half-rations. They're to be worked constantly, and the sooner they die off, the better the Zulu nation will be.'

Now everyone, except the child-bearing women, was in a regiment and the nation was at last efficiently organized. Nxumalo liked the certainty this provided, the orderly progression through life with no chance for accidental deviation: a boy was born; he tended cattle; at eleven he was a.s.signed a place in the cadets, a kind of pre-regiment that performed tasks for the king; at fourteen he joined the youth's regiment, carrying water and food to men in battle; at nineteen he could, if he were fortunate, become a member of some renowned regiment like the iziCwe. For the next quarter of a century he would live in barracks in an orderly way, traveling to far parts of the nation where enemies existed; and if he proved obedient, the time would eventually come when he could marry; he would have a brief, happy life with his wife and children, and then pa.s.s on to the old men's battalion, where he would die decently without prolonged imbecility. It was the way life should be managed, Nxumalo thought, for it helped men avoid erratic behavior and produced a disciplined, happy nation.

Nxumalo also appreciated the advantage that came from having the young girls collected into their own regiment: at the conclusion of some harsh battle, when the warriors were exhausted, these girls would be sent to the proper area, and for three or four days the victors could sport with them and thus avoid the burden of returning long distances to the kraals, where girls would have to be searched for. In later days Nxumalo was astounded by an additional simplicity the king's strategy permitted: once when the amaWombe regiment had performed especially well, Shaka rewarded it brilliantly. He marched the entire force to the parade ground, then summoned one of the girls' regiments and announced: 'The men may marry the women.' And by nightfall the pairings had been made and six hundred new families were launched without interrupting army procedures.

By 1823 Shaka had consolidated the major portion of his nation, bringing into carefully defined order what had previously been a ma.s.s of contending chiefdoms. He was an excellent administrator, offering positions of considerable importance to any gifted members of defeated tribes, and recalling his own unhappy days as an alien among the Langeni, he made the newcomers totally welcome, so that within a few months they began to forget that they had ever been anything but Zulu.

Nxumalo saw that iron rule was necessary if such a patchwork of clans was ever to become a unified kingdom; brutal punishments were accepted, for in the black tribes the chief served as father of the people, and what displeased him displeased his children, who became almost eager for retribution. Shaka started his reign in accordance with tradition; his rule was no more b.l.o.o.d.y than that of his predecessors, but as his authority widened he was tempted, like all burgeoning tyrants, to make his whim the law of the land.

In this he was encouraged by a curious personal motivation: he looked with scorn at all diviners and witch doctors, for although he knew they were necessary, he also knew they were a sorry lot. But the more he denigrated them, the more he was tempted to usurp their power; he became his own diviner, and those about him lived in terror. A nod when he was speaking, a belch, an injudicious fart, and Shaka would point to the offender, signaling his k.n.o.bkerrie team to strangle that one.

But never in the early days was he a senseless tyrant; he gave the Zulu an able, generous government. He was especially careful to ensure that his people had reliable water supplies, stable sources of food, and his care of cattle would never be excelled. His personal herds numbered above twenty thousand, and he expressed his love for them in various ways. As a Zulu, he cherished cattle above any other possession, for he knew that a man's stature depended on the number of cattle he had been able to acc.u.mulate and that a nation's welfare was determined by the care with which it protected its animals.

His herds were so large that he was able to segregate them by color, which had not only an esthetic result but also a very practical one, because the cowhide s.h.i.+elds of various regiments could be differentiated. The iziCwe, for example, carried only white s.h.i.+elds with black fittings. Others had black, a choice color, or brown or red, the red finding little favor, for it was thought to be unlucky.

He was most careful with the animals intended for sacrifice, for upon them depended the spiritual safety of his kingdom, as well as his own. He never felt more secure than when he attended a ritual slaughter, stripped naked and washed himself in the still-warm chyme of a freshly slain bull. This thick liquid, the contents of the animal's stomach at the completion of the digestive process, was life-giving, and to feel one's self cleansed by it was an a.s.surance of immortality.

Even more important, however, was the precious little sac, about as big as a child's fist, which fastened to the dead animal's liver. This was the gall bladder, in which rested the bitter fluid that symbolized life: it was acrid, like the taste of death, yet the bladder in which it lived was shaped exactly like the womb from which life sprang. Also, mysteriously, it resembled the beehive hut in which man lived, and the grave in which he ultimately rested, so that the whole of life was encompa.s.sed in this magical appendage. Once its bitter contents had been sprinkled to consecrate, it was dried into a thin leather, inflated and worn in the matted hair of witch-seekers.

He was extremely loving with his mother, turning over to her the supervision of the kraals in which he kept his wives, and it was because of her attentiveness that he became aware of Thetiwe, vice-commander of one of his women's regiments.

