Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott

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``Daughter,'' answered Cedric, much embarrassed,
``my time in this castle will not permit me to
exercise the duties of mine office---I must presently
forth---there is life and death upon my speed.''

``Yet, father, let me entreat you by the vow you
have taken on you,'' replied the suppliant, ``not to
leave the oppressed and endangered without counsel
or succour.''

``May the fiend fly away with me, and leave me
in Ifrin with the souls of Odin and of Thor!'' answered
Cedric impatiently, and would probably
have proceeded in the same tone of total departure
from his spiritual character, when the colloquy was
interrupted by the harsh voice of Urfried, the old
crone of the turret.
``How, minion,'' said she to the female speaker,
``is this the manner in which you requite the kindness
which permitted thee to leave thy prison-cell
yonder?---Puttest thou the reverend man to use
ungracious language to free himself from the importunities
of a Jewess?''

``A Jewess!'' said Cedric, availing himself of
the information to get clear of their interruption,---
``Let me pass, woman! stop me not at your peril.
I am fresh from my holy office, and would avoid
pollution.''

``Come this way, father,'' said the old hag, ``thou
art a stranger in this castle, and canst not leave it
without a guide. Come hither, for I would speak
with thee.---And you, daughter of an accursed race,
go to the sick man's chamber, and tend him until
my return; and woe betide you if you again quit
it without my permission!''

Rebecca retreated. Her importunities had prevailed
upon Urfried to suffer her to quit the turret,
and Urfried had employed her services where
she herself would most gladly have paid them, by
the bedside of the wounded Ivanhoe. With an
understanding awake to their dangerous situation,
and prompt to avail herself of each means of safety
which occurred, Rebecca had hoped something from
the presence of a man of religion, who, she learned
from Urfried, had penetrated into this godless castle.
She watched the return of the supposed ecclesiastic,
with the purpose of addressing him, and
interesting him in favour of the prisoners; with
what imperfect success the reader has been just
acquainted.

CHAPTER XXVII

Fond wretch! and what canst thou relate,
But deeds of sorrow, shame, and sin?
Thy deeds are proved---thou know'st thy fate;
But come, thy tale---begin---begin.
- - - - - - -
But I have griefs of other kind,
Troubles and sorrows more severe;
Give me to ease my tortured mind,
Lend to my woes a patient ear;
And let me, if I may not find
A friend to help---find one to hear.
_Crabbe's Hall of Justice._

When Urfried had with clamours and menaces
driven Rebecca back to the apartment from which
she had sallied, she proceeded to conduct the unwilling
Cedric into a small apartment, the door of
which she heedfully secured. Then fetching from
a cupboard a stoup of wine and two flagons, she
placed them on the table, and said in a tone rather
asserting a fact than asking a question, ``Thou art
Saxon, father---Deny it not,'' she continued, observing
that Cedric hastened not to reply; ``the
sounds of my native language are sweet to mine
ears, though seldom heard save from the tongues
of the wretched and degraded serfs on whom the
proud Normans impose the meanest drudgery of
this dwelling. Thou art a Saxon, father---a Saxon,
and, save as thou art a servant of God, a freeman.
---Thine accents are sweet in mine ear.''

``Do not Saxon priests visit this castle, then?''
replied Cedric; ``it were, methinks, their duty to
comfort the outcast and oppressed children of the
soil.''

``They come not---or if they come, they better
love to revel at the boards of their conquerors,''
answered Urfried, ``than to hear the groans of their
countrymen---so, at least, report speaks of them---
of myself I can say little. This castle, for ten
years, has opened to no priest save the debauched
Norman chaplain who partook the nightly revels of
Front-de-Buf, and he has been long gone to render
an account of his stewardship.---But thou art a
Saxon---a Saxon priest, and I have one question to
ask of thee.''

``I am a Saxon,'' answered Cedric, ``but unworthy,
surely, of the name of priest. Let me begone
on my way---I swear I will return, or send
one of our fathers more worthy to hear your confession.''

