Ivanhoe: A Romance
There is a huge lumbering Saint Christopher yonder, sufficient to bear
a whole company to the earth.”
The Templar had in the meantime been looking out on the proceedings of
the besiegers, with rather more attention than the brutal Front-de-Bœuf
or his giddy companion.
“By the faith of mine order,” he said, “these men approach with more
touch of discipline than could have been judged, however they come by
it. See ye how dexterously they avail themselves of every cover which a
tree or bush affords, and shun exposing themselves to the shot of our
cross-bows? I spy neither banner nor pennon among them, and yet will I
gage my golden chain, that they are led on by some noble knight or
gentleman, skilful in the practice of wars.”
“I espy him,” said De Bracy; “I see the waving of a knight’s crest, and
the gleam of his armour. See yon tall man in the black mail, who is
busied marshalling the farther troop of the rascaille yeomen—by Saint
Dennis, I hold him to be the same whom we called ‘Le Noir Faineant’,
who overthrew thee, Front-de-Bœuf, in the lists at Ashby.”
“So much the better,” said Front-de-Bœuf, “that he comes here to give
me my revenge. Some hilding fellow he must be, who dared not stay to
assert his claim to the tourney prize which chance had assigned him. I
should in vain have sought for him where knights and nobles seek their
foes, and right glad am I he hath here shown himself among yon villain
yeomanry.”
The demonstrations of the enemy’s immediate approach cut off all
farther discourse. Each knight repaired to his post, and at the head of
the few followers whom they were able to muster, and who were in
numbers inadequate to defend the whole extent of the walls, they
awaited with calm determination the threatened assault.
CHAPTER XXVIII
This wandering race, sever’d from other men,
Boast yet their intercourse with human arts;
The seas, the woods, the deserts, which they haunt,
Find them acquainted with their secret treasures:
And unregarded herbs, and flowers, and blossoms,
Display undreamt-of powers when gather’d by them.
THE JEW
Our history must needs retrograde for the space of a few pages, to
inform the reader of certain passages material to his understanding the
rest of this important narrative. His own intelligence may indeed have
easily anticipated that, when Ivanhoe sunk down, and seemed abandoned
by all the world, it was the importunity of Rebecca which prevailed on
her father to have the gallant young warrior transported from the lists
to the house which for the time the Jews inhabited in the suburbs of
Ashby.
It would not have been difficult to have persuaded Isaac to this step
in any other circumstances, for his disposition was kind and grateful.
But he had also the prejudices and scrupulous timidity of his
persecuted people, and those were to be conquered.
“Holy Abraham!” he exclaimed, “he is a good youth, and my heart bleeds
to see the gore trickle down his rich embroidered hacqueton, and his
corslet of goodly price—but to carry him to our house!—damsel, hast
thou well considered?—he is a Christian, and by our law we may not deal
with the stranger and Gentile, save for the advantage of our commerce.”
“Speak not so, my dear father,” replied Rebecca; “we may not indeed mix
with them in banquet and in jollity; but in wounds and in misery, the
Gentile becometh the Jew’s brother.”
“I would I knew what the Rabbi Jacob Ben Tudela would opine on it,”
replied Isaac;—“nevertheless, the good youth must not bleed to death.
Let Seth and Reuben bear him to Ashby.”
“Nay, let them place him in my litter,” said Rebecca; “I will mount one
of the palfreys.”
“That were to expose thee to the gaze of those dogs of Ishmael and of
Edom,” whispered Isaac, with a suspicious glance towards the crowd of
knights and squires. But Rebecca was already busied in carrying her
charitable purpose into effect, and listed not what he said, until
Isaac, seizing the sleeve of her mantle, again exclaimed, in a hurried
voice—“Beard of Aaron!—what if the youth perish!—if he die in our
custody, shall we not be held guilty of his blood, and be torn to
pieces by the multitude?”
“He will not die, my father,” said Rebecca, gently extricating herself
from the grasp of Isaac “he will not die unless we abandon him; and if
so, we are indeed answerable for his blood to God and to man.”
“Nay,” said Isaac, releasing his hold, “it grieveth me as much to see
the drops of his blood, as if they were so many golden byzants from
mine own purse; and I well know, that the lessons of Miriam, daughter
of the Rabbi Manasses of Byzantium whose soul is in Paradise, have made
thee skilful in the art of healing, and that thou knowest the craft of
herbs, and the force of elixirs. Therefore, do as thy mind giveth
thee—thou art a good damsel, a blessing, and a crown, and a song of
rejoicing unto me and unto my house, and unto the people of my
fathers.”
The apprehensions of Isaac, however, were not ill founded; and the
generous and grateful benevolence of his daughter exposed her, on her
return to Ashby, to the unhallowed gaze of Brian de Bois-Guilbert. The
Templar twice passed and repassed them on the road, fixing his bold and
ardent look on the beautiful Jewess; and we have already seen the
consequences of the admiration which her charms excited when accident
threw her into the power of that unprincipled voluptuary.