The Female Elephant was beginning to show her age, and Shaka was terrified by the possibility that one day she might die, so he tended her lovingly, and once when she caught something in her eye and could not dislodge it, she began to wail so loudly that messengers were sent for the king, and when he found her in despair, he summoned all his herbalists, but before they arrived, Thetiwe, whose regiment barracked nearby, was called to the queen's hut, and with the deftness she exhibited on so many occasions, extracted the thorn-tip which had tormented the queen. Nandi was ecstatic, and told her son, 'There's a splendid woman. I've waited all these years for you to give me a grandson. There's the one.'

When Shaka studied his young military leader he saw quickly that his mother was right, and this frightened him, for he did not want a Paramount Wife nor did he want any children by one. On both accounts his thinking was clear and accurate. A king, when he was making his way, could have as many wives as he wished; Shaka had twelve hundred now. And with them he could have as many children as he was capable of siring; some chiefs had sixty or more. But none of this counted; the early mothers had no special standing, for among the Zulu there was no primogeniture.

What a prudent king did was wait till his reign had been securely established; then he carefully chose from some family that could a.s.sist him in time of trouble a young woman of proved stability. She became his Paramount Wife, acknowledged by all others, and her sons stood in line to inherit the kingdom. And that's where the trouble came, for in Zululand princes killed kings.

So as soon as the Female Elephant announced that she had selected Thetiwe to be this Paramount Wife, Shaka bowed, backed out the door of his mother's kraal, and had Nxumalo summoned: 'Didn't you tell me that you fancied the girl Thetiwe, of the women's regiment?'

'I did.'

'You're to marry her this afternoon.'

'Mighty Lion, I haven't cattle enough to pay lobola for such a woman.' 'I give you three hundred cattle.' 'But her family . . .'

'I will command her family to approve. Now!'

Hasty and flimsy arrangements were made on the spot, and before the Female Elephant could protest, a wedding was arranged. The king himself officiated, and when the witch doctors had shaken their matted locks and rattled their dried gall bladders, blessings were said and the surprised couple were married. Then, to spirit them away from Nandi's wrath, they were sent north to conduct a negotiation which would determine the future course of their lives.

Their quarry was Mzilikazi of the k.u.malo clan, an extraordinary young commander who even now, at the youthful age of twenty-seven, was betraying signs of challenging Shaka. This Mzilikazi had refused to send Shaka three thousand cattle captured in his raids, and twice he had rebuffed emissaries sent to collect them. Now Nxumalo and Thetiwe, armed with plenipotentiary powers and one hundred warriors, went to recover the cattle.

They found Mzilikazi at his unpretentious kraal in the northern forests, and when they saw him they simply could not believe that this reticent, whisper-speaking young warrior would dare antagonize the King of the Zulu. But that was the case. Bowing in servility, the young leader extended every hospitality to his guests, but no cattle. Whenever Nxumalo raised the question of the cattle'The lion grows impatient, Mzilikazi, and he wants to eat'the young leader smiled, blinked his hooded eyes, and did nothing.

They stayed with him for two weeks, and the more they saw, the more impressed they became. One night, upon retiring, Nxumalo made a final threat'If we don't take the cattle home with us, Mzilikazi, the regiments will come north'and when he wakened next morning he found that all his men had been surrounded by the commander's warriors and were immobilized.

Mzilikazi ruled wisely and with a minimum of pa.s.sion. He was so considerate of his subjects that he kept about him no gang of a.s.sa.s.sins to inflict his will. No rhinoceros whips were allowed to sting his cattle; supple reeds from the river had to be used. In all things he was gentle: speech, movement, the giving of orders, his manner of dress, his love of singing. He was so utterly different from Shaka that whenever Nxumalo looked at him he thought: How pleasant it would be for a warrior to serve in the retinue of this n.o.ble man.

But in the end Nxumalo and Thetiwe returned home without a single cow. At the final meeting Mzilikazi said in his silken way, 'Tell Shaka not to waste his energies sending for the cattle. They will never be released.'

Nxumalo knew that he was obligated to resist such arrogance, but he said, without raising his voice, 'Then you must build high fences of thorn to protect them.'

And Mzilikazi replied, 'The love my people bear me is my fence of thorn.'

When Shaka heard of this insolence he ordered his regiments to a.s.semble, and within the week Nxumalo was at the head of his iziCwe marching right back to Mzilikazi's kraals. The siege was short . . . and b.l.o.o.d.y, but the boy-general with the quiet manners escaped in some safe direction that could not be detected.

