Shaka the Great (9 page)

So, let him be strong here, too.

Yes!

He will show them …

His shoulders sag. But that's not really the issue, is it?

Mnkabayi poses a threat far greater than any of his brothers, or the rulers he has bested on the battlefield.

“I must confess I still do not follow you, old friend. You speak of the First Fruits, then you speak of the savages at Thekweni.” Shaka can't see the connection.

“Aiee, old friend!” says Mgobozi. “This is me you're talking to! You know it's not that simple! You know what inviting the Long Noses to the First Fruits implies. You know how provocative that is. Yes, yes, many won't consider that, but there are those, like your aunt, who will wonder what you're up to. Those who will know you're up to something simply because you've invited the Long Noses to the First Fruits. They will never fully divine your motives, it is true, but the little they do grasp will be enough to have them reaching for their spears.”

Even Nandi! Even his mother had trusted her!

His mother …

“And Mnkabayi will understand this goes beyond power.” Yes, beyond even ensuring the perpetuation of the House of Zulu. “She is not like your brothers, after all! Power is valuable to her, yes, but perhaps she also realizes there are more important things at stake here. Maybe she moves against you, old friend, not to usurp but to save.”

Shaka glances at the general. His head is spinning. Mgobozi's words scurry through his mind like burning ants. Nausea sits coiled in his throat and there's a stinging in his eyes.

Hot, suddenly. So hot.

A wary glance at the flames. But they are behaving themselves.

His mother …

Mgobozi …

Mgobozi's here, but not Nandi. Why not? What he wouldn't give to see her!

Shaka regards his old friend.

“You are dead,” he murmurs. He runs his left hand down the side of his face, then leans forward and examines the black and red smears on his fingers. Imithi Emnyama, Black Medicine—muthi of the dead moon, isifile, and the dark day thereafter.

“You are dead,” he says again, staring at Mgobozi. “And I will remember nothing of this, will I?” Except perhaps as a presentiment: the same kind of vague unease his advisers feel when he speaks of the White Men.

And she will move against me.

And you have told me why, old friend.

Or at least you have told me as much as you know, hence your warning earlier. What you then meant was:
Just because I am dead, do not think I know anything more! Please, do not think that!

Somehow, though, Shaka will have to retain
some
inkling of this encounter. Yet, even as he's telling himself this, something else intrudes. Nandi, his mother—why not her? Why isn't she here?

Not important!

Mgobozi, it's what he said.

Mnkabayi will move against me.

She will …

He looks around, finds he is back inside the hut of his seclusion.

Who will move against him?

He snorts. Who indeed!

His shadow curves over him against the walls, as he paces back and forth.

It is the time of the First Fruits. His mighty army surrounds him! He will awe the White Men. They will not realize it, but this will be the beginning of their enslavement. The great army, and a mighty nation awaiting his word … these things will distract the barbarians, for they are like children in that respect. They will gape and stare, their greed rendering their precious guns next to useless, making a mockery of their boasts of conquering legions and stone cities. And they will nod and grin, and think they are fooling him!
They will walk in his shadow with their hands clasped behind their backs, and then, when they speak, their gestures will become more elaborate than a praise singer's, and they will think him tamed, never realizing that he knows they believe their King Jorgi is stronger. Never realizing he thinks they might be right!

But this campaign will not be decided on the battlefield.

What they don't know is that Shaka is something their King Jorgi is not—for if he is King of Kings, he is also Umthakathi Omkhulu, Sorcerer of Sorcerers, and it is with the First Fruits the beguiling will begin.

Once he dreamt of stones on a plain. And a journey, then an arrival …

Seen from afar the rocks resemble crocodiles sunning themselves, half hidden in the long grass. There is something reptilian about those rocks, those walls, those crude bricks like scales. Move closer and the crocodiles vanish; the rocks rearrange themselves, become something else. Circular walls creating enclosures; walls curving and ending; walls worn down by time and the elements to become rocky paths through the grass. A curse awaiting the awareness of words in order to give it life. A childhood taunt, lying in the long grass of memory, seemingly discarded, but never forgotten. An evil that beckons, but is willing to bide its time, knowing that time will come.

And he wondered about this dream of his. Did it have something to do with his Ubulawu, the talisman every Zulu king must seek out? He thought so at the time, and even sent out a band of trusted warriors to find the stones.

But the more he watched the White Men, the more he wondered …

Stones on a plain. And a journey, then an arrival. Perhaps those stones were theirs, and Jakot's footprints in the sand the final stage of the odyssey. (Although that's only a way of seeing that's occurred to him while he's been segregated in here, covered by this vile muthi. Which clearly does serve some purpose!)

Initially he'd agreed with Mbopa that skillful maneuvering would see the men from King Jorgi help him secure complete hegemony over all he sees, and extend the boundaries of his kingdom even further, since those ruled by greed are so easy to fool. As time passed, though, he began to wonder if they might not be able to offer him more.

Indeed, it was this realization that finally helped him climb out of the depression he had fallen into since the death of his mother …

There is much Shaka can understand about the ways of these savages—they are not so different—but of late he's become intrigued by the things he can't comprehend or imagine.

