Ivanhoe: A Romance
darkly announced, but the stern voice of Front-de-Bœuf was heard,
exclaiming, “Where tarries this loitering priest? By the scallop-shell
of Compostella, I will make a martyr of him, if he loiters here to
hatch treason among my domestics!”
“What a true prophet,” said Ulrica, “is an evil conscience! But heed
him not—out and to thy people—Cry your Saxon onslaught, and let them
sing their war-song of Rollo, if they will; vengeance shall bear a
burden to it.”
As she thus spoke, she vanished through a private door, and Reginald
Front-de-Bœuf entered the apartment. Cedric, with some difficulty,
compelled himself to make obeisance to the haughty Baron, who returned
his courtesy with a slight inclination of the head.
“Thy penitents, father, have made a long shrift—it is the better for
them, since it is the last they shall ever make. Hast thou prepared
them for death?”
“I found them,” said Cedric, in such French as he could command,
“expecting the worst, from the moment they knew into whose power they
had fallen.”
“How now, Sir Friar,” replied Front-de-Bœuf, “thy speech, methinks,
smacks of a Saxon tongue?”
“I was bred in the convent of St Withold of Burton,” answered Cedric.
“Ay?” said the Baron; “it had been better for thee to have been a
Norman, and better for my purpose too; but need has no choice of
messengers. That St Withold’s of Burton is an owlet’s nest worth the
harrying. The day will soon come that the frock shall protect the Saxon
as little as the mail-coat.”
“God’s will be done,” said Cedric, in a voice tremulous with passion,
which Front-de-Bœuf imputed to fear.
“I see,” said he, “thou dreamest already that our men-at-arms are in
thy refectory and thy ale-vaults. But do me one cast of thy holy
office, and, come what list of others, thou shalt sleep as safe in thy
cell as a snail within his shell of proof.”
“Speak your commands,” said Cedric, with suppressed emotion.
“Follow me through this passage, then, that I may dismiss thee by the
postern.”
And as he strode on his way before the supposed friar, Front-de-Bœuf
thus schooled him in the part which he desired he should act.
“Thou seest, Sir Friar, yon herd of Saxon swine, who have dared to
environ this castle of Torquilstone—Tell them whatever thou hast a mind
of the weakness of this fortalice, or aught else that can detain them
before it for twenty-four hours. Meantime bear thou this scroll—But
soft—canst read, Sir Priest?”
“Not a jot I,” answered Cedric, “save on my breviary; and then I know
the characters, because I have the holy service by heart, praised be
Our Lady and St Withold!”
“The fitter messenger for my purpose.—Carry thou this scroll to the
castle of Philip de Malvoisin; say it cometh from me, and is written by
the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and that I pray him to send it to
York with all the speed man and horse can make. Meanwhile, tell him to
doubt nothing, he shall find us whole and sound behind our
battlement—Shame on it, that we should be compelled to hide thus by a
pack of runagates, who are wont to fly even at the flash of our pennons
and the tramp of our horses! I say to thee, priest, contrive some cast
of thine art to keep the knaves where they are, until our friends bring
up their lances. My vengeance is awake, and she is a falcon that
slumbers not till she has been gorged.”
“By my patron saint,” said Cedric, with deeper energy than became his
character, “and by every saint who has lived and died in England, your
commands shall be obeyed! Not a Saxon shall stir from before these
walls, if I have art and influence to detain them there.”
“Ha!” said Front-de-Bœuf, “thou changest thy tone, Sir Priest, and
speakest brief and bold, as if thy heart were in the slaughter of the
Saxon herd; and yet thou art thyself of kindred to the swine?”
Cedric was no ready practiser of the art of dissimulation, and would at
this moment have been much the better of a hint from Wamba’s more
fertile brain. But necessity, according to the ancient proverb,
sharpens invention, and he muttered something under his cowl concerning
the men in question being excommunicated outlaws both to church and to
kingdom.
“‘Despardieux’,” answered Front-de-Bœuf, “thou hast spoken the very
truth—I forgot that the knaves can strip a fat abbot, as well as if
they had been born south of yonder salt channel. Was it not he of St
Ives whom they tied to an oak-tree, and compelled to sing a mass while
they were rifling his mails and his wallets?—No, by our Lady—that jest
was played by Gualtier of Middleton, one of our own companions-at-arms.
But they were Saxons who robbed the chapel at St Bees of cup,
candlestick and chalice, were they not?”
“They were godless men,” answered Cedric.
“Ay, and they drank out all the good wine and ale that lay in store for
many a secret carousal, when ye pretend ye are but busied with vigils
and primes!—Priest, thou art bound to revenge such sacrilege.”
“I am indeed bound to vengeance,” murmured Cedric; “Saint Withold knows
my heart.”
Front-de-Bœuf, in the meanwhile, led the way to a postern, where,
passing the moat on a single plank, they reached a small barbican, or
exterior defence, which communicated with the open field by a
well-fortified sallyport.
“Begone, then; and if thou wilt do mine errand, and if thou return
hither when it is done, thou shalt see Saxon flesh cheap as ever was
hog’s in the shambles of Sheffield. And, hark thee, thou seemest to be
a jolly confessor—come hither after the onslaught, and thou shalt have
as much Malvoisie as would drench thy whole convent.”
“Assuredly we shall meet again,” answered Cedric.
“Something in hand the whilst,” continued the Norman; and, as they
parted at the postern door, he thrust into Cedric’s reluctant hand a
gold byzant, adding, “Remember, I will fly off both cowl and skin, if
thou failest in thy purpose.”