``Stay yet a while,'' said Urfried; ``the accents
of the voice which thou hearest now will soon be
choked with the cold earth, and I would not descend
to it like the beast I have lived. But wine
must give me strength to tell the horrors of my
tale.'' She poured out a cup, and drank it with a
frightful avidity, which seemed desirous of draining
the last drop in the goblet. ``It stupifies,'' she
said, looking upwards as she finished her drought,
``but it cannot cheer---Partake it, father, if you
would hear my tale without sinking down upon the
pavement.'' Cedric would have avoided pledging
her in this ominous conviviality, but the sign which
she made to him expressed impatience and despair.
He complied with her request, and answered her
challenge in a large wine-cup; she then proceeded
with her story, as if appeased by his complaisance.

``I was not born,'' she said, ``father, the wretch
that thou now seest me. I was free, was happy,
was honoured, loved, and was beloved. I am now
a slave, miserable and degraded---the sport of my
masters' passions while I had yet beauty---the object
of their contempt, scorn, and hatred, since it
has passed away. Dost thou wonder, father, that
I should hate mankind, and, above all, the race that
has wrought this change in me? Can the wrinkled
decrepit hag before thee, whose wrath must vent
itself in impotent curses, forget she was once the
daughter of the noble Thane of Torquilstone, before
whose frown a thousand vassals trembled?''

``Thou the daughter of Torquil Wolfganger!''
said Cedric, receding as he spoke; ``thou---thou---
the daughter of that noble Saxon, my father's friend
and companion in arms!''

``Thy father's friend!'' echoed Urfried; ``then
Cedric called the Saxon stands before me, for the
noble Hereward of Rotherwood had but one son,
whose name is well known among his countrymen.
But if thou art Cedric of Rotherwood, why this
religious dress?---hast thou too despaired of saving
thy country, and sought refuge from oppression in
the shade of the convent?''

``It matters not who I am,'' said Cedric; ``proceed,
unhappy woman, with thy tale of horror and
guilt!---Guilt there must be---there is guilt even
in thy living to tell it.''

``There is---there is,'' answered the wretched
woman, ``deep, black, damning guilt,---guilt, that
lies like a load at my breast---guilt, that all the
penitential fires of hereafter cannot cleanse.---Yes,
in these halls, stained with the noble and pure
blood of my father and my brethren---in these very
halls, to have lived the paramour of their murderer,
the slave at once and the partaker of his pleasures,
was to render every breath which I drew of vital
air, a crime and a curse.''

``Wretched woman!'' exclaimed Cedric. ``And
while the friends of thy father---while each true
Saxon heart, as it breathed a requiem for his soul,
and those of his valiant sons, forgot not in their
prayers the murdered Ulrica---while all mourned
and honoured the dead, thou hast lived to merit
our hate and execration---lived to unite thyself
with the vile tyrant who murdered thy nearest and
dearest---who shed the blood of infancy, rather than
a male of the noble house of Torquil Wolfganger
should survive---with him hast thou lived to unite
thyself, and in the hands of lawless love!''

``In lawless hands, indeed, but not in those of
love!'' answered the hag; ``love will sooner visit
the regions of eternal doom, than those unhallowed
vaults.---No, with that at least I cannot reproach
myself---hatred to Front-de-Buf and his race governed
my soul most deeply, even in the hour of
his guilty endearments.''

``You hated him, and yet you lived,'' replied
Cedric; ``wretch! was there no poniard---no knife
---no bodkin!---Well was it for thee, since thou
didst prize such an existence, that the secrets of a
Norman castle are like those of the grave. For had
I but dreamed of the daughter of Torquil living in
foul communion with the murderer of her father,
the sword of a true Saxon had found thee out even
in the arms of thy paramour!''

