Ivanhoe: A Romance
having fifty men at my back?”
“Were it not well,” said the Lieutenant of the gang apart to the
Captain, “that the Prior should name the Jew’s ransom, and the Jew name
the Prior’s?”
“Thou art a mad knave,” said the Captain, “but thy plan
transcends!—Here, Jew, step forth—Look at that holy Father Aymer, Prior
of the rich Abbey of Jorvaulx, and tell us at what ransom we should
hold him?—Thou knowest the income of his convent, I warrant thee.”
“O, assuredly,” said Isaac. “I have trafficked with the good fathers,
and bought wheat and barley, and fruits of the earth, and also much
wool. O, it is a rich abbey-stede, and they do live upon the fat, and
drink the sweet wines upon the lees, these good fathers of Jorvaulx.
Ah, if an outcast like me had such a home to go to, and such incomings
by the year and by the month, I would pay much gold and silver to
redeem my captivity.”
“Hound of a Jew!” exclaimed the Prior, “no one knows better than thy
own cursed self, that our holy house of God is indebted for the
finishing of our chancel—”
“And for the storing of your cellars in the last season with the due
allowance of Gascon wine,” interrupted the Jew; “but that—that is small
matters.”
“Hear the infidel dog!” said the churchman; “he jangles as if our holy
community did come under debts for the wines we have a license to
drink, ‘propter necessitatem, et ad frigus depellendum’. The
circumcised villain blasphemeth the holy church, and Christian men
listen and rebuke him not!”
“All this helps nothing,” said the leader.—“Isaac, pronounce what he
may pay, without flaying both hide and hair.”
“An six hundred crowns,” said Isaac, “the good Prior might well pay to
your honoured valours, and never sit less soft in his stall.”
“Six hundred crowns,” said the leader, gravely; “I am contented—thou
hast well spoken, Isaac—six hundred crowns.—It is a sentence, Sir
Prior.”
“A sentence!—a sentence!” exclaimed the band; “Solomon had not done it
better.”
“Thou hearest thy doom, Prior,” said the leader.
“Ye are mad, my masters,” said the Prior; “where am I to find such a
sum? If I sell the very pyx and candlesticks on the altar at Jorvaulx,
I shall scarce raise the half; and it will be necessary for that
purpose that I go to Jorvaulx myself; ye may retain as borrows 44 my
two priests.”
“That will be but blind trust,” said the Outlaw; “we will retain thee,
Prior, and send them to fetch thy ransom. Thou shalt not want a cup of
wine and a collop of venison the while; and if thou lovest woodcraft,
thou shalt see such as your north country never witnessed.”
“Or, if so please you,” said Isaac, willing to curry favour with the
outlaws, “I can send to York for the six hundred crowns, out of certain
monies in my hands, if so be that the most reverend Prior present will
grant me a quittance.”
“He shall grant thee whatever thou dost list, Isaac,” said the Captain;
“and thou shalt lay down the redemption money for Prior Aymer as well
as for thyself.”
“For myself! ah, courageous sirs,” said the Jew, “I am a broken and
impoverished man; a beggar’s staff must be my portion through life,
supposing I were to pay you fifty crowns.”
“The Prior shall judge of that matter,” replied the Captain.—“How say
you, Father Aymer? Can the Jew afford a good ransom?”
“Can he afford a ransom?” answered the Prior “Is he not Isaac of York,
rich enough to redeem the captivity of the ten tribes of Israel, who
were led into Assyrian bondage?—I have seen but little of him myself,
but our cellarer and treasurer have dealt largely with him, and report
says that his house at York is so full of gold and silver as is a shame
in any Christian land. Marvel it is to all living Christian hearts that
such gnawing adders should be suffered to eat into the bowels of the
state, and even of the holy church herself, with foul usuries and
extortions.”
“Hold, father,” said the Jew, “mitigate and assuage your choler. I pray
of your reverence to remember that I force my monies upon no one. But
when churchman and layman, prince and prior, knight and priest, come
knocking to Isaac’s door, they borrow not his shekels with these
uncivil terms. It is then, Friend Isaac, will you pleasure us in this
matter, and our day shall be truly kept, so God sa’ me?—and Kind Isaac,
if ever you served man, show yourself a friend in this need! And when
the day comes, and I ask my own, then what hear I but Damned Jew, and
The curse of Egypt on your tribe, and all that may stir up the rude and
uncivil populace against poor strangers!”
“Prior,” said the Captain, “Jew though he be, he hath in this spoken
well. Do thou, therefore, name his ransom, as he named thine, without
farther rude terms.”
“None but ‘latro famosus’—the interpretation whereof,” said the Prior,
“will I give at some other time and tide—would place a Christian
prelate and an unbaptized Jew upon the same bench. But since ye require
me to put a price upon this caitiff, I tell you openly that ye will
wrong yourselves if you take from him a penny under a thousand crowns.”
“A sentence!—a sentence!” exclaimed the chief Outlaw.
“A sentence!—a sentence!” shouted his assessors; “the Christian has
shown his good nurture, and dealt with us more generously than the
Jew.”
“The God of my fathers help me!” said the Jew; “will ye bear to the
ground an impoverished creature?—I am this day childless, and will ye
deprive me of the means of livelihood?”
“Thou wilt have the less to provide for, Jew, if thou art childless,”
said Aymer.
“Alas! my lord,” said Isaac, “your law permits you not to know how the
child of our bosom is entwined with the strings of our heart—O Rebecca!
laughter of my beloved Rachel! were each leaf on that tree a zecchin,
and each zecchin mine own, all that mass of wealth would I give to know
whether thou art alive, and escaped the hands of the Nazarene!”
