Ivanhoe: A Romance
soldiers lie grovelling under them like crushed reptiles—The besieged
have the better.”
“Saint George strike for us!” exclaimed the knight; “do the false
yeomen give way?”
“No!” exclaimed Rebecca, “they bear themselves right yeomanly—the Black
Knight approaches the postern with his huge axe—the thundering blows
which he deals, you may hear them above all the din and shouts of the
battle—Stones and beams are hailed down on the bold champion—he regards
them no more than if they were thistle-down or feathers!”
“By Saint John of Acre,” said Ivanhoe, raising himself joyfully on his
couch, “methought there was but one man in England that might do such a
deed!”
“The postern gate shakes,” continued Rebecca; “it crashes—it is
splintered by his blows—they rush in—the outwork is won—Oh, God!—they
hurl the defenders from the battlements—they throw them into the moat—O
men, if ye be indeed men, spare them that can resist no longer!”
“The bridge—the bridge which communicates with the castle—have they won
that pass?” exclaimed Ivanhoe.
“No,” replied Rebecca, “The Templar has destroyed the plank on which
they crossed—few of the defenders escaped with him into the castle—the
shrieks and cries which you hear tell the fate of the others—Alas!—I
see it is still more difficult to look upon victory than upon battle.”
“What do they now, maiden?” said Ivanhoe; “look forth yet again—this is
no time to faint at bloodshed.”
“It is over for the time,” answered Rebecca; “our friends strengthen
themselves within the outwork which they have mastered, and it affords
them so good a shelter from the foemen’s shot, that the garrison only
bestow a few bolts on it from interval to interval, as if rather to
disquiet than effectually to injure them.”
“Our friends,” said Wilfred, “will surely not abandon an enterprise so
gloriously begun and so happily attained.—O no! I will put my faith in
the good knight whose axe hath rent heart-of-oak and bars of
iron.—Singular,” he again muttered to himself, “if there be two who can
do a deed of such derring-do! 37—a fetterlock, and a shacklebolt on a
field sable—what may that mean?—seest thou nought else, Rebecca, by
which the Black Knight may be distinguished?”
“Nothing,” said the Jewess; “all about him is black as the wing of the
night raven. Nothing can I spy that can mark him further—but having
once seen him put forth his strength in battle, methinks I could know
him again among a thousand warriors. He rushes to the fray as if he
were summoned to a banquet. There is more than mere strength, there
seems as if the whole soul and spirit of the champion were given to
every blow which he deals upon his enemies. God assoilize him of the
sin of bloodshed!—it is fearful, yet magnificent, to behold how the arm
and heart of one man can triumph over hundreds.”
“Rebecca,” said Ivanhoe, “thou hast painted a hero; surely they rest
but to refresh their force, or to provide the means of crossing the
moat—Under such a leader as thou hast spoken this knight to be, there
are no craven fears, no cold-blooded delays, no yielding up a gallant
emprize; since the difficulties which render it arduous render it also
glorious. I swear by the honour of my house—I vow by the name of my
bright lady-love, I would endure ten years’ captivity to fight one day
by that good knight’s side in such a quarrel as this!”
“Alas,” said Rebecca, leaving her station at the window, and
approaching the couch of the wounded knight, “this impatient yearning
after action—this struggling with and repining at your present
weakness, will not fail to injure your returning health—How couldst
thou hope to inflict wounds on others, ere that be healed which thou
thyself hast received?”
“Rebecca,” he replied, “thou knowest not how impossible it is for one
trained to actions of chivalry to remain passive as a priest, or a
woman, when they are acting deeds of honour around him. The love of
battle is the food upon which we live—the dust of the ‘melee’ is the
breath of our nostrils! We live not—we wish not to live—longer than
while we are victorious and renowned—Such, maiden, are the laws of
chivalry to which we are sworn, and to which we offer all that we hold
dear.”
“Alas!” said the fair Jewess, “and what is it, valiant knight, save an
offering of sacrifice to a demon of vain glory, and a passing through
the fire to Moloch?—What remains to you as the prize of all the blood
you have spilled—of all the travail and pain you have endured—of all
the tears which your deeds have caused, when death hath broken the
strong man’s spear, and overtaken the speed of his war-horse?”
“What remains?” cried Ivanhoe; “Glory, maiden, glory! which gilds our
sepulchre and embalms our name.”
“Glory?” continued Rebecca; “alas, is the rusted mail which hangs as a
hatchment over the champion’s dim and mouldering tomb—is the defaced
sculpture of the inscription which the ignorant monk can hardly read to
the enquiring pilgrim—are these sufficient rewards for the sacrifice of
every kindly affection, for a life spent miserably that ye may make
others miserable? Or is there such virtue in the rude rhymes of a
wandering bard, that domestic love, kindly affection, peace and
happiness, are so wildly bartered, to become the hero of those ballads
which vagabond minstrels sing to drunken churls over their evening
ale?”
“By the soul of Hereward!” replied the knight impatiently, “thou
speakest, maiden, of thou knowest not what. Thou wouldst quench the
pure light of chivalry, which alone distinguishes the noble from the
base, the gentle knight from the churl and the savage; which rates our
life far, far beneath the pitch of our honour; raises us victorious
over pain, toil, and suffering, and teaches us to fear no evil but
disgrace. Thou art no Christian, Rebecca; and to thee are unknown those
high feelings which swell the bosom of a noble maiden when her lover
hath done some deed of emprize which sanctions his flame.