Now the beneficial results of Shaka's approach to government manifested themselves. An area larger than many European nations, which had festered for centuries in petty anarchy, became a unit, orderly and prosperous. The two hundred tribal loyalties which had previously rendered sensible action impossible were now melded into one, and families that two decades ago had not even heard the word Zulu now proudly proclaimed themselves as such. Whatever new triumph Shaka attained brought a shared glory to them, so that what had begun as a small clan of thirteen hundred Zulu was magically transformed by his genius into a powerful nation of half a million.

Order reigned in the land, and advancement was open to even the latest convert to the Zulu cause. A boy from the Sixolobo tribe entering his Zulu regiment at fourteen had just as fair a chance of becoming its commander as did any son of a distinguished Zulu family. In fact, by the time he was fifteen, with a year's training behind him, he was a Zulu, and no one ever again referred to him as a Sixolobo. And such citizens.h.i.+p was not reserved for the young; this boy's parents could come into Shaka's court and demand justice the same as anyone else, and his sisters could enter the kraals as wives to men who were born Zulu.

Peace also prevailed, and the central kraals along the Umfolozi River would pa.s.s years without experiencing attack, so that Shaka's name became revered throughout his kingdom. Citizens cheered when he appeared, waited on his commands, and were gratified with the benefits he brought them.

Nxumalo, for example, had scores of reasons for loving his powerful friend. He had already served as general of the finest regiment and as plenipotentiary in arranging peace with outlying clans. In 1826 Shaka gave further proof of his affection for the man who served him so well.

'Nxumalo, you must come to my kraal,' the king said, and when they reached the sacred area two beautiful Zulu girls were waiting. 'These are your brides,' Shaka said, ordering the seventeen-year-old girls forward.

'This time, Mighty Lion, I have the cattle to pay for them.'

'Their parents have already received their lobola . . . from me.'

'I am most grateful.' It was a considerate thing Shaka had done, for in Zulu custom a husband was not permitted to go near his first wife, or any other for that matter, so long as she was pregnant or nursing a baby, and since she continued to nurse till the child was four and a half, this meant that the man was without s.e.xual affection for about five years at a stretch. The problem was solved by allowing the man to take multiple wives, always supposing that he could pay for them in cattle, because this meant that as one wife after another became pregnant, there would be replacements, and one of the standard jokes in Zulu regiments dealt with the fiery commander who had seven wives, all pregnant at the same time: 'He might as well have been unmarried.' Now that Thetiwe had a baby, it was helpful to her for Nxumalo to take additional wives; Nxumalo, on his part, was made additionally beholden to his king.

But in a wonderfully subtle and corrective way Nxumalo's good fortune was beginning to produce its own penalties, for an ancient black tradition had been amended to provide a clever strategy for leveling society and cutting off any upstart whose popularity and power might begin to threaten the king's. This was the smelling-out ritual; now when witch-seekers coursed through the crowd, they were identifying those subversive persons whose removal would purify the tribe.

A smelling-out was conducted on sound psychological principles: as the witch-seekers with their gall bladders, snake skeletons and wildebeest tails dashed through the a.s.sembly, the crowd uttered the low, throbbing sound of a thousand voices moaning. If the seekers approached someone who by common consent ought to be removed from society, the humming increased to an audible roar, a.s.suring the seekers that this man's death would be popular. In this way Zulu society cleansed itself. With subtle tactic it announced a consensus that was immediately enforced, for as soon as the witch-seekers nominated a man by waving their wildebeest tails in his face, he was grabbed, bent double, and destroyed with four bamboo skewers.

Nxumalo, as he acc.u.mulated fresh proofs of the king's favor, realized that he was moving into the realm of danger when the witch-seekers could mysteriously decide that the Zulu had had just about enough of him. Rumors were already circulating: 'Nxumalo? He came from nowhere. Connived against better men to win leaders.h.i.+p of the iziCwe. Failed in his mission to Mzilikazi. Now has more cattle than a man should dream of owning. Nxumalo, like the white stork, flies too high.' So now whenever the Zulu were summoned for the next batch of removals, he began to sweat, appreciating like an ancient philosopher the transient nature of human glory.

In spite of this encroaching danger, he was needed by the Zulu, for although Shaka's system was well-nigh perfect, it had one self-destroying weakness: if a nation is totally geared to the waging of war, it had better ensure that war keeps occurring somewhere; and if incessant warfare is the rule, then trusted leaders like Nxumalo are essential. Every improvement that Shaka made obligated him to seek opponents against whom to test it, for he dared not allow his war machine to rest. It had to be housed and fed and armed with iron-tipped a.s.segais: whole communities did nothing but forge iron; others spent their days fabricating stinkwood shafts.

