The Wizard

H >> H. Rider Haggard >> The Wizard


On hearing this the woman sprang up, hid away the poison in her hair,
and taking her basket of fruit, passed 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."

"Not so," answered Hokosa, "for on this matter the greatest talker in
the world would keep silence. Firstly, she, being a Christian, dare not
own that she has visited a witch-doctor. Secondly, the fruit she brought
in payment was stolen, therefore she will say nothing of it. Thirdly,
to admit that she had medicine from me would be to admit her guilt, and
that she will scarcely do even under torture, which by the new law it is
not lawful to apply. Moreover, none saw her come here, and I should deny
her visit."

"The plan is very clever," said Noma again.

"It is very clever," he repeated complacently; "never have I made a
better one. Now throw those fruits to the she goats that are in the
kraal, and burn the basket, while I go and talk to some in the Great
Place, telling them that I have returned from counting my cattle on the
mountain, whither I went after I had bowed the knee in the house of the
king."

*****

Two hours later, Hokosa, having made a wide detour and talked to sundry
of his acquaintances about the condition of his cattle, might have been
seen walking slowly along the north side of the Great Place towards his
own kraal. His path lay past the chapel and the little house that Owen
had built to dwell in. This house was furnished with a broad verandah,
and upon it sat the Messenger himself, eating his evening meal. Hokosa
saw him, and a great desire entered his heart to learn whether or no
he had partaken of the poisoned fruit. Also it occurred to him that it
would be wise if, before the end came, he could contrive to divert all
possible suspicion from himself, by giving the impression that he was
now upon friendly terms with the great white teacher and not disinclined
even to become a convert to his doctrine.

For a moment he hesitated, seeking an excuse. One soon suggested itself
to his ready mind. That very morning the king had told him not obscurely
that Owen had pleaded for his safety and saved him from being put upon
his trial on charges of witchcraft and murder. He would go to him, now
at once, playing the part of a grateful penitent, and the White Man's
magic must be keen indeed if it availed to pierce the armour of his
practised craft.

So Hokosa went up and squatted himself down native fashion among a
little group of converts who were waiting to see their teacher upon one
business or another. He was not more than ten paces from the verandah,
and sitting thus he saw a sight that interested him strangely. Having
eaten a little of a dish of roasted meat, Owen put out his hand and
took a fruit from a basket that the wizard knew well. At this moment he
looked up and recognised Hokosa.

"Do you desire speech with me, Hokosa?" he asked in his gentle voice.
"If so, be pleased to come hither."

"Nay, Messenger," answered Hokosa, "I desire speech with you indeed, but
it is ill to stand between a hungry man and his food."

"I care little for my food," answered Owen; "at the least it can wait,"
and he put down the fruit.

Then suddenly a feeling to which the wizard had been for many years a
stranger took possession of him--a feeling of compunction. That man was
about to partake of what would cause his death--of what he, Hokosa, had
prepared in order that it should cause his death. He was good, he was
kindly, none could allege a wrong deed against him; and, foolishness
though it might be, so was the doctrine that he taught. Why should he
kill him? It was true that never till that moment had he hesitated, by
fair means or foul, to remove an enemy or rival from his path. He
had been brought up in this teaching; it was part of the education of
wizards to be merciless, for they reigned by terror and evil craft.
Their magic lay chiefly in clairvoyance and powers of observation
developed to a pitch that was almost superhuman, and the best of
their weapons was poison in infinite variety, whereof the guild alone
understood the properties and preparation. Therefore there was nothing
strange, nothing unusual in this deed of devilish and cunning murder
that the sight of its doing should stir him thus, and yet it did stir
him. He was minded to stop the plot, to let things take their course.

Some sense of the futility of all such strivings came home to him, and
as in a glass, for Hokosa was a man of imagination, he foresaw their
end. A little success, a little failure, it scarcely mattered which, and
then--that end. Within twenty years, or ten, or mayhap even one, what
would this present victory or defeat mean to him? Nothing so far as
he was concerned; that is, nothing so far as his life of to-day was
concerned. Yet, if he had another life, it might mean everything. There
was another life; he knew it, who had dragged back from its borders the
spirits of the dead, though what might be the state and occupations of
those dead he did not know. Yet he believed--why he could not tell--that
they were affected vitally by their acts and behaviour here; and his
intelligence warned him that good must always flow from good, and evil
from evil. To kill this man was evil, and of it only evil could come.

