Ivanhoe: A Romance
computation, I must be at least a hundred and fifty years old.”
“I will warrant you against dying of old age, however,” said the
Templar, who now recognised his friend of the forest; “I will assure
you from all deaths but a violent one, if you give such directions to
wayfarers, as you did this night to the Prior and me.”
“How, sirrah!” said Cedric, “misdirect travellers? We must have you
whipt; you are at least as much rogue as fool.”
“I pray thee, uncle,” answered the Jester, “let my folly, for once,
protect my roguery. I did but make a mistake between my right hand and
my left; and he might have pardoned a greater, who took a fool for his
counsellor and guide.”
Conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of the porter’s page,
who announced that there was a stranger at the gate, imploring
admittance and hospitality.
“Admit him,” said Cedric, “be he who or what he may;—a night like that
which roars without, compels even wild animals to herd with tame, and
to seek the protection of man, their mortal foe, rather than perish by
the elements. Let his wants be ministered to with all care—look to it,
Oswald.”
And the steward left the banqueting hall to see the commands of his
patron obeyed.
CHAPTER V
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same
weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed
and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?
MERCHANT OF VENICE
Oswald, returning, whispered into the ear of his master, “It is a Jew,
who calls himself Isaac of York; is it fit I should marshall him into
the hall?”
“Let Gurth do thine office, Oswald,” said Wamba with his usual
effrontery; “the swineherd will be a fit usher to the Jew.”
“St Mary,” said the Abbot, crossing himself, “an unbelieving Jew, and
admitted into this presence!”
“A dog Jew,” echoed the Templar, “to approach a defender of the Holy
Sepulchre?”
“By my faith,” said Wamba, “it would seem the Templars love the Jews’
inheritance better than they do their company.”
“Peace, my worthy guests,” said Cedric; “my hospitality must not be
bounded by your dislikes. If Heaven bore with the whole nation of
stiff-necked unbelievers for more years than a layman can number, we
may endure the presence of one Jew for a few hours. But I constrain no
man to converse or to feed with him.—Let him have a board and a morsel
apart,—unless,” he said smiling, “these turban’d strangers will admit
his society.”
“Sir Franklin,” answered the Templar, “my Saracen slaves are true
Moslems, and scorn as much as any Christian to hold intercourse with a
Jew.”
“Now, in faith,” said Wamba, “I cannot see that the worshippers of
Mahound and Termagaunt have so greatly the advantage over the people
once chosen of Heaven.”
“He shall sit with thee, Wamba,” said Cedric; “the fool and the knave
will be well met.”
“The fool,” answered Wamba, raising the relics of a gammon of bacon,
“will take care to erect a bulwark against the knave.”
“Hush,” said Cedric, “for here he comes.”
Introduced with little ceremony, and advancing with fear and
hesitation, and many a bow of deep humility, a tall thin old man, who,
however, had lost by the habit of stooping much of his actual height,
approached the lower end of the board. His features, keen and regular,
with an aquiline nose, and piercing black eyes; his high and wrinkled
forehead, and long grey hair and beard, would have been considered as
handsome, had they not been the marks of a physiognomy peculiar to a
race, which, during those dark ages, was alike detested by the
credulous and prejudiced vulgar, and persecuted by the greedy and
rapacious nobility, and who, perhaps, owing to that very hatred and
persecution, had adopted a national character, in which there was much,
to say the least, mean and unamiable.
The Jew’s dress, which appeared to have suffered considerably from the
storm, was a plain russet cloak of many folds, covering a dark purple
tunic. He had large boots lined with fur, and a belt around his waist,
which sustained a small knife, together with a case for writing
materials, but no weapon. He wore a high square yellow cap of a
peculiar fashion, assigned to his nation to distinguish them from
Christians, and which he doffed with great humility at the door of the
hall.
The reception of this person in the hall of Cedric the Saxon, was such
as might have satisfied the most prejudiced enemy of the tribes of
Israel. Cedric himself coldly nodded in answer to the Jew’s repeated
salutations, and signed to him to take place at the lower end of the
table, where, however, no one offered to make room for him. On the
contrary, as he passed along the file, casting a timid supplicating
glance, and turning towards each of those who occupied the lower end of
the board, the Saxon domestics squared their shoulders, and continued
to devour their supper with great perseverance, paying not the least
attention to the wants of the new guest. The attendants of the Abbot
crossed themselves, with looks of pious horror, and the very heathen
Saracens, as Isaac drew near them, curled up their whiskers with
indignation, and laid their hands on their poniards, as if ready to rid
themselves by the most desperate means from the apprehended
contamination of his nearer approach.
Probably the same motives which induced Cedric to open his hall to this
son of a rejected people, would have made him insist on his attendants
receiving Isaac with more courtesy. But the Abbot had, at this moment,
engaged him in a most interesting discussion on the breed and character
of his favourite hounds, which he would not have interrupted for
matters of much greater importance than that of a Jew going to bed
supperless. While Isaac thus stood an outcast in the present society,
like his people among the nations, looking in vain for welcome or
resting place, the pilgrim who sat by the chimney took compassion upon
him, and resigned his seat, saying briefly, “Old man, my garments are
dried, my hunger is appeased, thou art both wet and fasting.” So
saying, he gathered together, and brought to a flame, the decaying
brands which lay scattered on the ample hearth; took from the larger
board a mess of pottage and seethed kid, placed it upon the small table
at which he had himself supped, and, without waiting the Jew’s thanks,
went to the other side of the hall;—whether from unwillingness to hold
more close communication with the object of his benevolence, or from a
wish to draw near to the upper end of the table, seemed uncertain.
