IVANHOE.

Chapters 1 to 10   Chapters 11 to 20   Chapters 21 to 30   Chapter 31 to 40   Chapters 41 to 44

Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30

CHAPTER XXI

Alas, how many hours and years have past, Since human forms have round this table sate, Or lamp, or taper, on its surface gleam'd! Methinks, I hear the sound of time long pass'd Still murmuring o'er us, in the lofty void Of these dark arches, like the ling'ring voices Of those who long within their graves have slept.

_Orra, a Tragedy._

While these measures were taking in behalf of Cedric and his companions, the armed men by whom the latter had been seized, hurried their captives along towards the place of security, where they intended to imprison them. But darkness came on fast, and the paths of the wood seemed but imperfectly known to the marauders. They were compelled to make several long halts, and once or twice to return on their road to resume the direction which they wished to pursue. The summer morn had dawned upon them ere they could travel in full assurance that they held the right path. But confidence returned with light, and the cavalcade now moved rapidly forward. Meanwhile, the following dialogue took place between the two leaders of the banditti. ``It is time thou shouldst leave us, Sir Maurice,'' said the Templar to De Bracy, ``in order to prepare the second part of thy mystery. Thou art next, thou knowest, to act the Knight Deliverer.''

``I have thought better of it,'' said De Bracy; ``I will not leave thee till the prize is fairly deposited in Front-de-B<oe>uf's castle. There will I appear before the Lady Rowena in mine own shape, and trust that she will set down to the vehemence of my passion the violence of which I have been guilty.''

``And what has made thee change thy plan, De Bracy?'' replied the Knight Templar.

``That concerns thee nothing,'' answered his companion.

``I would hope, however, Sir Knight,'' said the Templar, ``that this alteration of measures arises from no suspicion of my honourable meaning, such as Fitzurse endeavoured to instil into thee?''

``My thoughts are my own,'' answered De Bracy; ``the fiend laughs, they say, when one thief robs another; and we know, that were he to spit fire and brimstone instead, it would never prevent a Templar from following his bent.''

``Or the leader of a Free Company,'' answered the Templar, ``from dreading at the hands of a comrade and friend, the injustice he does to all mankind.''

``This is unprofitable and perilous recrimination,'' answered De Bracy; ``suffice it to say, I know the morals of the Temple-Order, and I will not give thee the power of cheating me out of the fair prey for which I have run such risks.''

``Psha,'' replied the Templar, ``what hast thou to fear?---Thou knowest the vows of our order.''

``Right well,'' said De Bracy, ``and also how they are kept. Come, Sir Templar, the laws of gallantry have a liberal interpretation in Palestine, and this is a case in which I will trust nothing to your conscience.''

``Hear the truth, then,'' said the Templar; ``I care not for your blue-eyed beauty. There is in that train one who will make me a better mate.''

``What! wouldst thou stoop to the waiting damsel?'' said De Bracy. ``No, Sir Knight,'' said the Templar, haughtily. ``To the waiting-woman will I not stoop. I have a prize among the captives as lovely as thine own.''

``By the mass, thou meanest the fair Jewess!'' said De Bracy.

``And if I do,'' said Bois-Guilbert, ``who shall gainsay me?''

``No one that I know,'' said De Bracy, ``unless it be your vow of celibacy, or a cheek of conscience for an intrigue with a Jewess.''

``For my vow,'' said the Templar, ``our Grand Master hath granted me a dispensation. And for my conscience, a man that has slain three hundred Saracens, need not reckon up every little failing, like a village girl at her first confession upon Good Friday eve.''

``Thou knowest best thine own privileges,'' said De Bracy. ``Yet, I would have sworn thy thought had been more on the old usurer's money bags, than on the black eyes of the daughter.''

``I can admire both,'' answered the Templar; ``besides, the old Jew is but half-prize. I must share his spoils with Front-de-B<oe>uf, who will not lend us the use of his castle for nothing. I must have something that I can term exclusively my own by this foray of ours, and I have fixed on the lovely Jewess as my peculiar prize. But, now thou knowest my drift, thou wilt resume thine own original plan, wilt thou not?---Thou hast nothing, thou seest, to fear from my interference.''

``No,'' replied De Bracy, ``I will remain beside my prize. What thou sayst is passing true, but I like not the privileges acquired by the dispensation of the Grand Master, and the merit acquired by the slaughter of three hundred Saracens. You have too good a right to a free pardon, to render you very scrupulous about peccadilloes.''

While this dialogue was proceeding, Cedric was endeavouring to wring out of those who guarded him an avowal of their character and purpose. ``You should be Englishmen,'' said he; ``and yet, sacred Heaven! you prey upon your countrymen as if you were very Normans. You should be my neighbours, and, if so, my friends; for which of my English neighbours have reason to be otherwise? I tell ye, yeomen, that even those among ye who have been branded with outlawry have had from me protection; for I have pitied their miseries, and curst the oppression of their tyrannic nobles. What, then, would you have of me? or in what can this violence serve ye?---Ye are worse than brute beasts in your actions, and will you imitate them in their very dumbness?''

It was in vain that Cedric expostulated with his guards, who had too many good reasons for their silence to be induced to break it either by his wrath or his expostulations. They continued to hurry him along, travelling at a very rapid rate, until, at the end of an avenue of huge trees, arose Torquilstone, now the hoary and ancient castle of Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf. It was a fortress of no great size, consisting of a donjon, or large and high square tower, surrounded by buildings of inferior height, which were encircled by an inner court-yard. Around the exterior wall was a deep moat, supplied with water from a neighbouring rivulet. Front-de-B<oe>uf, whose character placed him often at feud with his enemies, had made considerable additions to the strength of his castle, by building towers upon the outward wall, so as to flank it at every angle. The access, as usual in castles of the period, lay through an arched barbican, or outwork, which was terminated and defended by a small turret at each corner.

Cedric no sooner saw the turrets of Front-de-B<oe>uf's castle raise their grey and moss-grown battlements, glimmering in the morning sun above the wood by which they were surrounded, than he instantly augured more truly concerning the cause of his misfortune.

``I did injustice,'' he said, ``to the thieves and outlaws of these woods, when I supposed such banditti to belong to their bands; I might as justly have confounded the foxes of these brakes with the ravening wolves of France. Tell me, dogs---is it my life or my wealth that your master aims at? Is it too much that two Saxons, myself and the noble Athelstane, should hold land in the country which was once the patrimony of our race?---Put us then to death, and complete your tyranny by taking our lives, as you began with our liberties. If the Saxon Cedric cannot rescue England, he is willing to die for her. Tell your tyrannical master, I do only beseech him to dismiss the Lady Rowena in honour and safety. She is a woman, and he need not dread her; and with us will die all who dare fight in her cause.''

The attendants remained as mute to this address as to the former, and they now stood before the gate of the castle. De Bracy winded his horn three times, and the archers and cross-bow men, who had manned the wall upon seeing their approach, hastened to lower the drawbridge, and admit them. The prisoners were compelled by their guards to alight, and were conducted to an apartment where a hasty repast was offered them, of which none but Athelstane felt any inclination to partake. Neither had the descendant of the Confessor much time to do justice to the good cheer placed before them, for their guards gave him and Cedric to understand that they were to be imprisoned in a chamber apart from Rowena. Resistance was vain; and they were compelled to follow to a large room, which, rising on clumsy Saxon pillars, resembled those refectories and chapter-houses which may be still seen in the most ancient parts of our most ancient monasteries.

The Lady Rowena was next separated from her train, and conducted, with courtesy, indeed, but still without consulting her inclination, to a distant apartment. The same alarming distinction was conferred on Rebecca, in spite of her father's entreaties, who offered even money, in this extremity of distress, that she might be permitted to abide with him. ``Base unbeliever,'' answered one of his guards, ``when thou hast seen thy lair, thou wilt not wish thy daughter to partake it.'' And, without farther discussion, the old Jew was forcibly dragged off in a different direction from the other prisoners. The domestics, after being carefully searched and disarmed, were confined in another part of the castle; and Rowena was refused even the comfort she might have derived from the attendance of her handmaiden Elgitha.

The apartment in which the Saxon chiefs were confined, for to them we turn our first attention, although at present used as a sort of guard-room, had formerly been the great hall of the castle. It was now abandoned to meaner purposes, because the present lord, among other additions to the convenience, security, and beauty of his baronial residence, had erected a new and noble hall, whose vaulted roof was supported by lighter and more elegant pillars, and fitted up with that higher degree of ornament, which the Normans had already introduced into architecture.

Cedric paced the apartment, filled with indignant reflections on the past and on the present, while the apathy of his companion served, instead of patience and philosophy, to defend him against every thing save the inconvenience of the present moment; and so little did he feel even this last, that he was only from time to time roused to a reply by Cedric's animated and impassioned appeal to him.

``Yes,'' said Cedric, half speaking to himself, and half addressing himself to Athelstane, ``it was in this very hall that my father feasted with Torquil Wolfganger, when he entertained the valiant and unfortunate Harold, then advancing against the Norwegians, who had united themselves to the rebel Tosti. It was in this hall that Harold returned the magnanimous answer to the ambassador of his rebel brother. Oft have I heard my father kindle as he told the tale. The envoy of Tosti was admitted, when this ample room could scarce contain the crowd of noble Saxon leaders, who were quaffing the blood-red wine around their monarch.''

``I hope,'' said Athelstane, somewhat moved by this part of his friend's discourse, ``they will not forget to send us some wine and refactions at noon ---we had scarce a breathing-space allowed to break our fast, and I never have the benefit of my food when I eat immediately after dismounting from horseback, though the leeches recommend that practice.''

Cedric went on with his story without noticing this interjectional observation of his friend.

``The envoy of Tosti,'' he said, ``moved up the hall, undismayed by the frowning countenances of all around him, until he made his obeisance before the throne of King Harold.

`` `What terms,' he said, `Lord King, hath thy brother Tosti to hope, if he should lay down his arms, and crave peace at thy hands?'

`` `A brother's love,' cried the generous Harold, `and the fair earldom of Northumberland.'

`` `But should Tosti accept these terms,' continued the envoy, ` what lands shall be assigned to his faithful ally, Hardrada, King of Norway?'

`` `Seven feet of English ground,' answered Harold, fiercely, 'or, as Hardrada is said to be a giant, perhaps we may allow him twelve inches more.'

``The hall rung with acclamations, and cup and horn was filled to the Norwegian, who should be speedily in possession of his English territory.''

``I could have pledged him with all my soul,'' said Athelstane, ``for my tongue cleaves to my palate.''

``The baffled envoy,'' continued Cedric, pursuing with animation his tale, though it interested not the listener, ``retreated, to carry to Tosti and his ally the ominous answer of his injured brother. It was then that the distant towers of York, and the bloody streams of the Derwent,* beheld that direful

* Note D. Battle of Stamford.

conflict, in which, after displaying the most undaunted valour, the King of Norway, and Tosti, both fell, with ten thousand of their bravest followers. Who would have thought that upon the proud day when this battle was won, the very gale which waved the Saxon banners in triumph, was filling the Norman sails, and impelling them to the fatal shores of Sussex?---Who would have thought that Harold, within a few brief days, would himself possess no more of his kingdom, than the share which he allotted in his wrath to the Norwegian invader? ---Who would have thought that you, noble Athelstane--- that you, descended of Harold's blood, and that I, whose father was not the worst defender of the Saxon crown, should be prisoners to a vile Norman, in the very hall in which our ancestors held such high festival?''

``It is sad enough,'' replied Athelstane; ``but I trust they will hold us to a moderate ransom--- At any rate it cannot be their purpose to starve us outright; and yet, although it is high noon, I see no preparations for serving dinner. Look up at the window, noble Cedric, and judge by the sunbeams if it is not on the verge of noon.''

``It may be so,'' answered Cedric; ``but I cannot look on that stained lattice without its awakening other reflections than those which concern the passing moment, or its privations. When that window was wrought, my noble friend, our hardy fathers knew not the art of making glass, or of staining it---The pride of Wolfganger's father brought an artist from Normandy to adorn his hall with this new species of emblazonment, that breaks the golden light of God's blessed day into so many fantastic hues. The foreigner came here poor, beggarly, cringing, and subservient, ready to doff his cap to the meanest native of the household. He returned pampered and proud, to tell his rapacious countrymen of the wealth and the simplicity of the Saxon nobles---a folly, oh, Athelstane, foreboded of old, as well as foreseen, by those descendants of Hengist and his hardy tribes, who retained the simplicity of their manners. We made these strangers our bosom friends, our confidential servants; we borrowed their artists and their arts, and despised the honest simplicity and hardihood with which our brave ancestors supported themselves, and we became enervated by Norman arts long ere we fell under Norman arms. Far better was our homely diet, eaten in peace and liberty, than the luxurious dainties, the love of which hath delivered us as bondsmen to the foreign conqueror!''

``I should,'' replied Athelstane, ``hold very humble diet a luxury at present; and it astonishes me, noble Cedric, that you can bear so truly in mind the memory of past deeds, when it appeareth you forget the very hour of dinner.''

``It is time lost,'' muttered Cedric apart and impatiently, ``to speak to him of aught else but that which concerns his appetite! The soul of Hardicanute hath taken possession of him, and he hath no pleasure save to fill, to swill, and to call for more. ---Alas!'' said he, looking at Athelstane with compassion, ``that so dull a spirit should be lodged in so goodly a form! Alas! that such an enterprise as the regeneration of England should turn on a hinge so imperfect! Wedded to Rowena, indeed, her nobler and more generous soul may yet awake the better nature which is torpid within him. Yet how should this be, while Rowena, Athelstane, and I myself, remain the prisoners of this brutal marauder and have been made so perhaps from a sense of the dangers which our liberty might bring to the usurped power of his nation?''

While the Saxon was plunged in these painful reflections, the door of their prison opened, and gave entrance to a sewer, holding his white rod of office. This important person advanced into the chamber with a grave pace, followed by four attendants, bearing in a table covered with dishes, the sight and smell of which seemed to be an instant compensation to Athelstane for all the inconvenience he had undergone. The persons who attended on the feast were masked and cloaked.

``What mummery is this?'' said Cedric; ``think you that we are ignorant whose prisoners we are, when we are in the castle of your master? Tell him,'' he continued, willing to use this opportunity to open a negotiation for his freedom,---``Tell your master, Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf, that we know no reason he can have for withholding our liberty, excepting his unlawful desire to enrich himself at our expense. Tell him that we yield to his rapacity, as in similar circumstances we should do to that of a literal robber. Let him name the ransom at which he rates our liberty, and it shall be paid, providing the exaction is suited to our means.'' The sewer made no answer, but bowed his head.

``And tell Sir Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf,'' said Athelstane, ``that I send him my mortal defiance, and challenge him to combat with me, on foot or horseback, at any secure place, within eight days after our liberation; which, if he be a true knight, he will not, under these circumstances, venture to refuse or to delay.''

``I shall deliver to the knight your defiance,'' answered the sewer; ``meanwhile I leave you to your food.''

The challenge of Athelstane was delivered with no good grace; for a large mouthful, which required the exercise of both jaws at once, added to a natural hesitation, considerably damped the effect of the bold defiance it contained. Still, however, his speech was hailed by Cedric as an incontestible token of reviving spirit in his companion, whose previous indifference had begun, notwithstanding his respect for Athelstane's descent, to wear out his patience. But he now cordially shook hands with him in token of his approbation, and was somewhat grieved when Athelstane observed, ``that he would fight a dozen such men as Front-de-B<oe>uf, if, by so doing, he could hasten his departure from a dungeon where they put so much garlic into their pottage.'' Notwithstanding this intimation of a relapse into the apathy of sensuality, Cedric placed himself opposite to Athelstane, and soon showed, that if the distresses of his country could banish the recollection of food while the table was uncovered, yet no sooner were the victuals put there, than he proved that the appetite of his Saxon ancestors had descended to him along with their other qualities.

The captives had not long enjoyed their refreshment, however, ere their attention was disturbed even from this most serious occupation by the blast of a horn winded before the gate. It was repeated three times, with as much violence as if it had been blown before an enchanted castle by the destined knight, at whose summons halls and towers, barbican and battlement, were to roll off like a morning vapour. The Saxons started from the table, and hastened to the window. But their curiosity was disappointed; for these outlets only looked upon the court of the castle, and the sound came from beyond its precincts. The summons, however, seemed of importance, for a considerable degree of bustle instantly took place in the castle.

CHAPTER XXII

My daughter---O my ducats---O my daughter! ------------O my Christian ducats! Justice---the Law---my ducats, and my daughter! _Merchant of Venice._

Leaving the Saxon chiefs to return to their banquet as soon as their ungratified curiosity should permit them to attend to the calls of their half-satiated appetite, we have to look in upon the yet more severe imprisonment of Isaac of York. The poor Jew had been hastily thrust into a dungeon-vault of the castle, the floor of which was deep beneath the level of the ground, and very damp, being lower than even the moat itself. The only light was received through one or two loop-holes far above the reach of the captive's hand. These apertures admitted, even at mid-day, only a dim and uncertain light, which was changed for utter darkness long before the rest of the castle had lost the blessing of day. Chains and shackles, which had been the portion of former captives, from whom active exertions to escape had been apprehended, hung rusted and empty on the walls of the prison, and in the rings of one of those sets of fetters there remained two mouldering bones, which seemed to have been once those of the human leg, as if some prisoner had been left not only to perish there, but to be consumed to a skeleton.

At one end of this ghastly apartment was a large fire-grate, over the top of which were stretched some transverse iron bars, half devoured with rust.

The whole appearance of the dungeon might have appalled a stouter heart than that of Isaac, who, nevertheless, was more composed under the imminent pressure of danger, than he had seemed to be while affected by terrors, of which the cause was as yet remote and contingent. The lovers of the chase say that the hare feels more agony during the pursuit of the greyhounds, than when she is struggling in their fangs.* And thus it is probable, that

* _Nota Bene._---We by no means warrant the accuracy of this * piece of natural history, which we give on the authority of the * Wardour MS. L. T.

the Jews, by the very frequency of their fear on all occasions, had their minds in some degree prepared for every effort of tyranny which could be practised upon them; so that no aggression, when it had taken place, could bring with it that surprise which is the most disabling quality of terror. Neither was it the first time that Isaac had been placed in circumstances so dangerous. He had therefore experience to guide him, as well as hope, that he might again, as formerly, be delivered as a prey from the fowler. Above all, he had upon his side the unyielding obstinacy of his nation, and that unbending resolution, with which Israelites have been frequently known to submit to the uttermost evils which power and violence can inflict upon them, rather than gratify their oppressors by granting their demands.

In this humour of passive resistance, and with his garment collected beneath him to keep his limbs from the wet pavement, Isaac sat in a corner of his dungeon, where his folded hands, his dishevelled hair and beard, his furred cloak and high cap, seen by the wiry and broken light, would have afforded a study for Rembrandt, had that celebrated painter existed at the period. The Jew remained, without altering his position, for nearly three hours, at the expiry of which steps were heard on the dungeon stair. The bolts screamed as they were withdrawn ---the hinges creaked as the wicket opened, and Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf, followed by the two Saracen slaves of the Templar, entered the prison.

Front-de-B<oe>uf, a tall and strong man, whose life had been spent in public war or in private feuds and broils, and who had hesitated at no means of extending his feudal power, had features corresponding to his character, and which strongly expressed the fiercer and more malignant passions of the mind. The scars with which his visage was seamed, would, on features of a different cast, have excited the sympathy and veneration due to the marks of honourable valour; but, in the peculiar case of Front-de-B<oe>uf, they only added to the ferocity of his countenance, and to the dread which his presence inspired. This formidable baron was clad in a leathern doublet, fitted close to his body, which was frayed and soiled with the stains of his armour. He had no weapon, excepting a poniard at his belt, which served to counterbalance the weight of the bunch of rusty keys that hung at his right side.

The black slaves who attended Front-de-B<oe>uf were stripped of their gorgeous apparel, and attired in jerkins and trowsers of coarse linen, their sleeves being tucked up above the elbow, like those of butchers when about to exercise their function in the slaughter-house. Each had in his hand a small pannier; and, when they entered the dungeon, they stopt at the door until Front-de-B<oe>uf himself carefully locked and double-locked it. Having taken this precaution, he advanced slowly up the apartment towards the Jew, upon whom he kept his eye fixed, as if he wished to paralyze him with his glance, as some animals are said to fascinate their prey. It seemed indeed as if the sullen and malignant eye of Front-de-B<oe>uf possessed some portion of that supposed power over his unfortunate prisoner. The Jew sate with his mouth a-gape, and his eyes fixed on the savage baron with such earnestness of terror, that his frame seemed literally to shrink together, and to diminish in size while encountering the fierce Norman's fixed and baleful gaze. The unhappy Isaac was deprived not only of the power of rising to make the obeisance which his terror dictated, but he could not even doff his cap, or utter any word of supplication; so strongly was he agitated by the conviction that tortures and death were impending over him.

On the other hand, the stately form of the Norman appeared to dilate in magnitude, like that of the eagle, which ruffles up its plumage when about to pounce on its defenceless prey. He paused within three steps of the corner in which the unfortunate Jew had now, as it were, coiled himself up into the smallest possible space, and made a sign for one of the slaves to approach. The black satellite came forward accordingly, and, producing from his basket a large pair of scales and several weights, he laid them at the feet of Front-de-B<oe>uf, and again retired to the respectful distance, at which his companion had already taken his station.

The motions of these men were slow and solemn, as if there impended over their souls some preconception of horror and of cruelty. Front-de-B<oe>uf himself opened the scene by thus addressing his ill-fated captive.

``Most accursed dog of an accursed race,'' he said, awaking with his deep and sullen voice the sullen echoes of his dungeon vault, ``seest thou these scales?''

The unhappy Jew returned a feeble affirmative.

``In these very scales shalt thou weigh me out,'' said the relentless Baron, ``a thousand silver pounds, after the just measure and weight of the Tower of London.''

``Holy Abraham!'' returned the Jew, finding voice through the very extremity of his danger, ``heard man ever such a demand?---Who ever heard, even in a minstrel's tale, of such a sum as a thousand pounds of silver?---What human sight was ever blessed with the vision of such a mass of treasure? ---Not within the walls of York, ransack my house and that of all my tribe, wilt thou find the tithe of that huge sum of silver that thou speakest of.''

``I am reasonable,'' answered Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``and if silver be scant, I refuse not gold. At the rate of a mark of gold for each six pounds of silver, thou shalt free thy unbelieving carcass from such punishment as thy heart has never even conceived.''

``Have mercy on me, noble knight!'' exclaimed Isaac; ``I am old, and poor, and helpless. It were unworthy to triumph over me---It is a poor deed to crush a worm.''

``Old thou mayst be,'' replied the knight; ``more shame to their folly who have suffered thee to grow grey in usury and knavery---Feeble thou mayst be, for when had a Jew either heart or hand---But rich it is well known thou art.''

``I swear to you, noble knight,'' said the Jew ``by all which I believe, and by all which we believe in common------''

``Perjure not thyself,'' said the Norman, interrupting him, ``and let not thine obstinacy seal thy doom, until thou hast seen and well considered the fate that awaits thee. Think not I speak to thee only to excite thy terror, and practise on the base cowardice thou hast derived from thy tribe. I swear to thee by that which thou dost =not= believe, by the gospel which our church teaches, and by the keys which are given her to bind and to loose, that my purpose is deep and peremptory. This dungeon is no place for trifling. Prisoners ten thousand times more distinguished than thou have died within these walls, and their fate hath never been known! But for thee is reserved a long and lingering death, to which theirs were luxury.''

He again made a signal for the slaves to approach, and spoke to them apart, in their own language; for he also had been in Palestine, where perhaps, he had learnt his lesson of cruelty. The Saracens produced from their baskets a quantity of charcoal, a pair of bellows, and a flask of oil. While the one struck a light with a flint and steel, the other disposed the charcoal in the large rusty grate which we have already mentioned, and exercised the bellows until the fuel came to a red glow.

``Seest thou, Isaac,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``the range of iron bars above the glowing charcoal?*---

* Note E. The range of iron bars above that glowing * charcoal.

on that warm couch thou shalt lie, stripped of thy clothes as if thou wert to rest on a bed of down. One of these slaves shall maintain the fire beneath thee, while the other shall anoint thy wretched limbs with oil, lest the roast should burn.---Now, choose betwixt such a scorching bed and the payment of a thousand pounds of silver; for, by the head of my father, thou hast no other option.''