Rebecca lost no time in causing the patient to be transported to their
temporary dwelling, and proceeded with her own hands to examine and to
bind up his wounds. The youngest reader of romances and romantic
ballads, must recollect how often the females, during the dark ages, as
they are called, were initiated into the mysteries of surgery, and how
frequently the gallant knight submitted the wounds of his person to her
cure, whose eyes had yet more deeply penetrated his heart.
But the Jews, both male and female, possessed and practised the medical
science in all its branches, and the monarchs and powerful barons of
the time frequently committed themselves to the charge of some
experienced sage among this despised people, when wounded or in
sickness. The aid of the Jewish physicians was not the less eagerly
sought after, though a general belief prevailed among the Christians,
that the Jewish Rabbins were deeply acquainted with the occult
sciences, and particularly with the cabalistical art, which had its
name and origin in the studies of the sages of Israel. Neither did the
Rabbins disown such acquaintance with supernatural arts, which added
nothing (for what could add aught?) to the hatred with which their
nation was regarded, while it diminished the contempt with which that
malevolence was mingled. A Jewish magician might be the subject of
equal abhorrence with a Jewish usurer, but he could not be equally
despised. It is besides probable, considering the wonderful cures they
are said to have performed, that the Jews possessed some secrets of the
healing art peculiar to themselves, and which, with the exclusive
spirit arising out of their condition, they took great care to conceal
from the Christians amongst whom they dwelt.
The beautiful Rebecca had been heedfully brought up in all the
knowledge proper to her nation, which her apt and powerful mind had
retained, arranged, and enlarged, in the course of a progress beyond
her years, her sex, and even the age in which she lived. Her knowledge
of medicine and of the healing art had been acquired under an aged
Jewess, the daughter of one of their most celebrated doctors, who loved
Rebecca as her own child, and was believed to have communicated to her
secrets, which had been left to herself by her sage father at the same
time, and under the same circumstances. The fate of Miriam had indeed
been to fall a sacrifice to the fanaticism of the times; but her
secrets had survived in her apt pupil.
Rebecca, thus endowed with knowledge as with beauty, was universally
revered and admired by her own tribe, who almost regarded her as one of
those gifted women mentioned in the sacred history. Her father himself,
out of reverence for her talents, which involuntarily mingled itself
with his unbounded affection, permitted the maiden a greater liberty
than was usually indulged to those of her sex by the habits of her
people, and was, as we have just seen, frequently guided by her
opinion, even in preference to his own.
When Ivanhoe reached the habitation of Isaac, he was still in a state
of unconsciousness, owing to the profuse loss of blood which had taken
place during his exertions in the lists. Rebecca examined the wound,
and having applied to it such vulnerary remedies as her art prescribed,
informed her father that if fever could be averted, of which the great
bleeding rendered her little apprehensive, and if the healing balsam of
Miriam retained its virtue, there was nothing to fear for his guest’s
life, and that he might with safety travel to York with them on the
ensuing day. Isaac looked a little blank at this annunciation. His
charity would willingly have stopped short at Ashby, or at most would
have left the wounded Christian to be tended in the house where he was
residing at present, with an assurance to the Hebrew to whom it
belonged, that all expenses should be duly discharged. To this,
however, Rebecca opposed many reasons, of which we shall only mention
two that had peculiar weight with Isaac. The one was, that she would on
no account put the phial of precious balsam into the hands of another
physician even of her own tribe, lest that valuable mystery should be
discovered; the other, that this wounded knight, Wilfred of Ivanhoe,
was an intimate favourite of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, and that, in case
the monarch should return, Isaac, who had supplied his brother John
with treasure to prosecute his rebellious purposes, would stand in no
small need of a powerful protector who enjoyed Richard’s favour.
“Thou art speaking but sooth, Rebecca,” said Isaac, giving way to these
weighty arguments—“it were an offending of Heaven to betray the secrets
of the blessed Miriam; for the good which Heaven giveth, is not rashly
to be squandered upon others, whether it be talents of gold and shekels
of silver, or whether it be the secret mysteries of a wise
physician—assuredly they should be preserved to those to whom
Providence hath vouchsafed them. And him whom the Nazarenes of England
call the Lion’s Heart, assuredly it were better for me to fall into the
hands of a strong lion of Idumea than into his, if he shall have got
assurance of my dealing with his brother. Wherefore I will lend ear to
thy counsel, and this youth shall journey with us unto York, and our
house shall be as a home to him until his wounds shall be healed. And
if he of the Lion Heart shall return to the land, as is now noised
abroad, then shall this Wilfred of Ivanhoe be unto me as a wall of
defence, when the king’s displeasure shall burn high against thy
father. And if he doth not return, this Wilfred may natheless repay us
our charges when he shall gain treasure by the strength of his spear
and of his sword, even as he did yesterday and this day also. For the
youth is a good youth, and keepeth the day which he appointeth, and
restoreth that which he borroweth, and succoureth the Israelite, even
the child of my father’s house, when he is encompassed by strong
thieves and sons of Belial.”
It was not until evening was nearly closed that Ivanhoe was restored to
consciousness of his situation. He awoke from a broken slumber, under
the confused impressions which are naturally attendant on the recovery
from a state of insensibility. He was unable for some time to recall
exactly to memory the circumstances which had preceded his fall in the