Ivanhoe, Walter Scott [the lemonade war series txt] 📗
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and confusion occasioned by the preparations for defence, “will
none of ye hear the message of the reverend father in God Aymer,
Prior of Jorvaulx?---I beseech thee to hear me, noble Sir
Reginald!”
“Go patter thy petitions to heaven,” said the fierce Norman, “for
we on earth have no time to listen to them.---Ho! there, Anselm I
see that seething pitch and oil are ready to pour on the heads of
these audacious traitors---Look that the cross-bowmen lack not
bolts.*
The bolt was the arrow peculiarly fitted to the cross-bow, as that of the long-bow was called a shaft. Hence the English proverb---“I will either make a shaft or bolt of it,” signifying a determination to make one use or other of the thing spoken of.---Fling abroad my banner with the old bull’s head---the knaves
shall soon find with whom they have to do this day!”
“But, noble sir,” continued the monk, persevering in his
endeavours to draw attention, “consider my vow of obedience, and
let me discharge myself of my Superior’s errand.”
“Away with this prating dotard,” said Front-de Boeuf, “lock him
up in the chapel, to tell his beads till the broil be over. It
will be a new thing to the saints in Torquilstone to hear aves
and paters; they have not been so honoured, I trow, since they
were cut out of stone.”
“Blaspheme not the holy saints, Sir Reginald,” said De Bracy, “we
shall have need of their aid to-day before yon rascal rout
disband.”
“I expect little aid from their hand,” said Front-de-Boeuf,
“unless we were to hurl them from the battlements on the heads of
the villains. 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-Boeuf 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-Boeuf, in the lists at Ashby.”
“So much the better,” said Front-de-Boeuf, “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 Coeur-de-Lion, and that, in case the monarch
should return, Isaac, who had supplied his brother John with
treasure to
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