Ivanhoe, Walter Scott [the lemonade war series txt] 📗
- Author: Walter Scott
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“Not without a blow struck in its defence,” said Ivanhoe, raising
himself upon the couch, “if there were but one true subject in
England I will fight for Richard’s title with the best of them
---ay, one or two, in his just quarrel!”
“But that you may be able to do so,” said Rebecca touching his
shoulder with her hand, “you must now observe my directions, and
remain quiet.”
“True, maiden,” said Ivanhoe, “as quiet as these disquieted times
will permit---And of Cedric and his household?”
“His steward came but brief while since,” said the Jewess,
“panting with haste, to ask my father for certain monies, the
price of wool the growth of Cedric’s flocks, and from him I
learned that Cedric and Athelstane of Coningsburgh had left
Prince John’s lodging in high displeasure, and were about to set
forth on their return homeward.”
“Went any lady with them to the banquet?” said Wilfred.
“The Lady Rowena,” said Rebecca, answering the question with more
precision than it had been asked---“The Lady Rowena went not to
the Prince’s feast, and, as the steward reported to us, she is
now on her journey back to Rotherwood, with her guardian Cedric.
And touching your faithful squire Gurth------”
“Ha!” exclaimed the knight, “knowest thou his name?---But thou
dost,” he immediately added, “and well thou mayst, for it was
from thy hand, and, as I am now convinced, from thine own
generosity of spirit, that he received but yesterday a hundred
zecchins.”
“Speak not of that,” said Rebecca, blushing deeply; “I see how
easy it is for the tongue to betray what the heart would gladly
conceal.”
“But this sum of gold,” said Ivanhoe, gravely, “my honour is
concerned in repaying it to your father.”
“Let it be as thou wilt,” said Rebecca, “when eight days have
passed away; but think not, and speak not now, of aught that may
retard thy recovery.”
“Be it so, kind maiden,” said Ivanhoe; “I were most ungrateful to
dispute thy commands. But one word of the fate of poor Gurth,
and I have done with questioning thee.”
“I grieve to tell thee, Sir Knight,” answered the Jewess, “that
he is in custody by the order of Cedric.”---And then observing
the distress which her communication gave to Wilfred, she
instantly added, “But the steward Oswald said, that if nothing
occurred to renew his master’s displeasure against him, he was
sure that Cedric would pardon Gurth, a faithful serf, and one who
stood high in favour, and who had but committed this error out of
the love which he bore to Cedric’s son. And he said, moreover,
that he and his comrades, and especially Wamba the Jester, were
resolved to warn Gurth to make his escape by the way, in case
Cedric’s ire against him could not be mitigated.”
“Would to God they may keep their purpose!” said Ivanhoe; “but it
seems as if I were destined to bring ruin on whomsoever hath
shown kindness to me. My king, by whom I was honoured and
distinguished, thou seest that the brother most indebted to him
is raising his arms to grasp his crown;---my regard hath brought
restraint and trouble on the fairest of her sex;---and now my
father in his mood may slay this poor bondsman but for his love
and loyal service to me!---Thou seest, maiden, what an ill-fated
wretch thou dost labour to assist; be wise, and let me go, ere
the misfortunes which track my footsteps like slot-hounds, shall
involve thee also in their pursuit.”
“Nay,” said Rebecca, “thy weakness and thy grief, Sir Knight,
make thee miscalculate the purposes of Heaven. Thou hast been
restored to thy country when it most needed the assistance of a
strong hand and a true heart, and thou hast humbled the pride of
thine enemies and those of thy king, when their horn was most
highly exalted, and for the evil which thou hast sustained, seest
thou not that Heaven has raised thee a helper and a physician,
even among the most despised of the land?---Therefore, be of good
courage, and trust that thou art preserved for some marvel which
thine arm shall work before this people. Adieu---and having
taken the medicine which I shall send thee by the hand of Reuben,
compose thyself again to rest, that thou mayest be the more able
to endure the journey on the succeeding day.”
Ivanhoe was convinced by the reasoning, and obeyed the
directions, of Rebecca. The drought which Reuben administered
was of a sedative and narcotic quality, and secured the patient
sound and undisturbed slumbers. In the morning his kind
physician found him entirely free from feverish symptoms, and fit
to undergo the fatigue of a journey.
He was deposited in the horse-litter which had brought him from
the lists, and every precaution taken for his travelling with
ease. In one circumstance only even the entreaties of Rebecca
were unable to secure sufficient attention to the accommodation
of the wounded knight. Isaac, like the enriched traveller of
Juvenal’s tenth satire, had ever the fear of robbery before his
eyes, conscious that he would be alike accounted fair game by the
marauding Norman noble, and by the Saxon outlaw. He therefore
journeyed at a great rate, and made short halts, and shorter
repasts, so that he passed by Cedric and Athelstane who had
several hours the start of him, but who had been delayed by their
protracted feasting at the convent of Saint Withold’s. Yet such
was the virtue of Miriam’s balsam, or such the strength of
Ivanhoe’s constitution, that he did not sustain from the hurried
journey that inconvenience which his kind physician had
apprehended.
