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Updated: May 13, 2025
They entered this gate, and presently came to a second. It was that of the Emposeni, the Dwelling of the King's wives, out of which appeared women crawling on the ground before Rachel, and holding in their left hands torches of grass. These undid the baggage from the ox, and at their signals, for they did not seem to dare to speak to her, Rachel dismounted.
They leaped into the air, they ground their teeth, and rolled upon the ground. They drew forth snakes and devoured them alive, they shrieked out to the spirits and called upon the names of ancient kings. At length it drew on to evening, and the last company of the witch-doctors did their work, smelling out some of the keepers of the Emposeni, the house of the women.
I woke when the sky was grey with the morning light; it was the pain of my burnt hand that aroused me from my sleep or from my stupor. I rose shaking the ashes from me, and went without the kraal to wash away their defilement. Then I returned, and sat outside the gates of the Emposeni, waiting till the king's women, whom he named his sisters, should come to draw water according to their custom.
Then she put up her hand, and drew the assegai from her side. "So shalt thou die also, Chaka the Evil!" she cried, and fell down dead there in the hut. Thus, then, did Chaka murder his mother Unandi. Now when Baleka saw what had been done, she turned and fled from the hut into the Emposeni, and so swiftly that the guards at the gates could not stop her.
But the bundle of medicines that held the living one I fastened across my shoulders. I passed out of the Emposeni, and, as I went, I held up the bundle in my right hand to the guards, showing them that which was in it, but saying nothing. "It is good," they said, nodding. But now ill-fortune found me, for just outside the Emposeni I met three of the king's messengers.
"Suffer none to enter the hut till I return," I said; "and speak no word of the child that seems to be dead. If you allow any to enter, or if you speak a word, then my medicine will not work and the babe will be dead indeed." So I went, leaving the women wondering, for it is not our custom to save both when twins are born; but I ran swiftly to the gates of the Emposeni.
A minute or two, however, sufficed for the eye to become accustomed to the change of light, and when mine had done so I perceived that the interior of this particular hut was divided by wattle partitions into apparently three apartments, two in the front half and the other which I surmised to be sacred to the king's emposeni, or harem occupying the rear half.
Within this inner fence was the large open space, big enough to hold five regiments, and at the top of it opposite the entrance stood the cattle kraal itself, that cut off a piece of the open space by another fence bent like a bow. Behind this again were the Emposeni, the place of the king's women, the guard-house, the labyrinth, and the Intunkulu, the house of the king.
Better that an infant should die than that we should become food for jackals. Presently I came to the Emposeni, the place of the king's wives, and declared the king's word to the soldiers on guard. They lowered their assegais and let me pass, and I entered the hut of Baleka.
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