``It is impossible,'' exclaimed the miserable Jew ---``it is impossible that your purpose can be real! The good God of nature never made a heart capable of exercising such cruelty!''

``Trust not to that, Isaac,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``it were a fatal error. Dost thou think that I, who have seen a town sacked, in which thousands of my Christian countrymen perished by sword, by flood, and by fire, will blench from my purpose for the outcries or screams of one single wretched Jew?--- or thinkest thou that these swarthy slaves, who have neither law, country, nor conscience, but their master's will---who use the poison, or the stake, or the poniard, or the cord, at his slightest wink--- thinkest thou that _they_ will have mercy, who do not even understand the language in which it is asked?---Be wise, old man; discharge thyself of a portion of thy superfluous wealth; repay to the hands of a Christian a part of what thou hast acquired by the usury thou hast practised on those of his religion. Thy cunning may soon swell out once more thy shrivelled purse, but neither leech nor medicine can restore thy scorched hide and flesh wert thou once stretched on these bars. Tell down thy ransom, I say, and rejoice that at such rate thou canst redeem thee from a dungeon, the secrets of which few have returned to tell. I waste no more words with thee---choose between thy dross and thy flesh and blood, and as thou choosest, so shall it be.''

``So may Abraham, Jacob, and all the fathers of our people assist me,'' said Isaac, ``I cannot make the choice, because I have not the means of satisfying your exorbitant demand!''

``Seize him and strip him, slaves,'' said the knight, ``and let the fathers of his race assist him if they can.''

The assistants, taking their directions more from the Baron's eye and his hand than his tongue, once more stepped forward, laid hands on the unfortunate Isaac, plucked him up from the ground, and, holding him between them, waited the hard-hearted Baron's farther signal. The unhappy Jew eyed their countenances and that of Front-de-B<oe>uf, in hope of discovering some symptoms of relenting; but that of the Baron exhibited the same cold, half-sullen, half-sarcastic smile which had been the prelude to his cruelty; and the savage eyes of the Saracens, rolling gloomily under their dark brows, acquiring a yet more sinister expression by the whiteness of the circle which surrounds the pupil, evinced rather the secret pleasure which they expected from the approaching scene, than any reluctance to be its directors or agents. The Jew then looked at the glowing furnace, over which he was presently to be stretched, and seeing no chance of his tormentor's relenting, his resolution gave way.

``I will pay,'' he said, ``the thousand pounds of silver---That is,'' he added, after a moment's pause, ``I will pay it with the help of my brethren; for I must beg as a mendicant at the door of our synagogue ere I make up so unheard-of a sum.---When and where must it be delivered?''

``Here,'' replied Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``here it must be delivered---weighed it must be---weighed and told down on this very dungeon floor.---Thinkest thou I will part with thee until thy ransom is secure?''

``And what is to be my surety,'' said the Jew, ``that I shall be at liberty after this ransom is paid?''

``The word of a Norman noble, thou pawn-broking slave,'' answered Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``the faith of a Norman nobleman, more pure than the gold and silver of thee and all thy tribe.''

``I crave pardon, noble lord,'' said Isaac timidly, ``but wherefore should I rely wholly on the word of one who will trust nothing to mine?''

``Because thou canst not help it, Jew,'' said the knight, sternly. ``Wert thou now in thy treasure-chamber at York, and were I craving a loan of thy shekels, it would be thine to dictate the time of payment, and the pledge of security. This is _my_ treasure-chamber. Here I have thee at advantage, nor will I again deign to repeat the terms on which I grant thee liberty.''

The Jew groaned deeply.---``Grant me,'' he said, ``at least with my own liberty, that of the companions with whom I travel. They scorned me as a Jew, yet they pitied my desolation, and because they tarried to aid me by the way, a share of my evil hath come upon them; moreover, they may contribute in some sort to my ransom.''

``If thou meanest yonder Saxon churls,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``their ransom will depend upon other terms than thine. Mind thine own concerns, Jew, I warn thee, and meddle not with those of others.''

``I am, then,'' said Isaac, ``only to be set at liberty, together with mine wounded friend?''

``Shall I twice recommend it,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``to a son of Israel, to meddle with his own concerns, and leave those of others alone?---Since thou hast made thy choice, it remains but that thou payest down thy ransom, and that at a short day.''

``Yet hear me,'' said the Jew---``for the sake of that very wealth which thou wouldst obtain at the expense of thy------'' Here he stopt short, afraid of irritating the savage Norman. But Front-de-B<oe>uf only laughed, and himself filled up the blank at which the Jew had hesitated. ``At the expense of my conscience, thou wouldst say, Isaac; speak it out---I tell thee, I am reasonable. I can bear the reproaches of a loser, even when that loser is a Jew. Thou wert not so patient, Isaac, when thou didst invoke justice against Jacques Fitzdotterel, for calling thee a usurious blood-sucker, when thy exactions had devoured his patrimony.''

``I swear by the Talmud,'' said the Jew, ``that your valour has been misled in that matter. Fitzdotterel drew his poniard upon me in mine own chamber, because I craved him for mine own silver. The term of payment was due at the Passover.''

``I care not what he did,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``the question is, when shall I have mine own?--- when shall I have the shekels, Isaac?''

``Let my daughter Rebecca go forth to York,'' answered Isaac, ``with your safe conduct, noble knight, and so soon as man and horse can return, the treasure------'' Here he groaned deeply, but added, after the pause of a few seconds,---``The treasure shall be told down on this very floor.''

``Thy daughter!'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, as if surprised,---``By heavens, Isaac, I would I had known of this. I deemed that yonder black-browed girl had been thy concubine, and I gave her to be a handmaiden to Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, after the fashion of patriarchs and heroes of the days of old, who set us in these matters a wholesome example.''

The yell which Isaac raised at this unfeeling communication made the very vault to ring, and astounded the two Saracens so much that they let go their hold of the Jew. He availed himself of his enlargement to throw himself on the pavement, and clasp the knees of Front-de-B<oe>uf.

``Take all that you have asked,'' said he, ``Sir Knight---take ten times more---reduce me to ruin and to beggary, if thou wilt,---nay, pierce me with thy poniard, broil me on that furnace, but spare my daughter, deliver her in safety and honour!--- As thou art born of woman, spare the honour of a helpless maiden---She is the image of my deceased Rachel, she is the last of six pledges of her love ---Will you deprive a widowed husband of his sole remaining comfort?---Will you reduce a father to wish that his only living child were laid beside her dead mother, in the tomb of our fathers?''

``I would,'' said the Norman, somewhat relenting, ``that I had known of this before. I thought your race had loved nothing save their moneybags.''

``Think not so vilely of us, Jews though we be,'' said Isaac, eager to improve the moment of apparent sympathy; ``the hunted fox, the tortured wildcat loves its young---the despised and persecuted race of Abraham love their children!''

``Be it so,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``I will believe it in future, Isaac, for thy very sake---but it aids us not now, I cannot help what has happened, or what is to follow; my word is passed to my comrade in arms, nor would I break it for ten Jews and Jewesses to boot. Besides, why shouldst thou think evil is to come to the girl, even if she became Bois-Guilbert's booty?''

``There will, there must!'' exclaimed Isaac, wringing his hands in agony; ``when did Templars breathe aught but cruelty to men, and dishonour to women!''

``Dog of an infidel,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, with sparkling eyes, and not sorry, perhaps, to seize a pretext for working himself into a passion, ``blaspheme not the Holy Order of the Temple of Zion, but take thought instead to pay me the ransom thou hast promised, or woe betide thy Jewish throat!''

``Robber and villain!'' said the Jew, retorting the insults of his oppressor with passion, which, however impotent, he now found it impossible to bridle, ``I will pay thee nothing---not one silver penny will I pay thee, unless my daughter is delivered to me in safety and honour?''

``Art thou in thy senses, Israelite?'' said the Norman, sternly---``has thy flesh and blood a charm against heated iron and scalding oil?''

``I care not!'' said the Jew, rendered desperate by paternal affection; ``do thy worst. My daughter is my flesh and blood, dearer to me a thousand times than those limbs which thy cruelty threatens. No silver will I give thee, unless I were to pour it molten down thy avaricious throat---no, not a silver penny will I give thee, Nazarene, were it to save thee from the deep damnation thy whole life has merited! Take my life if thou wilt, and say, the Jew, amidst his tortures, knew how to disappoint the Christian.''

``We shall see that,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``for by the blessed rood, which is the abomination of thy accursed tribe, thou shalt feel the extremities of fire and steel!---Strip him, slaves, and chain him down upon the bars.''

In spite of the feeble struggles of the old man, the Saracens had already torn from him his upper garment, and were proceeding totally to disrobe him, when the sound of a bugle, twice winded without the castle, penetrated even to the recesses of the dungeon, and immediately after loud voices were heard calling for Sir Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf. Unwilling to be found engaged in his hellish occupation, the savage Baron gave the slaves a signal to restore Isaac's garment, and, quitting the dungeon with his attendants, he left the Jew to thank God for his own deliverance, or to lament over his daughter's captivity, and probable fate, as his personal or parental feelings might prove strongest.

CHAPTER XXIII

Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words Can no way change you to a milder form, I'll woo you, like a soldier, at arms' end, And love you 'gainst the nature of love, force you. _Two Gentlemen of Verona._

The apartment to which the Lady Rowena had been introduced was fitted up with some rude attempts at ornament and magnificence, and her being placed there might be considered as a peculiar mark of respect not offered to the other prisoners. But the wife of Front-de-B<oe>uf, for whom it had been originally furnished, was long dead, and decay and neglect had impaired the few ornaments with which her taste had adorned it. The tapestry hung down from the walls in many places, and in others was tarnished and faded under the effects of the sun, or tattered and decayed by age. Desolate, however, as it was, this was the apartment of the castle which had been judged most fitting for the accommodation of the Saxon heiress; and here she was left to meditate upon her fate, until the actors in this nefarious drama had arranged the several parts which each of them was to perform. This had been settled in a council held by Front-de-B<oe>uf, De Bracy, and the Templar, in which, after a long and warm debate concerning the several advantages which each insisted upon deriving from his peculiar share in this audacious enterprise, they had at length determined the fate of their unhappy prisoners.

It was about the hour of noon, therefore, when De Bracy, for whose advantage the expedition had been first planned, appeared to prosecute his views upon the hand and possessions of the Lady Rowena.

The interval had not entirely been bestowed in holding council with his confederates, for De Bracy had found leisure to decorate his person with all the foppery of the times. His green cassock and vizard were now flung aside. His long luxuriant hair was trained to flow in quaint tresses down his richly furred cloak. His beard was closely shaved, his doublet reached to the middle of his leg, and the girdle which secured it, and at the same time supported his ponderous sword, was embroidered and embossed with gold work. We have already noticed the extravagant fashion of the shoes at this period, and the points of Maurice de Bracy's might have challenged the prize of extravagance with the gayest, being turned up and twisted like the horns of a ram. Such was the dress of a gallant of the period; and, in the present instance, that effect was aided by the handsome person and good demeanour of the wearer, whose manners partook alike of the grace of a courtier, and the frankness of a soldier.

He saluted Rowena by doffing his velvet bonnet, garnished with a golden broach, representing St Michael trampling down the Prince of Evil. With this, he gently motioned the lady to a seat; and, as she still retained her standing posture, the knight ungloved his right hand, and motioned to conduct her thither. But Rowena declined, by her gesture, the proffered compliment, and replied, ``If I be in the presence of my jailor, Sir Knight---nor will circumstances allow me to think otherwise---it best becomes his prisoner to remain standing till she learns her doom.''

``Alas! fair Rowena,'' returned De Bracy, ``you are in presence of your captive, not your jailor; and it is from your fair eyes that De Bracy must receive that doom which you fondly expect from him.''

``I know you not, sir,'' said the lady, drawing herself up with all the pride of offended rank and beauty; ``I know you not---and the insolent familiarity with which you apply to me the jargon of a troubadour, forms no apology for the violence of a robber.''

``To thyself, fair maid,'' answered De Bracy, in his former tone---``to thine own charms be ascribed whate'er I have done which passed the respect due to her, whom I have chosen queen of my heart, and loadstar of my eyes.''

``I repeat to you, Sir Knight, that I know you not, and that no man wearing chain and spurs ought thus to intrude himself upon the presence of an unprotected lady.''

``That I am unknown to you,'' said De Bracy, ``is indeed my misfortune; yet let me hope that De Bracy's name has not been always unspoken, when minstrels or heralds have praised deeds of chivalry, whether in the lists or in the battle-field.''

``To heralds and to minstrels, then, leave thy praise, Sir Knight,'' replied Rowena, ``more suiting for their mouths than for thine own; and tell me which of them shall record in song, or in book of tourney, the memorable conquest of this night, a conquest obtained over an old man, followed by a few timid hinds; and its booty, an unfortunate maiden, transported against her will to the castle of a robber?''

``You are unjust, Lady Rowena,'' said the knight, biting his lips in some confusion, and speaking in a tone more natural to him than that of affected gallantry, which he had at first adopted; ``yourself free from passion, you can allow no excuse for the frenzy of another, although caused by your own beauty.''

``I pray you, Sir Knight,'' said Rowena, ``to cease a language so commonly used by strolling minstrels, that it becomes not the mouth of knights or nobles. Certes, you constrain me to sit down, since you enter upon such commonplace terms, of which each vile crowder hath a stock that might last from hence to Christmas.''

``Proud damsel,'' said De Bracy, incensed at finding his gallant style procured him nothing but contempt---``proud damsel, thou shalt be as proudly encountered. Know then, that I have supported my pretensions to your hand in the way that best suited thy character. It is meeter for thy humour to be wooed with bow and bill, than in set terms, and in courtly language.''

``Courtesy of tongue,'' said Rowena, ``when it is used to veil churlishness of deed, is but a knight's girdle around the breast of a base clown. I wonder not that the restraint appears to gall you--- more it were for your honour to have retained the dress and language of an outlaw, than to veil the deeds of one under an affectation of gentle language and demeanour.''

``You counsel well, lady,'' said the Norman; ``and in the bold language which best justifies bold action I tell thee, thou shalt never leave this castle, or thou shalt leave it as Maurice de Bracy's wife. I am not wont to be baffled in my enterprises, nor needs a Norman noble scrupulously to vindicate his conduct to the Saxon maiden whom be distinguishes by the offer of his hand. Thou art proud, Rowena, and thou art the fitter to be my wife. By what other means couldst thou be raised to high honour and to princely place, saving by my alliance? How else wouldst thou escape from the mean precincts of a country grange, where Saxons herd with the swine which form their wealth, to take thy seat, honoured as thou shouldst be, and shalt be, amid all in England that is distinguished by beauty, or dignified by power?''

``Sir Knight,'' replied Rowena, ``the grange which you contemn hath been my shelter from infancy; and, trust me, when I leave it---should that day ever arrive---it shall be with one who has not learnt to despise the dwelling and manners in which I have been brought up.''

``I guess your meaning, lady,'' said De Bracy, ``though you may think it lies too obscure for my apprehension. But dream not, that Richard C<oe>ur de Lion will ever resume his throne, far less that Wilfred of Ivanhoe, his minion, will ever lead thee to his footstool, to be there welcomed as the bride of a favourite. Another suitor might feel jealousy while he touched this string; but my firm purpose cannot be changed by a passion so childish and so hopeless. Know, lady, that this rival is in my power, and that it rests but with me to betray the secret of his being within the castle to Front-de-B<oe>uf, whose jealousy will be more fatal than mine.''

``Wilfred here?'' said Rowena, in disdain; ``that is as true as that Front-de-B<oe>uf is his rival.''

De Bracy looked at her steadily for an instant.

``Wert thou really ignorant of this?'' said he; ``didst thou not know that Wilfred of Ivanhoe travelled in the litter of the Jew?---a meet conveyance for the crusader, whose doughty arm was to reconquer the Holy Sepulchre!'' And he laughed scornfully.

``And if he is here,'' said Rowena, compelling herself to a tone of indifference, though trembling with an agony of apprehension which she could not suppress, ``in what is he the rival of Front-de-B<oe>uf? or what has he to fear beyond a short imprisonment, and an honourable ransom, according to the use of chivalry?''

``Rowena,'' said De Bracy, ``art thou, too, deceived by the common error of thy sex, who think there can be no rivalry but that respecting their own charms? Knowest thou not there is a jealousy of ambition and of wealth, as well as of love; and that this our host, Front-de-B<oe>uf, will push from his road him who opposes his claim to the fair barony of Ivanhoe, as readily, eagerly, and unscrupulously, as if he were preferred to him by some blue-eyed damsel? But smile on my suit, lady, and the wounded champion shall have nothing to fear from Front-de-B<oe>uf, whom else thou mayst mourn for, as in the hands of one who has never shown compassion.''

``Save him, for the love of Heaven!'' said Rowena, her firmness giving way under terror for her lover's impending fate.

``I can---I will---it is my purpose,'' said De Bracy; `for, when Rowena consents to be the bride of De Bracy, who is it shall dare to put forth a violent hand upon her kinsman---the son of her guardian---the companion of her youth? But it is thy love must buy his protection. I am not romantic fool enough to further the fortune, or avert the fate, of one who is likely to be a successful obstacle between me and my wishes. Use thine influence with me in his behalf, and he is safe,---refuse to employ it, Wilfred dies, and thou thyself art not the nearer to freedom.''

``Thy language,'' answered Rowena, ``hath in its indifferent bluntness something which cannot be reconciled with the horrors it seems to express. I believe not that thy purpose is so wicked, or thy power so great.''

``Flatter thyself, then, with that belief,'' said De Bracy, ``until time shall prove it false. Thy lover lies wounded in this castle---thy preferred lover. He is a bar betwixt Front-de-B<oe>uf and that which Front-de-B<oe>uf loves better than either ambition or beauty. What will it cost beyond the blow of a poniard, or the thrust of a javelin, to silence his opposition for ever? Nay, were Front-de-B<oe>uf afraid to justify a deed so open, let the leech but give his patient a wrong draught---let the chamberlain, or the nurse who tends him, but pluck the pillow from his head, and Wilfred in his present condition, is sped without the effusion of blood. Cedric also---''

``And Cedric also,'' said Rowena, repeating his words; ``my noble---my generous guardian! I deserved the evil I have encountered, for forgetting his fate even in that of his son!''

``Cedric's fate also depends upon thy determination,'' said De Bracy; ``and I leave thee to form it.''

Hitherto, Rowena had sustained her part in this trying scene with undismayed courage, but it was because she had not considered the danger as serious and imminent. Her disposition was naturally that which physiognomists consider as proper to fair complexions, mild, timid, and gentle; but it had been tempered, and, as it were, hardened, by the circumstances of her education. Accustomed to see the will of all, even of Cedric himself, (sufficiently arbitrary with others,) give way before her wishes, she had acquired that sort of courage and self-confidence which arises from the habitual and constant deference of the circle in which we move. She could scarce conceive the possibility of her will being opposed, far less that of its being treated with total disregard.

Her haughtiness and habit of domination was, therefore, a fictitious character, induced over that which was natural to her, and it deserted her when her eyes were opened to the extent of her own danger, as well as that of her lover and her guardian; and when she found her will, the slightest expression of which was wont to command respect and attention, now placed in opposition to that of a man of a strong, fierce, and determined mind, who possessed the advantage over her, and was resolved to use it, she quailed before him.

After casting her eyes around, as if to look for the aid which was nowhere to be found, and after a few broken interjections, she raised her hands to heaven, and burst into a passion of uncontrolled vexation and sorrow. It was impossible to see so beautiful a creature in such extremity without feeling for her, and De Bracy was not unmoved, though he was yet more embarrassed than touched. He had, in truth, gone too far to recede; and yet, in Rowena's present condition, she could not be acted on either by argument or threats. He paced the apartment to and fro, now vainly exhorting the terrified maiden to compose herself, now hesitating concerning his own line of conduct.

If, thought he, I should be moved by the tears and sorrow of this disconsolate damsel, what should I reap but the loss of these fair hopes for which I have encountered so much risk, and the ridicule of Prince John and his jovial comrades? ``And yet,'' he said to himself, ``I feel myself ill framed for the part which I am playing. I cannot look on so fair a face while it is disturbed with agony, or on those eyes when they are drowned in tears. I would she had retained her original haughtiness of disposition, or that I had a larger share of Front-de-B<oe>uf's thrice-tempered hardness of heart!''

Agitated by these thoughts, he could only bid the unfortunate Rowena be comforted, and assure her, that as yet she had no reason for the excess of despair to which she was now giving way. But in this task of consolation De Bracy was interrupted by the horn, ``hoarse-winded blowing far and keen,'' which had at the same time alarmed the other inmates of the castle, and interrupted their several plans of avarice and of license. Of them all, perhaps, De Bracy least regretted the interruption; for his conference with the Lady Rowena had arrived at a point, where he found it equally difficult to prosecute or to resign his enterprise.

And here we cannot but think it necessary to offer some better proof than the incidents of an idle tale, to vindicate the melancholy representation of manners which has been just laid before the reader. It is grievous to think that those valiant barons, to whose stand against the crown the liberties of England were indebted for their existence, should themselves have been such dreadful oppressors, and capable of excesses contrary not only to the laws of England, but to those of nature and humanity. But, alas! we have only to extract from the industrious Henry one of those numerous passages which he has collected from contemporary historians, to prove that fiction itself can hardly reach the dark reality of the horrors of the period.

The description given by the author of the Saxon Chronicle of the cruelties exercised in the reign of King Stephen by the great barons and lords of castles, who were all Normans, affords a strong proof of the excesses of which they were capable when their passions were inflamed. ``They grievously oppressed the poor people by building castles; and when they were built, they filled them with wicked men, or rather devils, who seized both men and women who they imagined had any money, threw them into prison, and put them to more cruel tortures than the martyrs ever endured. They suffocated some in mud, and suspended others by the feet, or the head, or the thumbs, kindling fires below them. They squeezed the heads of some with knotted cords till they pierced their brains, while they threw others into dungeons swarming with serpents, snakes, and toads.'' But it would be cruel to put the reader to the pain of perusing the remainder of this description.*

* Henry's Hist. edit. 1805, vol. vii. p. .146.

As another instance of these bitter fruits of conquest, and perhaps the strongest that can be quoted, we may mention, that the Princess Matilda, though a daughter of the King of Scotland, and afterwards both Queen of England, niece to Edgar Atheling, and mother to the Empress of Germany, the daughter, the wife, and the mother of monarchs, was obliged, during her early residence for education in England, to assume the veil of a nun, as the only means of escaping the licentious pursuit of the Norman nobles. This excuse she stated before a great council of the clergy of England, as the sole reason for her having taken the religious habit. The assembled clergy admitted the validity of the plea, and the notoriety of the circumstances upon which it was founded; giving thus an indubitable and most remarkable testimony to the existence of that disgraceful license by which that age was stained. It was a matter of public knowledge, they said, that after the conquest of King William, his Norman followers, elated by so great a victory, acknowledged no law but their own wicked pleasure, and not only despoiled the conquered Saxons of their lands and their goods, but invaded the honour of their wives and of their daughters with the most unbridled license; and hence it was then common for matrons and maidens of noble families to assume the veil, and take shelter in convents, not as called thither by the vocation of God, but solely to preserve their honour from the unbridled wickedness of man.

Such and so licentious were the times, as announced by the public declaration of the assembled clergy, recorded by Eadmer; and we need add nothing more to vindicate the probability of the scenes which we have detailed, and are about to detail, upon the more apocryphal authority of the Wardour MS.

CHAPTER XXIV

I'll woo her as the lion woos his bride. _Douglas._

While the scenes we have described were passing in other parts of the castle, the Jewess Rebecca awaited her fate in a distant and sequestered turret. Hither she had been led by two of her disguised ravishers, and on being thrust into the little cell, she found herself in the presence of an old sibyl, who kept murmuring to herself a Saxon rhyme, as if to beat time to the revolving dance which her spindle was performing upon the floor. The hag raised her head as Rebecca entered, and scowled at the fair Jewess with the malignant envy with which old age and ugliness, when united with evil conditions, are apt to look upon youth and beauty.

``Thou must up and away, old house-cricket,'' said one of the men; ``our noble master commands it---Thou must e'en leave this chamber to a fairer guest.''

``Ay,'' grumbled the hag, ``even thus is service requited. I have known when my bare word would have cast the best man-at-arms among ye out of saddle and out of service; and now must I up and away at the command of every groom such as thou.''