Had there been painters in those days capable to execute such a
subject, the Jew, as he bent his withered form, and expanded his
chilled and trembling hands over the fire, would have formed no bad
emblematical personification of the Winter season. Having dispelled the
cold, he turned eagerly to the smoking mess which was placed before
him, and ate with a haste and an apparent relish, that seemed to
betoken long abstinence from food.
Meanwhile the Abbot and Cedric continued their discourse upon hunting;
the Lady Rowena seemed engaged in conversation with one of her
attendant females; and the haughty Templar, whose eye wandered from the
Jew to the Saxon beauty, revolved in his mind thoughts which appeared
deeply to interest him.
“I marvel, worthy Cedric,” said the Abbot, as their discourse
proceeded, “that, great as your predilection is for your own manly
language, you do not receive the Norman-French into your favour, so far
at least as the mystery of wood-craft and hunting is concerned. Surely
no tongue is so rich in the various phrases which the field-sports
demand, or furnishes means to the experienced woodman so well to
express his jovial art.”
“Good Father Aymer,” said the Saxon, “be it known to you, I care not
for those over-sea refinements, without which I can well enough take my
pleasure in the woods. I can wind my horn, though I call not the blast
either a ‘recheate’ or a ‘morte’—I can cheer my dogs on the prey, and I
can flay and quarter the animal when it is brought down, without using
the newfangled jargon of ‘curee, arbor, nombles’, and all the babble of
the fabulous Sir Tristrem.” 14
“The French,” said the Templar, raising his voice with the presumptuous
and authoritative tone which he used upon all occasions, “is not only
the natural language of the chase, but that of love and of war, in
which ladies should be won and enemies defied.”
“Pledge me in a cup of wine, Sir Templar,” said Cedric, “and fill
another to the Abbot, while I look back some thirty years to tell you
another tale. As Cedric the Saxon then was, his plain English tale
needed no garnish from French troubadours, when it was told in the ear
of beauty; and the field of Northallerton, upon the day of the Holy
Standard, could tell whether the Saxon war-cry was not heard as far
within the ranks of the Scottish host as the ‘cri de guerre’ of the
boldest Norman baron. To the memory of the brave who fought
there!—Pledge me, my guests.” He drank deep, and went on with
increasing warmth. “Ay, that was a day of cleaving of shields, when a
hundred banners were bent forwards over the heads of the valiant, and
blood flowed round like water, and death was held better than flight. A
Saxon bard had called it a feast of the swords—a gathering of the
eagles to the prey—the clashing of bills upon shield and helmet, the
shouting of battle more joyful than the clamour of a bridal. But our
bards are no more,” he said; “our deeds are lost in those of another
race—our language—our very name—is hastening to decay, and none mourns
for it save one solitary old man—Cupbearer! knave, fill the goblets—To
the strong in arms, Sir Templar, be their race or language what it
will, who now bear them best in Palestine among the champions of the
Cross!”
“It becomes not one wearing this badge to answer,” said Sir Brian de
Bois-Guilbert; “yet to whom, besides the sworn Champions of the Holy
Sepulchre, can the palm be assigned among the champions of the Cross?”
“To the Knights Hospitallers,” said the Abbot; “I have a brother of
their order.”
“I impeach not their fame,” said the Templar; “nevertheless—-”
“I think, friend Cedric,” said Wamba, interfering, “that had Richard of
the Lion’s Heart been wise enough to have taken a fool’s advice, he
might have staid at home with his merry Englishmen, and left the
recovery of Jerusalem to those same Knights who had most to do with the
loss of it.”
“Were there, then, none in the English army,” said the Lady Rowena,
“whose names are worthy to be mentioned with the Knights of the Temple,
and of St John?”
“Forgive me, lady,” replied De Bois-Guilbert; “the English monarch did,
indeed, bring to Palestine a host of gallant warriors, second only to
those whose breasts have been the unceasing bulwark of that blessed
land.”
“Second to NONE,” said the Pilgrim, who had stood near enough to hear,
and had listened to this conversation with marked impatience. All
turned toward the spot from whence this unexpected asseveration was
heard.
“I say,” repeated the Pilgrim in a firm and strong voice, “that the
English chivalry were second to NONE who ever drew sword in defence of
the Holy Land. I say besides, for I saw it, that King Richard himself,
and five of his knights, held a tournament after the taking of St
John-de-Acre, as challengers against all comers. I say that, on that
day, each knight ran three courses, and cast to the ground three
antagonists. I add, that seven of these assailants were Knights of the
Temple—and Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert well knows the truth of what I
tell you.”
It is impossible for language to describe the bitter scowl of rage