In another point of view, however, the Jew’s haste proved
somewhat more than good speed. The rapidity with which he
insisted on travelling, bred several disputes between him and the
party whom he had hired to attend him as a guard. These men were
Saxons, and not free by any means from the national love of ease
and good living which the Normans stigmatized as laziness and
gluttony. Reversing Shylock’s position, they had accepted the
employment in hopes of feeding upon the wealthy Jew, and were
very much displeased when they found themselves disappointed, by
the rapidity with which he insisted on their proceeding. They
remonstrated also upon the risk of damage to their horses by
these forced marches. Finally, there arose betwixt Isaac and his
satellites a deadly feud, concerning the quantity of wine and ale
to be allowed for consumption at each meal. And thus it happened,
that when the alarm of danger approached, and that which Isaac
feared was likely to come upon him, he was deserted by the
discontented mercenaries on whose protection he had relied,
without using the means necessary to secure their attachment.
In this deplorable condition the Jew, with his daughter and her
wounded patient, were found by Cedric, as has already been
noticed, and soon afterwards fell into the power of De Bracy and
his confederates. Little notice was at first taken of the
horse-litter, and it might have remained behind but for the
curiosity of De Bracy, who looked into it under the impression
that it might contain the object of his enterprise, for Rowena
had not unveiled herself. But De Bracy’s astonishment was
considerable, when he discovered that the litter contained a
wounded man, who, conceiving himself to have fallen into the
power of Saxon outlaws, with whom his name might be a protection
for himself and his friends, frankly avowed himself to be Wilfred
of Ivanhoe.
The ideas of chivalrous honour, which, amidst his wildness and
levity, never utterly abandoned De Bracy, prohibited him from
doing the knight any injury in his defenceless condition, and
equally interdicted his betraying him to Front-de-Boeuf, who
would have had no scruples to put to death, under any
circumstances, the rival claimant of the fief of Ivanhoe. On the
other hand, to liberate a suitor preferred by the Lady Rowena, as
the events of the tournament, and indeed Wilfred’s previous
banishment from his father’s house, had made matter of notoriety,
was a pitch far above the flight of De Bracy’s generosity. A
middle course betwixt good and evil was all which he found
himself capable of adopting, and he commanded two of his own
squires to keep close by the litter, and to suffer no one to
approach it. If questioned, they were directed by their master
to say, that the empty litter of the Lady Rowena was employed to
transport one of their comrades who had been wounded in the
scuffle. On arriving at Torquilstone, while the Knight Templar
and the lord of that castle were each intent upon their own
schemes, the one on the Jew’s treasure, and the other on his
daughter, De Bracy’s squires conveyed Ivanhoe, still under the
name of a wounded comrade, to a distant apartment. This
explanation was accordingly returned by these men to
Front-de-Boeuf, when he questioned them why they did not make for
the battlements upon the alarm.
“A wounded companion!” he replied in great wrath and
astonishment. “No wonder that churls and yeomen wax so
presumptuous as even to lay leaguer before castles, and that
clowns and swineherds send defiances to nobles, since men-at-arms
have turned sick men’s nurses, and Free Companions are grown
keepers of dying folk’s curtains, when the castle is about to be
assailed.---To the battlements, ye loitering villains!” he
exclaimed, raising his stentorian voice till the arches around
rung again, “to the battlements, or I will splinter your bones
with this truncheon!”
The men sulkily replied, “that they desired nothing better than
to go to the battlements, providing Front-de-Boeuf would bear
them out with their master, who had commanded them to tend the
dying man.”
“The dying man, knaves!” rejoined the Baron; “I promise thee we
shall all be dying men an we stand not to it the more stoutly.
But I will relieve the guard upon this caitiff companion of
yours.---Here, Urfried---hag---fiend of a Saxon witch---hearest
me not?---tend me this bedridden fellow since he must needs be
tended, whilst these knaves use their weapons.---Here be two
arblasts, comrades, with windlaces and quarrells*
The arblast was a cross-bow, the windlace the machine used in bending that weapon, and the quarrell, so called from its square or diamond-shaped head, was the bolt adapted to it.---to the barbican with you, and see you drive each bolt through
a Saxon brain.”
The men, who, like most of their description, were fond of
enterprise and detested inaction, went joyfully to the scene of
danger as they were commanded, and thus the charge of Ivanhoe was
transferred to Urfried, or Ulrica. But she, whose brain was
burning with remembrance of injuries and with hopes of vengeance,
was readily induced to devolve upon Rebecca the care of her
patient.
CHAPTER XXIX
Ascend the watch-tower yonder, valiant soldier,
Look on the field, and say how goes the battle.
Schiller’s Maid of Orleans
A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness
and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general
agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those,
which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals,
if it cannot altogether suppress them. In finding herself once
more by the side of Ivanhoe, Rebecca was astonished at the keen
sensation of pleasure which she experienced, even at a time when
all around them both was danger, if not despair. As she felt his
pulse, and enquired after his health, there was a softness in her
touch and in her accents implying a kinder interest than she
would herself have been pleased to have voluntarily expressed.
Her voice faltered and her hand trembled, and it was only the
cold question of Ivanhoe, “Is it you, gentle
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