Ivanhoe: A Romance
leech here who can tell us the ingredients of this mystic unguent?”
Two mediciners, as they called themselves, the one a monk, the other a
barber, appeared, and avouched they knew nothing of the materials,
excepting that they savoured of myrrh and camphire, which they took to
be Oriental herbs. But with the true professional hatred to a
successful practitioner of their art, they insinuated that, since the
medicine was beyond their own knowledge, it must necessarily have been
compounded from an unlawful and magical pharmacopeia; since they
themselves, though no conjurors, fully understood every branch of their
art, so far as it might be exercised with the good faith of a
Christian. When this medical research was ended, the Saxon peasant
desired humbly to have back the medicine which he had found so
salutary; but the Grand Master frowned severely at the request. “What
is thy name, fellow?” said he to the cripple.
“Higg, the son of Snell,” answered the peasant.
“Then Higg, son of Snell,” said the Grand Master, “I tell thee it is
better to be bedridden, than to accept the benefit of unbelievers’
medicine that thou mayest arise and walk; better to despoil infidels of
their treasure by the strong hand, than to accept of them benevolent
gifts, or do them service for wages. Go thou, and do as I have said.”
“Alack,” said the peasant, “an it shall not displease your Reverence,
the lesson comes too late for me, for I am but a maimed man; but I will
tell my two brethren, who serve the rich Rabbi Nathan Ben Samuel, that
your mastership says it is more lawful to rob him than to render him
faithful service.”
“Out with the prating villain!” said Beaumanoir, who was not prepared
to refute this practical application of his general maxim.
Higg, the son of Snell, withdrew into the crowd, but, interested in the
fate of his benefactress, lingered until he should learn her doom, even
at the risk of again encountering the frown of that severe judge, the
terror of which withered his very heart within him.
At this period of the trial, the Grand Master commanded Rebecca to
unveil herself. Opening her lips for the first time, she replied
patiently, but with dignity,—“That it was not the wont of the daughters
of her people to uncover their faces when alone in an assembly of
strangers.” The sweet tones of her voice, and the softness of her
reply, impressed on the audience a sentiment of pity and sympathy. But
Beaumanoir, in whose mind the suppression of each feeling of humanity
which could interfere with his imagined duty, was a virtue of itself,
repeated his commands that his victim should be unveiled. The guards
were about to remove her veil accordingly, when she stood up before the
Grand Master and said, “Nay, but for the love of your own
daughters—Alas,” she said, recollecting herself, “ye have no
daughters!—yet for the remembrance of your mothers—for the love of your
sisters, and of female decency, let me not be thus handled in your
presence; it suits not a maiden to be disrobed by such rude grooms. I
will obey you,” she added, with an expression of patient sorrow in her
voice, which had almost melted the heart of Beaumanoir himself; “ye are
elders among your people, and at your command I will show the features
of an ill-fated maiden.”
She withdrew her veil, and looked on them with a countenance in which
bashfulness contended with dignity. Her exceeding beauty excited a
murmur of surprise, and the younger knights told each other with their
eyes, in silent correspondence, that Brian’s best apology was in the
power of her real charms, rather than of her imaginary witchcraft. But
Higg, the son of Snell, felt most deeply the effect produced by the
sight of the countenance of his benefactress.
“Let me go forth,” he said to the warders at the door of the hall,—“let
me go forth!—To look at her again will kill me, for I have had a share
in murdering her.”
“Peace, poor man,” said Rebecca, when she heard his exclamation; “thou
hast done me no harm by speaking the truth—thou canst not aid me by thy
complaints or lamentations. Peace, I pray thee—go home and save
thyself.”
Higg was about to be thrust out by the compassion of the warders, who
were apprehensive lest his clamorous grief should draw upon them
reprehension, and upon himself punishment. But he promised to be
silent, and was permitted to remain. The two men-at-arms, with whom
Albert Malvoisin had not failed to communicate upon the import of their
testimony, were now called forward. Though both were hardened and
inflexible villains, the sight of the captive maiden, as well as her
excelling beauty, at first appeared to stagger them; but an expressive
glance from the Preceptor of Templestowe restored them to their dogged
composure; and they delivered, with a precision which would have seemed
suspicious to more impartial judges, circumstances either altogether
fictitious or trivial, and natural in themselves, but rendered pregnant
with suspicion by the exaggerated manner in which they were told, and
the sinister commentary which the witnesses added to the facts. The
circumstances of their evidence would have been, in modern days,
divided into two classes—those which were immaterial, and those which
were actually and physically impossible. But both were, in those
ignorant and superstitions times, easily credited as proofs of
guilt.—The first class set forth, that Rebecca was heard to mutter to
herself in an unknown tongue—that the songs she sung by fits were of a
strangely sweet sound, which made the ears of the hearer tingle, and
his heart throb—that she spoke at times to herself, and seemed to look
upward for a reply—that her garments were of a strange and mystic form,
unlike those of women of good repute—that she had rings impressed with
cabalistical devices, and that strange characters were broidered on her
veil.
All these circumstances, so natural and so trivial, were gravely
listened to as proofs, or, at least, as affording strong suspicions
that Rebecca had unlawful correspondence with mystical powers.
