Ivanhoe: A Romance
accommodated with a footstool of ivory, curiously carved.
No fewer than four silver candelabras, holding great waxen torches,
served to illuminate this apartment. Yet let not modern beauty envy the
magnificence of a Saxon princess. The walls of the apartment were so
ill finished and so full of crevices, that the rich hangings shook in
the night blast, and, in despite of a sort of screen intended to
protect them from the wind, the flame of the torches streamed sideways
into the air, like the unfurled pennon of a chieftain. Magnificence
there was, with some rude attempt at taste; but of comfort there was
little, and, being unknown, it was unmissed.
The Lady Rowena, with three of her attendants standing at her back, and
arranging her hair ere she lay down to rest, was seated in the sort of
throne already mentioned, and looked as if born to exact general
homage. The Pilgrim acknowledged her claim to it by a low genuflection.
“Rise, Palmer,” said she graciously. “The defender of the absent has a
right to favourable reception from all who value truth, and honour
manhood.” She then said to her train, “Retire, excepting only Elgitha;
I would speak with this holy Pilgrim.”
The maidens, without leaving the apartment, retired to its further
extremity, and sat down on a small bench against the wall, where they
remained mute as statues, though at such a distance that their whispers
could not have interrupted the conversation of their mistress.
“Pilgrim,” said the lady, after a moment’s pause, during which she
seemed uncertain how to address him, “you this night mentioned a name—I
mean,” she said, with a degree of effort, “the name of Ivanhoe, in the
halls where by nature and kindred it should have sounded most
acceptably; and yet, such is the perverse course of fate, that of many
whose hearts must have throbbed at the sound, I, only, dare ask you
where, and in what condition, you left him of whom you spoke?—We heard,
that, having remained in Palestine, on account of his impaired health,
after the departure of the English army, he had experienced the
persecution of the French faction, to whom the Templars are known to be
attached.”
“I know little of the Knight of Ivanhoe,” answered the Palmer, with a
troubled voice. “I would I knew him better, since you, lady, are
interested in his fate. He hath, I believe, surmounted the persecution
of his enemies in Palestine, and is on the eve of returning to England,
where you, lady, must know better than I, what is his chance of
happiness.”
The Lady Rowena sighed deeply, and asked more particularly when the
Knight of Ivanhoe might be expected in his native country, and whether
he would not be exposed to great dangers by the road. On the first
point, the Palmer professed ignorance; on the second, he said that the
voyage might be safely made by the way of Venice and Genoa, and from
thence through France to England. “Ivanhoe,” he said, “was so well
acquainted with the language and manners of the French, that there was
no fear of his incurring any hazard during that part of his travels.”
“Would to God,” said the Lady Rowena, “he were here safely arrived, and
able to bear arms in the approaching tourney, in which the chivalry of
this land are expected to display their address and valour. Should
Athelstane of Coningsburgh obtain the prize, Ivanhoe is like to hear
evil tidings when he reaches England.—How looked he, stranger, when you
last saw him? Had disease laid her hand heavy upon his strength and
comeliness?”
“He was darker,” said the Palmer, “and thinner, than when he came from
Cyprus in the train of Cœur-de-Lion, and care seemed to sit heavy on
his brow; but I approached not his presence, because he is unknown to
me.”
“He will,” said the lady, “I fear, find little in his native land to
clear those clouds from his countenance. Thanks, good Pilgrim, for your
information concerning the companion of my childhood.—Maidens,” she
said, “draw near—offer the sleeping cup to this holy man, whom I will
no longer detain from repose.”
One of the maidens presented a silver cup, containing a rich mixture of
wine and spice, which Rowena barely put to her lips. It was then
offered to the Palmer, who, after a low obeisance, tasted a few drops.
“Accept this alms, friend,” continued the lady, offering a piece of
gold, “in acknowledgment of thy painful travail, and of the shrines
thou hast visited.”
The Palmer received the boon with another low reverence, and followed
Edwina out of the apartment.
In the anteroom he found his attendant Anwold, who, taking the torch
from the hand of the waiting-maid, conducted him with more haste than
ceremony to an exterior and ignoble part of the building, where a
number of small apartments, or rather cells, served for sleeping places
to the lower order of domestics, and to strangers of mean degree.
“In which of these sleeps the Jew?” said the Pilgrim.
“The unbelieving dog,” answered Anwold, “kennels in the cell next your
holiness.—St Dunstan, how it must be scraped and cleansed ere it be
again fit for a Christian!”
“And where sleeps Gurth the swineherd?” said the stranger.
“Gurth,” replied the bondsman, “sleeps in the cell on your right, as
the Jew on that to your left; you serve to keep the child of
circumcision separate from the abomination of his tribe. You might have
occupied a more honourable place had you accepted of Oswald’s
invitation.”
“It is as well as it is,” said the Palmer; “the company, even of a Jew,
can hardly spread contamination through an oaken partition.”
So saying, he entered the cabin allotted to him, and taking the torch
from the domestic’s hand, thanked him, and wished him good-night.
Having shut the door of his cell, he placed the torch in a candlestick
made of wood, and looked around his sleeping apartment, the furniture
of which was of the most simple kind. It consisted of a rude wooden
stool, and still ruder hutch or bed-frame, stuffed with clean straw,
and accommodated with two or three sheepskins by way of bed-clothes.