So, like the emperors of Rome dispatching their legions to the far frontiers in search of new enemies, Shaka sent his regiments to distant valleys, where tribes that had committed no offense found themselves surrounded. And because Zulu warriors needed constant practice with their stabbing a.s.segais, they collected few prisoners, but many cattle and women. This increased the wealth of the victors but not their stability, and many men discovered that as they acquired more cattle and wives, they also acquired the enmity of their friends. Many a prospering Zulu who was nominated by the witch-seekers wondered as he died in skewered agony how it all happened. War threw men upward, but the moaning of the populace dragged them back down.

It was in 1826, when Hilary and Emma Salt wood were entering Salisbury to visit his mother, that Shaka became acutely aware that he, too, formed part of this vast, impersonal process of advance and decline. He did not have to fear the diviners, for they were his agents; by subtle means he indicated whom he wanted them to remove, so that the leaders.h.i.+p of the kingdom would always remain at a dead level, with no new heads rising suddenly above the mult.i.tude. What did threaten him, and all men, was the inexorable pa.s.sing of time, the loss of a tooth now and then, the death of an uncle, the sad, sad wasting away of a man's life. Diviners were the enemy of Nxumalo; time, the enemy of Shaka.

By now a set of daring British traders had settled on the coast well to the south of Zululand, and among them was a tough, ingratiating Irish-Englishman named Henry Francis Fynn, a man whose personal courage equaled his brazen ingenuity. He introduced Shaka to Western ways, instructed him regarding the powers of the English king, and doctored his sick followers in the kraals. The extraordinary details of Shaka's final years might never have been known to the world at large had it not been for the recollections of Fynn, and the colorful journal of an imaginative eighteen-year-old, Nathaniel Isaacs, who had also made his way into the area.

No one will ever know what really went on in the minds of these traders as they observed customs and ancient traditions so utterly alien; their remembered response was clear, though, and in their writings they created the portrait of Shaka, the monster, driven by an unconquerable l.u.s.t for slaughter His eyes evinced his pleasure, his iron heart exulted, his whole frame seemed as if it felt a joyous impulse at seeing the blood of innocent creatures flowing at his feet; his hands grasped, his herculean and muscular limbs exhibiting by their motion a desire to aid in the execution of the victims of his vengeance; in short, he seemed a being in human form with more than the physical capabilities of a man; a giant without reason, a monster created with more than ordinary power and disposition for doing mischief, and from whom we recoil as we would at the serpent's hiss or the lion's growl.

Confronted by such a horror, Fynn, Isaacs and the other Europeans who joined them were nevertheless to stay in Shaka's domain up to four years, unharmed, desperately trying to make money, and conniving constantly to have the British Colonial Office bail them out.

If Fynn and Isaacs were horrified by Shaka's killings, he was appalled to learn that the British imprisoned their offenders: 'Nothing could be more cruel than to keep a man lingering, when one swift blow would free him forever.'

But Fynn was a clever man, seeking any chance to gain the approval of the Zulu ruler, and after studying the man, he came up with a brilliant approach: a promise of liquid which prevented hair from turning gray.

'Yes,' said Fynn, 'you rub this magic liquid in your hair, and it never becomes white.'

'Immortality!' Shaka cried, demanding to know what this elixir was called.

'Rowland's Maca.s.sar Oil,' Fynn said. 'Have you any?'

'No, but a year from now, when the trading s.h.i.+p comes in . . .'

It was a year of anxiety. To all parts of his realm Shaka sent messengers seeking to learn if anyone had Rowland's Maca.s.sar Oil, and his tragic countenance when none was produced alerted Nxumalo to the king's confused state of mind: 'If I could live another twenty years . . . forty ... I could have all the land ever seen under my control. Nxumalo, we must find the oil that prevents a man from growing old.'

'Do you really think there is such a thing?'

'Yes. The white men know of it. That's why they have guns and horses. The oil!'

When the oil did not arrive and gray hairs multiplied, Shaka had to face the problem of a successor. He was only forty, with death far off, but as he said to Nxumalo, 'Look at my mother, how she fades. I don't want the magic oil for myself. I want it to save her life.'

'She's old' Nxumalo started to say, hoping to prepare the king for his mother's eventual death, but Shaka would hear no such words.

In terrible rage he shouted at his aide, 'Goleave me! You spoke against the Female Elephant! I'll kill you with my own hands.'

But two days later Nxumalo was summoned back: 'Trusted friend, no man can rule forever.' As Shaka uttered these bitter words tears filled his eyes and he sat with his shoulders heaving, finally regaining enough control to add, 'If you and I could have another twenty years, we'd bring order to all the lands. We'd even bring the Xhosa into our fold.' With bitter regret he shook his head, then seemed to discharge his apprehensions: 'Nxumalo, you must go north again. Find Mzilikazi.'

'My King, I've seen your hatred for this traitor who stole your cattle.'

'It is so, Nxumalo, but you will take ten men and find him. Bring him to me. For if he rules the north and I the south, together we can protect this land from strangers.'