What did he care whether Hafela ruled the nation or Nodwengo, and
whether it worshipped the God of the Christians or the god of Fire--who,
by the way, had proved himself so singularly inefficient in the hour of
trial. Now that he thought of it, he much preferred Nodwengo to Hafela,
for the one was a just man and the other a tyrant; and he himself was
more comfortable as a wealthy private person than he had been as a head
medicine-man and a chief of wizards. He would let things stand; he would
prevent the Messenger from eating of that fruit. A word could do it; he
had but to suggest that it was unripe or not wholesome at this season of
the year, and it would be cast aside.

All these reflections, or their substance, passed through Hokosa's
mind in a few instants of time, and already he was rising to go to
the verandah and translate their moral into acts, when another thought
occurred to him--How should he face Noma with this tale? He could give
up his own ambitions, but could he bear her mockery, as day by day
she taunted him with his faint-heartedness and reproached him with his
failure to regain greatness and to make her great? He forgot that he
might conceal the truth from her; or rather, he did not contemplate such
concealment, of which their relations were too peculiar and too intimate
to permit. She hated him, and he worshipped her with a half-inhuman
passion--a passion so unnatural, indeed, that it suggested the horrid
and insatiable longings of the damned--and yet their souls were naked
to each other. It was their fate that they could hide nothing each from
each--they were cursed with the awful necessity of candour.

It would be impossible that he should keep from Noma anything that he
did or did not do; it would be still more impossible that she should
conceal from him even such imaginings and things as it is common for
women to hold secret. Her very bitterness, which it had been policy for
her to cloak or soften, would gush from her lips at the sight of him;
nor, in the depth of his rage and torment, could he, on the other hand,
control the ill-timed utterance of his continual and overmastering
passion. It came to this, then: he must go forward, and against his
better judgment, because he was afraid to go back, for the whip of
a woman's tongue drove him on remorselessly. It was better that the
Messenger should die, and the land run red with blood, than that he
should be forced to endure this scourge.

So with a sigh Hokosa sank back to the ground and watched while Owen ate
three of the poisoned fruits. After a pause, he took a fourth and bit
into it, but not seeming to find it to his taste, he threw it to a child
that was waiting by the verandah for any scraps which might be left over
from his meal. The child caught it, and devoured it eagerly.

Then, smiling at the little boy's delight, the Messenger called to
Hokosa to come up and speak with him.



CHAPTER XV

NOMA COMES TO HAFELA

Hokosa advanced to the verandah and bowed to the white man with grave
dignity.

"Be seated," said Owen. "Will you not eat? though I have nothing to
offer you but these," and he pushed the basket of fruits towards him,
adding, "The best of them, I fear, are already gone."

"I thank you, no, Messenger; such fruits are not always wholesome at
this season of the year. I have known them to breed dysentery."

"Indeed," said Owen. "If so, I trust that I may escape. I have suffered
from that sickness, and I think that another bout of it would kill me.
In future I will avoid them. But what do you seek with me, Hokosa? Enter
and tell me," and he led the way into a little sitting-room.

"Messenger," said the wizard, with deep humility, "I am a proud man; I
have been a great man, and it is no light thing to me to humble myself
before the face of my conqueror. Yet I am come to this. To-day when I
was in audience with the king, craving a small boon of his graciousness,
he spoke to me sharp and bitter words. He told me that he had been
minded to put me on trial for my life because of various misdoings which
are alleged against me in the past, but that you had pleaded for me
and that for this cause he spared me. I come to thank you for your
gentleness, Messenger, for I think that had I been in your place I
should have whispered otherwise in the ear of the king."