The Palmer, having extinguished his torch, threw himself, without
taking off any part of his clothes, on this rude couch, and slept, or
at least retained his recumbent posture, till the earliest sunbeams
found their way through the little grated window, which served at once
to admit both air and light to his uncomfortable cell. He then started
up, and after repeating his matins, and adjusting his dress, he left
it, and entered that of Isaac the Jew, lifting the latch as gently as
he could.
The inmate was lying in troubled slumber upon a couch similar to that
on which the Palmer himself had passed the night. Such parts of his
dress as the Jew had laid aside on the preceding evening, were disposed
carefully around his person, as if to prevent the hazard of their being
carried off during his slumbers. There was a trouble on his brow
amounting almost to agony. His hands and arms moved convulsively, as if
struggling with the nightmare; and besides several ejaculations in
Hebrew, the following were distinctly heard in the Norman-English, or
mixed language of the country: “For the sake of the God of Abraham,
spare an unhappy old man! I am poor, I am penniless—should your irons
wrench my limbs asunder, I could not gratify you!”
The Palmer awaited not the end of the Jew’s vision, but stirred him
with his pilgrim’s staff. The touch probably associated, as is usual,
with some of the apprehensions excited by his dream; for the old man
started up, his grey hair standing almost erect upon his head, and
huddling some part of his garments about him, while he held the
detached pieces with the tenacious grasp of a falcon, he fixed upon the
Palmer his keen black eyes, expressive of wild surprise and of bodily
apprehension.
“Fear nothing from me, Isaac,” said the Palmer, “I come as your
friend.”
“The God of Israel requite you,” said the Jew, greatly relieved; “I
dreamed—But Father Abraham be praised, it was but a dream.” Then,
collecting himself, he added in his usual tone, “And what may it be
your pleasure to want at so early an hour with the poor Jew?”
“It is to tell you,” said the Palmer, “that if you leave not this
mansion instantly, and travel not with some haste, your journey may
prove a dangerous one.”
“Holy father!” said the Jew, “whom could it interest to endanger so
poor a wretch as I am?”
“The purpose you can best guess,” said the Pilgrim; “but rely on this,
that when the Templar crossed the hall yesternight, he spoke to his
Mussulman slaves in the Saracen language, which I well understand, and
charged them this morning to watch the journey of the Jew, to seize
upon him when at a convenient distance from the mansion, and to conduct
him to the castle of Philip de Malvoisin, or to that of Reginald
Front-de-Bœuf.”
It is impossible to describe the extremity of terror which seized upon
the Jew at this information, and seemed at once to overpower his whole
faculties. His arms fell down to his sides, and his head drooped on his
breast, his knees bent under his weight, every nerve and muscle of his
frame seemed to collapse and lose its energy, and he sunk at the foot
of the Palmer, not in the fashion of one who intentionally stoops,
kneels, or prostrates himself to excite compassion, but like a man
borne down on all sides by the pressure of some invisible force, which
crushes him to the earth without the power of resistance.
“Holy God of Abraham!” was his first exclamation, folding and elevating
his wrinkled hands, but without raising his grey head from the
pavement; “Oh, holy Moses! O, blessed Aaron! the dream is not dreamed
for nought, and the vision cometh not in vain! I feel their irons
already tear my sinews! I feel the rack pass over my body like the
saws, and harrows, and axes of iron over the men of Rabbah, and of the
cities of the children of Ammon!”
“Stand up, Isaac, and hearken to me,” said the Palmer, who viewed the
extremity of his distress with a compassion in which contempt was
largely mingled; “you have cause for your terror, considering how your
brethren have been used, in order to extort from them their hoards,
both by princes and nobles; but stand up, I say, and I will point out
to you the means of escape. Leave this mansion instantly, while its
inmates sleep sound after the last night’s revel. I will guide you by
the secret paths of the forest, known as well to me as to any forester
that ranges it, and I will not leave you till you are under safe
conduct of some chief or baron going to the tournament, whose good-will
you have probably the means of securing.”
As the ears of Isaac received the hopes of escape which this speech
intimated, he began gradually, and inch by inch, as it were, to raise
himself up from the ground, until he fairly rested upon his knees,
throwing back his long grey hair and beard, and fixing his keen black
eyes upon the Palmer’s face, with a look expressive at once of hope and
fear, not unmingled with suspicion. But when he heard the concluding
part of the sentence, his original terror appeared to revive in full
force, and he dropt once more on his face, exclaiming, “_I_ possess the
means of securing good-will! alas! there is but one road to the favour
of a Christian, and how can the poor Jew find it, whom extortions have
already reduced to the misery of Lazarus?” Then, as if suspicion had
overpowered his other feelings, he suddenly exclaimed, “For the love of
God, young man, betray me not—for the sake of the Great Father who made
us all, Jew as well as Gentile, Israelite and Ishmaelite—do me no
treason! I have not means to secure the good-will of a Christian
beggar, were he rating it at a single penny.” As he spoke these last
words, he raised himself, and grasped the Palmer’s mantle with a look