Ivanhoe: A Romance
off wenches against their will? May the foul fiend fly off with me, if
I am not man enough for a dozen of them.”
“Swearest thou, Holy Clerk?” said the Black Knight.
“Clerk me no Clerks,” replied the transformed priest; “by Saint George
and the Dragon, I am no longer a shaveling than while my frock is on my
back—When I am cased in my green cassock, I will drink, swear, and woo
a lass, with any blithe forester in the West Riding.”
“Come on, Jack Priest,” said Locksley, “and be silent; thou art as
noisy as a whole convent on a holy eve, when the Father Abbot has gone
to bed.—Come on you, too, my masters, tarry not to talk of it—I say,
come on, we must collect all our forces, and few enough we shall have,
if we are to storm the Castle of Reginald Front-de-Bœuf.”
“What! is it Front-de-Bœuf,” said the Black Knight, “who has stopt on
the king’s highway the king’s liege subjects?—Is he turned thief and
oppressor?”
“Oppressor he ever was,” said Locksley.
“And for thief,” said the priest, “I doubt if ever he were even half so
honest a man as many a thief of my acquaintance.”
“Move on, priest, and be silent,” said the yeoman; “it were better you
led the way to the place of rendezvous, than say what should be left
unsaid, both in decency and prudence.”
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-Bœuf’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 check 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-Bœuf, 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-Bœuf. 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-Bœuf, 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-Bœuf’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