"Say no more of it, friend," said Owen kindly, "We are all of us
sinners, and it is my place to push back your ancient sins, not to drag
them into the light of day and clamour for their punishment. It is true
I know that you plotted with the Prince Hafela to poison Umsuka the
King, for it was revealed to me. It chanced, however, that I was able
to recover Umsuka from his sickness, and Hafela is fled, so why should
I bring up the deed against you? It is true that you still practise
witchcraft, and that you hate and strive against the holy Faith which I
preach; but you were brought up to wizardry and have been the priest of
another creed, and these things plead for you.

"Also, Hokosa, I can see the good and evil struggling in your soul, and
I pray and I believe that in the end the good will master the evil;
that you who have been pre-eminent in sin will come to be pre-eminent
in righteousness. Oh! be not stubborn, but listen with your ear, and
let your heart be softened. The gate stands open, and I am the guide
appointed to show you the way without reward or fee. Follow them ere it
be too late, that in time to come when my voice is stilled you also may
be able to direct the feet of wanderers into the paths of peace. It is
the hour of prayer; come with me, I beg of you, and listen to some few
words of the message of my lips, and let your spirit be nurtured with
them, and the Sun of Truth arise upon its darkness."

Hokosa heard, and before this simple eloquence his wisdom sank
confounded. More, his intelligence was stirred, and a desire came upon
him to investigate and examine the canons of a creed that could produce
such men as this. He made no answer, but waiting while Owen robed
himself, he followed him to the chapel. It was full of new-made
Christians who crowded even the doorways, but they gave place to him,
wondering. Then the service began--a short and simple service. First
Owen offered up some prayer for the welfare of the infant Church, for
the conversion of the unbelieving, for the safety of the king and the
happiness of the people. Then John, the Messenger's first disciple, read
aloud from a manuscript a portion of the Scripture which his master had
translated. It was St. Paul's exposition of the resurrection from the
dead, and the grandeur of its thoughts and language were by no means
lost upon Hokosa, who, savage and heathen though he might be, was also a
man of intellect.

The reading over, Owen addressed the congregation, taking for his text,
"Thy sin shall find thee out." Being now a master of the language,
he preached very well and earnestly, and indeed the subject was not
difficult to deal with in the presence of an audience many of whose
pasts had been stepped in iniquities of no common kind. As he talked of
judgment to come for the unrepentant, some of his hearers groaned and
even wept; and when, changing his note, he dwelt upon the blessed future
state of those who earned forgiveness, their faces were lighted up with
joy.

But perhaps among all those gathered before him there were none more
deeply interested than Hokosa and one other, that woman to whom he
had sold the poison, and who, as it chanced, sat next to him. Hokosa,
watching her face as he was skilled to do, saw the thrusts of the
preacher go home, and grew sure that already in her jealous haste she
had found opportunity to sprinkle the medicine upon her rival's food.
She believed it to be but a charm indeed, yet knowing that in using
such charms she had done wickedly, she trembled beneath the words of
denunciation, and rising at length, crept from the chapel.

"Truly, her sin will find her out," thought Hokosa to himself, and
then in a strange half-impersonal fashion he turned his thoughts to
the consideration of his own case. Would _his_ sin find him out? he
wondered. Before he could answer that question, it was necessary first
to determine whether or no he had committed a sin. The man before
him--that gentle and yet impassioned man--bore in his vitals the seed
of death which he, Hokosa, had planted there. Was it wrong to have done
this? It depended by which standard the deed was judged. According to
his own code, the code on which he had been educated and which hitherto
he had followed with exactness, it was not wrong. That code taught
the necessity of self-aggrandisement, or at least and at all costs the
necessity of self-preservation. This white preacher stood in his path;
he had humiliated him, Hokosa, and in the end, either of himself or
through his influences, it was probable that he would destroy him.
Therefore he must strike before in his own person he received a mortal
blow, and having no other means at his command, he struck through
treachery and poison.