``Wouldst thou indeed have done this justice to
the name of Torquil?'' said Ulrica, for we may now
lay aside her assumed name of Urfried; ``thou art
then the true Saxon report speaks thee! for even
within these accursed walls, where, as thou well
sayest, guilt shrouds itself in inscrutable mystery,
even there has the name of Cedric been sounded---
and I, wretched and degraded, have rejoiced to
think that there yet breathed an avenger of our
unhappy nation.---I also have had my hours of vengeance---
I have fomented the quarrels of our foes,
and heated drunken revelry into murderous broil
---I have seen their blood flow---I have heard their
dying groans!---Look on me, Cedric---are there not
still left on this foul and faded face some traces of
the features of Torquil?''

``Ask me not of them, Ulrica,'' replied Cedric,
in a tone of grief mixed with abhorrence; ``these
traces form such a resemblance as arises from the
graves of the dead, when a fiend has animated the
lifeless corpse.''

``Be it so,'' answered Ulrica; ``yet wore these
fiendish features the mask of a spirit of light when
they were able to set at variance the elder Front-de-Buf
and his son Reginald! The darkness of
hell should hide what followed, but revenge must
lift the veil, and darkly intimate what it would raise
the dead to speak aloud. Long had the smouldering
fire of discord glowed between the tyrant father
and his savage son---long had I nursed, in secret,
the unnatural hatred---it blazed forth in an hour of
drunken wassail, and at his own board fell my oppressor
by the hand of his own son---such are the
secrets these vaults conceal!---Rend asunder, ye
accursed arches,'' she added, looking up towards
the roof, ``and bury in your fall all who are conscious
of the hideous mystery!''

``And thou, creature of guilt and misery,'' said
Cedric, ``what became thy lot on the death of thy
ravisher?''

``Guess it, but ask it not.---Here---here I dwelt,
till age, premature age, has stamped its ghastly
features on my countenance---scorned and insulted
where I was once obeyed, and compelled to bound
the revenge which had once such ample scope, to
the efforts of petty malice of a discontented menial,
or the vain or unheeded curses of an impotent
hag---condemned to hear from my lonely turret the
sounds of revelry in which I once partook, or the
shrieks and groans of new victims of oppression.''

``Ulrica,'' said Cedric, ``with a heart which still,
I fear, regrets the lost reward of thy crimes, as
much as the deeds by which thou didst acquire that
meed, how didst thou dare to address thee to one
who wears this robe? Consider, unhappy woman,
what could the sainted Edward himself do for thee,
were he here in bodily presence? The royal Confessor
was endowed by heaven with power to cleanse
the ulcers of the body, but only God himself can
cure the leprosy of the soul.''

``Yet, turn not from me, stern prophet of wrath,''
she exclaimed, ``but tell me, if thou canst, in what
shall terminate these new and awful feelings that
burst on my solitude---Why do deeds, long since
done, rise before me in new and irresistible horrors?
What fate is prepared beyond the grave for her, to
whom God has assigned on earth a lot of such
unspeakable wretchedness? Better had I turn to
Woden, Hertha, and Zernebock---to Mista, and
to Skogula, the gods of our yet unbaptized ancestors,
than endure the dreadful anticipations which
have of late haunted my waking and my sleeping
hours!''

``I am no priest,'' said Cedric, turning with disgust
from this miserable picture of guilt, wretchedness,
and despair; ``I am no priest, though I wear
a priest's garment.''

``Priest or layman,'' answered Ulrica, ``thou art
the first I have seen for twenty years, by whom God
was feared or man regarded; and dost thou bid me
despair?''

``I bid thee repent,'' said Cedric. ``Seek to
prayer and penance, and mayest thou find acceptance!
But I cannot, I will not, longer abide with
thee.''

``Stay yet a moment!'' said Ulrica; ``leave me
not now, son of my father's friend, lest the demon
who has governed my life should tempt me to
avenge myself of thy hard-hearted scorn---Thinkest
thou, if Front-de-Buf found Cedric the Saxon in
his castle, in such a disguise, that thy life would be
a long one?---Already his eye has been upon thee
like a falcon on his prey.''

