Ivanhoe: A Romance
well as read, and if we can but find the writing materials of my
chaplain, who died a twelvemonth since in the midst of his Christmas
carousals—”
“So please ye,” said the squire, who was still in attendance, “I think
old Urfried has them somewhere in keeping, for love of the confessor.
He was the last man, I have heard her tell, who ever said aught to her,
which man ought in courtesy to address to maid or matron.”
“Go, search them out, Engelred,” said Front-de-Bœuf; “and then, Sir
Templar, thou shalt return an answer to this bold challenge.”
“I would rather do it at the sword’s point than at that of the pen,”
said Bois-Guilbert; “but be it as you will.”
He sat down accordingly, and indited, in the French language, an
epistle of the following tenor:—“Sir Reginald Front-de-Bœuf, with his
noble and knightly allies and confederates, receive no defiances at the
hands of slaves, bondsmen, or fugitives. If the person calling himself
the Black Knight have indeed a claim to the honours of chivalry, he
ought to know that he stands degraded by his present association, and
has no right to ask reckoning at the hands of good men of noble blood.
Touching the prisoners we have made, we do in Christian charity require
you to send a man of religion, to receive their confession, and
reconcile them with God; since it is our fixed intention to execute
them this morning before noon, so that their heads being placed on the
battlements, shall show to all men how lightly we esteem those who have
bestirred themselves in their rescue. Wherefore, as above, we require
you to send a priest to reconcile them to God, in doing which you shall
render them the last earthly service.”
This letter being folded, was delivered to the squire, and by him to
the messenger who waited without, as the answer to that which he had
brought.
The yeoman having thus accomplished his mission, returned to the
head-quarters of the allies, which were for the present established
under a venerable oak-tree, about three arrow-flights distant from the
castle. Here Wamba and Gurth, with their allies the Black Knight and
Locksley, and the jovial hermit, awaited with impatience an answer to
their summons. Around, and at a distance from them, were seen many a
bold yeoman, whose silvan dress and weatherbeaten countenances showed
the ordinary nature of their occupation. More than two hundred had
already assembled, and others were fast coming in. Those whom they
obeyed as leaders were only distinguished from the others by a feather
in the cap, their dress, arms, and equipments being in all other
respects the same.
Besides these bands, a less orderly and a worse armed force, consisting
of the Saxon inhabitants of the neighbouring township, as well as many
bondsmen and servants from Cedric’s extensive estate, had already
arrived, for the purpose of assisting in his rescue. Few of these were
armed otherwise than with such rustic weapons as necessity sometimes
converts to military purposes. Boar-spears, scythes, flails, and the
like, were their chief arms; for the Normans, with the usual policy of
conquerors, were jealous of permitting to the vanquished Saxons the
possession or the use of swords and spears. These circumstances
rendered the assistance of the Saxons far from being so formidable to
the besieged, as the strength of the men themselves, their superior
numbers, and the animation inspired by a just cause, might otherwise
well have made them. It was to the leaders of this motley army that the
letter of the Templar was now delivered.
Reference was at first made to the chaplain for an exposition of its
contents.
“By the crook of St Dunstan,” said that worthy ecclesiastic, “which
hath brought more sheep within the sheepfold than the crook of e’er
another saint in Paradise, I swear that I cannot expound unto you this
jargon, which, whether it be French or Arabic, is beyond my guess.”
He then gave the letter to Gurth, who shook his head gruffly, and
passed it to Wamba. The Jester looked at each of the four corners of
the paper with such a grin of affected intelligence as a monkey is apt
to assume upon similar occasions, then cut a caper, and gave the letter
to Locksley.
“If the long letters were bows, and the short letters broad arrows, I
might know something of the matter,” said the brave yeoman; “but as the
matter stands, the meaning is as safe, for me, as the stag that’s at
twelve miles distance.”
“I must be clerk, then,” said the Black Knight; and taking the letter
from Locksley, he first read it over to himself, and then explained the
meaning in Saxon to his confederates.
“Execute the noble Cedric!” exclaimed Wamba; “by the rood, thou must be
mistaken, Sir Knight.”
“Not I, my worthy friend,” replied the knight, “I have explained the
words as they are here set down.”
“Then, by St Thomas of Canterbury,” replied Gurth, “we will have the
castle, should we tear it down with our hands!”
“We have nothing else to tear it with,” replied Wamba; “but mine are
scarce fit to make mammocks of freestone and mortar.”
“’Tis but a contrivance to gain time,” said Locksley; “they dare not do
a deed for which I could exact a fearful penalty.”
“I would,” said the Black Knight, “there were some one among us who
could obtain admission into the castle, and discover how the case
stands with the besieged. Methinks, as they require a confessor to be
sent, this holy hermit might at once exercise his pious vocation, and
procure us the information we desire.”
“A plague on thee, and thy advice!” said the pious hermit; “I tell
thee, Sir Slothful Knight, that when I doff my friar’s frock, my
priesthood, my sanctity, my very Latin, are put off along with it; and
when in my green jerkin, I can better kill twenty deer than confess one
Christian.”
“I fear,” said the Black Knight, “I fear greatly, there is no one here
that is qualified to take upon him, for the nonce, this same character
of father confessor?”
All looked on each other, and were silent.