But there was less equivocal testimony, which the credulity of the
assembly, or of the greater part, greedily swallowed, however
incredible. One of the soldiers had seen her work a cure upon a wounded
man, brought with them to the castle of Torquilstone. She did, he said,
make certain signs upon the wound, and repeated certain mysterious
words, which he blessed God he understood not, when the iron head of a
square cross-bow bolt disengaged itself from the wound, the bleeding
was stanched, the wound was closed, and the dying man was, within a
quarter of an hour, walking upon the ramparts, and assisting the
witness in managing a mangonel, or machine for hurling stones. This
legend was probably founded upon the fact, that Rebecca had attended on
the wounded Ivanhoe when in the castle of Torquilstone. But it was the
more difficult to dispute the accuracy of the witness, as, in order to
produce real evidence in support of his verbal testimony, he drew from
his pouch the very bolt-head, which, according to his story, had been
miraculously extracted from the wound; and as the iron weighed a full
ounce, it completely confirmed the tale, however marvellous.
His comrade had been a witness from a neighbouring battlement of the
scene betwixt Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert, when she was upon the point of
precipitating herself from the top of the tower. Not to be behind his
companion, this fellow stated, that he had seen Rebecca perch herself
upon the parapet of the turret, and there take the form of a milk-white
swan, under which appearance she flitted three times round the castle
of Torquilstone; then again settle on the turret, and once more assume
the female form.
Less than one half of this weighty evidence would have been sufficient
to convict any old woman, poor and ugly, even though she had not been a
Jewess. United with that fatal circumstance, the body of proof was too
weighty for Rebecca’s youth, though combined with the most exquisite
beauty.
The Grand Master had collected the suffrages, and now in a solemn tone
demanded of Rebecca what she had to say against the sentence of
condemnation, which he was about to pronounce.
“To invoke your pity,” said the lovely Jewess, with a voice somewhat
tremulous with emotion, “would, I am aware, be as useless as I should
hold it mean. To state that to relieve the sick and wounded of another
religion, cannot be displeasing to the acknowledged Founder of both our
faiths, were also unavailing; to plead that many things which these men
(whom may Heaven pardon!) have spoken against me are impossible, would
avail me but little, since you believe in their possibility; and still
less would it advantage me to explain, that the peculiarities of my
dress, language, and manners, are those of my people—I had well-nigh
said of my country, but alas! we have no country. Nor will I even
vindicate myself at the expense of my oppressor, who stands there
listening to the fictions and surmises which seem to convert the tyrant
into the victim.—God be judge between him and me! but rather would I
submit to ten such deaths as your pleasure may denounce against me,
than listen to the suit which that man of Belial has urged upon
me—friendless, defenceless, and his prisoner. But he is of your own
faith, and his lightest affirmance would weigh down the most solemn
protestations of the distressed Jewess. I will not therefore return to
himself the charge brought against me—but to himself—Yes, Brian de
Bois-Guilbert, to thyself I appeal, whether these accusations are not
false? as monstrous and calumnious as they are deadly?”
There was a pause; all eyes turned to Brain de Bois-Guilbert. He was
silent.
“Speak,” she said, “if thou art a man—if thou art a Christian, speak!—I
conjure thee, by the habit which thou dost wear, by the name thou dost
inherit—by the knighthood thou dost vaunt—by the honour of thy
mother—by the tomb and the bones of thy father—I conjure thee to say,
are these things true?”
“Answer her, brother,” said the Grand Master, “if the Enemy with whom
thou dost wrestle will give thee power.”
In fact, Bois-Guilbert seemed agitated by contending passions, which
almost convulsed his features, and it was with a constrained voice that
at last he replied, looking to Rebecca,—“The scroll!—the scroll!”
“Ay,” said Beaumanoir, “this is indeed testimony! The victim of her
witcheries can only name the fatal scroll, the spell inscribed on which
is, doubtless, the cause of his silence.”
But Rebecca put another interpretation on the words extorted as it were
from Bois-Guilbert, and glancing her eye upon the slip of parchment
which she continued to hold in her hand, she read written thereupon in
the Arabian character, “Demand a Champion!” The murmuring commentary
which ran through the assembly at the strange reply of Bois-Guilbert,
gave Rebecca leisure to examine and instantly to destroy the scroll
unobserved. When the whisper had ceased, the Grand Master spoke.
“Rebecca, thou canst derive no benefit from the evidence of this
unhappy knight, for whom, as we well perceive, the Enemy is yet too
powerful. Hast thou aught else to say?”
“There is yet one chance of life left to me,” said Rebecca, “even by
your own fierce laws. Life has been miserable—miserable, at least, of
late—but I will not cast away the gift of God, while he affords me the
means of defending it. I deny this charge—I maintain my innocence, and
I declare the falsehood of this accusation—I challenge the privilege of
trial by combat, and will appear by my champion.”
“And who, Rebecca,” replied the Grand Master, “will lay lance in rest
for a sorceress? who will be the champion of a Jewess?”
“God will raise me up a champion,” said Rebecca—“It cannot be that in