``And be it so,'' said Cedric; ``and let him tear
me with beak and talons, ere my tongue say one
word which my heart doth not warrant. I will die
a Saxon---true in word, open in deed---I bid thee
avaunt!---touch me not, stay me not!---The sight
of Front-de-Buf himself is less odious to me than
thou, degraded and degenerate as thou art.''

``Be it so,'' said Ulrica, no longer interrupting
him; ``go thy way, and forget, in the insolence of
thy superority, that the wretch before thee is the
daughter of thy father's friend.---Go thy way---if
I am separated from mankind by my sufferings---
separated from those whose aid I might most justly
expect---not less will I be separated from them in
my revenge!---No man shall aid me, but the ears
of all men shall tingle to hear of the deed which I
shall dare to do!---Farewell!---thy scorn has burst
the last tie which seemed yet to unite me to my
kind---a thought that my woes might claim the
compassion of my people.''

``Ulrica,'' said Cedric, softened by this appeal,
``hast thou borne up and endured to live through
so much guilt and so much misery, and wilt thou
now yield to despair when thine eyes are opened to
thy crimes, and when repentance were thy fitter
occupation?''

``Cedric,'' answered Ulrica, ``thou little knowest
the human heart. To act as I have acted, to
think as I have thought, requires the maddening
love of pleasure, mingled with the keen appetite of
revenge, the proud consciousness of power; droughts
too intoxicating for the human heart to bear, and
yet retain the power to prevent. Their force has
long passed away---Age has no pleasures, wrinkles
have no influence, revenge itself dies away in impotent
curses. Then comes remorse, with all its
vipers, mixed with vain regrets for the past, and
despair for the future!---Then, when all other
strong impulses have ceased, we become like the
fiends in hell, who may feel remorse, but never repentance.
---But thy words have awakened a new
soul within me---Well hast thou said, all is possible
for those who dare to die!---Thou hast shown
me the means of revenge, and be assured I will
embrace them. It has hitherto shared this wasted
bosom with other and with rival passions---henceforward
it shall possess me wholly, and thou thyself
shalt say, that, whatever was the life of Ulrica,
her death well became the daughter of the noble
Torquil. There is a force without beleaguering
this accursed castle---hasten to lead them to the attack,
and when thou shalt see a red flag wave from
the turret on the eastern angle of the donjon, press
the Normans hard---they will then have enough to
do within, and you may win the wall in spite both
of bow and mangonel.---Begone, I pray thee---follow
thine own fate, and leave me to mine.''

Cedric would have enquired farther into the purpose
which she thus darkly announced, but the stern
voice of Front-de-Buf was heard, exclaiming,
``Where tarries this loitering priest? By the scallop-shell
of Compostella, I will make a martyr of
him, if he loiters here to hatch treason among my
domestics!''

``What a true prophet,'' said Ulrica, ``is an evil
conscience! But heed him not---out and to thy
people---Cry your Saxon onslaught, and let them
sing their war-song of Rollo, if they will; vengeance
shall bear a burden to it.''

As she thus spoke, she vanished through a private
door, and Reginald Front-de-Buf entered
the apartment. Cedric, with some difficulty, compelled
himself to make obeisance to the haughty
Baron, who returned his courtesy with a slight inclination
of the head.

``Thy penitents, father, have made a long shrift
---it is the better for them, since it is the last they
shall ever make. Hast thou prepared them for
death?''

``I found them,'' said Cedric, in such French as
he could command, ``expecting the worst, from the
moment they knew into whose power they had
fallen.''

``How now, Sir Friar,'' replied Front-de-Buf,
``thy speech, methinks, smacks of a Saxon tongue?''

``I was bred in the convent of St Withold of
Burton,'' answered Cedric.

``Ay?'' said the Baron; ``it had been better for
thee to have been a Norman, and better for my
purpose too; but need has no choice of messengers.
That St Withold's of Burton is a howlet's nest
worth the harrying. The day will soon come that
the frock shall protect the Saxon as little as the
mail-coat.''

