Ivanhoe: A Romance
Front-de-Bœuf,” he said, turning towards that Baron, “I trust you will
so keep the goodly Barony of Ivanhoe, that Sir Wilfred shall not incur
his father’s farther displeasure by again entering upon that fief.”
“By St Anthony!” answered the black-brow’d giant, “I will consent that
your highness shall hold me a Saxon, if either Cedric or Wilfred, or
the best that ever bore English blood, shall wrench from me the gift
with which your highness has graced me.”
“Whoever shall call thee Saxon, Sir Baron,” replied Cedric, offended at
a mode of expression by which the Normans frequently expressed their
habitual contempt of the English, “will do thee an honour as great as
it is undeserved.”
Front-de-Bœuf would have replied, but Prince John’s petulance and
levity got the start.
“Assuredly,” said be, “my lords, the noble Cedric speaks truth; and his
race may claim precedence over us as much in the length of their
pedigrees as in the longitude of their cloaks.”
“They go before us indeed in the field—as deer before dogs,” said
Malvoisin.
“And with good right may they go before us—forget not,” said the Prior
Aymer, “the superior decency and decorum of their manners.”
“Their singular abstemiousness and temperance,” said De Bracy,
forgetting the plan which promised him a Saxon bride.
“Together with the courage and conduct,” said Brian de Bois-Guilbert,
“by which they distinguished themselves at Hastings and elsewhere.”
While, with smooth and smiling cheek, the courtiers, each in turn,
followed their Prince’s example, and aimed a shaft of ridicule at
Cedric, the face of the Saxon became inflamed with passion, and he
glanced his eyes fiercely from one to another, as if the quick
succession of so many injuries had prevented his replying to them in
turn; or, like a baited bull, who, surrounded by his tormentors, is at
a loss to choose from among them the immediate object of his revenge.
At length he spoke, in a voice half choked with passion; and,
addressing himself to Prince John as the head and front of the offence
which he had received, “Whatever,” he said, “have been the follies and
vices of our race, a Saxon would have been held ‘nidering’,” 21 (the
most emphatic term for abject worthlessness,) “who should in his own
hall, and while his own wine-cup passed, have treated, or suffered to
be treated, an unoffending guest as your highness has this day beheld
me used; and whatever was the misfortune of our fathers on the field of
Hastings, those may at least be silent,” here he looked at
Front-de-Bœuf and the Templar, “who have within these few hours once
and again lost saddle and stirrup before the lance of a Saxon.”
“By my faith, a biting jest!” said Prince John. “How like you it,
sirs?—Our Saxon subjects rise in spirit and courage; become shrewd in
wit, and bold in bearing, in these unsettled times—What say ye, my
lords?—By this good light, I hold it best to take our galleys, and
return to Normandy in time.”
“For fear of the Saxons?” said De Bracy, laughing; “we should need no
weapon but our hunting spears to bring these boars to bay.”
“A truce with your raillery, Sir Knights,” said Fitzurse;—“and it were
well,” he added, addressing the Prince, “that your highness should
assure the worthy Cedric there is no insult intended him by jests,
which must sound but harshly in the ear of a stranger.”
“Insult?” answered Prince John, resuming his courtesy of demeanour; “I
trust it will not be thought that I could mean, or permit any, to be
offered in my presence. Here! I fill my cup to Cedric himself, since he
refuses to pledge his son’s health.”
The cup went round amid the well-dissembled applause of the courtiers,
which, however, failed to make the impression on the mind of the Saxon
that had been designed. He was not naturally acute of perception, but
those too much undervalued his understanding who deemed that this
flattering compliment would obliterate the sense of the prior insult.
He was silent, however, when the royal pledge again passed round, “To
Sir Athelstane of Coningsburgh.”
The knight made his obeisance, and showed his sense of the honour by
draining a huge goblet in answer to it.
“And now, sirs,” said Prince John, who began to be warmed with the wine
which he had drank, “having done justice to our Saxon guests, we will
pray of them some requital to our courtesy.—Worthy Thane,” he
continued, addressing Cedric, “may we pray you to name to us some
Norman whose mention may least sully your mouth, and to wash down with
a goblet of wine all bitterness which the sound may leave behind it?”
Fitzurse arose while Prince John spoke, and gliding behind the seat of
the Saxon, whispered to him not to omit the opportunity of putting an
end to unkindness betwixt the two races, by naming Prince John. The
Saxon replied not to this politic insinuation, but, rising up, and
filling his cup to the brim, he addressed Prince John in these words:
“Your highness has required that I should name a Norman deserving to be
remembered at our banquet. This, perchance, is a hard task, since it
calls on the slave to sing the praises of the master—upon the
vanquished, while pressed by all the evils of conquest, to sing the
praises of the conqueror. Yet I will name a Norman—the first in arms
and in place—the best and the noblest of his race. And the lips that
shall refuse to pledge me to his well-earned fame, I term false and
dishonoured, and will so maintain them with my life.—I quaff this
goblet to the health of Richard the Lion-hearted!”