``Good Dame Urfried,'' said the other man, ``stand not to reason on it, but up and away. Lords' hests must be listened to with a quick ear. Thou hast had thy day, old dame, but thy sun has long been set. Thou art now the very emblem of an old war-horse turned out on the barren heath--- thou hast had thy paces in thy time, but now a broken amble is the best of them---Come, amble off with thee.''

``Ill omens dog ye both!'' said the old woman; ``and a kennel be your burying-place! May the evil demon Zernebock tear me limb from limb, if I leave my own cell ere I have spun out the hemp on my distaff!''

``Answer it to our lord, then, old housefiend,'' said the man, and retired; leaving Rebecca in company with the old woman, upon whose presence she had been thus unwillingly forced.

``What devil's deed have they now in the wind?'' said the old hag, murmuring to herself, yet from time to time casting a sidelong and malignant glance at Rebecca; ``but it is easy to guess--- Bright eyes, black locks, and a skin like paper, ere the priest stains it with his black unguent---Ay, it is easy to guess why they send her to this lone turret, whence a shriek could no more be heard than at the depth of five hundred fathoms beneath the earth.---Thou wilt have owls for thy neighbours, fair one; and their screams will be heard as far, and as much regarded, as thine own. Outlandish, too,'' she said, marking the dress and turban of Rebecca---``What country art thou of?---a Saracen? or an Egyptian?---Why dost not answer?--- thou canst weep, canst thou not speak?''

``Be not angry, good mother,'' said Rebecca.

``Thou needst say no more,'' replied Urfried ``men know a fox by the train, and a Jewess by her tongue.''

``For the sake of mercy,'' said Rebecca, ``tell me what I am to expect as the conclusion of the violence which hath dragged me hither! Is it my life they seek, to atone for my religion? I will lay it down cheerfully.''

``Thy life, minion?'' answered the sibyl; ``what would taking thy life pleasure them?---Trust me, thy life is in no peril. Such usage shalt thou have as was once thought good enough for a noble Saxon maiden. And shall a Jewess, like thee, repine because she hath no better? Look at me---I was as young and twice as fair as thou, when Front-de-B<oe>uf, father of this Reginald, and his Normans, stormed this castle. My father and his seven sons defended their inheritance from story to story, from chamber to chamber---There was not a room, not a step of the stair, that was not slippery with their blood. They died---they died every man; and ere their bodies were cold, and ere their blood was dried, I had become the prey and the scorn of the conqueror!''

``Is there no help?---Are there no means of escape?'' said Rebecca---``Richly, richly would I requite thine aid.''

``Think not of it,'' said the hag; ``from hence there is no escape but through the gates of death; and it is late, late,'' she added, shaking her grey head, ``ere these open to us---Yet it is comfort to think that we leave behind us on earth those who shall be wretched as ourselves. Fare thee well, Jewess!---Jew or Gentile, thy fate would be the same; for thou hast to do with them that have neither scruple nor pity. Fare thee well, I say. My thread is spun out---thy task is yet to begin.''

``Stay! stay! for Heaven's sake!'' said Rebecca; ``stay, though it be to curse and to revile me ---thy presence is yet some protection.''

``The presence of the mother of God were no protection,'' answered the old woman. ``There she stands,'' pointing to a rude image of the Virgin Mary, ``see if she can avert the fate that awaits thee.''

She left the room as she spoke, her features writhed into a sort of sneering laugh, which made them seem even more hideous than their habitual frown. She locked the door behind her, and Rebecca might hear her curse every step for its steepness, as slowly and with difficulty she descended the turret-stair.

Rebecca was now to expect a fate even more dreadful than that of Rowena; for what probability was there that either softness or ceremony would be used towards one of her oppressed race, whatever shadow of these might be preserved towards a Saxon heiress? Yet had the Jewess this advantage, that she was better prepared by habits of thought, and by natural strength of mind, to encounter the dangers to which she was exposed. Of a strong and observing character, even from her earliest years, the pomp and wealth which her father displayed within his walls, or which she witnessed in the houses of other wealthy Hebrews, had not been able to blind her to the precarious circumstances under which they were enjoyed. Like Damocles at his celebrated banquet, Rebecca perpetually beheld, amid that gorgeous display, the sword which was suspended over the heads of her people by a single hair. These reflections had tamed and brought down to a pitch of sounder judgment a temper, which, under other circumstances, might have waxed haughty, supercilious, and obstinate.

From her father's example and injunctions, Rebecca had learnt to bear herself courteously towards all who approached her. She could not indeed imitate his excess of subservience, because she was a stranger to the meanness of mind, and to the constant state of timid apprehension, by which it was dictated; but she bore herself with a proud humility, as if submitting to the evil circumstances in which she was placed as the daughter of a despised race, while she felt in her mind the consciousness that she was entitled to hold a higher rank from her merit, than the arbitrary despotism of religious prejudice permitted her to aspire to.

Thus prepared to expect adverse circumstances, she had acquired the firmness necessary for acting under them. Her present situation required all her presence of mind, and she summoned it up accordingly.

Her first care was to inspect the apartment; but it afforded few hopes either of escape or protection. It contained neither secret passage nor trap-door, and unless where the door by which she had entered joined the main building, seemed to be circumscribed by the round exterior wall of the turret. The door had no inside bolt or bar. The single window opened upon an embattled space surmounting the turret, which gave Rebecca, at first sight, some hopes of escaping; but she soon found it had no communication with any other part of the battlements, being an isolated bartisan, or balcony, secured, as usual, by a parapet, with embrasures, at which a few archers might be stationed for defending the turret, and flanking with their shot the wall of the castle on that side.

There was therefore no hope but in passive fortitude, and in that strong reliance on Heaven natural to great and generous characters. Rebecca, however erroneously taught to interpret the promises of Scripture to the chosen people of Heaven, did not err in supposing the present to be their hour of trial, or in trusting that the children of Zion would be one day called in with the fulness of the Gentiles. In the meanwhile, all around her showed that their present state was that of punishment and probation, and that it was their especial duty to suffer without sinning. Thus prepared to consider herself as the victim of misfortune, Rebecca had early reflected upon her own state, and schooled her mind to meet the dangers which she had probably to encounter.

The prisoner trembled, however, and changed colour, when a step was heard on the stair, and the door of the turret-chamber slowly opened, and a tall man, dressed as one of those banditti to whom they owed their misfortune, slowly entered, and shut the door behind him; his cap, pulled down upon his brows, concealed the upper part of his face, and he held his mantle in such a manner as to muffle the rest. In this guise, as if prepared for the execution of some deed, at the thought of which he was himself ashamed, he stood before the affrighted prisoner; yet, ruffian as his dress bespoke him, he seemed at a loss to express what purpose had brought him thither, so that Rebecca, making an effort upon herself, had time to anticipate his explanation. She had already unclasped two costly bracelets and a collar, which she hastened to proffer to the supposed outlaw, concluding naturally that to gratify his avarice was to bespeak his favour.

``Take these,'' she said, ``good friend, and for God's sake be merciful to me and my aged father! These ornaments are of value, yet are they trifling to what he would bestow to obtain our dismissal from this castle, free and uninjured.''

``Fair flower of Palestine,'' replied the outlaw, ``these pearls are orient, but they yield in whiteness to your teeth; the diamonds are brilliant, but they cannot match your eyes; and ever since I have taken up this wild trade, I have made a vow to prefer beauty to wealth.''

``Do not do yourself such wrong,'' said Rebecca; ``take ransom, and have mercy!---Gold will purchase you pleasure,---to misuse us, could only bring thee remorse. My father will willingly satiate thy utmost wishes; and if thou wilt act wisely, thou mayst purchase with our spoils thy restoration to civil society---mayst obtain pardon for past errors, and be placed beyond the necessity of committing more.''

``It is well spoken,'' replied the outlaw in French, finding it difficult probably to sustain, in Saxon, a conversation which Rebecca had opened in that language; ``but know, bright lily of the vale of Baca! that thy father is already in the hands of a powerful alchemist, who knows how to convert into gold and silver even the rusty bars of a dungeon grate. The venerable Isaac is subjected to an alembic, which will distil from him all he holds dear, without any assistance from my requests or thy entreaty. The ransom must be paid by love and beauty, and in no other coin will I accept it.''

``Thou art no outlaw,'' said Rebecca, in the same language in which he addressed her; ``no outlaw had refused such offers. No outlaw in this land uses the dialect in which thou hast spoken. Thou art no outlaw, but a Norman---a Norman, noble perhaps in birth---O, be so in thy actions, and cast off this fearful mask of outrage and violence!''

``And thou, who canst guess so truly,'' said Brian de Bois-Guilbert, dropping the mantle from his face, ``art no true daughter of Israel, but in all, save youth and beauty, a very witch of Endor. I am not an outlaw, then, fair rose of Sharon. And I am one who will be more prompt to hang thy neck and arms with pearls and diamonds, which so well become them, than to deprive thee of these ornaments.''

``What wouldst thou have of me,'' said Rebecca, ``if not my wealth?---We can have nought in common between us---you are a Christian---I am a Jewess.---Our union were contrary to the laws, alike of the church and the synagogue.''

``It were so, indeed,'' replied the Templar, laughing; ``wed with a Jewess? _Despardieux!_---Not if she were the Queen of Sheba! And know, besides, sweet daughter of Zion, that were the most Christian king to offer me his most Christian daughter, with Languedoc for a dowery, I could not wed her. It is against my vow to love any maiden, otherwise than _par amours_, as I will love thee. I am a Templar. Behold the cross of my Holy Order.''

``Darest thou appeal to it,'' said Rebecca, ``on an occasion like the present?''

``And if I do so,'' said the Templar, ``it concerns not thee, who art no believer in the blessed sign of our salvation.''

``I believe as my fathers taught,'' said Rebecca; ``and may God forgive my belief if erroneous! But you, Sir Knight, what is yours, when you appeal without scruple to that which you deem most holy, even while you are about to transgress the most solemn of your vows as a knight, and as a man of religion?''

``It is gravely and well preached, O daughter of Sirach!'' answered the Templar; ``but, gentle Ecclesiastics, thy narrow Jewish prejudices make thee blind to our high privilege. Marriage were an enduring crime on the part of a Templar; but what lesser folly I may practise, I shall speedily be absolved from at the next Perceptory of our Order. Not the wisest of monarchs, not his father, whose examples you must needs allow are weighty, claimed wider privileges than we poor soldiers of the Temple of Zion have won by our zeal in its defence. The protectors of Solomon's Temple may claim license by the example of Solomon.''

``If thou readest the Scripture,'' said the Jewess, ``and the lives of the saints, only to justify thine own license and profligacy, thy crime is like that of him who extracts poison from the most healthful and necessary herbs.''

The eyes of the Templar flashed fire at this reproof--- ``Hearken,'' he said, ``Rebecca; I have hitherto spoken mildly to thee, but now my language shall be that of a conqueror. Thou art the captive of my bow and spear---subject to my will by the laws of all nations; nor will I abate an inch of my right, or abstain from taking by violence what thou refusest to entreaty or necessity.''

``Stand back,'' said Rebecca---``stand back, and hear me ere thou offerest to commit a sin so deadly! My strength thou mayst indeed overpower for God made women weak, and trusted their defence to man's generosity. But I will proclaim thy villainy, Templar, from one end of Europe to the other. I will owe to the superstition of thy brethren what their compassion might refuse me, Each Preceptory---each Chapter of thy Order, shall learn, that, like a heretic, thou hast sinned with a Jewess. Those who tremble not at thy crime, will hold thee accursed for having so far dishonoured the cross thou wearest, as to follow a daughter of my people.''

``Thou art keen-witted, Jewess,'' replied the Templar, well aware of the truth of what she spoke, and that the rules of his Order condemned in the most positive manner, and under high penalties, such intrigues as he now prosecuted, and that, in some instances, even degradation had followed upon it---``thou art sharp-witted,'' he said; ``but loud must be thy voice of complaint, if it is heard beyond the iron walls of this castle; within these, murmurs, laments, appeals to justice, and screams for help, die alike silent away. One thing only can save thee, Rebecca. Submit to thy fate---embrace our religion, and thou shalt go forth in such state, that many a Norman lady shall yield as well in pomp as in beauty to the favourite of the best lance among the defenders of the Temple.'' ``Submit to my fate!'' said Rebecca---``and, sacred Heaven! to what fate?---embrace thy religion! and what religion can it be that harbours such a villain?---_thou_ the best lance of the Templars! ---Craven knight!---forsworn priest! I spit at thee, and I defy thee.---The God of Abraham's promise hath opened an escape to his daughter--- even from this abyss of infamy!''

As she spoke, she threw open the latticed window which led to the bartisan, and in an instant after, stood on the very verge of the parapet, with not the slightest screen between her and the tremendous depth below. Unprepared for such a desperate effort, for she had hitherto stood perfectly motionless, Bois-Guilbert had neither time to intercept nor to stop her. As he offered to advance, she exclaimed, ``Remain where thou art, proud Templar, or at thy choice advance!---one foot nearer, and I plunge myself from the precipice; my body shall be crushed out of the very form of humanity upon the stones of that court-yard, ere it become the victim of thy brutality!''

As she spoke this, she clasped her hands and extended them towards heaven, as if imploring mercy on her soul before she made the final plunge. The Templar hesitated, and a resolution which had never yielded to pity or distress, gave way to his admiration of her fortitude. ``Come down,'' he said, ``rash girl!---I swear by earth, and sea, and sky, I will offer thee no offence.''

``I will not trust thee, Templar,'' said Rebecca; thou hast taught me better how to estimate the virtues of thine Order. The next Preceptory would grant thee absolution for an oath, the keeping of which concerned nought but the honour or the dishonour of a miserable Jewish maiden.''

``You do me injustice,'' exclaimed the Templar fervently; ``I swear to you by the name which I bear---by the cross on my bosom---by the sword on my side---by the ancient crest of my fathers do I swear, I will do thee no injury whatsoever! If not for thyself, yet for thy father's sake forbear! I will be his friend, and in this castle he will need a powerful one.''

``Alas!'' said Rebecca, ``I know it but too well ---dare I trust thee?''

``May my arms be reversed, and my name dishonoured,'' said Brian de Bois-Guilbert, ``if thou shalt have reason to complain of me! Many a law, many a commandment have I broken, but my word never.''

``I will then trust thee,'' said Rebecca, ``thus far;'' and she descended from the verge of the battlement, but remained standing close by one of the embrasures, or _machicolles_, as they were then called. ---``Here,'' she said, ``I take my stand. Remain where thou art, and if thou shalt attempt to diminish by one step the distance now between us, thou shalt see that the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God, than her honour to the Templar!''

While Rebecca spoke thus, her high and firm resolve, which corresponded so well with the expressive beauty of her countenance, gave to her looks, air, and manner, a dignity that seemed more than mortal. Her glance quailed not, her cheek blanched not, for the fear of a fate so instant and so horrible; on the contrary, the thought that she had her fate at her command, and could escape at will from infamy to death, gave a yet deeper colour of carnation to her complexion, and a yet more brilliant fire to her eye. Bois-Guilbert, proud himself and high-spirited, thought he had never beheld beauty so animated and so commanding.

``Let there be peace between us, Rebecca,'' he said.

``Peace, if thou wilt,'' answered Rebecca---``Peace ---but with this space between.''

``Thou needst no longer fear me,'' said Bois-Guilbert.

``I fear thee not,'' replied she; ``thanks to him that reared this dizzy tower so high, that nought could fall from it and live---thanks to him, and to the God of Israel!---I fear thee not.''

``Thou dost me injustice,'' said the Templar; ``by earth, sea, and sky, thou dost me injustice! I am not naturally that which you have seen me, hard, selfish, and relentless. It was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore I have exercised it; but not upon such as thou. Hear me, Rebecca---Never did knight take lance in his hand with a heart more devoted to the lady of his love than Brian de Bois-Guilbert. She, the daughter of a petty baron, who boasted for all his domains but a ruinous tower, and an unproductive vineyard, and some few leagues of the barren Landes of Bourdeaux, her name was known wherever deeds of arms were done, known wider than that of many a lady's that had a county for a dowery.---Yes,'' he continued, pacing up and down the little platform, with an animation in which he seemed to lose all consciousness of Rebecca's presence---``Yes, my deeds, my danger, my blood, made the name of Adelaide de Montemare known from the court of Castile to that of Byzantium. And how was I requited? ---When I returned with my dear-bought honours, purchased by toil and blood, I found her wedded to a Gascon squire, whose name was never heard beyond the limits of his own paltry domain! Truly did I love her, and bitterly did I revenge me of her broken faith! But my vengeance has recoiled on myself. Since that day I have separated myself from life and its ties---My manhood must know no domestic home---must be soothed by no affectionate wife---My age must know no kindly hearth--- My grave must be solitary, and no offspring must outlive me, to bear the ancient name of Bois-Guilbert. At the feet of my Superior I have laid down the right of self-action---the privilege of independence. The Templar, a serf in all but the name, can possess neither lands nor goods, and lives, moves, and breathes, but at the will and pleasure of another.''

``Alas!'' said Rebecca, ``what advantages could compensate for such an absolute sacrifice?''

``The power of vengeance, Rebecca,'' replied the Templar, ``and the prospects of ambition.''

``An evil recompense,'' said Rebecca, ``for the surrender of the rights which are dearest to humanity.''

``Say not so, maiden,'' answered the Templar; ``revenge is a feast for the gods! And if they have reserved it, as priests tell us, to themselves, it is because they hold it an enjoyment too precious for the possession of mere mortals.---And ambition? it is a temptation which could disturb even the bliss of heaven itself.''---He paused a moment, and then added, ``Rebecca! she who could prefer death to dishonour, must have a proud and a powerful soul. Mine thou must be!---Nay, start not,'' he added, ``it must be with thine own consent, and on thine own terms. Thou must consent to share with me hopes more extended than can be viewed from the throne of a monarch!---Hear me ere you answer and judge ere you refuse.---The Templar loses, as thou hast said, his social rights, his power of free agency, but he becomes a member and a limb of a mighty body, before which thrones already tremble,---even as the single drop of rain which mixes with the sea becomes an individual part of that resistless ocean, which undermines rocks and ingulfs royal armadas. Such a swelling flood is that powerful league. Of this mighty Order I am no mean member, but already one of the Chief Commanders, and may well aspire one day to hold the batoon of Grand Master. The poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon the necks of kings---a hemp-sandall'd monk can do that. Our mailed step shall ascend their throne---our gauntlet shall wrench the sceptre from their gripe. Not the reign of your vainly-expected Messiah offers such power to your dispersed tribes as my ambition may aim at. I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I have found such in thee.''

``Sayest thou this to one of my people?'' answered Rebecca. ``Bethink thee---''

``Answer me not,'' said the Templar, ``by urging the difference of our creeds; within our secret conclaves we hold these nursery tales in derision. Think not we long remained blind to the idiotical folly of our founders, who forswore every delight of life for the pleasure of dying martyrs by hunger, by thirst, and by pestilence, and by the swords of savages, while they vainly strove to defend a barren desert, valuable only in the eyes of superstition. Our Order soon adopted bolder and wider views, and found out a better indemnification for our sacrifices. Our immense possessions in every kingdom of Europe, our high military fame, which brings within our circle the flower of chivalry from every Christian clime---these are dedicated to ends of which our pious founders little dreamed, and which are equally concealed from such weak spirits as embrace our Order on the ancient principles, and whose superstition makes them our passive tools. But I will not further withdraw the veil of our mysteries. That bugle-sound announces something which may require my presence. Think on what I have said.---Farewell!---I do not say forgive me the violence I have threatened, for it was necessary to the display of thy character. Gold can be only known by the application of the touchstone. I will soon return, and hold further conference with thee.''

He re-entered the turret-chamber, and descended the stair, leaving Rebecca scarcely more terrified at the prospect of the death to which she had been so lately exposed, than at the furious ambition of the bold bad man in whose power she found herself so unhappily placed. When she entered the turret-chamber, her first duty was to return thanks to the God of Jacob for the protection which he had afforded her, and to implore its continuance for her and for her father. Another name glided into her petition---it was that of the wounded Christian, whom fate had placed in the hands of bloodthirsty men, his avowed enemies. Her heart indeed checked her, as if, even in communing with the Deity in prayer, she mingled in her devotions the recollection of one with whose fate hers could have no alliance---a Nazarene, and an enemy to her faith. But the petition was already breathed, nor could all the narrow prejudices of her sect induce Rebecca to wish it recalled.

 

CHAPTER XXV

A damn'd cramp piece of penmanship as ever I saw in my life! _She Stoops to Conquer_.

When the Templar reached the hall of the castle, he found De Bracy already there. ``Your love-suit,'' said De Bracy, ``hath, I suppose, been disturbed, like mine, by this obstreperous summons. But you have come later and more reluctantly, and therefore I presume your interview has proved more agreeable than mine.''

``Has your suit, then, been unsuccessfully paid to the Saxon heiress?'' said the Templar.

``By the bones of Thomas a Becket,'' answered De Bracy, ``the Lady Rowena must have heard that I cannot endure the sight of women's tears.''

``Away!'' said the Templar; ``thou a leader of a Free Company, and regard a woman's tears! A few drops sprinkled on the torch of love, make the flame blaze the brighter.''

``Gramercy for the few drops of thy sprinkling,'' replied De Bracy; ``but this damsel hath wept enough to extinguish a beacon-light. Never was such wringing of hands and such overflowing of eyes, since the days of St Niobe, of whom Prior Aymer told us.* A water-fiend hath possessed the

* I wish the Prior had also informed them when Niobe was * sainted. Probably during that enlightened period when * * ``Pan to Moses lent his pagan horn.'' * L. T.

fair Saxon.'' ``A legion of fiends have occupied the bosom of the Jewess,'' replied the Templar; ``for, I think no single one, not even Apollyon himself, could have inspired such indomitable pride and resolution. ---But where is Front-de-B<oe>uf? That horn is sounded more and more clamorously.''

``He is negotiating with the Jew, I suppose,'' replied De Bracy, coolly; ``probably the howls of Isaac have drowned the blast of the bugle. Thou mayst know, by experience, Sir Brian, that a Jew parting with his treasures on such terms as our friend Front-de-B<oe>uf is like to offer, will raise a clamour loud enough to be heard over twenty horns and trumpets to boot. But we will make the vassals call him.''

They were soon after joined by Front-de-B<oe>uf, who had been disturbed in his tyrannic cruelty in the manner with which the reader is acquainted, and had only tarried to give some necessary directions.

``Let us see the cause of this cursed clamour,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf---``here is a letter, and, if I mistake not, it is in Saxon.''

He looked at it, turning it round and round as if he had had really some hopes of coming at the meaning by inverting the position of the paper, and then handed it to De Bracy.

``It may be magic spells for aught I know,'' said De Bracy, who possessed his full proportion of the ignorance which characterised the chivalry of the period. ``Our chaplain attempted to teach me to write,'' he said, ``but all my letters were formed like spear-heads and sword-blades, and so the old shaveling gave up the task.''

``Give it me,'' said the Templar. ``We have that of the priestly character, that we have some knowledge to enlighten our valour.''

``Let us profit by your most reverend knowledge, then,'' said De Bracy; ``what says the scroll?''

``It is a formal letter of defiance,'' answered the Templar; ``but, by our Lady of Bethlehem, if it be not a foolish jest, it is the most extraordinary cartel that ever was sent across the drawbridge of a baronial castle.''

``Jest!'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``I would gladly know who dares jest with me in such a matter!--- Read it, Sir Brian.'' The Templar accordingly read it as follows:---

``I, Wamba, the son of Witless, Jester to a noble and free-born man, Cedric of Rotherwood, called the Saxon,---And I, Gurth, the son of Beowulph, the swineherd------''

``Thou art mad,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, interrupting the reader.