``God's will be done,'' said Cedric, in a voice
tremulous with passion, which Front-de-Buf imputed
to fear.

``I see,'' said he, ``thou dreamest already that
our men-at-arms are in thy refectory and thy ale-vaults.
But do me one cast of thy holy office, and,
come what list of others, thou shalt sleep as safe in
thy cell as a snail within his shell of proof.''

``Speak your commands,'' said Cedric, with suppressed
emotion.

``Follow me through this passage, then, that I
may dismiss thee by the postern.''

And as he strode on his way before the supposed
friar, Front-de-Buf thus schooled him in the part
which he desired he should act.

``Thou seest, Sir Friar, yon herd of Saxon swine,
who have dared to environ this castle of Torquilstone---
Tell them whatever thou hast a mind of the
weakness of this fortalice, or aught else that can detain
them before it for twenty-four hours. Meantime
bear thou this scroll---But soft---canst read,
Sir Priest?''

``Not a jot I,'' answered Cedric, ``save on my
breviary; and then I know the characters, because
I have the holy service by heart, praised be Our
Lady and St Withold!''

``The fitter messenger for my purpose.---Carry
thou this scroll to the castle of Philip de Malvoisin;
say it cometh from me, and is written by the
Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and that I pray
him to send it to York with all the speed man and
horse can make. Meanwhile, tell him to doubt
nothing, he shall find us whole and sound behind
our battlement---Shame on it, that we should be
compelled to hide thus by a pack of runagates, who
are wont to fly even at the flash of our pennons and
the tramp of our horses! I say to thee, priest, contrive
some cast of thine art to keep the knaves
where they are, until our friends bring up their
lances. My vengeance is awake, and she is a falcon
that slumbers not till she has been gorged.''

``By my patron saint,'' said Cedric, with deeper
energy than became his character, ``and by every
saint who has lived and died in England, your commands
shall be obeyed! Not a Saxon shall stir from
before these walls, if I have art and influence to detain
them there.''

``Ha!'' said Front-de-Buf, ``thou changest thy
tone, Sir Priest, and speakest brief and bold, as if
thy heart were in the slaughter of the Saxon herd;
and yet thou art thyself of kindred to the swine?''

Cedric was no ready practiser of the art of dissimulation,
and would at this moment have been
much the better of a hint from Wamba's more
fertile brain. But necessity, according to the ancient
proverb, sharpens invention, and he muttered
something under his cowl concerning the men in
question being excommunicated outlaws both to
church and to kingdom.

``_Despardieux_,'' answered Front-de-Buf, ``thou
hast spoken the very truth---I forgot that the knaves
can strip a fat abbot, as well as if they had been
born south of yonder salt channel. Was it not he
of St Ives whom they tied to an oak-tree, and compelled
to sing a mass while they were rifling his
mails and his wallets?---No, by our Lady---that
jest was played by Gualtier of Middleton, one of
our own companions-at-arms. But they were
Saxons who robbed the chapel at St Bees of cup,
candlestick and chalice, were they not?''

``They were godless men,'' answered Cedric.

``Ay, and they drank out all the good wine and
ale that lay in store for many a secret carousal,
when ye pretend ye are but busied with vigils and
primes!---Priest, thou art bound to revenge such
sacrilege.''

``I am indeed bound to vengeance,'' murmured
Cedric; ``Saint Withold knows my heart.''

Front-de-Buf, in the meanwhile, led the way
to a postern, where, passing the moat on a single
plank, they reached a small barbican, or exterior
defence, which communicated with the open field
by a well-fortified sallyport.

``Begone, then; and if thou wilt do mine errand,
and if thou return hither when it is done, thou
shalt see Saxon flesh cheap as ever was hog's in the
shambles of Sheffield. And, hark thee, thou seemest
to be a jolly confessor---come hither after the
onslaught, and thou shalt have as much Malvoisie
as would drench thy whole convent.''

``Assuredly we shall meet again,'' answered Cedric.

