Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott

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And hurrying his daughter in his turn, he conducted
her from the lists, and by means of conveyance
which he had provided, transported her safely
to the house of the Rabbi Nathan.

The Jewess, whose fortunes had formed the principal
interest of the day, having now retired unobserved,
the attention of the populace was transferred
to the Black Knight. They now filled the air
with ``Long life to Richard with the Lion's Heart,
and down with the usurping Templars!''

``Notwithstanding all this lip-loyalty,'' said Ivanhoe
to the Earl of Essex, ``it was well the King
took the precaution to bring thee with him, noble
Earl, and so many of thy trusty followers.''

The Earl smiled and shook his head.

``Gallant Ivanhoe,'' said Essex, ``dost thou know
our Master so well, and yet suspect him of taking
so wise a precaution! I was drawing towards York
having heard that Prince John was making head
there, when I met King Richard, like a true knight-errant,
galloping hither to achieve in his own person
this adventure of the Templar and the Jewess,
with his own single arm. I accompanied him with
my band, almost maugre his consent.''

``And what news from York, brave Earl?'' said
Ivanhoe; ``will the rebels bide us there?''

``No more than December's snow will bide
July's sun,'' said the Earl; ``they are dispersing;
and who should come posting to bring us the news,
but John himself!''

``The traitor! the ungrateful insolent traitor!''
said Ivanhoe; ``did not Richard order him into
confinement?''

``O! he received him,'' answered the Earl, ``as if
they had met after a hunting party; and, pointing
to me and our men-at-arms, said, `Thou seest, brother,
I have some angry men with me---thou wert
best go to our mother, carry her my duteous affection,
and abide with her until men's minds are pacified.' ''

``And this was all he said?'' enquired Ivanhoe;
``would not any one say that this Prince invites
men to treason by his clemency?''

``Just,'' replied the Earl, ``as the man may be
said to invite death, who undertakes to fight a combat,
having a dangerous wound unhealed.''

``I forgive thee the jest, Lord Earl,'' said Ivanhoe;
``but, remember, I hazarded but my own life
---Richard, the welfare of his kingdom.''

``Those,'' replied Essex, ``who are specially careless
of their own welfare, are seldom remarkably
attentive to that of others---But let us haste to the
castle, for Richard meditates punishing some of the
subordinate members of the conspiracy, though he
has pardoned their principal.''

From the judicial investigations which followed
on this occasion, and which are given at length in
the Wardour Manuscript, it appears that Maurice
de Bracy escaped beyond seas, and went into the
service of Philip of France; while Philip de Malvoisin,
and his brother Albert, the Preceptor of
Templestowe, were executed, although Waldemar
Fitzurse, the soul of the conspiracy, escaped with
banishment; and Prince John, for whose behoof it
was undertaken, was not even censured by his good-natured
brother. No one, however, pitied the fate
of the two Malvoisins, who only suffered the death
which they had both well deserved, by many acts of
falsehood, cruelty, and oppression.

Briefly after the judicial combat, Cedric the Saxon
was summoned to the court of Richard, which,
for the purpose of quieting the counties that had
been disturbed by the ambition of his brother, was
then held at York. Cedric tushed and pshawed
more than once at the message---but he refused
not obedience. In fact, the return of Richard had
quenched every hope that he had entertained of
restoring a Saxon dynasty in England; for, whatever
head the Saxons might have made in the event
of a civil war, it was plain that nothing could be
done under the undisputed dominion of Richard,
popular as he was by his personal good qualities
and military fame, although his administration was
wilfully careless, now too indulgent, and now allied
to despotism.

But, moreover, it could not escape even Cedric's
reluctant observation, that his project for an absolute
union among the Saxons, by the marriage of
Rowena and Athelstane, was now completely at an
end, by the mutual dissent of both parties concerned.
This was, indeed, an event which, in his ardour
for the Saxon cause, he could not have anticipated,
and even when the disinclination of both was broadly
and plainly manifested, he could scarce bring
himself to believe that two Saxons of royal descent
should scruple, on personal grounds, at an alliance
so necessary for the public weal of the nation. But
it was not the less certain: Rowena had always
expressed her repugnance to Athelstane, and now
Athelstane was no less plain and positive in proclaiming
his resolution never to pursue his addresses
to the Lady Rowena. Even the natural obstinacy
of Cedric sunk beneath these obstacles, where
he, remaining on the point of junction, had the
task of dragging a reluctant pair up to it, one with
each hand. He made, however, a last vigorous
attack on Athelstane, and he found that resuscitated
sprout of Saxon royalty engaged, like country
squires of our own day, in a furious war with the
clergy.

It seems that, after all his deadly menaces against
the Abbot of Saint Edmund's, Athelstane's spirit
of revenge, what between the natural indolent kindness
of his own disposition, what through the prayers
of his mother Edith, attached, like most ladies,
(of the period,) to the clerical order, had terminated
in his keeping the Abbot and his monks in the
dungeons of Coningsburgh for three days on a meagre
diet. For this atrocity the Abbot menaced him
with excommunication, and made out a dreadful
list of complaints in the bowels and stomach, suffered
by himself and his monks, in consequence of
the tyrannical and unjust imprisonment they had
sustained. With this controversy, and with the
means he had adopted to counteract this clerical
persecution, Cedric found the mind of his friend
Athelstane so fully occupied, that it had no room
for another idea. And when Rowena's name was
mentioned the noble Athelstane prayed leave to
quaff a full goblet to her health, and that she might
soon be the bride of his kinsman Wilfred. It was
a desperate case therefore. There was obviously
no more to be made of Athelstane; or, as Wamba
expressed it, in a phrase which has descended from
Saxon times to ours, he was a cock that would not
fight.

