Ivanhoe: A Romance
affected to deride them.
“By the bald scalp of Abraham,” said Prince John, “yonder Jewess must
be the very model of that perfection, whose charms drove frantic the
wisest king that ever lived! What sayest thou, Prior Aymer?—By the
Temple of that wise king, which our wiser brother Richard proved unable
to recover, she is the very Bride of the Canticles!”
“The Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley,”—answered the Prior, in
a sort of snuffling tone; “but your Grace must remember she is still
but a Jewess.”
“Ay!” added Prince John, without heeding him, “and there is my Mammon
of unrighteousness too—the Marquis of Marks, the Baron of Byzants,
contesting for place with penniless dogs, whose threadbare cloaks have
not a single cross in their pouches to keep the devil from dancing
there. By the body of St Mark, my prince of supplies, with his lovely
Jewess, shall have a place in the gallery!—What is she, Isaac? Thy wife
or thy daughter, that Eastern houri that thou lockest under thy arm as
thou wouldst thy treasure-casket?”
“My daughter Rebecca, so please your Grace,” answered Isaac, with a low
congee, nothing embarrassed by the Prince’s salutation, in which,
however, there was at least as much mockery as courtesy.
“The wiser man thou,” said John, with a peal of laughter, in which his
gay followers obsequiously joined. “But, daughter or wife, she should
be preferred according to her beauty and thy merits.—Who sits above
there?” he continued, bending his eye on the gallery. “Saxon churls,
lolling at their lazy length!—out upon them!—let them sit close, and
make room for my prince of usurers and his lovely daughter. I’ll make
the hinds know they must share the high places of the synagogue with
those whom the synagogue properly belongs to.”
Those who occupied the gallery to whom this injurious and unpolite
speech was addressed, were the family of Cedric the Saxon, with that of
his ally and kinsman, Athelstane of Coningsburgh, a personage, who, on
account of his descent from the last Saxon monarchs of England, was
held in the highest respect by all the Saxon natives of the north of
England. But with the blood of this ancient royal race, many of their
infirmities had descended to Athelstane. He was comely in countenance,
bulky and strong in person, and in the flower of his age—yet inanimate
in expression, dull-eyed, heavy-browed, inactive and sluggish in all
his motions, and so slow in resolution, that the soubriquet of one of
his ancestors was conferred upon him, and he was very generally called
Athelstane the Unready. His friends, and he had many, who, as well as
Cedric, were passionately attached to him, contended that this sluggish
temper arose not from want of courage, but from mere want of decision;
others alleged that his hereditary vice of drunkenness had obscured his
faculties, never of a very acute order, and that the passive courage
and meek good-nature which remained behind, were merely the dregs of a
character that might have been deserving of praise, but of which all
the valuable parts had flown off in the progress of a long course of
brutal debauchery.
It was to this person, such as we have described him, that the Prince
addressed his imperious command to make place for Isaac and Rebecca.
Athelstane, utterly confounded at an order which the manners and
feelings of the times rendered so injuriously insulting, unwilling to
obey, yet undetermined how to resist, opposed only the “vis inertiae”
to the will of John; and, without stirring or making any motion
whatever of obedience, opened his large grey eyes, and stared at the
Prince with an astonishment which had in it something extremely
ludicrous. But the impatient John regarded it in no such light.
“The Saxon porker,” he said, “is either asleep or minds me not—Prick
him with your lance, De Bracy,” speaking to a knight who rode near him,
the leader of a band of Free Companions, or Condottieri; that is, of
mercenaries belonging to no particular nation, but attached for the
time to any prince by whom they were paid. There was a murmur even
among the attendants of Prince John; but De Bracy, whose profession
freed him from all scruples, extended his long lance over the space
which separated the gallery from the lists, and would have executed the
commands of the Prince before Athelstane the Unready had recovered
presence of mind sufficient even to draw back his person from the
weapon, had not Cedric, as prompt as his companion was tardy,
unsheathed, with the speed of lightning, the short sword which he wore,
and at a single blow severed the point of the lance from the handle.
The blood rushed into the countenance of Prince John. He swore one of
his deepest oaths, and was about to utter some threat corresponding in
violence, when he was diverted from his purpose, partly by his own
attendants, who gathered around him conjuring him to be patient, partly
by a general exclamation of the crowd, uttered in loud applause of the
spirited conduct of Cedric. The Prince rolled his eyes in indignation,
as if to collect some safe and easy victim; and chancing to encounter
the firm glance of the same archer whom we have already noticed, and
who seemed to persist in his gesture of applause, in spite of the
frowning aspect which the Prince bent upon him, he demanded his reason
for clamouring thus.
“I always add my hollo,” said the yeoman, “when I see a good shot, or a
gallant blow.”
“Sayst thou?” answered the Prince; “then thou canst hit the white
thyself, I’ll warrant.”
“A woodsman’s mark, and at woodsman’s distance, I can hit,” answered
the yeoman.
“And Wat Tyrrel’s mark, at a hundred yards,” said a voice from behind,
but by whom uttered could not be discerned.
This allusion to the fate of William Rufus, his Relative, at once
incensed and alarmed Prince John. He satisfied himself, however, with
commanding the men-at-arms, who surrounded the lists, to keep an eye on
the braggart, pointing to the yeoman.
“By St Grizzel,” he added, “we will try his own skill, who is so ready
to give his voice to the feats of others!”