Prince John, who had expected that his own name would have closed the
Saxon’s speech, started when that of his injured brother was so
unexpectedly introduced. He raised mechanically the wine-cup to his
lips, then instantly set it down, to view the demeanour of the company
at this unexpected proposal, which many of them felt it as unsafe to
oppose as to comply with. Some of them, ancient and experienced
courtiers, closely imitated the example of the Prince himself, raising
the goblet to their lips, and again replacing it before them. There
were many who, with a more generous feeling, exclaimed, “Long live King
Richard! and may he be speedily restored to us!” And some few, among
whom were Front-de-Bœuf and the Templar, in sullen disdain suffered
their goblets to stand untasted before them. But no man ventured
directly to gainsay a pledge filled to the health of the reigning
monarch.
Having enjoyed his triumph for about a minute, Cedric said to his
companion, “Up, noble Athelstane! we have remained here long enough,
since we have requited the hospitable courtesy of Prince John’s
banquet. Those who wish to know further of our rude Saxon manners must
henceforth seek us in the homes of our fathers, since we have seen
enough of royal banquets, and enough of Norman courtesy.”
So saying, he arose and left the banqueting room, followed by
Athelstane, and by several other guests, who, partaking of the Saxon
lineage, held themselves insulted by the sarcasms of Prince John and
his courtiers.
“By the bones of St Thomas,” said Prince John, as they retreated, “the
Saxon churls have borne off the best of the day, and have retreated
with triumph!”
“‘Conclamatum est, poculatum est’,” said Prior Aymer; “we have drunk
and we have shouted,—it were time we left our wine flagons.”
“The monk hath some fair penitent to shrive to-night, that he is in
such a hurry to depart,” said De Bracy.
“Not so, Sir Knight,” replied the Abbot; “but I must move several miles
forward this evening upon my homeward journey.”
“They are breaking up,” said the Prince in a whisper to Fitzurse;
“their fears anticipate the event, and this coward Prior is the first
to shrink from me.”
“Fear not, my lord,” said Waldemar; “I will show him such reasons as
shall induce him to join us when we hold our meeting at York.—Sir
Prior,” he said, “I must speak with you in private, before you mount
your palfrey.”
The other guests were now fast dispersing, with the exception of those
immediately attached to Prince John’s faction, and his retinue.
“This, then, is the result of your advice,” said the Prince, turning an
angry countenance upon Fitzurse; “that I should be bearded at my own
board by a drunken Saxon churl, and that, on the mere sound of my
brother’s name, men should fall off from me as if I had the leprosy?”
“Have patience, sir,” replied his counsellor; “I might retort your
accusation, and blame the inconsiderate levity which foiled my design,
and misled your own better judgment. But this is no time for
recrimination. De Bracy and I will instantly go among these shuffling
cowards, and convince them they have gone too far to recede.”
“It will be in vain,” said Prince John, pacing the apartment with
disordered steps, and expressing himself with an agitation to which the
wine he had drank partly contributed—“It will be in vain—they have seen
the handwriting on the wall—they have marked the paw of the lion in the
sand—they have heard his approaching roar shake the wood—nothing will
reanimate their courage.”
“Would to God,” said Fitzurse to De Bracy, “that aught could reanimate
his own! His brother’s very name is an ague to him. Unhappy are the
counsellors of a Prince, who wants fortitude and perseverance alike in
good and in evil!”
CHAPTER XV
And yet he thinks,—ha, ha, ha, ha,—he thinks
I am the tool and servant of his will.
Well, let it be; through all the maze of trouble
His plots and base oppression must create,
I’ll shape myself a way to higher things,
And who will say ’tis wrong?
BASIL, A TRAGEDY
No spider ever took more pains to repair the shattered meshes of his
web, than did Waldemar Fitzurse to reunite and combine the scattered
members of Prince John’s cabal. Few of these were attached to him from
inclination, and none from personal regard. It was therefore necessary,
that Fitzurse should open to them new prospects of advantage, and
remind them of those which they at present enjoyed. To the young and
wild nobles, he held out the prospect of unpunished license and
uncontrolled revelry; to the ambitious, that of power, and to the
covetous, that of increased wealth and extended domains. The leaders of
the mercenaries received a donation in gold; an argument the most
persuasive to their minds, and without which all others would have
proved in vain. Promises were still more liberally distributed than
money by this active agent; and, in fine, nothing was left undone that
could determine the wavering, or animate the disheartened. The return
of King Richard he spoke of as an event altogether beyond the reach of
probability; yet, when he observed, from the doubtful looks and
uncertain answers which he received, that this was the apprehension by
which the minds of his accomplices were most haunted, he boldly treated
that event, should it really take place, as one which ought not to
alter their political calculations.
“If Richard returns,” said Fitzurse, “he returns to enrich his needy
and impoverished crusaders at the expense of those who did not follow
him to the Holy Land. He returns to call to a fearful reckoning, those
who, during his absence, have done aught that can be construed offence
or encroachment upon either the laws of the land or the privileges of
the crown. He returns to avenge upon the Orders of the Temple and the
Hospital, the preference which they showed to Philip of France during
the wars in the Holy Land. He returns, in fine, to punish as a rebel
every adherent of his brother Prince John. Are ye afraid of his power?”
continued the artful confident of that Prince, “we acknowledge him a
strong and valiant knight; but these are not the days of King Arthur,
when a champion could encounter an army. If Richard indeed comes back,