``By St Luke, it is so set down,'' answered the Templar. Then resuming his task, he went on,--- ``I, Gurth, the son of Beowulph, swineherd unto the said Cedric, with the assistance of our allies and confederates, who make common cause with us in this our feud, namely, the good knight, called for the present _Le Noir Faineant_, and the stout yeoman, Robert Locksley, called Cleave-the-wand, Do you, Reginald Front de-B<oe>uf, and your allies and accomplices whomsoever, to wit, that whereas you have, without cause given or feud declared, wrongfully and by mastery seized upon the person of our lord and master the said Cedric; also upon the person of a noble and freeborn damsel, the Lady Rowena of Hargottstandstede; also upon the person of a noble and freeborn man, Athelstane of Coningsburgh; also upon the persons of certain freeborn men, their _cnichts_; also upon certain serfs, their born bondsmen; also upon a certain Jew, named Isaac of York, together with his daughter, a Jewess, and certain horses and mules: Which noble persons, with their _cnichts_ and slaves, and also with the horses and mules, Jew and Jewess beforesaid, were all in peace with his majesty, and travelling as liege subjects upon the king's highway; therefore we require and demand that the said noble persons, namely, Cedric of Rotherwood, Rowena of Hargottstandstede, Athelstane of Coningsburgh, with their servants, _cnichts_, and followers, also the horses and mules, Jew and Jewess aforesaid, together with all goods and chattels to them pertaining, be, within an hour after the delivery hereof, delivered to us, or to those whom we shall appoint to receive the same, and that untouched and unharmed in body and goods. Failing of which, we do pronounce to you, that we hold ye as robbers and traitors, and will wager our bodies against ye in battle, siege, or otherwise, and do our utmost to your annoyance and destruction. Wherefore may God have you in his keeping.---Signed by us upon the eve of St Withold's day, under the great trysting oak in the Hart-hill Walk, the above being written by a holy man, Clerk to God, our Lady, and St Dunstan, in the Chapel of Copmanhurst.''

At the bottom of this document was scrawled, in the first place, a rude sketch of a cock's head and comb, with a legend expressing this hieroglyphic to be the sign-manual of Wamba, son of Witless. Under this respectable emblem stood a cross, stated to be the mark of Gurth, the son of Beowulph. Then was written, in rough bold characters, the words, _Le Noir Faineant_. And, to conclude the whole, an arrow, neatly enough drawn, was described as the mark of the yeoman Locksley.

The knights heard this uncommon document read from end to end, and then gazed upon each other in silent amazement, as being utterly at a loss to know what it could portend. De Bracy was the first to break silence by an uncontrollable fit of laughter, wherein he was joined, though with more moderation, by the Templar. Front-de-B<oe>uf, on the contrary, seemed impatient of their ill-timed jocularity.

``I give you plain warning,'' he said, ``fair sirs, that you had better consult how to bear yourselves under these circumstances, than give way to such misplaced merriment.''

``Front-de-B<oe>uf has not recovered his temper since his late overthrow,'' said De Bracy to the Templar; ``he is cowed at the very idea of a cartel, though it come but from a fool and a swineherd.''

``By St Michael,'' answered Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``I would thou couldst stand the whole brunt of this adventure thyself, De Bracy. These fellows dared not have acted with such inconceivable impudence, had they not been supported by some strong bands. There are enough of outlaws in this forest to resent my protecting the deer. I did but tie one fellow, who was taken redhanded and in the fact, to the horns of a wild stag, which gored him to death in five minutes, and I had as many arrows shot at me as there were launched against yonder target at Ashby.---Here, fellow,'' he added, to one of his attendants, ``hast thou sent out to see by what force this precious challenge is to be supported?''

``There are at least two hundred men assembled in the woods,'' answered a squire who was in attendance.

``Here is a proper matter!'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``this comes of lending you the use of my castle, that cannot manage your undertaking quietly, but you must bring this nest of hornets about my ears!''

``Of hornets?'' said De Bracy; ``of stingless drones rather; a band of lazy knaves, who take to the wood, and destroy the venison rather than labour for their maintenance.''

``Stingless!'' replied Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``fork-headed shafts of a cloth-yard in length, and these shot within the breadth of a French crown, are sting enough.''

``For shame, Sir Knight!'' said the Templar. ``Let us summon our people, and sally forth upon them. One knight---ay, one man-at-arms, were enough for twenty such peasants.''

``Enough, and too much,'' said De Bracy; ``I should only be ashamed to couch lance against them.''

``True,'' answered Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``were they black Turks or Moors, Sir Templar, or the craven peasants of France, most valiant De Bracy; but these are English yeomen, over whom we shall have no advantage, save what we may derive from our arms and horses, which will avail us little in the glades of the forest. Sally, saidst thou? we have scarce men enough to defend the castle. The best of mine are at York; so is all your band, De Bracy; and we have scarcely twenty, besides the handful that were engaged in this mad business.''

``Thou dost not fear,'' said the Templar, ``that they can assemble in force sufficient to attempt the castle?''

``Not so, Sir Brian,'' answered Front-de-B<oe>uf. ``These outlaws have indeed a daring captain; but without machines, scaling ladders, and experienced leaders, my castle may defy them.''

``Send to thy neighbours,'' said the Templar, ``let them assemble their people, and come to the rescue of three knights, besieged by a jester and a swineherd in the baronial castle of Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf!''

``You jest, Sir Knight,'' answered the baron; ``but to whom should I send?---Malvoisin is by this time at York with his retainers, and so are my other allies; and so should I have been, but for this infernal enterprise.''

``Then send to York, and recall our people,'' said De Bracy. ``If they abide the shaking of my standard, or the sight of my Free Companions, I will give them credit for the boldest outlaws ever bent bow in green-wood.''

``And who shall bear such a message?'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``they will beset every path, and rip the errand out of his bosom.---I have it,'' he added, after pausing for a moment---``Sir Templar, thou canst write as well as read, and if we can but find the writing materials of my chaplain, who died a twelvemonth since in the midst of his Christmas carousals---''

``So please ye,'' said the squire, who was still in attendance, ``I think old Urfried has them somewhere in keeping, for love of the confessor. He was the last man, I have heard her tell, who ever said aught to her, which man ought in courtesy to address to maid or matron.''

``Go, search them out, Engelred,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``and then, Sir Templar, thou shalt return an answer to this bold challenge.''

``I would rather do it at the sword's point than at that of the pen,'' said Bois-Guilbert; ``but be it as you will.''

He sat down accordingly, and indited, in the French language, an epistle of the following tenor:---

``Sir Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf, with his noble and knightly allies and confederates, receive no defiances at the bands of slaves, bondsmen, or fugitives. If the person calling himself the Black Knight have indeed a claim to the honours of chivalry, he ought to know that he stands degraded by his present association, and has no right to ask reckoning at the hands of good men of noble blood. Touching the prisoners we have made, we do in Christian charity require you to send a man of religion, to receive their confession, and reconcile them with God; since it is our fixed intention to execute them this morning before noon, so that their heads being placed on the battlements, shall show to all men how lightly we esteem those who have bestirred themselves in their rescue. Wherefore, as above, we require you to send a priest to reconcile them to God, in doing which you shall render them the last earthly service.''

This letter being folded, was delivered to the squire, and by him to the messenger who waited without, as the answer to that which be had brought.

The yeoman having thus accomplished his mission, returned to the head-quarters of the allies, which were for the present established under a venerable oak-tree, about three arrow-flights distant from the castle. Here Wamba and Gurth, with their allies the Black Knight and Locksley, and the jovial hermit, awaited with impatience an answer to their summons. Around, and at a distance from them, were seen many a bold yeoman, whose silvan dress and weatherbeaten countenances showed the ordinary nature of their occupation. More than two hundred had already assembled, and others were fast coming in. Those whom they obeyed as leaders were only distinguished from the others by a feather in the cap, their dress, arms, and equipments being in all other respects the same.

Besides these bands, a less orderly and a worse armed force, consisting of the Saxon inhabitants of the neighbouring township, as well as many bondsmen and servants from Cedric's extensive estate, had already arrived, for the purpose of assisting in his rescue. Few of these were armed otherwise than with such rustic weapons as necessity sometimes converts to military purposes. Boar-spears, scythes, flails, and the like, were their chief arms; for the Normans, with the usual policy of conquerors, were jealous of permitting to the vanquished Saxons the possession or the use of swords and spears. These circumstances rendered the assistance of the Saxons far from being so formidable to the besieged, as the strength of the men themselves, their superior numbers, and the animation inspired by a just cause, might otherwise well have made them. It was to the leaders of this motley army that the letter of the Templar was now delivered.

Reference was at first made to the chaplain for an exposition of its contents.

``By the crook of St Dunstan,'' said that worthy ecclesiastic, ``which hath brought more sheep within the sheepfold than the crook of e'er another saint in Paradise, I swear that I cannot expound unto you this jargon, which, whether it be French or Arabic, is beyond my guess.''

He then gave the letter to Gurth, who shook his head gruffly, and passed it to Wamba. The Jester looked at each of the four corners of the paper with such a grin of affected intelligence as a monkey is apt to assume upon similar occasions, then cut a caper, and gave the letter to Locksley.

``If the long letters were bows, and the short letters broad arrows, I might know something of the matter,'' said the brave yeoman; ``but as the matter stands, the meaning is as safe, for me, as the stag that's at twelve miles distance.''

``I must be clerk, then,'' said the Black Knight; and taking the letter from Locksley, he first read it over to himself, and then explained the meaning in Saxon to his confederates.

``Execute the noble Cedric!'' exclaimed Wamba; ``by the rood, thou must be mistaken, Sir Knight.''

``Not I, my worthy friend,'' replied the knight, ``I have explained the words as they are here set down.''

``Then, by St Thomas of Canterbury,'' replied Gurth, ``we will have the castle, should we tear it down with our hands!''

``We have nothing else to tear it with,'' replied Wamba; ``but mine are scarce fit to make mammocks of freestone and mortar.''

``'Tis but a contrivance to gain time,'' said Locksley; ``they dare not do a deed for which I could exact a fearful penalty.''

``I would,'' said the Black Knight, ``there were some one among us who could obtain admission into the castle, and discover how the case stands with the besieged. Methinks, as they require a confessor to be sent, this holy hermit might at once exercise his pious vocation, and procure us the information we desire.''

``A plague on thee, and thy advice!'' said the pious hermit; ``I tell thee, Sir Slothful Knight, that when I doff my friar's frock, my priesthood, my sanctity, my very Latin, are put off along with it; and when in my green jerkin, I can better kill twenty deer than confess one Christian.''

``I fear,'' said the Black Knight, ``I fear greatly, there is no one here that is qualified to take upon him, for the nonce, this same character of father confessor?''

All looked on each other, and were silent.

``I see,'' said Wamba, after a short pause, ``that the fool must be still the fool, and put his neck in the venture which wise men shrink from. You must know, my dear cousins and countrymen, that I more russet before I wore motley, and was bred to be a friar, until a brain-fever came upon me and left me just wit enough to be a fool. I trust, with the assistance of the good hermit's frock, together with the priesthood, sanctity, and learning which are stitched into the cowl of it, I shall be found qualified to administer both worldly and ghostly comfort to our worthy master Cedric, and his companions in adversity.''

``Hath he sense enough, thinkst thou?'' said the Black Knight, addressing Gurth.

``I know not,'' said Gurth; ``but if he hath not, it will be the first time he hath wanted wit to turn his folly to account.''

``On with the frock, then, good fellow,'' quoth the Knight, ``and let thy master send us an account of their situation within the castle. Their numbers must be few, and it is five to one they may be accessible by a sudden and bold attack. Time wears---away with thee.''

``And, in the meantime,'' said Locksley, ``we will beset the place so closely, that not so much as a fly shall carry news from thence. So that, my good friend,'' he continued, addressing Wamba, ``thou mayst assure these tyrants, that whatever violence they exercise on the persons of their prisoners, shall be most severely repaid upon their own.''

``_Pax vobiscum_,'' said Wamba, who was now muffled in his religious disguise.

And so saying he imitated the solemn and stately deportment of a friar, and departed to execute his mission.

CHAPTER XXVI

The hottest horse will oft be cool, The dullest will show fire; The friar will often play the fool, The fool will play the friar. _Old Song_.

When the Jester, arrayed in the cowl and frock of the hermit, and having his knotted cord twisted round his middle, stood before the portal of the castle of Front-de-B<oe>uf, the warder demanded of him his name and errand.

``_Pax vobiscum_,'' answered the Jester, ``I am a poor brother of the Order of St Francis, who come hither to do my office to certain unhappy prisoners now secured within this castle.'' ``Thou art a bold friar,'' said the warder, ``to come hither, where, saving our own drunken confessor, a cock of thy feather hath not crowed these twenty years.''

``Yet I pray thee, do mine errand to the lord of the castle,'' answered the pretended friar; ``trust me it will find good acceptance with him, and the cock shall crow, that the whole castle shall hear him.''

``Gramercy,'' said the warder; ``but if I come to shame for leaving my post upon thine errand, I will try whether a friar's grey gown be proof against a grey-goose shaft.''

With this threat he left his turret, and carried to the hall of the castle his unwonted intelligence, that a holy friar stood before the gate and demanded instant admission. With no small wonder he received his master's commands to admit the holy man immediately; and, having previously manned the entrance to guard against surprise, he obeyed, without further scruple, the commands which he had received. The harebrained self-conceit which had emboldened Wamba to undertake this dangerous office, was scarce sufficient to support him when he found himself in the presence of a man so dreadful, and so much dreaded, as Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf, and he brought out his _pax vobiscum_, to which he, in a good measure, trusted for supporting his character, with more anxiety and hesitation than had hitherto accompanied it. But Front-de-B<oe>uf was accustomed to see men of all ranks tremble in his presence, so that the timidity of the supposed father did not give him any cause of suspicion.

``Who and whence art thou, priest?'' said he.

``_Pax vobiscum_,'' reiterated the Jester, ``I am a poor servant of St Francis, who, travelling through this wilderness, have fallen among thieves, (as Scripture hath it,) _quidam viator incidit in latrones_, which thieves have sent me unto this castle in order to do my ghostly office on two persons condemned by your honourable justice.''

``Ay, right,'' answered Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``and canst thou tell me, holy father, the number of those banditti?''

``Gallant sir,'' answered the Jester, ``_nomen illis legio_, their name is legion.''

``Tell me in plain terms what numbers there are, or, priest, thy cloak and cord will ill protect thee.''

``Alas!'' said the supposed friar, ``_cor meum eructavit_, that is to say, I was like to burst with fear! but I conceive they may be---what of yeomen ---what of commons, at least five hundred men.''

``What!'' said the Templar, who came into the hall that moment, ``muster the wasps so thick here? it is time to stifle such a mischievous brood.'' Then taking Front-de-B<oe>uf aside ``Knowest thou the priest?''

``He is a stranger from a distant convent,'' I said Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``I know him not.''

``Then trust him not with thy purpose in words,'' answered the Templar. ``Let him carry a written order to De Bracy's company of Free Companions, to repair instantly to their master's aid. In the meantime, and that the shaveling may suspect nothing, permit him to go freely about his task of preparing these Saxon hogs for the slaughter-house.''

``It shall be so,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf. And he forthwith appointed a domestic to conduct Wamba to the apartment where Cedric and Athelstane were confined.

The impatience of Cedric had been rather enhanced than diminished by his confinement. He walked from one end of the hall to the other, with the attitude of one who advances to charge an enemy, or to storm the breach of a beleaguered place, sometimes ejaculating to himself, sometimes addressing Athelstane, who stoutly and stoically awaited the issue of the adventure, digesting, in the meantime, with great composure, the liberal meal which he had made at noon, and not greatly interesting himself about the duration of his captivity, which he concluded, would, like all earthly evils, find an end in Heaven's good time.

``_Pax vobiscum_,'' said the Jester, entering the apartment; ``the blessing of St Dunstan, St Dennis, St Duthoc, and all other saints whatsoever, be upon ye and about ye.''

``Enter freely,'' answered Cedric to the supposed friar; ``with what intent art thou come hither?''

``To bid you prepare yourselves for death,'' answered the Jester.

``It is impossible!'' replied Cedric, starting. ``Fearless and wicked as they are, they dare not attempt such open and gratuitous cruelty!''

``Alas!'' said the Jester, ``to restrain them by their sense of humanity, is the same as to stop a runaway horse with a bridle of silk thread. Bethink thee, therefore, noble Cedric, and you also, gallant Athelstane, what crimes you have committed in the flesh; for this very day will ye be called to answer at a higher tribunal.''

``Hearest thou this, Athelstane?'' said Cedric; ``we must rouse up our hearts to this last action, since better it is we should die like men, than live like slaves.''

``I am ready,'' answered Athelstane, ``to stand the worst of their malice, and shall walk to my death with as much composure as ever I did to my dinner.''

``Let us then unto our holy gear, father,'' said Cedric.

``Wait yet a moment, good uncle,'' said the Jester, in his natural tone; ``better look long before you leap in the dark.''

``By my faith,'' said Cedric, ``I should know that voice!''

``It is that of your trusty slave and jester,'' answered Wamba, throwing back his cowl. ``Had you taken a fool's advice formerly, you would not have been here at all. Take a fool's advice now, and you will not be here long.''

``How mean'st thou, knave?'' answered the Saxon.

``Even thus,'' replied Wamba; ``take thou this frock and cord, which are all the orders I ever had, and march quietly out of the castle, leaving me your cloak and girdle to take the long leap in thy stead.''

``Leave thee in my stead!'' said Cedric, astonished at the proposal; ``why, they would hang thee, my poor knave.''

``E'en let them do as they are permitted,'' said Wamba; ``I trust---no disparagement to your birth ---that the son of Witless may hang in a chain with as much gravity as the chain hung upon his ancestor the alderman.''

``Well, Wamba,'' answered Cedric, ``for one thing will I grant thy request. And that is, if thou wilt make the exchange of garments with Lord Athelstane instead of me.''

``No, by St Dunstan,'' answered Wamba; ``there were little reason in that. Good right there is, that the son of Witless should suffer to save the son of Hereward; but little wisdom there were in his dying for the benefit of one whose fathers were strangers to his.''

``Villain,'' said Cedric, ``the fathers of Athelstane were monarchs of England!''

``They might be whomsoever they pleased,'' replied Wamba; ``but my neck stands too straight upon my shoulders to have it twisted for their sake. Wherefore, good my master, either take my proffer yourself, or suffer me to leave this dungeon as free as I entered.''

``Let the old tree wither,'' continued Cedric, ``so the stately hope of the forest be preserved. Save the noble Athelstane, my trusty Wamba! it is the duty of each who has Saxon blood in his veins. Thou and I will abide together the utmost rage of our injurious oppressors, while he, free and safe, shall arouse the awakened spirits of our countrymen to avenge us.''

``Not so, father Cedric,'' said Athelstane, grasping his hand,---for, when roused to think or act, his deeds and sentiments were not unbecoming his high race---``Not so,'' he continued; ``I would rather remain in this hall a week without food save the prisoner's stinted loaf, or drink save the prisoner's measure of water, than embrace the opportunity to escape which the slave's untaught kindness has purveyed for his master.''

``You are called wise men, sirs,'' said the Jester, ``and I a crazed fool; but, uncle Cedric, and cousin Athelstane, the fool shall decide this controversy for ye, and save ye the trouble of straining courtesies any farther. I am like John-a-Duck's mare, that will let no man mount her but John-a-Duck. I came to save my master, and if he will not consent--- basta---I can but go away home again. Kind service cannot be chucked from hand to hand like a shuttlecock or stool-ball. I'll hang for no man but my own born master.''

``Go, then, noble Cedric,'' said Athelstane, ``neglect not this opportunity. Your presence without may encourage friends to our rescue---your remaining here would ruin us all.''

``And is there any prospect, then, of rescue from without?'' said Cedric, looking to the Jester.

``Prospect, indeed!'' echoed Wamba; ``let me tell you, when you fill my cloak, you are wrapped in a general's cassock. Five hundred men are there without, and I was this morning one of the chief leaders. My fool's cap was a casque, and my bauble a truncheon. Well, we shall see what good they will make by exchanging a fool for a wise man. Truly, I fear they will lose in valour what they may gain in discretion. And so farewell, master, and be kind to poor Gurth and his dog Fangs; and let my cockscomb hang in the hall at Rotherwood, in memory that I flung away my life for my master, like a faithful------fool.''

The last word came out with a sort of double expression, betwixt jest and earnest. The tears stood in Cedric's eyes.

``Thy memory shall be preserved,'' he said, ``while fidelity and affection have honour upon earth! But that I trust I shall find the means of saving Rowena, and thee, Athelstane, and thee, also, my poor Wamba, thou shouldst not overbear me in this matter.''

The exchange of dress was now accomplished, when a sudden doubt struck Cedric.

``I know no language,'' he said, ``but my own, and a few words of their mincing Norman. How shall I bear myself like a reverend brother?''

``The spell lies in two words,'' replied Wamba--- ``_Pax vobiscum_ will answer all queries. If you go or come, eat or drink, bless or ban, _Pax vobiscum_ carries you through it all. It is as useful to a friar as a broomstick to a witch, or a wand to a conjurer. Speak it but thus, in a deep grave tone,---_Pax vobiscum!_---it is irresistible---Watch and ward, knight and squire, foot and horse, it acts as a charm upon them all. I think, if they bring me out to be hanged to-morrow, as is much to be doubted they may, I will try its weight upon the finisher of the sentence.''

``If such prove the case,'' said the master, ``my religious orders are soon taken---_Pax vobiscum_. I trust I shall remember the pass-word.---Noble Athelstane, farewell; and farewell, my poor boy, whose heart might make amends for a weaker head ---I will save you, or return and die with you. The royal blood of our Saxon kings shall not be spilt while mine beats in my veins; nor shall one hair fall from the head of the kind knave who risked himself for his master, if Cedric's peril can prevent it.---Farewell.''

``Farewell, noble Cedric,'' said Athelstane; ``remember it is the true part of a friar to accept refreshment, if you are offered any.''

``Farewell, uncle,'' added Wamba; ``and remember _Pax vobiscum_.''

Thus exhorted, Cedric sallied forth upon his expedition; and it was not long ere he had occasion to try the force of that spell which his Jester had recommended as omnipotent. In a low-arched and dusky passage, by which he endeavoured to work his way to the hall of the castle, he was interrupted by a female form.

``_Pax vobiscum!_'' said the pseudo friar, and was endeavouring to hurry past, when a soft voice replied, ``_Et vobis---quaso, domine reverendissime, pro misericordia vestra_.''

``I am somewhat deaf,'' replied Cedric, in good Saxon, and at the same time muttered to himself, ``A curse on the fool and his _Pax vobiscum!_ I have lost my javelin at the first cast.''

It was, however, no unusual thing for a priest of those days to be deaf of his Latin ear, and this the person who now addressed Cedric knew full well.

``I pray you of dear love, reverend father,'' she replied in his own language, ``that you will deign to visit with your ghostly comfort a wounded prisoner of this castle, and have such compassion upon him and us as thy holy office teaches---Never shall good deed so highly advantage thy convent.''

``Daughter,'' answered Cedric, much embarrassed, ``my time in this castle will not permit me to exercise the duties of mine office---I must presently forth---there is life and death upon my speed.''

``Yet, father, let me entreat you by the vow you have taken on you,'' replied the suppliant, ``not to leave the oppressed and endangered without counsel or succour.''

``May the fiend fly away with me, and leave me in Ifrin with the souls of Odin and of Thor!'' answered Cedric impatiently, and would probably have proceeded in the same tone of total departure from his spiritual character, when the colloquy was interrupted by the harsh voice of Urfried, the old crone of the turret. ``How, minion,'' said she to the female speaker, ``is this the manner in which you requite the kindness which permitted thee to leave thy prison-cell yonder?---Puttest thou the reverend man to use ungracious language to free himself from the importunities of a Jewess?''

``A Jewess!'' said Cedric, availing himself of the information to get clear of their interruption,--- ``Let me pass, woman! stop me not at your peril. I am fresh from my holy office, and would avoid pollution.''

``Come this way, father,'' said the old hag, ``thou art a stranger in this castle, and canst not leave it without a guide. Come hither, for I would speak with thee.---And you, daughter of an accursed race, go to the sick man's chamber, and tend him until my return; and woe betide you if you again quit it without my permission!''

Rebecca retreated. Her importunities had prevailed upon Urfried to suffer her to quit the turret, and Urfried had employed her services where she herself would most gladly have paid them, by the bedside of the wounded Ivanhoe. With an understanding awake to their dangerous situation, and prompt to avail herself of each means of safety which occurred, Rebecca had hoped something from the presence of a man of religion, who, she learned from Urfried, had penetrated into this godless castle. She watched the return of the supposed ecclesiastic, with the purpose of addressing him, and interesting him in favour of the prisoners; with what imperfect success the reader has been just acquainted.