“I see,” said Wamba, after a short pause, “that the fool must be still
the fool, and put his neck in the venture which wise men shrink from.
You must know, my dear cousins and countrymen, that I wore russet
before I wore motley, and was bred to be a friar, until a brain-fever
came upon me and left me just wit enough to be a fool. I trust, with
the assistance of the good hermit’s frock, together with the
priesthood, sanctity, and learning which are stitched into the cowl of
it, I shall be found qualified to administer both worldly and ghostly
comfort to our worthy master Cedric, and his companions in adversity.”
“Hath he sense enough, thinkst thou?” said the Black Knight, addressing
Gurth.
“I know not,” said Gurth; “but if he hath not, it will be the first
time he hath wanted wit to turn his folly to account.”
“On with the frock, then, good fellow,” quoth the Knight, “and let thy
master send us an account of their situation within the castle. Their
numbers must be few, and it is five to one they may be accessible by a
sudden and bold attack. Time wears—away with thee.”
“And, in the meantime,” said Locksley, “we will beset the place so
closely, that not so much as a fly shall carry news from thence. So
that, my good friend,” he continued, addressing Wamba, “thou mayst
assure these tyrants, that whatever violence they exercise on the
persons of their prisoners, shall be most severely repaid upon their
own.”
“Pax vobiscum,” said Wamba, who was now muffled in his religious
disguise.
And so saying he imitated the solemn and stately deportment of a friar,
and departed to execute his mission.
CHAPTER XXVI
The hottest horse will oft be cool,
The dullest will show fire;
The friar will often play the fool,
The fool will play the friar.
OLD SONG
When the Jester, arrayed in the cowl and frock of the hermit, and
having his knotted cord twisted round his middle, stood before the
portal of the castle of Front-de-Bœuf, the warder demanded of him his
name and errand.
“Pax vobiscum,” answered the Jester, “I am a poor brother of the Order
of St Francis, who come hither to do my office to certain unhappy
prisoners now secured within this castle.”
“Thou art a bold friar,” said the warder, “to come hither, where,
saving our own drunken confessor, a cock of thy feather hath not crowed
these twenty years.”
“Yet I pray thee, do mine errand to the lord of the castle,” answered
the pretended friar; “trust me it will find good acceptance with him,
and the cock shall crow, that the whole castle shall hear him.”
“Gramercy,” said the warder; “but if I come to shame for leaving my
post upon thine errand, I will try whether a friar’s grey gown be proof
against a grey-goose shaft.”
With this threat he left his turret, and carried to the hall of the
castle his unwonted intelligence, that a holy friar stood before the
gate and demanded instant admission. With no small wonder he received
his master’s commands to admit the holy man immediately; and, having
previously manned the entrance to guard against surprise, he obeyed,
without further scruple, the commands which he had received. The
harebrained self-conceit which had emboldened Wamba to undertake this
dangerous office, was scarce sufficient to support him when he found
himself in the presence of a man so dreadful, and so much dreaded, as
Reginald Front-de-Bœuf, and he brought out his “pax vobiscum”, to which
he, in a good measure, trusted for supporting his character, with more
anxiety and hesitation than had hitherto accompanied it. But
Front-de-Bœuf was accustomed to see men of all ranks tremble in his
presence, so that the timidity of the supposed father did not give him
any cause of suspicion.
“Who and whence art thou, priest?” said he.
“‘Pax vobiscum’,” reiterated the Jester, “I am a poor servant of St
Francis, who, travelling through this wilderness, have fallen among
thieves, (as Scripture hath it,) ‘quidam viator incidit in latrones’,
which thieves have sent me unto this castle in order to do my ghostly
office on two persons condemned by your honourable justice.”
“Ay, right,” answered Front-de-Bœuf; “and canst thou tell me, holy
father, the number of those banditti?”
“Gallant sir,” answered the Jester, “‘nomen illis legio’, their name is
legion.”
“Tell me in plain terms what numbers there are, or, priest, thy cloak
and cord will ill protect thee.”
“Alas!” said the supposed friar, “‘cor meum eructavit’, that is to say,
I was like to burst with fear! but I conceive they may be—what of
yeomen—what of commons, at least five hundred men.”
“What!” said the Templar, who came into the hall that moment, “muster
the wasps so thick here? it is time to stifle such a mischievous
brood.” Then taking Front-de-Bœuf aside “Knowest thou the priest?”
“He is a stranger from a distant convent,” said Front-de-Bœuf; “I know
him not.”
“Then trust him not with thy purpose in words,” answered the Templar.
“Let him carry a written order to De Bracy’s company of Free
Companions, to repair instantly to their master’s aid. In the meantime,
and that the shaveling may suspect nothing, permit him to go freely
about his task of preparing these Saxon hogs for the slaughter-house.”
“It shall be so,” said Front-de-Bœuf. And he forthwith appointed a
domestic to conduct Wamba to the apartment where Cedric and Athelstane
were confined.
The impatience of Cedric had been rather enhanced than diminished by
his confinement. He walked from one end of the hall to the other, with
the attitude of one who advances to charge an enemy, or to storm the
breach of a beleaguered place, sometimes ejaculating to himself,
sometimes addressing Athelstane, who stoutly and stoically awaited the
issue of the adventure, digesting, in the meantime, with great