“Was not thy daughter dark-haired?” said one of the outlaws; “and wore
she not a veil of twisted sendal, broidered with silver?”
“She did!—she did!” said the old man, trembling with eagerness, as
formerly with fear. “The blessing of Jacob be upon thee! canst thou
tell me aught of her safety?”
“It was she, then,” said the yeoman, “who was carried off by the proud
Templar, when he broke through our ranks on yester-even. I had drawn my
bow to send a shaft after him, but spared him even for the sake of the
damsel, who I feared might take harm from the arrow.”
“Oh!” answered the Jew, “I would to God thou hadst shot, though the
arrow had pierced her bosom!—Better the tomb of her fathers than the
dishonourable couch of the licentious and savage Templar. Ichabod!
Ichabod! the glory hath departed from my house!”
“Friends,” said the Chief, looking round, “the old man is but a Jew,
natheless his grief touches me.—Deal uprightly with us, Isaac—will
paying this ransom of a thousand crowns leave thee altogether
penniless?”
Isaac, recalled to think of his worldly goods, the love of which, by
dint of inveterate habit, contended even with his parental affection,
grew pale, stammered, and could not deny there might be some small
surplus.
“Well—go to—what though there be,” said the Outlaw, “we will not reckon
with thee too closely. Without treasure thou mayst as well hope to
redeem thy child from the clutches of Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, as to
shoot a stag-royal with a headless shaft.—We will take thee at the same
ransom with Prior Aymer, or rather at one hundred crowns lower, which
hundred crowns shall be mine own peculiar loss, and not light upon this
worshipful community; and so we shall avoid the heinous offence of
rating a Jew merchant as high as a Christian prelate, and thou wilt
have six hundred crowns remaining to treat for thy daughter’s ransom.
Templars love the glitter of silver shekels as well as the sparkle of
black eyes.—Hasten to make thy crowns chink in the ear of De
Bois-Guilbert, ere worse comes of it. Thou wilt find him, as our scouts
have brought notice, at the next Preceptory house of his Order.—Said I
well, my merry mates?”
The yeomen expressed their wonted acquiescence in their leader’s
opinion; and Isaac, relieved of one half of his apprehensions, by
learning that his daughter lived, and might possibly be ransomed, threw
himself at the feet of the generous Outlaw, and, rubbing his beard
against his buskins, sought to kiss the hem of his green cassock. The
Captain drew himself back, and extricated himself from the Jew’s grasp,
not without some marks of contempt.
“Nay, beshrew thee, man, up with thee! I am English born, and love no
such Eastern prostrations—Kneel to God, and not to a poor sinner, like
me.”
“Ay, Jew,” said Prior Aymer; “kneel to God, as represented in the
servant of his altar, and who knows, with thy sincere repentance and
due gifts to the shrine of Saint Robert, what grace thou mayst acquire
for thyself and thy daughter Rebecca? I grieve for the maiden, for she
is of fair and comely countenance,—I beheld her in the lists of Ashby.
Also Brian de Bois-Guilbert is one with whom I may do much—bethink thee
how thou mayst deserve my good word with him.”
“Alas! alas!” said the Jew, “on every hand the spoilers arise against
me—I am given as a prey unto the Assyrian, and a prey unto him of
Egypt.”
“And what else should be the lot of thy accursed race?” answered the
Prior; “for what saith holy writ, ‘verbum Domini projecerunt, et
sapientia est nulla in eis’—they have cast forth the word of the Lord,
and there is no wisdom in them; ‘propterea dabo mulieres eorum
exteris’—I will give their women to strangers, that is to the Templar,
as in the present matter; ‘et thesauros eorum haeredibus alienis’, and
their treasures to others—as in the present case to these honest
gentlemen.”
Isaac groaned deeply, and began to wring his hands, and to relapse into
his state of desolation and despair. But the leader of the yeomen led
him aside.
“Advise thee well, Isaac,” said Locksley, “what thou wilt do in this
matter; my counsel to thee is to make a friend of this churchman. He is
vain, Isaac, and he is covetous; at least he needs money to supply his
profusion. Thou canst easily gratify his greed; for think not that I am
blinded by thy pretexts of poverty. I am intimately acquainted, Isaac,
with the very iron chest in which thou dost keep thy money-bags—What!
know I not the great stone beneath the apple-tree, that leads into the
vaulted chamber under thy garden at York?” The Jew grew as pale as
death—“But fear nothing from me,” continued the yeoman, “for we are of
old acquainted. Dost thou not remember the sick yeoman whom thy fair
daughter Rebecca redeemed from the gyves at York, and kept him in thy
house till his health was restored, when thou didst dismiss him
recovered, and with a piece of money?—Usurer as thou art, thou didst
never place coin at better interest than that poor silver mark, for it
has this day saved thee five hundred crowns.”
“And thou art he whom we called Diccon Bend-the-Bow?” said Isaac; “I
thought ever I knew the accent of thy voice.”
“I am Bend-the-Bow,” said the Captain, “and Locksley, and have a good
name besides all these.”
“But thou art mistaken, good Bend-the-Bow, concerning that same vaulted
apartment. So help me Heaven, as there is nought in it but some
merchandises which I will gladly part with to you—one hundred yards of
Lincoln green to make doublets to thy men, and a hundred staves of
Spanish yew to make bows, and a hundred silken bowstrings, tough,
round, and sound—these will I send thee for thy good-will, honest
Diccon, an thou wilt keep silence about the vault, my good Diccon.”
“Silent as a dormouse,” said the Outlaw; “and never trust me but I am
grieved for thy daughter. But I may not help it—The Templars lances are