“And full leave will I give thee to do both,” answered Cedric, leaving
the postern, and striding forth over the free field with a joyful step,
“if, when we meet next, I deserve not better at thine hand.”—Turning
then back towards the castle, he threw the piece of gold towards the
donor, exclaiming at the same time, “False Norman, thy money perish
with thee!”
Front-de-Bœuf heard the words imperfectly, but the action was
suspicious—“Archers,” he called to the warders on the outward
battlements, “send me an arrow through yon monk’s frock!—yet stay,” he
said, as his retainers were bending their bows, “it avails not—we must
thus far trust him since we have no better shift. I think he dares not
betray me—at the worst I can but treat with these Saxon dogs whom I
have safe in kennel.—Ho! Giles jailor, let them bring Cedric of
Rotherwood before me, and the other churl, his companion—him I mean of
Coningsburgh—Athelstane there, or what call they him? Their very names
are an encumbrance to a Norman knight’s mouth, and have, as it were, a
flavour of bacon—Give me a stoup of wine, as jolly Prince John said,
that I may wash away the relish—place it in the armoury, and thither
lead the prisoners.”
His commands were obeyed; and, upon entering that Gothic apartment,
hung with many spoils won by his own valour and that of his father, he
found a flagon of wine on the massive oaken table, and the two Saxon
captives under the guard of four of his dependants. Front-de-Bœuf took
a long drought of wine, and then addressed his prisoners;—for the
manner in which Wamba drew the cap over his face, the change of dress,
the gloomy and broken light, and the Baron’s imperfect acquaintance
with the features of Cedric, (who avoided his Norman neighbours, and
seldom stirred beyond his own domains,) prevented him from discovering
that the most important of his captives had made his escape.
“Gallants of England,” said Front-de-Bœuf, “how relish ye your
entertainment at Torquilstone?—Are ye yet aware what your ‘surquedy’
and ‘outrecuidance’ 31 merit, for scoffing at the entertainment of a
prince of the House of Anjou?—Have ye forgotten how ye requited the
unmerited hospitality of the royal John? By God and St Dennis, an ye
pay not the richer ransom, I will hang ye up by the feet from the iron
bars of these windows, till the kites and hooded crows have made
skeletons of you!—Speak out, ye Saxon dogs—what bid ye for your
worthless lives?—How say you, you of Rotherwood?”
“Not a doit I,” answered poor Wamba—“and for hanging up by the feet, my
brain has been topsy-turvy, they say, ever since the biggin was bound
first round my head; so turning me upside down may peradventure restore
it again.”
“Saint Genevieve!” said Front-de-Bœuf, “what have we got here?”
And with the back of his hand he struck Cedric’s cap from the head of
the Jester, and throwing open his collar, discovered the fatal badge of
servitude, the silver collar round his neck.
“Giles—Clement—dogs and varlets!” exclaimed the furious Norman, “what
have you brought me here?”
“I think I can tell you,” said De Bracy, who just entered the
apartment. “This is Cedric’s clown, who fought so manful a skirmish
with Isaac of York about a question of precedence.”
“I shall settle it for them both,” replied Front-de-Bœuf; “they shall
hang on the same gallows, unless his master and this boar of
Coningsburgh will pay well for their lives. Their wealth is the least
they can surrender; they must also carry off with them the swarms that
are besetting the castle, subscribe a surrender of their pretended
immunities, and live under us as serfs and vassals; too happy if, in
the new world that is about to begin, we leave them the breath of their
nostrils.—Go,” said he to two of his attendants, “fetch me the right
Cedric hither, and I pardon your error for once; the rather that you
but mistook a fool for a Saxon franklin.”
“Ay, but,” said Wamba, “your chivalrous excellency will find there are
more fools than franklins among us.”
“What means the knave?” said Front-de-Bœuf, looking towards his
followers, who, lingering and loath, faltered forth their belief, that
if this were not Cedric who was there in presence, they knew not what
was become of him.
“Saints of Heaven!” exclaimed De Bracy, “he must have escaped in the
monk’s garments!”
“Fiends of hell!” echoed Front-de-Bœuf, “it was then the boar of
Rotherwood whom I ushered to the postern, and dismissed with my own
hands!—And thou,” he said to Wamba, “whose folly could overreach the
wisdom of idiots yet more gross than thyself—I will give thee holy
orders—I will shave thy crown for thee!—Here, let them tear the scalp
from his head, and then pitch him headlong from the battlements—Thy
trade is to jest, canst thou jest now?”
“You deal with me better than your word, noble knight,” whimpered forth
poor Wamba, whose habits of buffoonery were not to be overcome even by
the immediate prospect of death; “if you give me the red cap you
propose, out of a simple monk you will make a cardinal.”
“The poor wretch,” said De Bracy, “is resolved to die in his
vocation.—Front-de-Bœuf, you shall not slay him. Give him to me to make
sport for my Free Companions.—How sayst thou, knave? Wilt thou take
heart of grace, and go to the wars with me?”
“Ay, with my master’s leave,” said Wamba; “for, look you, I must not
slip collar” (and he touched that which he wore) “without his
permission.”
“Oh, a Norman saw will soon cut a Saxon collar.” said De Bracy.
“Ay, noble sir,” said Wamba, “and thence goes the proverb—
‘Norman saw on English oak,
On English neck a Norman yoke;
Norman spoon in English dish,
And England ruled as Normans wish;
Blithe world to England never will be more,
Till England’s rid of all the four.’”
“Thou dost well, De Bracy,” said Front-de-Bœuf, “to stand there
listening to a fool’s jargon, when destruction is gaping for us! Seest