That was his law which for many generations had been followed and
respected by his class with the tacit assent of the nation. According to
this law, then, he had done no wrong. But now the victim by the altar,
who did not know that already he was bound upon the altar, preached a
new and a very different doctrine under which, were it to be believed,
he, Hokosa, was one of the worst of sinners. The matter, then, resolved
itself to this: which of these two rules of life was the right rule?
Which of them should a man follow to satisfy his conscience and to
secure his abiding welfare? Apart from the motives that swayed him, as a
mere matter of ethics, this problem interested Hokosa not a little, and
he went homewards determined to solve it if he might. That could be done
in one way only--by a close examination of both systems. The first he
knew well; he had practised it for nearly forty years. Of the second
he had but an inkling. Also, if he would learn more of it he must make
haste, seeing that its exponent in some short while would cease to be in
a position to set it out.

"I trust that you will come again," said Owen to Hokosa as they left the
chapel.

"Yes, indeed, Messenger," answered the wizard; "I will come every day,
and if you permit it, I will attend your private teachings also, for I
accept nothing without examination, and I greatly desire to study this
new doctrine of yours, root and flower and fruit."

*****

On the morrow Noma started upon her journey. As the matrons who
accompanied her gave out with a somewhat suspicious persistency, its
ostensible object was to visit the Mount of Purification, and there by
fastings and solitude to purge herself of the sin of having given birth
to a stillborn child. For amongst savage peoples such an accident is
apt to be looked upon as little short of a crime, or, at the least, as
indicating that the woman concerned is the object of the indignation
of spirits who need to be appeased. To this Mount, Noma went, and there
performed the customary rites.

"Little wonder," she thought to herself, "that the spirits were angry
with her, seeing that yonder in the burying-ground of kings she had
dared to break in upon their rest."

From the Place of Purification she travelled on ten days' journey with
her companions till they reached the mountain fastness where Hafela had
established himself. The town and its surroundings were of extraordinary
strength, and so well guarded that it was only after considerable
difficulty and delay that the women were admitted. Hearing of her
arrival and that she had words for him, Hafela sent for Noma at once,
receiving her by night and alone in his principal hut. She came and
stood before him, and he looked at her beauty with admiring eyes, for he
could not forget the woman whom the cunning of Hokosa had forced him to
put away.

"Whence come you, pretty one?" he asked, "and wherefore come you? Are
you weary of your husband, that you fly back to me? If so, you are
welcome indeed; for know, Noma, that I still love you."

"Ay, Prince, I am weary of my husband sure enough; but I do not fly to
you, for he holds me fast to him with bonds that you cannot understand,
and fast to him while he lives I must remain."

"What hinders, Noma, that having got you here I should keep you here?
The cunning and magic of Hokosa may be great, but they will need to be
still greater to win you from my arms."

"This hinders, Prince, that you are playing for a higher stake than that
of a woman's love, and if you deal thus by me and my husband, then of a
surety you will lose the game."

"What stake, Noma?"

"The stake of the crown of the People of Fire."

"And why should I lose if I take you as a wife?"

"Because Hokosa, seeing that I do not return and learning from his spies
why I do not return, will warn the king, and by many means bring all
your plans to nothing. Listen now to the words of Hokosa that he has
set between my lips to deliver to you"--and she repeated to him all the
message without fault or fail.

"Say it again," he said, and she obeyed.

Then he answered:--

"Truly the skill of Hokosa is great, and well he knows how to set a
snare; but I think that if by his counsel I should springe the bird, he
will be too clever a man to keep upon the threshold of my throne. He
who sets one snare may set twain, and he who sits by the threshold may
desire to enter the house of kings wherein there is no space for two to
dwell."

"Is this the answer that I am to take back to Hokosa?" asked Noma. "It
will scarcely bind him to your cause, Prince, and I wonder that you dare
to speak it to me who am his wife."