“I shall not fly the trial,” said the yeoman, with the composure which
marked his whole deportment.
“Meanwhile, stand up, ye Saxon churls,” said the fiery Prince; “for, by
the light of Heaven, since I have said it, the Jew shall have his seat
amongst ye!”
“By no means, an it please your Grace!—it is not fit for such as we to
sit with the rulers of the land,” said the Jew; whose ambition for
precedence though it had led him to dispute Place with the extenuated
and impoverished descendant of the line of Montdidier, by no means
stimulated him to an intrusion upon the privileges of the wealthy
Saxons.
“Up, infidel dog when I command you,” said Prince John, “or I will have
thy swarthy hide stript off, and tanned for horse-furniture.”
Thus urged, the Jew began to ascend the steep and narrow steps which
led up to the gallery.
“Let me see,” said the Prince, “who dare stop him,” fixing his eye on
Cedric, whose attitude intimated his intention to hurl the Jew down
headlong.
The catastrophe was prevented by the clown Wamba, who, springing
betwixt his master and Isaac, and exclaiming, in answer to the Prince’s
defiance, “Marry, that will I!” opposed to the beard of the Jew a
shield of brawn, which he plucked from beneath his cloak, and with
which, doubtless, he had furnished himself, lest the tournament should
have proved longer than his appetite could endure abstinence. Finding
the abomination of his tribe opposed to his very nose, while the
Jester, at the same time, flourished his wooden sword above his head,
the Jew recoiled, missed his footing, and rolled down the steps,—an
excellent jest to the spectators, who set up a loud laughter, in which
Prince John and his attendants heartily joined.
“Deal me the prize, cousin Prince,” said Wamba; “I have vanquished my
foe in fair fight with sword and shield,” he added, brandishing the
brawn in one hand and the wooden sword in the other.
“Who, and what art thou, noble champion?” said Prince John, still
laughing.
“A fool by right of descent,” answered the Jester; “I am Wamba, the son
of Witless, who was the son of Weatherbrain, who was the son of an
Alderman.”
“Make room for the Jew in front of the lower ring,” said Prince John,
not unwilling perhaps to seize an apology to desist from his original
purpose; “to place the vanquished beside the victor were false
heraldry.”
“Knave upon fool were worse,” answered the Jester, “and Jew upon bacon
worst of all.”
“Gramercy! good fellow,” cried Prince John, “thou pleasest me—Here,
Isaac, lend me a handful of byzants.”
As the Jew, stunned by the request, afraid to refuse, and unwilling to
comply, fumbled in the furred bag which hung by his girdle, and was
perhaps endeavouring to ascertain how few coins might pass for a
handful, the Prince stooped from his jennet and settled Isaac’s doubts
by snatching the pouch itself from his side; and flinging to Wamba a
couple of the gold pieces which it contained, he pursued his career
round the lists, leaving the Jew to the derision of those around him,
and himself receiving as much applause from the spectators as if he had
done some honest and honourable action.
CHAPTER VIII
At this the challenger with fierce defy
His trumpet sounds; the challenged makes reply:
With clangour rings the field, resounds the vaulted sky.
Their visors closed, their lances in the rest,
Or at the helmet pointed or the crest,
They vanish from the barrier, speed the race,
And spurring see decrease the middle space.
PALAMON AND ARCITE
In the midst of Prince John’s cavalcade, he suddenly stopt, and
appealing to the Prior of Jorvaulx, declared the principal business of
the day had been forgotten.
“By my halidom,” said he, “we have forgotten, Sir Prior, to name the
fair Sovereign of Love and of Beauty, by whose white hand the palm is
to be distributed. For my part, I am liberal in my ideas, and I care
not if I give my vote for the black-eyed Rebecca.”
“Holy Virgin,” answered the Prior, turning up his eyes in horror, “a
Jewess!—We should deserve to be stoned out of the lists; and I am not
yet old enough to be a martyr. Besides, I swear by my patron saint,
that she is far inferior to the lovely Saxon, Rowena.”
“Saxon or Jew,” answered the Prince, “Saxon or Jew, dog or hog, what
matters it? I say, name Rebecca, were it only to mortify the Saxon
churls.”
A murmur arose even among his own immediate attendants.
“This passes a jest, my lord,” said De Bracy; “no knight here will lay
lance in rest if such an insult is attempted.”
“It is the mere wantonness of insult,” said one of the oldest and most
important of Prince John’s followers, Waldemar Fitzurse, “and if your
Grace attempt it, cannot but prove ruinous to your projects.”
“I entertained you, sir,” said John, reining up his palfrey haughtily,
“for my follower, but not for my counsellor.”
“Those who follow your Grace in the paths which you tread,” said
Waldemar, but speaking in a low voice, “acquire the right of
counsellors; for your interest and safety are not more deeply gaged
than their own.”
From the tone in which this was spoken, John saw the necessity of
acquiescence. “I did but jest,” he said; “and you turn upon me like so
many adders! Name whom you will, in the fiend’s name, and please
yourselves.”
“Nay, nay,” said De Bracy, “let the fair sovereign’s throne remain
unoccupied, until the conqueror shall be named, and then let him choose
the lady by whom it shall be filled. It will add another grace to his
triumph, and teach fair ladies to prize the love of valiant knights,
who can exalt them to such distinction.”
“If Brian de Bois-Guilbert gain the prize,” said the Prior, “I will