CHAPTER XXVII

Fond wretch! and what canst thou relate, But deeds of sorrow, shame, and sin? Thy deeds are proved---thou know'st thy fate; But come, thy tale---begin---begin. - - - - - - - But I have griefs of other kind, Troubles and sorrows more severe; Give me to ease my tortured mind, Lend to my woes a patient ear; And let me, if I may not find A friend to help---find one to hear. _Crabbe's Hall of Justice._

When Urfried had with clamours and menaces driven Rebecca back to the apartment from which she had sallied, she proceeded to conduct the unwilling Cedric into a small apartment, the door of which she heedfully secured. Then fetching from a cupboard a stoup of wine and two flagons, she placed them on the table, and said in a tone rather asserting a fact than asking a question, ``Thou art Saxon, father---Deny it not,'' she continued, observing that Cedric hastened not to reply; ``the sounds of my native language are sweet to mine ears, though seldom heard save from the tongues of the wretched and degraded serfs on whom the proud Normans impose the meanest drudgery of this dwelling. Thou art a Saxon, father---a Saxon, and, save as thou art a servant of God, a freeman. ---Thine accents are sweet in mine ear.''

``Do not Saxon priests visit this castle, then?'' replied Cedric; ``it were, methinks, their duty to comfort the outcast and oppressed children of the soil.''

``They come not---or if they come, they better love to revel at the boards of their conquerors,'' answered Urfried, ``than to hear the groans of their countrymen---so, at least, report speaks of them--- of myself I can say little. This castle, for ten years, has opened to no priest save the debauched Norman chaplain who partook the nightly revels of Front-de-B<oe>uf, and he has been long gone to render an account of his stewardship.---But thou art a Saxon---a Saxon priest, and I have one question to ask of thee.''

``I am a Saxon,'' answered Cedric, ``but unworthy, surely, of the name of priest. Let me begone on my way---I swear I will return, or send one of our fathers more worthy to hear your confession.''

``Stay yet a while,'' said Urfried; ``the accents of the voice which thou hearest now will soon be choked with the cold earth, and I would not descend to it like the beast I have lived. But wine must give me strength to tell the horrors of my tale.'' She poured out a cup, and drank it with a frightful avidity, which seemed desirous of draining the last drop in the goblet. ``It stupifies,'' she said, looking upwards as she finished her drought, ``but it cannot cheer---Partake it, father, if you would hear my tale without sinking down upon the pavement.'' Cedric would have avoided pledging her in this ominous conviviality, but the sign which she made to him expressed impatience and despair. He complied with her request, and answered her challenge in a large wine-cup; she then proceeded with her story, as if appeased by his complaisance.

``I was not born,'' she said, ``father, the wretch that thou now seest me. I was free, was happy, was honoured, loved, and was beloved. I am now a slave, miserable and degraded---the sport of my masters' passions while I had yet beauty---the object of their contempt, scorn, and hatred, since it has passed away. Dost thou wonder, father, that I should hate mankind, and, above all, the race that has wrought this change in me? Can the wrinkled decrepit hag before thee, whose wrath must vent itself in impotent curses, forget she was once the daughter of the noble Thane of Torquilstone, before whose frown a thousand vassals trembled?''

``Thou the daughter of Torquil Wolfganger!'' said Cedric, receding as he spoke; ``thou---thou--- the daughter of that noble Saxon, my father's friend and companion in arms!''

``Thy father's friend!'' echoed Urfried; ``then Cedric called the Saxon stands before me, for the noble Hereward of Rotherwood had but one son, whose name is well known among his countrymen. But if thou art Cedric of Rotherwood, why this religious dress?---hast thou too despaired of saving thy country, and sought refuge from oppression in the shade of the convent?''

``It matters not who I am,'' said Cedric; ``proceed, unhappy woman, with thy tale of horror and guilt!---Guilt there must be---there is guilt even in thy living to tell it.''

``There is---there is,'' answered the wretched woman, ``deep, black, damning guilt,---guilt, that lies like a load at my breast---guilt, that all the penitential fires of hereafter cannot cleanse.---Yes, in these halls, stained with the noble and pure blood of my father and my brethren---in these very halls, to have lived the paramour of their murderer, the slave at once and the partaker of his pleasures, was to render every breath which I drew of vital air, a crime and a curse.''

``Wretched woman!'' exclaimed Cedric. ``And while the friends of thy father---while each true Saxon heart, as it breathed a requiem for his soul, and those of his valiant sons, forgot not in their prayers the murdered Ulrica---while all mourned and honoured the dead, thou hast lived to merit our hate and execration---lived to unite thyself with the vile tyrant who murdered thy nearest and dearest---who shed the blood of infancy, rather than a male of the noble house of Torquil Wolfganger should survive---with him hast thou lived to unite thyself, and in the hands of lawless love!''

``In lawless hands, indeed, but not in those of love!'' answered the hag; ``love will sooner visit the regions of eternal doom, than those unhallowed vaults.---No, with that at least I cannot reproach myself---hatred to Front-de-B<oe>uf and his race governed my soul most deeply, even in the hour of his guilty endearments.''

``You hated him, and yet you lived,'' replied Cedric; ``wretch! was there no poniard---no knife ---no bodkin!---Well was it for thee, since thou didst prize such an existence, that the secrets of a Norman castle are like those of the grave. For had I but dreamed of the daughter of Torquil living in foul communion with the murderer of her father, the sword of a true Saxon had found thee out even in the arms of thy paramour!''

``Wouldst thou indeed have done this justice to the name of Torquil?'' said Ulrica, for we may now lay aside her assumed name of Urfried; ``thou art then the true Saxon report speaks thee! for even within these accursed walls, where, as thou well sayest, guilt shrouds itself in inscrutable mystery, even there has the name of Cedric been sounded--- and I, wretched and degraded, have rejoiced to think that there yet breathed an avenger of our unhappy nation.---I also have had my hours of vengeance--- I have fomented the quarrels of our foes, and heated drunken revelry into murderous broil ---I have seen their blood flow---I have heard their dying groans!---Look on me, Cedric---are there not still left on this foul and faded face some traces of the features of Torquil?''

``Ask me not of them, Ulrica,'' replied Cedric, in a tone of grief mixed with abhorrence; ``these traces form such a resemblance as arises from the graves of the dead, when a fiend has animated the lifeless corpse.''

``Be it so,'' answered Ulrica; ``yet wore these fiendish features the mask of a spirit of light when they were able to set at variance the elder Front-de-B<oe>uf and his son Reginald! The darkness of hell should hide what followed, but revenge must lift the veil, and darkly intimate what it would raise the dead to speak aloud. Long had the smouldering fire of discord glowed between the tyrant father and his savage son---long had I nursed, in secret, the unnatural hatred---it blazed forth in an hour of drunken wassail, and at his own board fell my oppressor by the hand of his own son---such are the secrets these vaults conceal!---Rend asunder, ye accursed arches,'' she added, looking up towards the roof, ``and bury in your fall all who are conscious of the hideous mystery!''

``And thou, creature of guilt and misery,'' said Cedric, ``what became thy lot on the death of thy ravisher?''

``Guess it, but ask it not.---Here---here I dwelt, till age, premature age, has stamped its ghastly features on my countenance---scorned and insulted where I was once obeyed, and compelled to bound the revenge which had once such ample scope, to the efforts of petty malice of a discontented menial, or the vain or unheeded curses of an impotent hag---condemned to hear from my lonely turret the sounds of revelry in which I once partook, or the shrieks and groans of new victims of oppression.''

``Ulrica,'' said Cedric, ``with a heart which still, I fear, regrets the lost reward of thy crimes, as much as the deeds by which thou didst acquire that meed, how didst thou dare to address thee to one who wears this robe? Consider, unhappy woman, what could the sainted Edward himself do for thee, were he here in bodily presence? The royal Confessor was endowed by heaven with power to cleanse the ulcers of the body, but only God himself can cure the leprosy of the soul.''

``Yet, turn not from me, stern prophet of wrath,'' she exclaimed, ``but tell me, if thou canst, in what shall terminate these new and awful feelings that burst on my solitude---Why do deeds, long since done, rise before me in new and irresistible horrors? What fate is prepared beyond the grave for her, to whom God has assigned on earth a lot of such unspeakable wretchedness? Better had I turn to Woden, Hertha, and Zernebock---to Mista, and to Skogula, the gods of our yet unbaptized ancestors, than endure the dreadful anticipations which have of late haunted my waking and my sleeping hours!''

``I am no priest,'' said Cedric, turning with disgust from this miserable picture of guilt, wretchedness, and despair; ``I am no priest, though I wear a priest's garment.''

``Priest or layman,'' answered Ulrica, ``thou art the first I have seen for twenty years, by whom God was feared or man regarded; and dost thou bid me despair?''

``I bid thee repent,'' said Cedric. ``Seek to prayer and penance, and mayest thou find acceptance! But I cannot, I will not, longer abide with thee.''

``Stay yet a moment!'' said Ulrica; ``leave me not now, son of my father's friend, lest the demon who has governed my life should tempt me to avenge myself of thy hard-hearted scorn---Thinkest thou, if Front-de-B<oe>uf found Cedric the Saxon in his castle, in such a disguise, that thy life would be a long one?---Already his eye has been upon thee like a falcon on his prey.''

``And be it so,'' said Cedric; ``and let him tear me with beak and talons, ere my tongue say one word which my heart doth not warrant. I will die a Saxon---true in word, open in deed---I bid thee avaunt!---touch me not, stay me not!---The sight of Front-de-B<oe>uf himself is less odious to me than thou, degraded and degenerate as thou art.''

``Be it so,'' said Ulrica, no longer interrupting him; ``go thy way, and forget, in the insolence of thy superority, that the wretch before thee is the daughter of thy father's friend.---Go thy way---if I am separated from mankind by my sufferings--- separated from those whose aid I might most justly expect---not less will I be separated from them in my revenge!---No man shall aid me, but the ears of all men shall tingle to hear of the deed which I shall dare to do!---Farewell!---thy scorn has burst the last tie which seemed yet to unite me to my kind---a thought that my woes might claim the compassion of my people.''

``Ulrica,'' said Cedric, softened by this appeal, ``hast thou borne up and endured to live through so much guilt and so much misery, and wilt thou now yield to despair when thine eyes are opened to thy crimes, and when repentance were thy fitter occupation?''

``Cedric,'' answered Ulrica, ``thou little knowest the human heart. To act as I have acted, to think as I have thought, requires the maddening love of pleasure, mingled with the keen appetite of revenge, the proud consciousness of power; droughts too intoxicating for the human heart to bear, and yet retain the power to prevent. Their force has long passed away---Age has no pleasures, wrinkles have no influence, revenge itself dies away in impotent curses. Then comes remorse, with all its vipers, mixed with vain regrets for the past, and despair for the future!---Then, when all other strong impulses have ceased, we become like the fiends in hell, who may feel remorse, but never repentance. ---But thy words have awakened a new soul within me---Well hast thou said, all is possible for those who dare to die!---Thou hast shown me the means of revenge, and be assured I will embrace them. It has hitherto shared this wasted bosom with other and with rival passions---henceforward it shall possess me wholly, and thou thyself shalt say, that, whatever was the life of Ulrica, her death well became the daughter of the noble Torquil. There is a force without beleaguering this accursed castle---hasten to lead them to the attack, and when thou shalt see a red flag wave from the turret on the eastern angle of the donjon, press the Normans hard---they will then have enough to do within, and you may win the wall in spite both of bow and mangonel.---Begone, I pray thee---follow thine own fate, and leave me to mine.''

Cedric would have enquired farther into the purpose which she thus darkly announced, but the stern voice of Front-de-B<oe>uf was heard, exclaiming, ``Where tarries this loitering priest? By the scallop-shell of Compostella, I will make a martyr of him, if he loiters here to hatch treason among my domestics!''

``What a true prophet,'' said Ulrica, ``is an evil conscience! But heed him not---out and to thy people---Cry your Saxon onslaught, and let them sing their war-song of Rollo, if they will; vengeance shall bear a burden to it.''

As she thus spoke, she vanished through a private door, and Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf entered the apartment. Cedric, with some difficulty, compelled himself to make obeisance to the haughty Baron, who returned his courtesy with a slight inclination of the head.

``Thy penitents, father, have made a long shrift ---it is the better for them, since it is the last they shall ever make. Hast thou prepared them for death?''

``I found them,'' said Cedric, in such French as he could command, ``expecting the worst, from the moment they knew into whose power they had fallen.''

``How now, Sir Friar,'' replied Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``thy speech, methinks, smacks of a Saxon tongue?''

``I was bred in the convent of St Withold of Burton,'' answered Cedric.

``Ay?'' said the Baron; ``it had been better for thee to have been a Norman, and better for my purpose too; but need has no choice of messengers. That St Withold's of Burton is a howlet's nest worth the harrying. The day will soon come that the frock shall protect the Saxon as little as the mail-coat.''

``God's will be done,'' said Cedric, in a voice tremulous with passion, which Front-de-B<oe>uf imputed to fear.

``I see,'' said he, ``thou dreamest already that our men-at-arms are in thy refectory and thy ale-vaults. But do me one cast of thy holy office, and, come what list of others, thou shalt sleep as safe in thy cell as a snail within his shell of proof.''

``Speak your commands,'' said Cedric, with suppressed emotion.

``Follow me through this passage, then, that I may dismiss thee by the postern.''

And as he strode on his way before the supposed friar, Front-de-B<oe>uf thus schooled him in the part which he desired he should act.

``Thou seest, Sir Friar, yon herd of Saxon swine, who have dared to environ this castle of Torquilstone--- Tell them whatever thou hast a mind of the weakness of this fortalice, or aught else that can detain them before it for twenty-four hours. Meantime bear thou this scroll---But soft---canst read, Sir Priest?''

``Not a jot I,'' answered Cedric, ``save on my breviary; and then I know the characters, because I have the holy service by heart, praised be Our Lady and St Withold!''

``The fitter messenger for my purpose.---Carry thou this scroll to the castle of Philip de Malvoisin; say it cometh from me, and is written by the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and that I pray him to send it to York with all the speed man and horse can make. Meanwhile, tell him to doubt nothing, he shall find us whole and sound behind our battlement---Shame on it, that we should be compelled to hide thus by a pack of runagates, who are wont to fly even at the flash of our pennons and the tramp of our horses! I say to thee, priest, contrive some cast of thine art to keep the knaves where they are, until our friends bring up their lances. My vengeance is awake, and she is a falcon that slumbers not till she has been gorged.''

``By my patron saint,'' said Cedric, with deeper energy than became his character, ``and by every saint who has lived and died in England, your commands shall be obeyed! Not a Saxon shall stir from before these walls, if I have art and influence to detain them there.''

``Ha!'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``thou changest thy tone, Sir Priest, and speakest brief and bold, as if thy heart were in the slaughter of the Saxon herd; and yet thou art thyself of kindred to the swine?''

Cedric was no ready practiser of the art of dissimulation, and would at this moment have been much the better of a hint from Wamba's more fertile brain. But necessity, according to the ancient proverb, sharpens invention, and he muttered something under his cowl concerning the men in question being excommunicated outlaws both to church and to kingdom.

``_Despardieux_,'' answered Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``thou hast spoken the very truth---I forgot that the knaves can strip a fat abbot, as well as if they had been born south of yonder salt channel. Was it not he of St Ives whom they tied to an oak-tree, and compelled to sing a mass while they were rifling his mails and his wallets?---No, by our Lady---that jest was played by Gualtier of Middleton, one of our own companions-at-arms. But they were Saxons who robbed the chapel at St Bees of cup, candlestick and chalice, were they not?''

``They were godless men,'' answered Cedric.

``Ay, and they drank out all the good wine and ale that lay in store for many a secret carousal, when ye pretend ye are but busied with vigils and primes!---Priest, thou art bound to revenge such sacrilege.''

``I am indeed bound to vengeance,'' murmured Cedric; ``Saint Withold knows my heart.''

Front-de-B<oe>uf, in the meanwhile, led the way to a postern, where, passing the moat on a single plank, they reached a small barbican, or exterior defence, which communicated with the open field by a well-fortified sallyport.

``Begone, then; and if thou wilt do mine errand, and if thou return hither when it is done, thou shalt see Saxon flesh cheap as ever was hog's in the shambles of Sheffield. And, hark thee, thou seemest to be a jolly confessor---come hither after the onslaught, and thou shalt have as much Malvoisie as would drench thy whole convent.''

``Assuredly we shall meet again,'' answered Cedric.

``Something in hand the whilst,'' continued the Norman; and, as they parted at the postern door, he thrust into Cedric's reluctant hand a gold byzant, adding, ``Remember, I will fly off both cowl and skin, if thou failest in thy purpose.''

``And full leave will I give thee to do both,'' answered Cedric, leaving the postern, and striding forth over the free field with a joyful step, ``if, when we meet next, I deserve not better at thine hand.''---Turning then back towards the castle, he threw the piece of gold towards the donor, exclaiming at the same time, ``False Norman, thy money perish with thee!''

Front-de-B<oe>uf heard the words imperfectly, but the action was suspicious---``Archers,'' he called to the warders on the outward battlements, ``send me an arrow through yon monk's frock!---yet stay,'' he said, as his retainers were bending their bows, ``it avails not--we must thus far trust him since we have no better shift. I think he dares not betray me---at the worst I can but treat with these Saxon dogs whom I have safe in kennel.---Ho! Giles jailor, let them bring Cedric of Rotherwood before me, and the other churl, his companion---him I mean of Coningsburgh---Athelstane there, or what call they him? Their very names are an encumbrance to a Norman knight's mouth, and have, as it were, a flavour of bacon---Give me a stoup of wine, as jolly Prince John said, that I may wash away the relish---place it in the armoury, and thither lead the prisoners.''

His commands were obeyed; and, upon entering that Gothic apartment, hung with many spoils won by his own valour and that of his father, he found a flagon of wine on the massive oaken table, and the two Saxon captives under the guard of four of his dependants. Front-de-B<oe>uf took a long drought of wine, and then addressed his prisoners; ---for the manner in which Wamba drew the cap over his face, the change of dress, the gloomy and broken light, and the Baron's imperfect acquaintance with the features of Cedric, (who avoided his Norman neighbours, and seldom stirred beyond his own domains,) prevented him from discovering that the most important of his captives had made his escape.

``Gallants of England,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``how relish ye your entertainment at Torquilstone? ---Are ye yet aware what your _surquedy_ and _outrecuidance_* merit, for scoffing at the entertainment

* _Surquedy_ and _outrecuidance_---insolence and presumption.

of a prince of the House of Anjou?---Have ye forgotten how ye requited the unmerited hospitality of the royal John? By God and St Dennis, an ye pay not the richer ransom, I will hang ye up by the feet from the iron bars of these windows, till the kites and hooded crows have made skeletons of you!---Speak out, ye Saxon dogs--- what bid ye for your worthless lives?---How say you, you of Rotherwood?

``Not a doit I,'' answered poor Wamba---``and for hanging up by the feet, my brain has been topsy-turvy, they say, ever since the biggin was bound first round my head; so turning me upside down may peradventure restore it again.''

``Saint Genevieve!'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``what have we got here?''

And with the back of his hand he struck Cedric's cap from the head of the Jester, and throwing open his collar, discovered the fatal badge of servitude, the silver collar round his neck.

``Giles---Clement---dogs and varlets!'' exclaimed the furious Norman, ``what have you brought me here?''

``I think I can tell you,'' said De Bracy, who just entered the apartment. ``This is Cedric's clown, who fought so manful a skirmish with Isaac of York about a question of precedence.''

``I shall settle it for them both,'' replied Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``they shall hang on the same gallows, unless his master and this boar of Coningsburgh will pay well for their lives. Their wealth is the least they can surrender; they must also carry off with them the swarms that are besetting the castle, subscribe a surrender of their pretended immunities, and live under us as serfs and vassals; too happy if, in the new world that is about to begin, we leave them the breath of their nostrils.---Go,'' said he to two of his attendants, ``fetch me the right Cedric hither, and I pardon your error for once; the rather that you but mistook a fool for a Saxon franklin.''

``Ay, but,'' said Wamba, ``your chivalrous excellency will find there are more fools than franklins among us.''

``What means the knave?'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, looking towards his followers, who, lingering and loath, faltered forth their belief, that if this were not Cedric who was there in presence, they knew not what was become of him.

``Saints of Heaven!'' exclaimed De Bracy, ``he must have escaped in the monk's garments!''

``Fiends of hell!'' echoed Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``it was then the boar of Rotherwood whom I ushered to the postern, and dismissed with my own hands! ---And thou,'' he said to Wamba, ``whose folly could overreach the wisdom of idiots yet more gross than thyself---I will give thee holy orders---I will shave thy crown for thee!---Here, let them tear the scalp from his head, and then pitch him headlong from the battlements---Thy trade is to jest, canst thou jest now?''

``You deal with me better than your word, noble knight,'' whimpered forth poor Wamba, whose habits of buffoonery were not to be overcome even by the immediate prospect of death; ``if you give me the red cap you propose, out of a simple monk you will make a cardinal.''

``The poor wretch,'' said De Bracy, ``is resolved to die in his vocation.---Front-de-B<oe>uf, you shall not slay him. Give him to me to make sport for my Free Companions.---How sayst thou, knave? Wilt thou take heart of grace, and go to the wars with me?''

``Ay, with my master's leave,'' said Wamba; ``for, look you, I must not slip collar'' (and he touched that which he wore) ``without his permission.''

``Oh, a Norman saw will soon cut a Saxon collar.'' said De Bracy.

``Ay, noble sir,'' said Wamba, ``and thence goes the proverb---

`Norman saw on English oak, On English neck a Norman yoke; Norman spoon in English dish, And England ruled as Normans wish; Blithe world to England never will be more, Till England's rid of all the four.' ''

``Thou dost well, De Bracy,' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``to stand there listening to a fool's jargon, when destruction is gaping for us! Seest thou not we are overreached, and that our proposed mode of communicating with our friends without has been disconcerted by this same motley gentleman thou art so fond to brother? What views have we to expect but instant storm?''

``To the battlements then,'' said De Bracy; ``when didst thou ever see me the graver for the thoughts of battle? Call the Templar yonder, and let him fight but half so well for his life as he has done for his Order---Make thou to the walls thyself with thy huge body---Let me do my poor endeavour in my own way, and I tell thee the Saxon outlaws may as well attempt to scale the clouds, as the castle of Torquilstone; or, if you will treat with the banditti, why not employ the mediation of this worthy franklin, who seems in such deep contemplation of the wine-flagon?---Here, Saxon,'' he continued, addressing Athelstane, and handing the cup to him, ``rinse thy throat with that noble liquor, and rouse up thy soul to say what thou wilt do for thy liberty.''

``What a man of mould may,'' answered Athelstane, ``providing it be what a man of manhood ought.---Dismiss me free, with my companions, and I will pay a ransom of a thousand marks.''

``And wilt moreover assure us the retreat of that scum of mankind who are swarming around the castle, contrary to God's peace and the king's?'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf.

``In so far as I can,'' answered Athelstane, ``I will withdraw them; and I fear not but that my father Cedric will do his best to assist me.''

``We are agreed then,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf--- ``thou and they are to be set at freedom, and peace is to be on both sides, for payment of a thousand marks. It is a trifling ransom, Saxon, and thou wilt owe gratitude to the moderation which accepts of it in exchange of your persons. But mark, this extends not to the Jew Isaac.''

``Nor to the Jew Isaac's daughter,'' said the Templar, who had now joined them

``Neither,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``belong to this Saxon's company.''

``I were unworthy to be called Christian, if they did,'' replied Athelstane: ``deal with the unbelievers as ye list.''

``Neither does the ransom include the Lady Rowena,'' said De Bracy. ``It shall never be said I was scared out of a fair prize without striking a blow for it.''

``Neither,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``does our treaty refer to this wretched Jester, whom I retain, that I may make him an example to every knave who turns jest into earnest.''

``The Lady Rowena,'' answered Athelstane, with the most steady countenance, ``is my affianced bride. I will be drawn by wild horses before I consent to part with her. The slave Wamba has this day saved the life of my father Cedric---I will lose mine ere a hair of his head be injured.''

``Thy affianced bride?---The Lady Rowena the affianced bride of a vassal like thee?'' said De Bracy; ``Saxon, thou dreamest that the days of thy seven kingdoms are returned again. I tell thee, the Princes of the House of Anjou confer not their wards on men of such lineage as thine.''

``My lineage, proud Norman,'' replied Athelstane, ``is drawn from a source more pure and ancient than that of a beggarly Frenchman, whose living is won by selling the blood of the thieves whom he assembles under his paltry standard. Kings were my ancestors, strong in war and wise in council, who every day feasted in their hall more hundreds than thou canst number individual followers; whose names have been sung by minstrels, and their laws recorded by Wittenagemotes; whose bones were interred amid the prayers of saints, and over whose tombs minsters have been builded.''

``Thou hast it, De Bracy,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, well pleased with the rebuff which his companion had received; ``the Saxon hath hit thee fairly.''