Chivalry!—why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection—the
stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the
power of the tyrant—Nobility were but an empty name without her, and
liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.”
“I am, indeed,” said Rebecca, “sprung from a race whose courage was
distinguished in the defence of their own land, but who warred not,
even while yet a nation, save at the command of the Deity, or in
defending their country from oppression. The sound of the trumpet wakes
Judah no longer, and her despised children are now but the unresisting
victims of hostile and military oppression. Well hast thou spoken, Sir
Knight,—until the God of Jacob shall raise up for his chosen people a
second Gideon, or a new Maccabeus, it ill beseemeth the Jewish damsel
to speak of battle or of war.”
The high-minded maiden concluded the argument in a tone of sorrow,
which deeply expressed her sense of the degradation of her people,
embittered perhaps by the idea that Ivanhoe considered her as one not
entitled to interfere in a case of honour, and incapable of
entertaining or expressing sentiments of honour and generosity.
“How little he knows this bosom,” she said, “to imagine that cowardice
or meanness of soul must needs be its guests, because I have censured
the fantastic chivalry of the Nazarenes! Would to heaven that the
shedding of mine own blood, drop by drop, could redeem the captivity of
Judah! Nay, would to God it could avail to set free my father, and this
his benefactor, from the chains of the oppressor! The proud Christian
should then see whether the daughter of God’s chosen people dared not
to die as bravely as the vainest Nazarene maiden, that boasts her
descent from some petty chieftain of the rude and frozen north!”
She then looked towards the couch of the wounded knight.
“He sleeps,” she said; “nature exhausted by sufferance and the waste of
spirits, his wearied frame embraces the first moment of temporary
relaxation to sink into slumber. Alas! is it a crime that I should look
upon him, when it may be for the last time?—When yet but a short space,
and those fair features will be no longer animated by the bold and
buoyant spirit which forsakes them not even in sleep!—When the nostril
shall be distended, the mouth agape, the eyes fixed and bloodshot; and
when the proud and noble knight may be trodden on by the lowest caitiff
of this accursed castle, yet stir not when the heel is lifted up
against him!—And my father!—oh, my father! evil is it with his
daughter, when his grey hairs are not remembered because of the golden
locks of youth!—What know I but that these evils are the messengers of
Jehovah’s wrath to the unnatural child, who thinks of a stranger’s
captivity before a parent’s? who forgets the desolation of Judah, and
looks upon the comeliness of a Gentile and a stranger?—But I will tear
this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!”
She wrapped herself closely in her veil, and sat down at a distance
from the couch of the wounded knight, with her back turned towards it,
fortifying, or endeavouring to fortify her mind, not only against the
impending evils from without, but also against those treacherous
feelings which assailed her from within.
CHAPTER XXX
Approach the chamber, look upon his bed.
His is the passing of no peaceful ghost,
Which, as the lark arises to the sky,
’Mid morning’s sweetest breeze and softest dew,
Is wing’d to heaven by good men’s sighs and tears!—
Anselm parts otherwise.
OLD PLAY
During the interval of quiet which followed the first success of the
besiegers, while the one party was preparing to pursue their advantage,
and the other to strengthen their means of defence, the Templar and De
Bracy held brief council together in the hall of the castle.
“Where is Front-de-Bœuf?” said the latter, who had superintended the
defence of the fortress on the other side; “men say he hath been
slain.”
“He lives,” said the Templar, coolly, “lives as yet; but had he worn
the bull’s head of which he bears the name, and ten plates of iron to
fence it withal, he must have gone down before yonder fatal axe. Yet a
few hours, and Front-de-Bœuf is with his fathers—a powerful limb lopped
off Prince John’s enterprise.”
“And a brave addition to the kingdom of Satan,” said De Bracy; “this
comes of reviling saints and angels, and ordering images of holy things
and holy men to be flung down on the heads of these rascaille yeomen.”
“Go to—thou art a fool,” said the Templar; “thy superstition is upon a
level with Front-de-Bœuf’s want of faith; neither of you can render a
reason for your belief or unbelief.”
“Benedicite, Sir Templar,” replied De Bracy, “pray you to keep better
rule with your tongue when I am the theme of it. By the Mother of
Heaven, I am a better Christian man than thou and thy fellowship; for
the ‘bruit’ goeth shrewdly out, that the most holy Order of the Temple
of Zion nurseth not a few heretics within its bosom, and that Sir Brian
de Bois-Guilbert is of the number.”
“Care not thou for such reports,” said the Templar; “but let us think
of making good the castle.—How fought these villain yeomen on thy
side?”
“Like fiends incarnate,” said De Bracy. “They swarmed close up to the
walls, headed, as I think, by the knave who won the prize at the
archery, for I knew his horn and baldric. And this is old Fitzurse’s
boasted policy, encouraging these malapert knaves to rebel against us!
Had I not been armed in proof, the villain had marked me down seven
times with as little remorse as if I had been a buck in season. He told
every rivet on my armour with a cloth-yard shaft, that rapped against
my ribs with as little compunction as if my bones had been of iron—But