"Alas, master, I am poor. I have nothing to offer you, for when I would not stay in my husband"s kraal to be a servant to his new wife, he took the cow and the five goats that belonged to me, as, I being childless, according to our ancient law he had the right to do."
"You are bold who come to ask a doctor to minister to you, bearing no fee in your hand," said Hokosa. "Yet, because I have pity on you, I will be content with very little. Give me that basket of fruit, for my wife has been sick and loves its taste."
"I cannot do that, Master," answered the woman, "for it is sent by my hand as a present to the Messenger, and he knows this and will eat of it after he has made prayer to-day. Did I not give it to him, it would be discovered that I had left it here with you."
"Then begone without your medicine," said Hokosa, "for I need such fruit."
The woman rose and said, looking at him wistfully:--
"Master, if you will be satisfied with other fruits of this same sort, I know where I can get them for you."
"When will you get them?"
"Now, within an hour. And till I return I will leave these in pledge with you; but these and no other I must give to the Messenger, for he has already seen them and might discover the difference; also I have promised so to do."
"As you will," said Hokosa. "If you are with the fruit within an hour, the medicine will be ready for you, a medicine that shall not fail."
CHAPTER XIV
THE EATING OF THE FRUIT
The woman slipped away secretly. When she had gone Hokosa bade his wife bring the basket of fruit into the hut.
"It is best that the butcher should kill the ox himself," she answered meaningly.
He carried in the basket and set it on the floor.
"Why do you speak thus, Noma?" he asked.
"Because I will have no hand in the matter, Hokosa. I have been the tool of a wizard, and won little joy therefrom. The tool of a murderer I will not be!"
"If I kill, it is for the sake of both of us," he said pa.s.sionately.
"It may be so, Hokosa, or for the sake of the people, or for the sake of Heaven above--I do not know and do not care; but I say, do your own killing, for I am sure that even less luck will hang to it than hangs to your witchcraft."
"Of all women you are the most perverse!" he said, stamping his foot upon the ground.
"Thus you may say again before everything is done, husband; but if it be so, why do you love me and tie me to you with your wizardry? Cut the knot, and let me go my way while you go yours."
"Woman, I cannot; but still I bid you beware, for, strive as you will, my path must be your path. Moreover, till I free you, you cannot lift voice or hand against me."
Then, while she watched him curiously, Hokosa fetched his medicines and took from them some powder fine as dust and two tiny crowquills. Placing a fruit before him, he inserted one of these quills into its substance, and filling the second with the powder, he shook its contents into it and withdrew the tube. This process he repeated four times on each of the fruits, replacing them one by one in the basket. So deftly did he work upon them, that however closely they were scanned none could guess that they had been tampered with.
"Will it kill at once?" asked Noma.
"No, indeed; but he who eats these fruits will be seized on the third day with dysentery and fever, and these will cling to him till within seven weeks--or if he is very strong, three months--he dies. This is the best of poisons, for it works through nature and can be traced by none."
"Except, perchance, by that Spirit Whom the white man worships, and Who also works through nature, as you learned, Hokosa, when He rolled the lightning back upon your head, shattering your G.o.d and beating down your company."
Then of a sudden terror seized the wizard, and springing to his feet, he cursed his wife till she trembled before him.
"Vile woman, and double-faced!" he said, "why do you push me forward with one hand and with the other drag me back? Why do you whisper evil counsel into one ear and into the other prophesy of misfortunes to come?
Had it not been for you, I should have let this business lie; I should have taken my fate and been content. But day by day you have taunted me with my fall and grieved over the greatness that you have lost, till at length you have driven me to this. Why cannot you be all good or all wicked, or at the least, through righteousness and sin, faithful to my interest and your own?"
"Because I hate you, Hokosa, and yet can strike you only through my tongue and your mad love for me. I am fast in your power, but thus at least I can make you feel something of my own pain. Hark! I hear that woman at the gate. Will you give her back the basket, or will you not?
Whatever you may choose to do, do not say in after days that I urged you to the deed."
"Truly you are great-hearted!" he answered, with cold contempt; "one for whom I did well to enter into treachery and sin! So be it: having gone so far upon it, come what may, I will not turn back from this journey.
Let in that fool!"
Presently the woman stood before them, bearing with her another basket of fruit.
"These are what you seek, Master," she said, "though I was forced to win them by theft. Now give me my own and the medicine and let me go."
He gave her the basket, and with it, wrapped in a piece of kidskin, some of the same powder with which he had doctored the fruits.
"What shall I do with this?" she asked.
"You must find means to sprinkle it upon your sister"s food, and thereafter your husband shall come to hate even the sight of her."
"But will he come to love me again?"
Hokosa shrugged his shoulders.
"I know not," he answered; "that is for you to see to. Yet this is sure, that if a tree grows up before the house of a man, shutting it off from the sunlight, when that tree is cut down the sun shines upon his house again."
"It is nothing to the sun on what he shines," said the woman.
"If the saying does not please you, then forget it. I promise you this and no more, that very soon the man shall cease to turn to your rival."
"The medicine will not harm her?" asked the woman doubtfully. "She has worked me bitter wrong indeed, yet she is my sister, whom I nursed when she was little, and I do not wish to do her hurt. If only he will welcome me back and treat me kindly, I am willing even that she should dwell on beneath my husband"s roof, bearing his children, for will they not be of my own blood?"
"Woman," answered Hokosa impatiently, "you weary me with your talk. Did I say that the charm would hurt her? I said that it would cause your husband to hate the sight of her. Now begone, taking or leaving it, and let me rest. If your mind is troubled, throw aside that medicine, and go soothe it with such sights as you saw last night."
On hearing this the woman sprang up, hid away the poison in her hair, and taking her basket of fruit, pa.s.sed from the kraal as secretly as she had entered it.
"Why did you give her death-medicine?" asked Noma of Hokosa, as he stood staring after her. "Have you a hate to satisfy against the husband or the girl who is her rival?"
"None," he answered, "for they have never crossed my path. Oh, foolish woman! cannot you read my plan?"
"Not altogether, Husband."
"Listen then: this woman will give to her sister a medicine of which in the end she must die. She may be discovered or she may not, but it is certain that she will be suspected, seeing that the bitterness of the quarrel between them is known. Also she will give to the Messenger certain fruits, after eating of which he will be taken sick and in due time die, of just such a disease as that which carries off the woman"s rival. Now, if any think that he is poisoned, which I trust none will, whom will they suppose to have poisoned him, though indeed they can never prove the crime?"
"The plan is clever," said Noma with admiration, "but in it I see a flaw. The woman will say that she had the drug from you, or, at the least, will babble of her visit to you."