``As fairly as a captive can strike,'' said De Bracy, with apparent carelessness; ``for he whose hands are tied should have his tongue at freedom. ---But thy glibness of reply, comrade,'' rejoined he, speaking to Athelstane, ``will not win the freedom of the Lady Rowena.''

To this Athelstane, who had already made a longer speech than was his custom to do on any topic, however interesting, returned no answer. The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a menial, who announced that a monk demanded admittance at the postern gate.

``In the name of Saint Bennet, the prince of these bull-beggars,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``have we a real monk this time, or another impostor? Search him, slaves---for an ye suffer a second impostor to be palmed upon you, I will have your eyes torn out, and hot coals put into the sockets.''

``Let me endure the extremity of your anger, my lord,'' said Giles, ``if this be not a real shaveling. Your squire Jocelyn knows him well, and will vouch him to be brother Ambrose, a monk in attendance upon the Prior of Jorvaulx.''

``Admit him,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``most likely he brings us news from his jovial master. Surely the devil keeps holiday, and the priests are relieved from duty, that they are strolling thus wildly through the country. Remove these prisoners; and, Saxon, think on what thou hast heard.''

``I claim,'' said Athelstane, ``an honourable imprisonment, with due care of my board and of my couch, as becomes my rank, and as is due to one who is in treaty for ransom. Moreover, I hold him that deems himself the best of you, bound to answer to me with his body for this aggression on my freedom. This defiance hath already been sent to thee by thy sewer; thou underliest it, and art bound to answer me---There lies my glove.''

``I answer not the challenge of my prisoner,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``nor shalt thou, Maurice de Bracy.---Giles,'' he continued, ``hang the franklin's glove upon the tine of yonder branched antlers: there shall it remain until he is a free man. Should he then presume to demand it, or to affirm he was unlawfully made my prisoner, by the belt of Saint Christopher, he will speak to one who hath never refused to meet a foe on foot or on horseback, alone or with his vassals at his back!''

The Saxon prisoners were accordingly removed, just as they introduced the monk Ambrose, who appeared to be in great perturbation.

``This is the real _Deus vobiscum_,'' said Wamba, as he passed the reverend brother; ``the others were but counterfeits.''

``Holy Mother,'' said the monk, as he addressed the assembled knights, ``I am at last safe and in Christian keeping!''

``Safe thou art,'' replied De Bracy; ``and for Christianity, here is the stout Baron Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf, whose utter abomination is a Jew; and the good Knight Templar, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, whose trade is to slay Saracens---If these are not good marks of Christianity, I know no other which they bear about them.'' ``Ye are friends and allies of our reverend father in God, Aymer, Prior of Jorvaulx,'' said the monk, without noticing the tone of De Bracy's reply; ``ye owe him aid both by knightly faith and holy charity; for what saith the blessed Saint Augustin, in his treatise _De Civitate Dei_------''

``What saith the devil!'' interrupted Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``or rather what dost thou say, Sir Priest? We have little time to hear texts from the holy fathers.''

``_Sancta Maria!_'' ejaculated Father Ambrose, ``how prompt to ire are these unhallowed laymen! ---But be it known to you, brave knights, that certain murderous caitiffs, casting behind them fear of God, and reverence of his church, and not regarding the bull of the holy see, _Si quis, suadende Diabolo_------''

``Brother priest,'' said the Templar, ``all this we know or guess at---tell us plainly, is thy master, the Prior, made prisoner, and to whom?''

``Surely,'' said Ambrose, ``he is in the hands of the men of Belial, infesters of these woods, and contemners of the holy text, `Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets naught of evil.' ''

``Here is a new argument for our swords, sirs,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, turning to his companions; ``and so, instead of reaching us any assistance, the Prior of Jorvaulx requests aid at our hands? a man is well helped of these lazy churchmen when he hath most to do!---But speak out, priest, and say at once, what doth thy master expect from us?''

``So please you,'' said Ambrose, ``violent hands having been imposed on my reverend superior, contrary to the holy ordinance which I did already quote, and the men of Belial having rifled his mails and budgets, and stripped him of two hundred marks of pure refined gold, they do yet demand of him a large sum beside, ere they will suffer him to depart from their uncircumcised hands. Wherefore the reverend father in God prays you, as his dear friends, to rescue him, either by paying down the ransom at which they hold him, or by force of arms, at your best discretion.''

``The foul fiend quell the Prior!'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``his morning's drought has been a deep one. When did thy master hear of a Norman baron unbuckling his purse to relieve a churchman, whose bags are ten times as weighty as ours?--- And how can we do aught by valour to free him, that are cooped up here by ten times our number, and expect an assault every moment?''

``And that was what I was about to tell you,'' said the monk, ``had your hastiness allowed me time. But, God help me, I am old, and these foul onslaughts distract an aged man's brain. Nevertheless, it is of verity that they assemble a camp, and raise a bank against the walls of this castle.''

``To the battlements!'' cried De Bracy, ``and let us mark what these knaves do without;'' and so saying, he opened a latticed window which led to a sort of bartisan or projecting balcony, and immediately called from thence to those in the apartment--- ``Saint Dennis, but the old monk hath brought true tidings!---They bring forward mantelets and pavisses,* and the archers muster on the

* Mantelets were temporary and movable defences formed * of planks, under cover of which the assailants advanced to the * attack of fortified places of old. Pavisses were a species of large * shields covering the whole person, employed on the same occasions.

skirts of the wood like a dark cloud before a hailstorm.''

Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf also looked out upon the field, and immediately snatched his bugle; and, after winding a long and loud blast, commanded his men to their posts on the walls.

``De Bracy, look to the eastern side, where the walls are lowest---Noble Bois-Guilbert, thy trade hath well taught thee how to attack and defend, look thou to the western side---I myself will take post at the barbican. Yet, do not confine your exertions to any one spot, noble friends!---we must this day be everywhere, and multiply ourselves, were it possible, so as to carry by our presence succour and relief wherever the attack is hottest. Our numbers are few, but activity and courage may supply that defect, since we have only to do with rascal clowns.''

``But, noble knights,'' exclaimed Father Ambrose, amidst the bustle and confusion occasioned by the preparations for defence, ``will none of ye hear the message of the reverend father in God Aymer, Prior of Jorvaulx?---I beseech thee to hear me, noble Sir Reginald!''

``Go patter thy petitions to heaven,'' said the fierce Norman, ``for we on earth have no time to listen to them.---Ho! there, Anselm I see that seething pitch and oil are ready to pour on the heads of these audacious traitors---Look that the cross-bowmen lack not bolts.*---Fling abroad my banner with

* The bolt was the arrow peculiarly fitted to the cross-bow, * as that of the long-bow was called a shaft. Hence the English * proverb---``I will either make a shaft or bolt of it,'' signifying a * determination to make one use or other of the thing spoken of.

the old bull's head---the knaves shall soon find with whom they have to do this day!''

``But, noble sir,'' continued the monk, persevering in his endeavours to draw attention, ``consider my vow of obedience, and let me discharge myself of my Superior's errand.''

``Away with this prating dotard,'' said Front-de B<oe>uf, ``lock him up in the chapel, to tell his beads till the broil be over. It will be a new thing to the saints in Torquilstone to hear aves and paters; they have not been so honoured, I trow, since they were cut out of stone.''

``Blaspheme not the holy saints, Sir Reginald,'' said De Bracy, ``we shall have need of their aid to-day before yon rascal rout disband.''

``I expect little aid from their hand,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``unless we were to hurl them from the battlements on the heads of the villains. There is a huge lumbering Saint Christopher yonder, sufficient to bear a whole company to the earth.''

The Templar had in the meantime been looking out on the proceedings of the besiegers, with rather more attention than the brutal Front-de-B<oe>uf or his giddy companion.

``By the faith of mine order,'' he said, ``these men approach with more touch of discipline than could have been judged, however they come by it. See ye how dexterously they avail themselves of every cover which a tree or bush affords, and shun exposing themselves to the shot of our cross-bows? I spy neither banner nor pennon among them, and yet will I gage my golden chain, that they are led on by some noble knight or gentleman, skilful in the practice of wars.''

``I espy him,'' said De Bracy; ``I see the waving of a knight's crest, and the gleam of his armour. See yon tall man in the black mail, who is busied marshalling the farther troop of the rascaille yeomen---by Saint Dennis, I hold him to be the same whom we called _Le Noir Faineant_, who overthrew thee, Front-de-B<oe>uf, in the lists at Ashby.'' ``So much the better,'' said Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``that he comes here to give me my revenge. Some hilding fellow he must be, who dared not stay to assert his claim to the tourney prize which chance had assigned him. I should in vain have sought for him where knights and nobles seek their foes, and right glad am I he hath here shown himself among yon villain yeomanry.''

The demonstrations of the enemy's immediate approach cut off all farther discourse. Each knight repaired to his post, and at the head of the few followers whom they were able to muster, and who were in numbers inadequate to defend the whole extent of the walls, they awaited with calm determination the threatened assault.

CHAPTER XXVIII

This wandering race, sever'd from other men, Boast yet their intercourse with human arts; The seas, the woods, the deserts, which they haunt, Find them acquainted with their secret treasures: And unregarded herbs, and flowers, and blossoms, Display undreamt-of powers when gather'd by them. _The Jew._

Our history must needs retrograde for the space of a few pages, to inform the reader of certain passages material to his understanding the rest of this important narrative. His own intelligence may indeed have easily anticipated that, when Ivanhoe sunk down, and seemed abandoned by all the world, it was the importunity of Rebecca which prevailed on her father to have the gallant young warrior transported from the lists to the house which for the time the Jews inhabited in the suburbs of Ashby.

It would not have been difficult to have persuaded Isaac to this step in any other circumstances, for his disposition was kind and grateful. But he had also the prejudices and scrupulous timidity of his persecuted people, and those were to be conquered.

``Holy Abraham!'' he exclaimed, ``he is a good youth, and my heart bleeds to see the gore trickle down his rich embroidered hacqueton, and his corslet of goodly price---but to carry him to our house! ---damsel, hast thou well considered?---he is a Christian, and by our law we may not deal with the stranger and Gentile, save for the advantage of our commerce.''

``Speak not so, my dear father,'' replied Rebecca; ``we may not indeed mix with them in banquet and in jollity; but in wounds and in misery, the Gentile becometh the Jew's brother.''

``I would I knew what the Rabbi Jacob Ben Tudela would opine on it,'' replied Isaac;---``nevertheless, the good youth must not bleed to death. Let Seth and Reuben bear him to Ashby.''

``Nay, let them place him in my litter,'' said Rebecca; ``I will mount one of the palfreys.''

``That were to expose thee to the gaze of those dogs of Ishmael and of Edom,'' whispered Isaac, with a suspicious glance towards the crowd of knights and squires. But Rebecca was already busied in carrying her charitable purpose into effect, and listed not what he said, until Isaac, seizing the sleeve of her mantle, again exclaimed, in a hurried voice---``Beard of Aaron!---what if the youth perish! ---if he die in our custody, shall we not be held guilty of his blood, and be torn to pieces by the multitude?''

``He will not die, my father,'' said Rebecca, gently extricating herself from the grasp of Isaac ``he will not die unless we abandon him; and if so, we are indeed answerable for his blood to God and to man.''

``Nay,'' said Isaac, releasing his hold, ``it grieveth me as much to see the drops of his blood, as if they were so many golden byzants from mine own purse; and I well know, that the lessons of Miriam, daughter of the Rabbi Manasses of Byzantium whose soul is in Paradise, have made thee skilful in the art of healing, and that thou knowest the craft of herbs, and the force of elixirs. Therefore, do as thy mind giveth thee---thou art a good damsel, a blessing, and a crown, and a song of rejoicing unto me and unto my house, and unto the people of my fathers.''

The apprehensions of Isaac, however, were not ill founded; and the generous and grateful benevolence of his daughter exposed her, on her return to Ashby, to the unhallowed gaze of Brian de Bois-Guilbert. The Templar twice passed and repassed them on the road, fixing his bold and ardent look on the beautiful Jewess; and we have already seen the consequences of the admiration which her charms excited when accident threw her into the power of that unprincipled voluptuary.

Rebecca lost no time in causing the patient to be transported to their temporary dwelling, and proceeded with her own hands to examine and to bind up his wounds. The youngest reader of romances and romantic ballads, must recollect how often the females, during the dark ages, as they are called, were initiated into the mysteries of surgery, and how frequently the gallant knight submitted the wounds of his person to her cure, whose eyes had yet more deeply penetrated his heart.

But the Jews, both male and female, possessed and practised the medical science in all its branches, and the monarchs and powerful barons of the time frequently committed themselves to the charge of some experienced sage among this despised people, when wounded or in sickness. The aid of the Jewish physicians was not the less eagerly sought after, though a general belief prevailed among the Christians, that the Jewish Rabbins were deeply acquainted with the occult sciences, and particularly with the cabalistical art, which had its name and origin in the studies of the sages of Israel. Neither did the Rabbins disown such acquaintance with supernatural arts, which added nothing (for what could add aught?) to the hatred with which their nation was regarded, while it diminished the contempt with which that malevolence was mingled. A Jewish magician might be the subject of equal abhorrence with a Jewish usurer, but he could not be equally despised. It is besides probable, considering the wonderful cures they are said to have performed, that the Jews possessed some secrets of the healing art peculiar to themselves, and which, with the exclusive spirit arising out of their condition, they took great care to conceal from the Christians amongst whom they dwelt.

The beautiful Rebecca had been heedfully brought up in all the knowledge proper to her nation, which her apt and powerful mind had retained, arranged, and enlarged, in the course of a progress beyond her years, her sex, and even the age in which she lived. Her knowledge of medicine and of the healing art had been acquired under an aged Jewess, the daughter of one of their most celebrated doctors, who loved Rebecca as her own child, and was believed to have communicated to her secrets, which had been left to herself by her sage father at the same time, and under the same circumstances. The fate of Miriam had indeed been to fall a sacrifice to the fanaticism of the times; but her secrets had survived in her apt pupil.

Rebecca, thus endowed with knowledge as with beauty, was universally revered and admired by her own tribe, who almost regarded her as one of those gifted women mentioned in the sacred history. Her father himself, out of reverence for her talents, which involuntarily mingled itself with his unbounded affection, permitted the maiden a greater liberty than was usually indulged to those of her sex by the habits of her people, and was, as we have just seen, frequently guided by her opinion, even in preference to his own.

When Ivanhoe reached the habitation of Isaac, he was still in a state of unconsciousness, owing to the profuse loss of blood which had taken place during his exertions in the lists. Rebecca examined the wound, and having applied to it such vulnerary remedies as her art prescribed, informed her father that if fever could be averted, of which the great bleeding rendered her little apprehensive, and if the healing balsam of Miriam retained its virtue, there was nothing to fear for his guest's life, and that he might with safety travel to York with them on the ensuing day. Isaac looked a little blank at this annunciation. His charity would willingly have stopped short at Ashby, or at most would have left the wounded Christian to be tended in the house where he was residing at present, with an assurance to the Hebrew to whom it belonged, that all expenses should be duly discharged. To this, however, Rebecca opposed many reasons, of which we shall only mention two that had peculiar weight with Isaac. The one was, that she would on no account put the phial of precious balsam into the hands of another physician even of her own tribe, lest that valuable mystery should be discovered; the other, that this wounded knight, Wilfred of Ivanhoe, was an intimate favourite of Richard C<oe>ur-de-Lion, and that, in case the monarch should return, Isaac, who had supplied his brother John with treasure to prosecute his rebellious purposes, would stand in no small need of a powerful protector who enjoyed Richard's favour.

``Thou art speaking but sooth, Rebecca,'' said Isaac, giving way to these weighty arguments---``it were an offending of Heaven to betray the secrets of the blessed Miriam; for the good which Heaven giveth, is not rashly to be squandered upon others, whether it be talents of gold and shekels of silver, or whether it be the secret mysteries of a wise physician---assuredly they should be preserved to those to whom Providence hath vouchsafed them. And him whom the Nazarenes of England call the Lion's Heart, assuredly it were better for me to fall into the hands of a strong lion of Idumea than into his, if he shall have got assurance of my dealing with his brother. Wherefore I will lend ear to thy counsel, and this youth shall journey with us unto York, and our house shall be as a home to him until his wounds shall be healed. And if he of the Lion Heart shall return to the land, as is now noised abroad, then shall this Wilfred of Ivanhoe be unto me as a wall of defence, when the king's displeasure shall burn high against thy father. And if he doth not return, this Wilfred may natheless repay us our charges when he shall gain treasure by the strength of his spear and of his sword, even as he did yesterday and this day also. For the youth is a good youth, and keepeth the day which he appointeth, and restoreth that which he borroweth, and succoureth the Israelite, even the child of my father's house, when he is encompassed by strong thieves and sons of Belial.''

It was not until evening was nearly closed that Ivanhoe was restored to consciousness of his situation. He awoke from a broken slumber, under the confused impressions which are naturally attendant on the recovery from a state of insensibility. He was unable for some time to recall exactly to memory the circumstances which had preceded his fall in the lists, or to make out any connected chain of the events in which he had been engaged upon the yesterday. A sense of wounds and injury, joined to great weakness and exhaustion, was mingled with the recollection of blows dealt and received, of steeds rushing upon each other, overthrowing and overthrown---of shouts and clashing of arms, and all the heady tumult of a confused fight. An effort to draw aside the curtain of his conch was in some degree successful, although rendered difficult by the pain of his wound.

To his great surprise he found himself in a room magnificently furnished, but having cushions instead of chairs to rest upon, and in other respects partaking so much of Oriental costume, that he began to doubt whether he had not, during his sleep, been transported back again to the land of Palestine. The impression was increased, when, the tapestry being drawn aside, a female form, dressed in a rich habit, which partook more of the Eastern taste than that of Europe, glided through the door which it concealed, and was followed by a swarthy domestic.

As the wounded knight was about to address this fair apparition, she imposed silence by placing her slender finger upon her ruby lips, while the attendant, approaching him, proceeded to uncover Ivanhoe's side, and the lovely Jewess satisfied herself that the bandage was in its place, and the wound doing well. She performed her task with a graceful and dignified simplicity and modesty, which might, even in more civilized days, have served to redeem it from whatever might seem repugnant to female delicacy. The idea of so young and beautiful a person engaged in attendance on a sick-bed, or in dressing the wound of one of a different sex, was melted away and lost in that of a beneficent being contributing her effectual aid to relieve pain, and to avert the stroke of death. Rebecca's few and brief directions were given in the Hebrew language to the old domestic; and he, who had been frequently her assistant in similar cases, obeyed them without reply.

The accents of an unknown tongue, however harsh they might have sounded when uttered by another, had, coming from the beautiful Rebecca, the romantic and pleasing effect which fancy ascribes to the charms pronounced by some beneficent fairy, unintelligible, indeed, to the ear, but, from the sweetness of utterance, and benignity of aspect, which accompanied them, touching and affecting to the heart. Without making an attempt at further question, Ivanhoe suffered them in silence to take the measures they thought most proper for his recovery; and it was not until those were completed, and this kind physician about to retire. that his curiosity could no longer be suppressed.---``Gentle maiden,'' be began in the Arabian tongue, with which his Eastern travels had rendered him familiar, and which he thought most likely to be understood by the turban'd and caftan'd damsel who stood before him---``I pray you, gentle maiden, of your courtesy------''

But here he was interrupted by his fair physician, a smile which she could scarce suppress dimpling for an instant a face, whose general expression was that of contemplative melancholy. ``I am of England, Sir Knight, and speak the English tongue, although my dress and my lineage belong to another climate.''

``Noble damsel,''---again the Knight of Ivanhoe began; and again Rebecca hastened to interrupt him.

``Bestow not on me, Sir Knight,'' she said, ``the epithet of noble. It is well you should speedily know that your handmaiden is a poor Jewess, the daughter of that Isaac of York, to whom you were so lately a good and kind lord. It well becomes him, and those of his household, to render to you such careful tendance as your present state necessarily demands.''

I know not whether the fair Rowena would have been altogether satisfied with the species of emotion with which her devoted knight had hitherto gazed on the beautiful features, and fair form, and lustrous eyes, of the lovely Rebecca; eyes whose brilliancy was shaded, and, as it were, mellowed, by the fringe of her long silken eyelashes, and which a minstrel would have compared to the evening star darting its rays through a bower of jessamine. But Ivanhoe was too good a Catholic to retain the same class of feelings towards a Jewess. This Rebecca had foreseen, and for this very purpose she had hastened to mention her father's name and lineage; yet---for the fair and wise daughter of Isaac was not without a touch of female weakness---she could not but sigh internally when the glance of respectful admiration, not altogether unmixed with tenderness, with which Ivanhoe had hitherto regarded his unknown benefactress, was exchanged at once for a manner cold, composed, and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling than that which expressed a grateful sense of courtesy received from an unexpected quarter, and from one of an inferior race. It was not that Ivanhoe's former carriage expressed more than that general devotional homage which youth always pays to beauty; yet it was mortifying that one word should operate as a spell to remove poor Rebecca, who could not be supposed altogether ignorant of her title to such homage, into a degraded class, to whom it could not be honourably rendered.

But the gentleness and candour of Rebecca's nature imputed no fault to Ivanhoe for sharing in the universal prejudices of his age and religion. On the contrary the fair Jewess, though sensible her patient now regarded her as one of a race of reprobation, with whom it was disgraceful to hold any beyond the most necessary intercourse, ceased not to pay the same patient and devoted attention to his safety and convalescence. She informed him of the necessity they were under of removing to York, and of her father's resolution to transport him thither, and tend him in his own house until his health should be restored. Ivanhoe expressed great repugnance to this plan, which he grounded on unwillingness to give farther trouble to his benefactors.

``Was there not,'' he said, ``in Ashby, or near it, some Saxon franklin, or even some wealthy peasant, who would endure the burden of a wounded countryman's residence with him until he should be again able to bear his armour?---Was there no convent of Saxon endowment, where he could be received?---Or could he not be transported as far as Burton, where he was sure to find hospitality with Waltheoff, the Abbot of St Withold's, to whom he was related?''

``Any, the worst of these harbourages,'' said Rebecca, with a melancholy smile, ``would unquestionably be more fitting for your residence than the abode of a despised Jew; yet, Sir Knight, unless you would dismiss your physician, you cannot change your lodging. Our nation, as you well know, can cure wounds, though we deal not in inflicting them; and in our own family, in particular, are secrets which have been handed down since the days of Solomon, and of which you have already experienced the advantages. No Nazarene---I crave your forgiveness, Sir Knight---no Christian leech, within the four seas of Britain, could enable you to bear your corslet within a month.''

``And how soon wilt thou enable me to brook it?'' said Ivanhoe, impatiently.

``Within eight days, if thou wilt be patient and conformable to my directions,'' replied Rebecca.

``By Our Blessed Lady,'' said Wilfred, ``if it be not a sin to name her here, it is no time for me or any true knight to be bedridden; and if thou accomplish thy promise, maiden, I will pay thee with my casque full of crowns, come by them as I may.''

``I will accomplish my promise,'' said Rebecca, and thou shalt bear thine armour on the eighth day from hence, if thou will grant me but one boon in the stead of the silver thou dost promise me.''

`If it be within my power, and such as a true Christian knight may yield to one of thy people,'' replied Ivanhoe, ``I will grant thy boon blithely and thankfully.''

``Nay,'' answered Rebecca, ``I will but pray of thee to believe henceforward that a Jew may do good service to a Christian, without desiring other guerdon than the blessing of the Great Father who made both Jew and Gentile.''

``It were sin to doubt it, maiden,'' replied Ivanhoe; ``and I repose myself on thy skill without further scruple or question, well trusting you will enable me to bear my corslet on the eighth day. And now, my kind leech, let me enquire of the news abroad. What of the noble Saxon Cedric and his household?---what of the lovely Lady---'' He stopt, as if unwilling to speak Rowena's name in the house of a Jew---``Of her, I mean, who was named Queen of the tournament?''

``And who was selected by you, Sir Knight, to hold that dignity, with judgment which was admired as much as your valour,'' replied Rebecca.

The blood which Ivanhoe had lost did not prevent a flush from crossing his cheek, feeling that he had incautiously betrayed a deep interest in Rowena by the awkward attempt he had made to conceal it.''

``It was less of her I would speak,'' said he, ``than of Prince John; and I would fain know somewhat of a faithful squire, and why he now attends me not?''

