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"Nay," said Anuti, "you shall certainly not do that. There is ample room in this house for you, and so long as you remain in Masakisale you must consent to be my most welcome and honoured guest."
"Right!" I said. "Forward, then! Now, Anuti, I wonder whether you can guess why I am so anxious to have an opportunity to converse with you?" "I think I can," he answered, with that frank, genial smile of his which had so favourably impressed me at our former meeting.
When I rode out from the palace that afternoon, I was animated by a fervent hope that I might encounter Anuti; for I longed for the opportunity to convince him that the ideas which he had somehow formed with regard to his royal wife were as far from the truth as darkness is from light, or as the east is from the west.
The fire blazed so furiously throwing out an almost unendurable heat that within half an hour the pyre had become reduced to a heap of ruddy, dull-glowing ashes; whereupon Anuti gave a signal, the trumpeters blew seven blasts by way of final salute to the dead, the white ribbons were torn from the banners and cast upon the flickering flames, the banners were unknotted, and, forming up in military array, the mounted contingent wheeled and departed, making their way back to the palace, and leaving the pedestrians to return home at their leisure.
"There will be neither trouble nor difficulty in disposing of her, for she has not a friend in all Bandokolo," answered Anuti. "It will but be necessary for me to display this ring and even her bodyguards will gladly transfer their allegiance to me.
Anuti had been absent about three-quarters of an hour when a servant announced that two of my natives desired speech with me; and when they were introduced they proved to be 'Mfuni and Piet, who had encountered each other on the main road and now returned together, bringing with them the astounding news that the whole of my oxen had suddenly dropped dead while feeding, at the precise moment so far as I was able to fix it when Bimbane had pronounced their death warrant!
We conversed together for nearly three hours that morning, and when at length the queen dismissed me the last shred of suspicion raised in my mind against her by Anuti had vanished, and in its stead I was conscious of a feeling of exalted, romantic devotion, such as the knights errant of old must have felt when they went forth to perform some deed of desperate gallantry in honour of the women who had won their admiration.
But she did not: on the contrary, she led me to understand that her gift was quite unconditional; and we then proceeded to talk of other matters, with the result that when at length I was dismissed, I left the royal presence strongly impressed with the conviction that my hostess was a very much misunderstood and maligned woman, earnestly desirous of governing an unruly people wisely and well, in the face of strenuous opposition on the part of a clique of ambitious and unscrupulous nobles, of whom the most ambitious and unscrupulous was Anuti, her husband, who, it seemed pretty evident, aimed at nothing short of her dethronement and death, and the usurpation of supreme power.
In the meantime, while these orders were being carried out, we all adjourned to the council chamber, where we were soon afterward joined by several other nobles and chiefs, who had been hastily summoned; and a council was held at which it was decided that, for expediency's sake, Anuti should at once take up his abode at the palace, and that he should be proclaimed king that same evening.
And after careful consideration I chose Anuti, one of the captains of my guard, because he seemed the most suitable for the position, and the man most likely to be helpful to me in my difficult task of government. "But Siluce, who was one of the women of my household, had already seen Anuti, and desired him as her husband, although the man would have naught to do with her.
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