This is why he thinks they can offer him more than they realize. Although perhaps, in the end, it'll be less about their offering and more about his taking, for this is something these aliens are not even aware they possess …

And the taking, the beguiling, begins now at the First Fruits.

Clench your fists, and remember what they said that day you clenched your fists beneath the cliffs that turned Ngoza's capital into a citadel, and say it again:
Everything is ready.
The lion is crouching in the long grass ready to pounce.

He has seen further than his advisers, he has understood more. Now a victory greater than any he has yet won lies within his grasp …

Shaka stops pacing. So why, then, this strange feeling, this sense of foreboding, like the sudden stifling heat that precedes a summer thunderstorm?

May 1824

It lies there in quiet splendor, dozing in the sun, sheltered from the worst of the storms that make sailing along this littoral so hazardous by a bluff of high ground that the Zulus call Isibubulungu, the Big
Long Sweet Potato, while a second peninsula protects the lagoon's eastern reaches. Between the two is a sandbar which is covered by less than a meter of water at low tide. Cross it and you'll be greeted by a tranquil twenty-square kilometers of bay shaped like a pear—or a testicle. Trees alive with chattering monkeys arch out over the water, but the jungle soon gives way to mangrove—full of perfidious hippo eyes and professorial egrets—and then mangrove becomes bush, grassland speckled with wattles, lala-palms and curly podberry trees, while terns and gulls patrol the breaking waves.

Over the centuries, clans and tribes have settled here, then drifted away. Castaways have found succor; even a penitent pirate seeking to atone for his sins, if legend is to be believed. From time to time, mariners have managed to bounce their ships across the sandbar. They have fetched fresh water from the streams that flow into the bay and hunted for food or bartered for provisions with the friendly natives. Then they have sailed away to distant parts, leaving the lagoon to become lost once more.

In 1685, survivors of three wrecked ships built a two-masted vessel, fourteen meters long, which they sailed to the Cape, which was then in Dutch hands. Governor Simon van der Stel bought the vessel, named her the
Centaur
, and dispatched her back up the coast to look for other shipwrecked mariners.

He was also interested in the men's descriptions of this mysterious harbor, and four years later, he sent Captain Pieter Timmerman, on the galiot
Noord
, to buy the bay for Holland and the Dutch East India Company. Iron pots and pans, skillets and spoons, bolts of material and several sacks of sugar and salt were handed over to the local chief, and a deed of sale drawn up. A document which was duly lost when Timmerman proceeded to wreck the
Noord
, near Algoa.

In 1705 another Dutch ship crossed the irksome sandbar, seeking confirmation that the Dutch East India Company owned the place. The chief Timmerman had originally dealt with had died, however, and his son sent the White Men packing.

As for the Zulus, they paid little attention to the bay they themselves
called Ethekweni. Initially it was far from their territory, but even when Shaka's conquests saw the kingdom grow to encompass the lagoon, it was ignored. The King was more interested in what lay further south, the territory where the Pondoes and Xhosas had settled.

And Farewell and the
Salisbury
missed noticing it on their first voyage. Outward bound, they had been aiming for Santa Lucia and, while returning to Port Elizabeth after Farewell and the others had been rescued, they assumed the entrance was just another river mouth, blocked by a sandbar.

All the same, Farewell still believed it was possible to find a safe anchorage and establish a settlement hereabouts. King was enthusiastic, too, reckoning there had to be gold higher up the rivers.

After taking on supplies, the
Salisbury
left Port Elizabeth on September 11, 1823, accompanied by a small sloop named the
Julia
.

Returning to Natal, the ships hugged the coast once more. The weather was better this time, but there were always those blessed sandbars. It was as if nature was mocking them, saying
Look, see the wide river, deep enough for a ship with the right draft
, then blocking it off with a barrier of silt and sand.

But not all were totally impassable, as Farewell and King found out one day when the weather changed and a squall started nudging them even closer to the shore. Loath to run aground or tear his keel on an uncharted reef, King decided to seek shelter in a nearby river. The tide was coming in, current and wind were in their favor, and the sandbar was just a smudge in the choppy water. It was worth the risk, and certainly the smaller
Julia
would have no problem crossing the bar.

Past the point of no return, chained to the current and whipped forward by the wind—then a first bump as the bottom leaps up to hit the prow … the creaking growl … silent prayers … and they're over.

They're over, and driven onward by the wind, tacking to starboard, they suddenly realize they're in a lagoon.

A bay!

It's even more attractive once the storm subsides and they're able to take stock of their surroundings.

Easily accessible to ships with the right draft, “it abounds with hippopotamus and fish of various sorts,” James King later writes in a letter to Earl Bathurst, Secretary of State for Colonies, seeking to broach the idea of establishing a British settlement at this bay. “The plains are very extensive, and the pasture for their cattle rich. Near the anchorage is excellent timber for shipbuilding.”

Claiming to have ventured (an unlikely) sixty kilometers inland, he comments that the terrain “is blest with a salubrious air.”