``Let me use my authority as a leech,'' answered Rebecca, ``and enjoin you to keep silence, and avoid agitating reflections, whilst I apprize you of what you desire to know. Prince John hath broken off the tournament, and set forward in all haste towards York, with the nobles, knights, and churchmen of his party, after collecting such sums as they could wring, by fair means or foul, from those who are esteemed the wealthy of the land. It is said be designs to assume his brother's crown.''

``Not without a blow struck in its defence,'' said Ivanhoe, raising himself upon the couch, ``if there were but one true subject in England I will fight for Richard's title with the best of them--- ay, one or two, in his just quarrel!''

``But that you may be able to do so,'' said Rebecca touching his shoulder with her hand, ``you must now observe my directions, and remain quiet.''

``True, maiden,'' said Ivanhoe, ``as quiet as these disquieted times will permit---And of Cedric and his household?''

``His steward came but brief while since,'' said the Jewess, ``panting with haste, to ask my father for certain monies, the price of wool the growth of Cedric's flocks, and from him I learned that Cedric and Athelstane of Coningsburgh had left Prince John's lodging in high displeasure, and were about to set forth on their return homeward.''

``Went any lady with them to the banquet?'' said Wilfred.

``The Lady Rowena,'' said Rebecca, answering the question with more precision than it had been asked---``The Lady Rowena went not to the Prince's feast, and, as the steward reported to us, she is now on her journey back to Rotherwood, with her guardian Cedric. And touching your faithful squire Gurth------''

``Ha!'' exclaimed the knight, ``knowest thou his name?---But thou dost,'' he immediately added, ``and well thou mayst, for it was from thy hand, and, as I am now convinced, from thine own generosity of spirit, that he received but yesterday a hundred zecchins.''

``Speak not of that,'' said Rebecca, blushing deeply; ``I see how easy it is for the tongue to betray what the heart would gladly conceal.''

``But this sum of gold,'' said Ivanhoe, gravely, ``my honour is concerned in repaying it to your father.''

``Let it be as thou wilt,'' said Rebecca, ``when eight days have passed away; but think not, and speak not now, of aught that may retard thy recovery.''

``Be it so, kind maiden,'' said Ivanhoe; ``I were most ungrateful to dispute thy commands. But one word of the fate of poor Gurth, and I have done with questioning thee.''

``I grieve to tell thee, Sir Knight,'' answered the Jewess, `` that he is in custody by the order of Cedric.''---And then observing the distress which her communication gave to Wilfred, she instantly added, ``But the steward Oswald said, that if nothing occurred to renew his master's displeasure against him, he was sure that Cedric would pardon Gurth, a faithful serf, and one who stood high in favour, and who had but committed this error out of the love which he bore to Cedric's son. And he said, moreover, that he and his comrades, and especially Wamba the Jester, were resolved to warn Gurth to make his escape by the way, in case Cedric's ire against him could not be mitigated.''

``Would to God they may keep their purpose!'' said Ivanhoe; ``but it seems as if I were destined to bring ruin on whomsoever hath shown kindness to me. My king, by whom I was honoured and distinguished, thou seest that the brother most indebted to him is raising his arms to grasp his crown;---my regard hath brought restraint and trouble on the fairest of her sex;---and now my father in his mood may slay this poor bondsman but for his love and loyal service to me!---Thou seest, maiden, what an ill-fated wretch thou dost labour to assist; be wise, and let me go, ere the misfortunes which track my footsteps like slot-hounds, shall involve thee also in their pursuit.''

``Nay,'' said Rebecca, ``thy weakness and thy grief, Sir Knight, make thee miscalculate the purposes of Heaven. Thou hast been restored to thy country when it most needed the assistance of a strong hand and a true heart, and thou hast humbled the pride of thine enemies and those of thy king, when their horn was most highly exalted . and for the evil which thou hast sustained, seest thou not that Heaven has raised thee a helper and a physician, even among the most despised of the land?---Therefore, be of good courage, and trust that thou art preserved for some marvel which thine arm shall work before this people. Adieu---and having taken the medicine which I shall send thee by the hand of Reuben, compose thyself again to rest, that thou mayest be the more able to endure the journey on the succeeding day.''

Ivanhoe was convinced by the reasoning, and obeyed the directions, of Rebecca. The drought which Reuben administered was of a sedative and narcotic quality, and secured the patient sound and undisturbed slumbers. In the morning his kind physician found him entirely free from feverish symptoms, and fit to undergo the fatigue of a journey.

He was deposited in the horse-litter which had brought him from the lists, and every precaution taken for his travelling with ease. In one circumstance only even the entreaties of Rebecca were unable to secure sufficient attention to the accommodation of the wounded knight. Isaac, like the enriched traveller of Juvenal's tenth satire, had ever the fear of robbery before his eyes, conscious that he would be alike accounted fair game by the marauding Norman noble, and by the Saxon outlaw. He therefore journeyed at a great rate, and made short halts, and shorter repasts, so that he passed by Cedric and Athelstane who had several hours the start of him, but who had been delayed by their protracted feasting at the convent of Saint Withold's. Yet such was the virtue of Miriam's balsam, or such the strength of Ivanhoe's constitution, that he did not sustain from the hurried journey that inconvenience which his kind physician had apprehended.

In another point of view, however, the Jew's haste proved somewhat more than good speed. The rapidity with which he insisted on travelling, bred several disputes between him and the party whom he had hired to attend him as a guard. These men were Saxons, and not free by any means from the national love of ease and good living which the Normans stigmatized as laziness and gluttony. Reversing Shylock's position, they had accepted the employment in hopes of feeding upon the wealthy Jew, and were very much displeased when they found themselves disappointed, by the rapidity with which he insisted on their proceeding. They remonstrated also upon the risk of damage to their horses by these forced marches. Finally, there arose betwixt Isaac and his satellites a deadly feud, concerning the quantity of wine and ale to be allowed for consumption at each meal. And thus it happened, that when the alarm of danger approached, and that which Isaac feared was likely to come upon him, he was deserted by the discontented mercenaries on whose protection he had relied, without using the means necessary to secure their attachment.

In this deplorable condition the Jew, with his daughter and her wounded patient, were found by Cedric, as has already been noticed, and soon afterwards fell into the power of De Bracy and his confederates. Little notice was at first taken of the horse-litter, and it might have remained behind but for the curiosity of De Bracy, who looked into it under the impression that it might contain the object of his enterprise, for Rowena had not unveiled herself. But De Bracy's astonishment was considerable, when he discovered that the litter contained a wounded man, who, conceiving himself to have fallen into the power of Saxon outlaws, with whom his name might be a protection for himself and his friends, frankly avowed himself to be Wilfred of Ivanhoe.

The ideas of chivalrous honour, which, amidst his wildness and levity, never utterly abandoned De Bracy, prohibited him from doing the knight any injury in his defenceless condition, and equally interdicted his betraying him to Front-de-B<oe>uf, who would have had no scruples to put to death, under any circumstances, the rival claimant of the fief of Ivanhoe. On the other hand, to liberate a suitor preferred by the Lady Rowena, as the events of the tournament, and indeed Wilfred's previous banishment from his father's house, had made matter of notoriety, was a pitch far above the flight of De Bracy's generosity. A middle course betwixt good and evil was all which he found himself capable of adopting, and he commanded two of his own squires to keep close by the litter, and to suffer no one to approach it. If questioned, they were directed by their master to say, that the empty litter of the Lady Rowena was employed to transport one of their comrades who had been wounded in the scuffle. On arriving at Torquilstone, while the Knight Templar and the lord of that castle were each intent upon their own schemes, the one on the Jew's treasure, and the other on his daughter, De Bracy's squires conveyed Ivanhoe, still under the name of a wounded comrade, to a distant apartment. This explanation was accordingly returned by these men to Front-de-B<oe>uf, when he questioned them why they did not make for the battlements upon the alarm.

``A wounded companion!'' he replied in great wrath and astonishment. ``No wonder that churls and yeomen wax so presumptuous as even to lay leaguer before castles, and that clowns and swineherds send defiances to nobles, since men-at-arms have turned sick men's nurses, and Free Companions are grown keepers of dying folk's curtains, when the castle is about to be assailed.---To the battlements, ye loitering villains!'' he exclaimed, raising his stentorian voice till the arches around rung again, ``to the battlements, or I will splinter your bones with this truncheon!''

The men sulkily replied, ``that they desired nothing better than to go to the battlements, providing Front-de-B<oe>uf would bear them out with their master, who had commanded them to tend the dying man.''

``The dying man, knaves!'' rejoined the Baron; ``I promise thee we shall all be dying men an we stand not to it the more stoutly. But I will relieve the guard upon this caitiff companion of yours.--- Here, Urfried---hag---fiend of a Saxon witch--- hearest me not?---tend me this bedridden fellow since he must needs be tended, whilst these knaves use their weapons.---Here be two arblasts, comrades, with windlaces and quarrells*---to the barbican with

* The arblast was a cross-bow, the windlace the machine * used in bending that weapon, and the quarrell, so called from * its square or diamond-shaped head, was the bolt adapted to it.

you, and see you drive each bolt through a Saxon brain.''

The men, who, like most of their description, were fond of enterprise and detested inaction, went joyfully to the scene of danger as they were commanded, and thus the charge of Ivanhoe was transferred to Urfried, or Ulrica. But she, whose brain was burning with remembrance of injuries and with hopes of vengeance, was readily induced to devolve upon Rebecca the care of her patient.

CHAPTER XXIX

Ascend the watch-tower yonder, valiant soldier, Look on the field, and say how goes the battle. Schiller's _Maid of Orleans_.

A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those, which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them. In finding herself once more by the side of Ivanhoe, Rebecca was astonished at the keen sensation of pleasure which she experienced, even at a time when all around them both was danger, if not despair. As she felt his pulse, and enquired after his health, there was a softness in her touch and in her accents implying a kinder interest than she would herself have been pleased to have voluntarily expressed. Her voice faltered and her hand trembled, and it was only the cold question of Ivanhoe, ``Is it you, gentle maiden?'' which recalled her to herself, and reminded her the sensations which she felt were not and could not be mutual. A sigh escaped, but it was scarce audible; and the questions which she asked the knight concerning his state of health were put in the tone of calm friendship. Ivanhoe answered her hastily that he was, in point of health, as well, and better than he could have expected--- ``Thanks,'' he said, ``dear Rebecca, to thy helpful skill.''

``He calls me _dear_ Rebecca,'' said the maiden to herself, ``but it is in the cold and careless tone which ill suits the word. His war-horse---his hunting hound, are dearer to him than the despised Jewess!''

``My mind, gentle maiden,'' continued Ivanhoe, ``is more disturbed by anxiety, than my body with pain. From the speeches of those men who were my warders just now, I learn that I am a prisoner, and, if I judge aright of the loud hoarse voice which even now dispatched them hence on some military duty, I am in the castle of Front-de-B<oe>uf---If so, how will this end, or how can I protect Rowena and my father?''

``He names not the Jew or Jewess,'' said Rebecca internally; ``yet what is our portion in him, and how justly am I punished by Heaven for letting my thoughts dwell upon him!'' She hastened after this brief self-accusation to give Ivanhoe what information she could; but it amounted only to this, that the Templar Bois-Guilbert, and the Baron Front-de-B<oe>uf, were commanders within the castle; that it was beleaguered from without, but by whom she knew not. She added, that there was a Christian priest within the castle who might be possessed of more information.

``A Christian priest!'' said the knight, joyfully; ``fetch him hither, Rebecca, if thou canst---say a sick man desires his ghostly counsel---say what thou wilt, but bring him---something I must do or attempt, but how can I determine until I know how matters stand without?''

Rebecca in compliance with the wishes of Ivanhoe, made that attempt to bring Cedric into the wounded Knight's chamber, which was defeated as we have already seen by the interference of Urfried, who had also been on the watch to intercept the supposed monk. Rebecca retired to communicate to Ivanhoe the result of her errand.

They had not much leisure to regret the failure of this source of intelligence, or to contrive by what means it might be supplied; for the noise within the castle, occasioned by the defensive preparations which had been considerable for some time, now increased into tenfold bustle and clamour. The heavy, yet hasty step of the men-at-arms, traversed the battlements or resounded on the narrow and winding passages and stairs which led to the various bartisans and points of defence. The voices of the knights were heard, animating their followers, or directing means of defence, while their commands were often drowned in the clashing of armour, or the clamorous shouts of those whom they addressed. Tremendous as these sounds were, and yet more terrible from the awful event which they presaged, there was a sublimity mixed with them, which Rebecca's high-toned mind could feel even in that moment of terror. Her eye kindled, although the blood fled from her cheeks; and there was a strong mixture of fear, and of a thrilling sense of the sublime, as she repeated, half whispering to herself, half speaking to her companion, the sacred text,--- ``The quiver rattleth---the glittering spear and the shield---the noise of the captains and the shouting!''

But Ivanhoe was like the war-horse of that sublime passage, glowing with impatience at his inactivity, and with his ardent desire to mingle in the affray of which these sounds were the introduction. ``If I could but drag myself,'' he said, ``to yonder window, that I might see how this brave game is like to go---If I had but bow to shoot a shaft, or battle-axe to strike were it but a single blow for our deliverance!---It is in vain---it is in vain---I am alike nerveless and weaponless!''

``Fret not thyself, noble knight,'' answered Rebecca, ``the sounds have ceased of a sudden---it may be they join not battle.''

``Thou knowest nought of it,'' said Wilfred, impatiently; ``this dead pause only shows that the men are at their posts on the walls, and expecting an instant attack; what we have heard was but the instant muttering of the storm---it will burst anon in all its fury.---Could I but reach yonder window!''

``Thou wilt but injure thyself by the attempt, noble knight,'' replied his attendant. Observing his extreme solicitude, she firmly added, ``I myself will stand at the lattice, and describe to you as I can what passes without.''

``You must not---you shall not!'' exclaimed Ivanhoe; ``each lattice, each aperture, will be soon a mark for the archers; some random shaft---''

``It shall be welcome!'' murmured Rebecca, as with firm pace she ascended two or three steps, which led to the window of which they spoke.

``Rebecca, dear Rebecca!'' exclaimed Ivanhoe, ``this is no maiden's pastime---do not expose thyself to wounds and death, and render me for ever miserable for having given the occasion; at least, cover thyself with yonder ancient buckler, and show as little of your person at the lattice as may be.''

Following with wonderful promptitude the directions of Ivanhoe, and availing herself of the protection of the large ancient shield, which she placed against the lower part of the window, Rebecca, with tolerable security to herself, could witness part of what was passing without the castle, and report to Ivanhoe the preparations which the assailants were making for the storm. Indeed the situation which she thus obtained was peculiarly favourable for this purpose, because, being placed on an angle of the main building, Rebecca could not only see what passed beyond the precincts of the castle, but also commanded a view of the outwork likely to be the first object of the meditated assault. It was an exterior fortification of no great height or strength, intended to protect the postern-gate, through which Cedric had been recently dismissed by Front-de-B<oe>uf. The castle moat divided this species of barbican from the rest of the fortress, so that, in case of its being taken, it was easy to cut off the communication with the main building, by withdrawing the temporary bridge. In the outwork was a sallyport corresponding to the postern of the castle, and the whole was surrounded by a strong palisade. Rebecca could observe, from the number of men placed for the defence of this post, that the besieged entertained apprehensions for its safety; and from the mustering of the assailants in a direction nearly opposite to the outwork, it seemed no less plain that it had been selected as a vulnerable point of attack.

These appearances she hastily communicated to Ivanhoe, and added, ``The skirts of the wood seem lined with archers, although only a few are advanced from its dark shadow.''

``Under what banner?'' asked Ivanhoe.

``Under no ensign of war which I can observe,'' answered Rebecca.

``A singular novelty,'' muttered the knight, ``to advance to storm such a castle without pennon or banner displayed!---Seest thou who they be that act as leaders?''

``A knight, clad in sable armour, is the most conspicuous,'' said the Jewess; ``he alone is armed from head to heel, and seems to assume the direction of all around him.''

``What device does he bear on his shield?'' replied Ivanhoe.

``Something resembling a bar of iron, and a padlock painted blue on the black shield.''*

* The author has been here upbraided with false heraldry, as * having charged metal upon metal. It should be remembered, * however, that heraldry had only its first rude origin during the * crusades, and that all the minuti<ae> of its fantastic science were * the work of time, and introduced at a much later period. Those * who think otherwise must suppose that the Goddess of _Armoirers_, * like the Goddess of Arms, sprung into the world completely * equipped in all the gaudy trappings of the department she * presides over.

``A fetterlock and shacklebolt azure,'' said Ivanhoe; ``I know not who may bear the device, but well I ween it might now be mine own. Canst thou not see the motto?''

``Scarce the device itself at this distance,'' replied Rebecca; ``but when the sun glances fair upon his shield, it shows as I tell you.''

``Seem there no other leaders?'' exclaimed the anxious enquirer.

``None of mark and distinction that I can behold from this station,'' said Rebecca; ``but, doubtless, the other side of the castle is also assailed. They appear even now preparing to advance---God of Zion, protect us!---What a dreadful sight!---Those who advance first bear huge shields and defences made of plank; the others follow, bending their bows as they come on.---They raise their bows!--- God of Moses, forgive the creatures thou hast made!''

Her description was here suddenly interrupted by the signal for assault, which was given by the blast of a shrill bugle, and at once answered by a flourish of the Norman trumpets from the battlements, which, mingled with the deep and hollow clang of the nakers, (a species of kettle-drum,) retorted in notes of defiance the challenge of the enemy. The shouts of both parties augmented the fearful din, the assailants crying, ``Saint George for merry England!'' and the Normans answering them with loud cries of ``_En avant De Bracy! ---Beau-seant! Beau-seant!---Front-de-B<oe>uf <a`> la rescousse!'' according to the war-cries of their different commanders.

It was not, however, by clamour that the contest was to be decided, and the desperate efforts of the assailants were met by an equally vigorous defence on the part of the besieged. The archers, trained by their woodland pastimes to the most effective use of the long-bow, shot, to use the appropriate phrase of the time, so ``wholly together,'' that no point at which a defender could show the least part of his person, escaped their cloth-yard shafts. By this heavy discharge, which continued as thick and sharp as hail, while, notwithstanding, every arrow had its individual aim, and flew by scores together against each embrasure and opening in the parapets, as well as at every window where a defender either occasionally had post, or might be suspected to be stationed,---by this sustained discharge, two or three of the garrison were slain, and several others wounded. But, confident in their armour of proof, and in the cover which their situation afforded, the followers of Front-de-B<oe>uf, and his allies, showed an obstinacy in defence proportioned to the fury of the attack and replied with the discharge of their large cross-bows, as well as with their long-bows, slings, and other missile weapons, to the close and continued shower of arrows; and, as the assailants were necessarily but indifferently protected, did considerably more damage than they received at their hand. The whizzing of shafts and of missiles, on both sides, was only interrupted by the shouts which arose when either side inflicted or sustained some notable loss.

``And I must lie here like a bedridden monk,'' exclaimed Ivanhoe, ``while the game that gives me freedom or death is played out by the hand of others!---Look from the window once again, kind maiden, but beware that you are not marked by the archers beneath---Look out once more, and tell me if they yet advance to the storm.''

With patient courage, strengthened by the interval which she had employed in mental devotion, Rebecca again took post at the lattice, sheltering herself, however, so as not to be visible from beneath.

``What dost thou see, Rebecca?'' again demanded the wounded knight.

``Nothing but the cloud of arrows flying so thick as to dazzle mine eyes, and to hide the bowmen who shoot them.''

``That cannot endure,'' said Ivanhoe; ``if they press not right on to carry the castle by pure force of arms, the archery may avail but little against stone walls and bulwarks. Look for the Knight of the Fetterlock, fair Rebecca, and see how he bears himself; for as the leader is, so will his followers be.''

``I see him not,'' said Rebecca.

``Foul craven!'' exclaimed Ivanhoe; ``does he blench from the helm when the wind blows highest?''

``He blenches not! he blenches not!'' said Rebecca, ``I see him now; he leads a body of men close under the outer barrier of the barbican.*---

* Every Gothic castle and city had, beyond the outer-walls, * a fortification composed of palisades, called the barriers, which * were often the scene of severe skirmishes, as these must necessarily * be carried before the walls themselves could be approached. * Many of those valiant feats of arms which adorn the chivalrous * pages of Froissart took place at the barriers of besieged * places.

They pull down the piles and palisades; they hew down the barriers with axes.---His high black plume floats abroad over the throng, like a raven over the field of the slain.---They have made a breach in the barriers---they rush in---they are thrust back!--- Front-de-B<oe>uf heads the defenders; I see his gigantic form above the press. They throng again to the breach, and the pass is disputed hand to hand, and man to man. God of Jacob! it is the meeting of two fierce tides---the conflict of two oceans moved by adverse winds!''

She turned her head from the lattice, as if unable longer to endure a sight so terrible.

``Look forth again, Rebecca,'' said Ivanhoe, mistaking the cause of her retiring; ``the archery must in some degree have ceased, since they are now fighting hand to hand.---Look again, there is now less danger.''

Rebecca again looked forth, and almost immediately exclaimed, ``Holy prophets of the law! Front-de-B<oe>uf and the Black Knight fight hand to hand on the breach, amid the roar of their followers, who watch the progress of the strife---Heaven strike with the cause of the oppressed and of the captive!'' She then uttered a loud shriek, and exclaimed, ``He is down!---he is down!''

``Who is down?'' cried Ivanhoe; ``for our dear Lady's sake, tell me which has fallen?''

``The Black Knight,'' answered Rebecca, faintly; then instantly again shouted with joyful eagerness--- ``But no---but no!---the name of the Lord of Hosts be blessed!---he is on foot again, and fights as if there were twenty men's strength in his single arm---His sword is broken---he snatches an axe from a yeoman---he presses Front-de-B<oe>uf with blow on blow---The giant stoops and totters like an oak under the steel of the woodman---he falls---he falls!''

``Front-de-B<oe>uf?'' exclaimed Ivanhoe.

``Front-de-B<oe>uf!'' answered the Jewess; ``his men rush to the rescue, headed by the haughty Templar---their united force compels the champion to pause---They drag Front-de-B<oe>uf within the walls.''

``The assailants have won the barriers, have they not?'' said Ivanhoe.

``They have---they have!'' exclaimed Rebecca--- ``and they press the besieged hard upon the outer wall; some plant ladders, some swarm like bees, and endeavour to ascend upon the shoulders of each other---down go stones, beams, and trunks of trees upon their heads, and as fast as they bear the wounded to the rear, fresh men supply their places in the assault---Great God! hast thou given men thine own image, that it should be thus cruelly defaced by the hands of their brethren!''

``Think not of that,'' said Ivanhoe; ``this is no time for such thoughts---Who yield?---who push their way?''

``The ladders are thrown down,'' replied Rebecca, shuddering; ``the soldiers lie grovelling under them like crushed reptiles---The besieged have the better.''

``Saint George strike for us!'' exclaimed the knight; ``do the false yeomen give way?''

``No!'' exclaimed Rebecca, ``they bear themselves right yeomanly---the Black Knight approaches the postern with his huge axe---the thundering blows which he deals, you may hear them above all the din and shouts of the battle---Stones and beams are hailed down on the bold champion--- he regards them no more than if they were thistle-down or feathers!''

``By Saint John of Acre,'' said Ivanhoe, raising himself joyfully on his couch, ``methought there was but one man in England that might do such a deed!''

``The postern gate shakes,'' continued Rebecca; ``it crashes---it is splintered by his blows---they rush in---the outwork is won---Oh, God!---they hurl the defenders from the battlements---they throw them into the moat---O men, if ye be indeed men, spare them that can resist no longer!''

``The bridge---the bridge which communicates with the castle---have they won that pass?'' exclaimed Ivanhoe.

``No,'' replied Rebecca, ``The Templar has destroyed the plank on which they crossed---few of the defenders escaped with him into the castle--- the shrieks and cries which you hear tell the fate of the others---Alas!---I see it is still more difficult to look upon victory than upon battle.''

``What do they now, maiden?'' said Ivanhoe; ``look forth yet again---this is no time to faint at bloodshed.''

``It is over for the time,'' answered Rebecca; ``our friends strengthen themselves within the outwork which they have mastered, and it affords them so good a shelter from the foemen's shot, that the garrison only bestow a few bolts on it from interval to interval, as if rather to disquiet than effectually to injure them.''