``Something in hand the whilst,'' continued the
Norman; and, as they parted at the postern door,
he thrust into Cedric's reluctant hand a gold byzant,
adding, ``Remember, I will fly off both cowl
and skin, if thou failest in thy purpose.''

``And full leave will I give thee to do both,''
answered Cedric, leaving the postern, and striding
forth over the free field with a joyful step, ``if,
when we meet next, I deserve not better at thine
hand.''---Turning then back towards the castle, he
threw the piece of gold towards the donor, exclaiming
at the same time, ``False Norman, thy money
perish with thee!''

Front-de-Buf heard the words imperfectly, but
the action was suspicious---``Archers,'' he called to
the warders on the outward battlements, ``send me
an arrow through yon monk's frock!---yet stay,'' he
said, as his retainers were bending their bows, ``it
avails not--we must thus far trust him since we
have no better shift. I think he dares not betray
me---at the worst I can but treat with these Saxon
dogs whom I have safe in kennel.---Ho! Giles
jailor, let them bring Cedric of Rotherwood before
me, and the other churl, his companion---him I
mean of Coningsburgh---Athelstane there, or what
call they him? Their very names are an encumbrance
to a Norman knight's mouth, and have, as
it were, a flavour of bacon---Give me a stoup of
wine, as jolly Prince John said, that I may wash
away the relish---place it in the armoury, and thither
lead the prisoners.''

His commands were obeyed; and, upon entering
that Gothic apartment, hung with many spoils
won by his own valour and that of his father, he
found a flagon of wine on the massive oaken table,
and the two Saxon captives under the guard of
four of his dependants. Front-de-Buf took a long
drought of wine, and then addressed his prisoners;
---for the manner in which Wamba drew the cap
over his face, the change of dress, the gloomy and
broken light, and the Baron's imperfect acquaintance
with the features of Cedric, (who avoided his
Norman neighbours, and seldom stirred beyond
his own domains,) prevented him from discovering
that the most important of his captives had made
his escape.

``Gallants of England,'' said Front-de-Buf,
``how relish ye your entertainment at Torquilstone?
---Are ye yet aware what your _surquedy_ and
_outrecuidance_* merit, for scoffing at the entertainment

* _Surquedy_ and _outrecuidance_---insolence and presumption.

of a prince of the House of Anjou?---Have
ye forgotten how ye requited the unmerited hospitality
of the royal John? By God and St Dennis,
an ye pay not the richer ransom, I will hang
ye up by the feet from the iron bars of these windows,
till the kites and hooded crows have made
skeletons of you!---Speak out, ye Saxon dogs---
what bid ye for your worthless lives?---How say
you, you of Rotherwood?

``Not a doit I,'' answered poor Wamba---``and
for hanging up by the feet, my brain has been topsy-turvy,
they say, ever since the biggin was bound
first round my head; so turning me upside down
may peradventure restore it again.''

``Saint Genevieve!'' said Front-de-Buf, ``what
have we got here?''

And with the back of his hand he struck Cedric's
cap from the head of the Jester, and throwing open
his collar, discovered the fatal badge of servitude,
the silver collar round his neck.

``Giles---Clement---dogs and varlets!'' exclaimed
the furious Norman, ``what have you brought
me here?''

``I think I can tell you,'' said De Bracy, who
just entered the apartment. ``This is Cedric's
clown, who fought so manful a skirmish with Isaac
of York about a question of precedence.''

``I shall settle it for them both,'' replied Front-de-Buf;
``they shall hang on the same gallows,
unless his master and this boar of Coningsburgh will
pay well for their lives. Their wealth is the least
they can surrender; they must also carry off with
them the swarms that are besetting the castle, subscribe
a surrender of their pretended immunities,
and live under us as serfs and vassals; too happy
if, in the new world that is about to begin, we leave
them the breath of their nostrils.---Go,'' said he to
two of his attendants, ``fetch me the right Cedric
hither, and I pardon your error for once; the rather
that you but mistook a fool for a Saxon franklin.''