"I dare to speak it to you, Noma, because, although you be his wife, all
wives do not love their lords; and I think that, perchance in days to
come, you would choose rather to hold the hand of a young king than that
of a witch-doctor sinking into eld. Thus shall you answer Hokosa: You
shall say to him that I have heard his words and that I find them very
good, and will walk along the path which he has made. Here before you I
swear by the oath that may not be broken--the sacred oath, calling down
ruin upon my head should I break one word of it--that if by his aid I
succeed in this great venture, I will pay him the price he asks. After
myself, the king, he shall be the greatest man among the people; he
shall be general of the armies; he shall be captain of the council
and head of the doctors, and to him shall be given half the cattle of
Nodwengo. Also, into his hand I will deliver all those who cling to this
faith of the Christians, and, if it pleases him, he shall offer them as
a sacrifice to his god. This I swear, and you, Noma, are witness to the
oath. Yet it may chance that after he, Hokosa, has gathered up all
this pomp and greatness, he himself shall be gathered up by Death, that
harvest-man whom soon or late will garner every ear;" and he looked at
her meaningly.

"It may be so, Prince," she answered.

"It may be so," he repeated, "and when----"

"When it is so, then, Prince, we will talk together, but not till then.
Nay, touch me not, for were he to command me, Hokosa has this power over
me that I must show him all that you have done, keeping nothing back.
Let me go now to the place that is made ready for me, and afterwards you
shall tell me again and more fully the words that I must say to Hokosa
my husband."

*****

On the morrow Hafela held a secret council of his great men, and the
next day an embassy departed to Nodwengo the king, taking to him that
message which Hokosa, through Noma his wife, had put into the lips
of the prince. Twenty days later the embassy returned saying that it
pleased the king to grant the prayer of his brother Hafela, and bringing
with it the tidings that the white man, Messenger, had fallen sick, and
it was thought that he would die.

So in due course the women and children of the people of Hafela started
upon their journey towards the new land where it was given out that they
should live, and with them went Noma, purposing to leave them as they
drew near the gates of the Great Place of the king. A while after,
Hafela and his _impis_ followed with carriers bearing their fighting
shields in bundles, and having their stabbing spears rolled up in mats.



CHAPTER XVI

THE REPENTANCE OF HOKOSA

Hokosa kept his promise. On the morrow of his first attendance there he
was again to be seen in the chapel, and after the service was over he
waited on Owen at his house and listened to his private teaching. Day
by day he appeared thus, till at length he became master of the whole
doctrine of Christianity, and discovered that that which at first had
struck him as childish and even monstrous, now presented itself to him
in a new and very different light. The conversion of Hokosa came upon
him through the gate of reason, not as is usual among savages--and some
who are not savage--by that of the emotions. Given the position of a
universe torn and groaning beneath the dual rule of Good and Evil,
two powers of well-nigh equal potency, he found no great difficulty in
accepting this tale of the self-sacrifice of the God of Good that He
might wring the race He loved out of the conquering grasp of the god of
Ill. There was a simple majesty about this scheme of redemption which
appealed to one side of his nature. Indeed, Hokosa felt that under
certain conditions and in a more limited fashion he would have been
capable of attempting as much himself.

Once his reason was satisfied, the rest followed in a natural sequence.
Within three weeks from the hour of his first attendance at the chapel
Hokosa was at heart a Christian.

He was a Christian, although as yet he did not confess it; but he was
also the most miserable man among the nation of the Sons of Fire. The
iniquities of his past life had become abominable to him; but he had
committed them in ignorance, and he understood that they were not beyond
forgiveness. Yet high above them all towered one colossal crime which,
as he believed, could never be pardoned to him in this world or the
next. He was the treacherous murderer of the Messenger of God; he was
in the very act of silencing the Voice that had proclaimed truth in the
dark places of his soul and the dull ears of his countrymen.

The deed was done; no power on earth could save his victim. Within a
week from the day of eating that fatal fruit Owen began to sicken, then
the dysentery had seized him which slowly but surely was wasting out
his life. Yet he, the murderer, was helpless, for with this form of the
disease no medicine could cope. With agony in his heart, an agony that
was shared by thousands of the people, Hokosa watched the decrease of
the white man's strength, and reckoned the days that would elapse before
the end. Having such sin as thus upon his soul, though Owen entreated
him earnestly, he would not permit himself to be baptised. Twice he
went near to consenting, but on each occasion an ominous and terrible
incident drove him from the door of mercy.