``Our friends,'' said Wilfred, ``will surely not abandon an enterprise so gloriously begun and so happily attained.---O no! I will put my faith in the good knight whose axe hath rent heart-of-oak and bars of iron.---Singular,'' he again muttered to himself, ``if there be two who can do a deed of such _derring-do!_*---a fetterlock, and a shacklebolt on

* _Derring-do_---desperate courage.

a field sable---what may that mean?---seest thou nought else, Rebecca, by which the Black Knight may be distinguished?''

``Nothing,'' said the Jewess; ``all about him is black as the wing of the night raven. Nothing can I spy that can mark him further---but having once seen him put forth his strength in battle, methinks I could know him again among a thousand warriors. He rushes to the fray as if he were summoned to a banquet. There is more than mere strength, there seems as if the whole soul and spirit of the champion were given to every blow which he deals upon his enemies. God assoilzie him of the sin of bloodshed!---it is fearful, yet magnificent, to behold bow the arm and heart of one man can triumph over hundreds.''

``Rebecca,'' said Ivanhoe, ``thou hast painted a hero; surely they rest but to refresh their force, or to provide the means of crossing the moat---Under such a leader as thou hast spoken this knight to be, there are no craven fears, no cold-blooded delays, no yielding up a gallant emprize; since the difficulties which render it arduous render it also glorious. I swear by the honour of my house---I vow by the name of my bright lady-love, I would endure ten years' captivity to fight one day by that good knight's side in such a quarrel as this!''

``Alas,'' said Rebecca, leaving her station at the window, and approaching the couch of the wounded knight, ``this impatient yearning after action--- this struggling with and repining at your present weakness, will not fail to injure your returning health---How couldst thou hope to inflict wounds on others, ere that be healed which thou thyself hast received?''

``Rebecca,'' he replied, ``thou knowest not how impossible it is for one trained to actions of chivalry to remain passive as a priest, or a woman, when they are acting deeds of honour around him. The love of battle is the food upon which we live ---the dust of the _m<e^>l<e'>e_ is the breath of our nostrils! We live not---we wish not to live---longer than while we are victorious and renowned---Such, maiden, are the laws of chivalry to which we are sworn, and to which we offer all that we hold dear.''

``Alas!'' said the fair Jewess, ``and what is it, valiant knight, save an offering of sacrifice to a demon of vain glory, and a passing through the fire to Moloch?---What remains to you as the prize of all the blood you have spilled---of all the travail and pain you have endured---of all the tears which your deeds have caused, when death hath broken the strong man's spear, and overtaken the speed of his war-horse?''

``What remains?'' cried Ivanhoe; ``Glory, maiden, glory! which gilds our sepulchre and embalms our name.''

``Glory?'' continued Rebecca; ``alas, is the rusted mail which hangs as a hatchment over the champion's dim and mouldering tomb---is the defaced sculpture of the inscription which the ignorant monk can hardly read to the enquiring pilgrim ---are these sufficient rewards for the sacrifice of every kindly affection, for a life spent miserably that ye may make others miserable? Or is there such virtue in the rude rhymes of a wandering bard, that domestic love, kindly affection, peace and happiness, are so wildly bartered, to become the hero of those ballads which vagabond minstrels sing to drunken churls over their evening ale?''

``By the soul of Hereward?'' replied the knight impatiently, ``thou speakest, maiden, of thou knowest not what. Thou wouldst quench the pure light of chivalry, which alone distinguishes the noble from the base, the gentle knight from the churl and the savage; which rates our life far, far beneath the pitch of our honour; raises us victorious over pain, toil, and suffering, and teaches us to fear no, evil but disgrace. Thou art no Christian, Rebecca; and to thee are unknown those high feelings which swell the bosom of a noble maiden when her lover hath done some deed of emprize which sanctions his flame. Chivalry!---why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection---the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant---Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.''

``I am, indeed,'' said Rebecca, ``sprung from a race whose courage was distinguished in the defence of their own land, but who warred not, even while yet a nation, save at the command of the Deity, or in defending their country from oppression. The sound of the trumpet wakes Judah no longer, and her despised children are now but the unresisting victims of hostile and military oppression. Well hast thou spoken, Sir Knight,---until the God of Jacob shall raise up for his chosen people a second Gideon, or a new Maccabeus, it ill beseemeth the Jewish damsel to speak of battle or of war.''

The high-minded maiden concluded the argument in a tone of sorrow, which deeply expressed her sense of the degradation of her people, embittered perhaps by the idea that Ivanhoe considered her as one not entitled to interfere in a case of honour, and incapable of entertaining or expressing sentiments of honour and generosity.

``How little he knows this bosom,'' she said, ``to imagine that cowardice or meanness of soul must needs be its guests, because I have censured the fantastic chivalry of the Nazarenes! Would to heaven that the shedding of mine own blood, drop by drop, could redeem the captivity of Judah! Nay, would to God it could avail to set free my father, and this his benefactor, from the chains of the oppressor! The proud Christian should then see whether the daughter of God's chosen people dared not to die as bravely as the vainest Nazarene maiden, that boasts her descent from some petty chieftain of the rude and frozen north!''

She then looked towards the couch of the wounded knight.

``He sleeps,'' she said; ``nature exhausted by sufferance and the waste of spirits, his wearied frame embraces the first moment of temporary relaxation to sink into slumber. Alas! is it a crime that I should look upon him, when it may be for the last time?---When yet but a short space, and those fair features will be no longer animated by the bold and buoyant spirit which forsakes them not even in sleep!---When the nostril shall be distended, the mouth agape, the eyes fixed and bloodshot; and when the proud and noble knight may be trodden on by the lowest caitiff of this accursed castle, yet stir not when the heel is lifted up against him! ---And my father!---oh, my father! evil is it with his daughter, when his grey hairs are not remembered because of the golden locks of youth!--- What know I but that these evils are the messengers of Jehovah's wrath to the unnatural child, who thinks of a stranger's captivity before a parent's? who forgets the desolation of Judah, and looks upon the comeliness of a Gentile and a stranger?--- But I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!''

She wrapped herself closely in her veil, and sat down at a distance from the couch of the wounded knight, with her back turned towards it, fortifying, or endeavouring to fortify her mind, not only against the impending evils from without, but also against those treacherous feelings which assailed her from within.

Addition to Note attached to page **.

In corroboration of what is above stated in Note at page **, it may be observed, that the arms, which were assumed by Godfrey of Boulogne himself, after the conquest of Jerusalem, was a cross counter patent cantoned with four little crosses or, upon a field azure, displaying thus metal upon metal. The heralds have tried to explain this undeniable fact in different modes--- but Ferne gallantly contends, that a prince of Godfrey's qualities should not be bound by the ordinary rules. The Scottish Nisbet, and the same Ferne, insist that the chiefs of the Crusade must have assigned to Godfrey this extraordinary and unwonted coat-of-arms, in order to induce those who should behold them to make enquiries; and hence give them the name of _arma inquirenda_. But with reverence to these grave authorities, it seems unlikely that the assembled princes of Europe should have adjudged to Godfrey a coat armorial so much contrary to the general rule, if such rule had then existed; at any rate, it proves that metal upon metal, now accounted a solecism in heraldry, was admitted in other cases similar to that in the text. See Ferne's _Blazon of Gentrie_, p. 238. Edition 1586. Nisbet's _Heraldry_, vol. i. p. 113. Second Edition.

CHAPTER XXX

Approach the chamber, look upon his bed. His is the passing of no peaceful ghost, Which, as the lark arises to the sky, 'Mid morning's sweetest breeze and softest dew, Is wing'd to heaven by good men's sighs and tears!--- Anselm parts otherwise. _Old Play._

During the interval of quiet which followed the first success of the besiegers, while the one party was preparing to pursue their advantage, and the other to strengthen their means of defence, the Templar and De Bracy held brief council together in the hall of the castle.

``Where is Front-de-B<oe>uf?'' said the latter, who had superintended the defence of the fortress on the other side; ``men say he hath been slain.''

``He lives,'' said the Templar, coolly, ``lives as yet; but had he worn the bull's head of which he bears the name, and ten plates of iron to fence it withal, he must have gone down before yonder fatal axe. Yet a few hours, and Front-de-B<oe>uf is with his fathers---a powerful limb lopped off Prince John's enterprise.''

``And a brave addition to the kingdom of Satan,'' said De Bracy; ``this comes of reviling saints and angels, and ordering images of holy things and holy men to be flung down on the heads of these rascaille yeomen.''

``Go to---thou art a fool,'' said the Templar; ``thy superstition is upon a level with Front-de-B<oe>uf's want of faith; neither of you can render a reason for your belief or unbelief.''

``Benedicite, Sir Templar,'' replied De Bracy, ``pray you to keep better rule with your tongue when I am the theme of it. By the Mother of Heaven, I am a better Christian man than thou and thy fellowship; for the _bruit_ goeth shrewdly out, that the most holy Order of the Temple of Zion nurseth not a few heretics within its bosom, and that Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert is of the number.''

``Care not thou for such reports,'' said the Templar; ``but let us think of making good the castle. ---How fought these villain yeomen on thy side?''

``Like fiends incarnate,'' said De Bracy. ``They swanned close up to the walls, headed, as I think, by the knave who won the prize at the archery, for I knew his horn and baldric. And this is old Fitzurse's boasted policy, encouraging these malapert knaves to rebel against us! Had I not been armed in proof, the villain had marked me down seven times with as little remorse as if I had been a buck in season. He told every rivet on my armour with a cloth-yard shaft, that rapped against my ribs with as little compunction as if my bones had been of iron---But that I wore a shirt of Spanish mail under my plate-coat, I had been fairly sped.''

``But you maintained your post?'' said the Templar. ``We lost the outwork on our part.''

``That is a shrewd loss,'' said De Bracy; ``the knaves will find cover there to assault the castle more closely, and may, if not well watched, gain some unguarded corner of a tower, or some forgotten window, and so break in upon us. Our numbers are too few for the defence of every point, and the men complain that they can nowhere show themselves, but they are the mark for as many arrows as a parish-butt on a holyday even. Front-de-B<oe>uf is dying too, so we shall receive no more aid from his bull's head and brutal strength. How think you, Sir Brian, were we not better make a virtue of necessity, and compound with the rogues by delivering up our prisoners?''

``How?'' exclaimed the Templar; ``deliver up our prisoners, and stand an object alike of ridicule and execration, as the doughty warriors who dared by a night-attack to possess themselves of the persons of a party of defenceless travellers, yet could not make good a strong castle against a vagabond troop of outlaws, led by swineherds, jesters, and the very refuse of mankind?---Shame on thy counsel, Maurice de Bracy!---The ruins of this castle shall bury both my body and my shame, ere I consent to such base and dishonourable composition.''

``Let us to the walls, then,'' said De Bracy, carelessly; ``that man never breathed, be he Turk or Templar, who held life at lighter rate than I do. But I trust there is no dishonour in wishing I had here some two scores of my gallant troop of Free Companions?---Oh, my brave lances! if ye knew but how hard your captain were this day bested, how soon should I see my banner at the head of your clump of spears! And how short while would these rabble villains stand to endure your encounter!''

``Wish for whom thou wilt,'' said the Templar, ``but let us make what defence we can with the soldiers who remain---They are chiefly Front-de-B<oe>uf's followers, hated by the English for a thousand acts of insolence and oppression.''

``The better,'' said De Bracy; ``the rugged slaves will defend themselves to the last drop of their blood, ere they encounter the revenge of the peasants without. Let us up and be doing, then, Brian de Bois-Guilbert; and, live or die, thou shalt see Maurice de Bracy bear himself this day as a gentleman of blood and lineage.'' ``To the walls!'' answered the Templar; and they both ascended the battlements to do all that skill could dictate, and manhood accomplish, in defence of the place. They readily agreed that the point of greatest danger was that opposite to the outwork of which the assailants had possessed themselves. The castle, indeed, was divided from that barbican by the moat, and it was impossible that the besiegers could assail the postern-door, with which the outwork corresponded, without surmounting that obstacle; but it was the opinion both of the Templar and De Bracy, that the besiegers, if governed by the same policy their leader had already displayed, would endeavour, by a formidable assault, to draw the chief part of the defenders' observation to this point, and take measures to avail themselves of every negligence which might take place in the defence elsewhere. To guard against such an evil, their numbers only permitted the knights to place sentinels from space to space along the walls in communication with each other, who might give the alarm whenever danger was threatened. Meanwhile, they agreed that De Bracy should command the defence at the postern, and the Templar should keep with him a score of men or thereabouts as a body of reserve, ready to hasten to any other point which might be suddenly threatened. The loss of the barbican had also this unfortunate effect, that, notwithstanding the superior height of the castle walls, the besieged could not see from them, with the same precision as before, the operations of the enemy; for some straggling underwood approached so near the sallyport of the outwork, that the assailants might introduce into it whatever force they thought proper, not only under cover, but even without the knowledge of the defenders. Utterly uncertain, therefore, upon what point the storm was to burst, De Bracy and his companion were under the necessity of providing against every possible contingency, and their followers, however brave, experienced the anxious dejection of mind incident to men enclosed by enemies, who possessed the power of choosing their time and mode of attack.

Meanwhile, the lord of the beleaguered and endangered castle lay upon a bed of bodily pain and mental agony. He had not the usual resource of bigots in that superstitious period, most of whom were wont to atone for the crimes they were guilty of by liberality to the church, stupefying by this means their terrors by the idea of atonement and forgiveness; and although the refuge which success thus purchased, was no more like to the peace of mind which follows on sincere repentance, than the turbid stupefaction procured by opium resembles healthy and natural slumbers, it was still a state of mind preferable to the agonies of awakened remorse. But among the vices of Front-de-B<oe>uf, a hard and griping man, avarice was predominant; and he preferred setting church and churchmen at defiance, to purchasing from them pardon and absolution at the price of treasure and of manors. Nor did the Templar, an infidel of another stamp, justly characterise his associate, when he said Front-de-B<oe>uf could assign no cause for his unbelief and contempt for the established faith; for the Baron would have alleged that the Church sold her wares too dear, that the spiritual freedom which she put up to sale was only to be bought like that of the chief captain of Jerusalem, ``with a great sum,'' and Front-de-B<oe>uf preferred denying the virtue of the medicine, to paying the expense of the physician.

But the moment had now arrived when earth and all his treasures were gliding from before his eyes, and when the savage Baron's heart, though hard as a nether millstone, became appalled as he gazed forward into the waste darkness of futurity. The fever of his body aided the impatience and agony of his mind, and his death-bed exhibited a mixture of the newly awakened feelings of horror, combating with the fixed and inveterate obstinacy of his disposition; ---a fearful state of mind, only to be equalled in those tremendous regions, where there are complaints without hope, remorse without repentance, a dreadful sense of present agony, and a presentiment that it cannot cease or be diminished!

``Where be these dog-priests now,'' growled the Baron, ``who set such price on their ghostly mummery? ---where be all those unshod Carmelites, for whom old Front-de-B<oe>uf founded the convent of St Anne, robbing his heir of many a fair rood of meadow, and many a fat field and close---where be the greedy hounds now?---Swilling, I warrant me, at the ale, or playing their juggling tricks at the bedside of some miserly churl.---Me, the heir of their founder---me, whom their foundation binds them to pray for---me---ungrateful villains as they are!---they suffer to die like the houseless dog on yonder common, unshriven and tinhouseled!---Tell the Templar to come hither---he is a priest, and may do something---But no!---as well confess myself to the devil as to Brian de Bois-Guilbert, who recks neither of heaven nor of hell.---I have heard old men talk of prayer---prayer by their own voice ---Such need not to court or to bribe the false priest ---But I---I dare not!''

``Lives Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf,'' said a broken and shrill voice close by his bedside, ``to say there is that which he dares not!''

The evil conscience and the shaken nerves of Front-de-B<oe>uf heard, in this strange interruption to his soliloquy, the voice of one of those demons, who, as the superstition of the times believed, beset the beds of dying men to distract their thoughts, and turn them from the meditations which concerned their eternal welfare. He shuddered and drew himself together; but, instantly summoning up his wonted resolution, he exclaimed, ``Who is there?---what art thou, that darest to echo my words in a tone like that of the night-raven?--- Come before my couch that I may see thee.''

``I am thine evil angel, Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf,'' replied the voice.

``Let me behold thee then in thy bodily shape, if thou best indeed a fiend,'' replied the dying knight; ``think not that I will blench from thee. ---By the eternal dungeon, could I but grapple with these horrors that hover round me, as I have done with mortal dangers, heaven or hell should never say that I shrunk from the conflict!''

``Think on thy sins, Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf,'' said the almost unearthly voice, ``on rebellion, on rapine, on murder!---Who stirred up the licentious John to war against his grey-headed father---against his generous brother?''

``Be thou fiend, priest, or devil,'' replied Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``thou liest in thy throat!---Not I stirred John to rebellion---not I alone---there were fifty knights and barons, the flower of the midland counties---better men never laid lance in rest---And must I answer for the fault done by fifty?---False fiend, I defy thee! Depart, and haunt my couch no more---let me die in peace if thou be mortal--- if thou be a demon, thy time is not yet come.''

``In peace thou shalt =not= die,'' repeated the voice; ``even in death shalt thou think on thy murders ---on the groans which this castle has echoed--- on the blood that is engrained in its floors!''

``Thou canst not shake me by thy petty malice,'' answered Front-de-B<oe>uf, with a ghastly and constrained laugh. ``The infidel Jew---it was merit with heaven to deal with him as I did, else wherefore are men canonized who dip their hands in the blood of Saracens?---The Saxon porkers, whom I have slain, they were the foes of my country, and of my lineage, and of my liege lord.---Ho! ho! thou seest there is no crevice in my coat of plate--- Art thou fled?---art thou silenced?''

``No, foul parricide!'' replied the voice; ``think of thy father!---think of his death!---think of his banquet-room flooded with his gore, and that poured forth by the hand of a son!''

``Ha!'' answered the Baron, after a long pause, ``an thou knowest that, thou art indeed the author of evil, and as omniscient as the monks call thee! ---That secret I deemed locked in my own breast, and in that of one besides---the temptress, the partaker of my guilt.---Go, leave me, fiend! and seek the Saxon witch Ulrica, who alone could tell thee what she and I alone witnessed.---Go, I say, to her, who washed the wounds, and straighted the corpse, and gave to the slain man the outward show of one parted in time and in the course of nature---Go to her, she was my temptress, the foul provoker, the more foul rewarder, of the deed---let her, as well as I, taste of the tortures which anticipate hell!''

``She already tastes them,'' said Ulrica, stepping before the couch of Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``she hath long drunken of this cup, and its bitterness is now sweetened to see that thou dost partake it.---Grind not thy teeth, Front-de-B<oe>uf---roll not thine eyes ---clench not thine hand, nor shake it at me with that gesture of menace!---The hand which, like that of thy renowned ancestor who gained thy name, could have broken with one stroke the skull of a mountain-bull, is now unnerved and powerless as mine own!''

``Vile murderous hag!'' replied Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``detestable screech-owl! it is then thou who art come to exult over the ruins thou hast assisted to lay low?''

``Ay, Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf,'' answered she, ``it is Ulrica!---it is the daughter of the murdered Torquil Wolfganger!---it is the sister of his slaughtered sons!---it is she who demands of thee, and of thy father's house, father and kindred, name and fame---all that she has lost by the name of Front-de-B<oe>uf!---Think of my wrongs, Front-de-B<oe>uf, and answer me if I speak not truth. Thou hast been my evil angel, and I will be thine---I will dog thee till the very instant of dissolution!''

``Detestable fury!'' exclaimed Front-de-B<oe>uf, ``that moment shalt thou never witness---Ho! Giles, Clement, and Eustace! Saint Maur, and Stephen! seize this damned witch, and hurl her from the battlements headlong---she has betrayed us to the Saxon!---Ho! Saint Maur! Clement! false-hearted, knaves, where tarry ye?''

``Call on them again, valiant Baron,'' said the hag, with a smile of grisly mockery; ``summon thy vassals around thee, doom them that loiter to the scourge and the dungeon---But know, mighty chief,'' she continued, suddenly changing her tone, ``thou shalt have neither answer, nor aid, nor obedience at their hands.---Listen to these horrid sounds,'' for the din of the recommenced assault and defence now rung fearfully loud from the battlements of the castle; ``in that war-cry is the downfall of thy house---The blood-cemented fabric of Front-de-B<oe>uf's power totters to the foundation, and before the foes he most despised!---The Saxon, Reginald! ---the scorned Saxon assails thy walls!---Why liest thou here, like a worn-out hind, when the Saxon storms thy place of strength?''

``Gods and fiends!'' exclaimed the wounded knight; ``O, for one moment's strength, to drag myself to the _m<e^>l<e'>e_, and perish as becomes my name!''

``Think not of it, valiant warrior!'' replied she; ``thou shalt die no soldier's death, but perish like the fox in his den, when the peasants have set fire to the cover around it.''

``Hateful hag! thou liest!'' exclaimed Front-de-B<oe>uf; ``my followers bear them bravely---my walls are strong and high---my comrades in arms fear not a whole host of Saxons, were they headed by Hengist and Horsa!---The war-cry of the Templar and of the Free Companions rises high over the conflict! And by mine honour, when we kindle the blazing beacon, for joy of our defence, it shall consume thee, body and bones; and I shall live to hear thou art gone from earthly fires to those of that hell, which never sent forth an incarnate fiend more utterly diabolical!''

``Hold thy belief,'' replied Ulrica, ``till the proof reach thee---But, no!'' she said, interrupting herself, ``thou shalt know, even now, the doom, which all thy power, strength, and courage, is unable to avoid, though it is prepared for thee by this feeble band. Markest thou the smouldering and suffocating vapour which already eddies in sable folds through the chamber?---Didst thou think it was but the darkening of thy bursting eyes---the difficulty of thy cumbered breathing?---No! Front-de-B<oe>uf, there is another cause---Rememberest thou the magazine of fuel that is stored beneath these apartments?''

``Woman!'' he exclaimed with fury, ``thou hast not set fire to it?---By heaven, thou hast, and the castle is in flames!''

``They are fast rising at least,'' said Ulrica, with frightful composure; ``and a signal shall soon wave to warn the besiegers to press hard upon those who would extinguish them.---Farewell, Front-de-B<oe>uf! ---May Mista, Skogula, and Zernebock, gods of the ancient Saxons---fiends, as the priests now call them---supply the place of comforters at your dying bed, which Ulrica now relinquishes!--- But know, if it will give thee comfort to know it, that Ulrica is bound to the same dark coast with thyself, the companion of thy punishment as the companion of thy guilt.---And now, parricide, farewell for ever!---May each stone of this vaulted roof find a tongue to echo that title into thine ear!''

So saying, she left the apartment; and Front-de-B<oe>uf could hear the crash of the ponderous key, as she locked and double-locked the door behind her, thus cutting off the most slender chance of escape. In the extremity of agony he shouted upon his servants and allies--``Stephen and Saint Maur! ---Clement and Giles!---I burn here unaided!--- To the rescue---to the rescue, brave Bois-Guilbert, valiant De Bracy!---It is Front-de-B<oe>uf who calls! ---It is your master, ye traitor squires!---Your ally ---your brother in arms, ye perjured and faithless knights!---all the curses due to traitors upon your recreant heads, do you abandon me to perish thus miserably!---They hear me not---they cannot hear me---my voice is lost in the din of battle.---The smoke rolls thicker and thicker---the fire has caught upon the floor below---O, for one drought of the air of heaven, were it to be purchased by instant annihilation!'' And in the mad frenzy of despair, the wretch now shouted with the shouts of the fighters, now muttered curses on himself, on mankind, and on Heaven itself.---``The red fire flashes through the thick smoke!'' he exclaimed; ``the demon marches against me under the banner of his own element---Foul spirit, avoid!---I go not with thee without my comrades---all, all are thine, that garrison these walls---Thinkest thou Front-de-B<oe>uf will be singled out to go alone?---No---the infidel Templar---the licentious De Bracy---Ulrica, the foul murdering strumpet---the men who aided my enterprises---the dog Saxons and accursed Jews, who are my prisoners---all, all shall attend me---a goodly fellowship as ever took the downward road---Ha, ha, ha!'' and he laughed in his frenzy till the vaulted roof rang again. ``Who laughed there?'' exclaimed Front-de-B<oe>uf, in altered mood, for the noise of the conflict did not prevent the echoes of his own mad laughter from returning upon his ear---``who laughed there?--- Ulrica, was it thou?---Speak, witch, and I forgive thee---for, only thou or the fiend of hell himself could have laughed at such a moment. Avaunt---avaunt!------''

But it were impious to trace any farther the picture of the blasphemer and parricide's deathbed.