There remained betwixt Cedric and the determination
which the lovers desired to come to, only
two obstacles---his own obstinacy, and his dislike
of the Norman dynasty. The former feeling gradually
gave way before the endearments of his
ward, and the pride which he could not help nourishing
in the fame of his son. Besides, he was not
insensible to the honour of allying his own line to
that of Alfred, when the superior claims of the descendant
of Edward the Confessor were abandoned
for ever. Cedric's aversion to the Norman race of
kings was also much undermined,---first, by consideration
of the impossibility of ridding England of
the new dynasty, a feeling which goes far to create
loyalty in the subject to the king _de facto_; and, secondly,
by the personal attention of King Richard,
who delighted in the blunt humour of Cedric, and,
to use the language of the Wardour Manuscript,
so dealt with the noble Saxon, that, ere he had been
a guest at court for seven days, he had given his
consent to the marriage of his ward Rowena and
his son Wilfred of Ivanhoe.

The nuptials of our hero, thus formally approved
by his father, were celebrated in the most august
of temples, the noble Minster of York. The King
himself attended, and from the countenance which
he afforded on this and other occasions to the distressed
and hitherto degraded Saxons, gave them
a safer and more certain prospect of attaining their
just rights, than they could reasonably hope from
the precarious chance of a civil war. The Church
gave her full solemnities, graced with all the splendour
which she of Rome knows how to apply with
such brilliant effect.

Gurth, gallantly apparelled, attended as esquire
upon his young master whom he had served so
faithfully, and the magnanimous Wamba, decorated
with a new cap and a most gorgeous set of silver
bells. Sharers of Wilfred's dangers and adversity,
they remained, as they had a right to expect,
the partakers of his more prosperous career.

But besides this domestic retinue, these distinguished
nuptials were celebrated by the attendance
of the high-born Normans, as well as Saxons, joined
with the universal jubilee of the lower orders,
that marked the marriage of two individuals as a
pledge of the future peace and harmony betwixt
two races, which, since that period, have been so
completely mingled, that the distinction has become
wholly invisible. Cedric lived to see this union
approximate towards its completion; for as the two
nations mixed in society and formed intermarriages
with each other, the Normans abated their scorn,
and the Saxons were refined from their rusticity.
But it was not until the reign of Edward the Third
that the mixed language, now termed English, was
spoken at the court of London, and that the hostile
distinction of Norman and Saxon seems entirely
to have disappeared.

It was upon the second morning after this happy
bridal, that the Lady Rowena was made acquainted
by her handmaid Elgitha, that a damsel desired
admission to her presence, and solicited that their
parley might be without witness. Rowena wondered,
hesitated, became curious, and ended by commanding
the damsel to be admitted, and her attendants
to withdraw.

She entered---a noble and commanding figure, the
long white veil, in which she was shrouded, overshadowing
rather than concealing the elegance and
majesty of her shape. Her demeanour was that of
respect, unmingled by the least shade either of fear,
or of a wish to propitiate favour. Rowena was
ever ready to acknowledge the claims, and attend
to the feelings, of others. She arose, and would
have conducted her lovely visitor to a seat; but the
stranger looked at Elgitha, and again intimated a
wish to discourse with the Lady Rowena alone.
Elgitha had no sooner retired with unwilling steps,
than, to the surprise of the Lady of Ivanhoe, her
fair visitant kneeled on one knee, pressed her hands
to her forehead, and bending her head to the ground,
in spite of Rowena's resistance, kissed the embroidered
hem of her tunic.

``What means this, lady?'' said the surprised
bride; ``or why do you offer to me a deference so
unusual?''

``Because to you, Lady of Ivanhoe,'' said Rebecca,
rising up and resuming the usual quiet dignity
of her manner, ``I may lawfully, and without
rebuke, pay the debt of gratitude which I owe to
Wilfred of Ivanhoe. I am---forgive the boldness
which has offered to you the homage of my country
---I am the unhappy Jewess, for whom your husband
hazarded his life against such fearful odds in
the tiltyard of Templestowe.''

``Damsel,'' said Rowena, ``Wilfred of Ivanhoe
on that day rendered back but in slight measure
your unceasing charity towards him in his wounds
and misfortunes. Speak, is there aught remains in
which he or I can serve thee?''

``Nothing,'' said Rebecca, calmly, ``unless you
will transmit to him my grateful farewell.''

``You leave England then?'' said Rowena, scarce
recovering the surprise of this extraordinary visit.

``I leave it, lady, ere this moon again changes.
My father had a brother high in favour with Mohammed
Boabdil, King of Grenada---thither we go,
secure of peace and protection, for the payment of
such ransom as the Moslem exact from our people.''

``And are you not then as well protected in
England?'' said Rowena. ``My husband has favour
with the King---the King himself is just and
generous.''

``Lady,'' said Rebecca, ``I doubt it not---but the
people of England are a fierce race, quarrelling
ever with their neighbours or among themselves,
and ready to plunge the sword into the bowels of
each other. Such is no safe abode for the children
of my people. Ephraim is an heartless dove---Issachar
an over-laboured drudge, which stoops between
two burdens. Not in a land of war and blood,
surrounded by hostile neighbours, and distracted
by internal factions, can Israel hope to rest during
her wanderings.''

``But you, maiden,'' said Rowena---``you surely
can have nothing to fear. She who nursed the sick-bed
of Ivanhoe,'' she continued, rising with enthusiasm
---``she can have nothing to fear in England,
where Saxon and Norman will contend who shall
most do her honour.''

``Thy speech is fair, lady,'' said Rebecca, ``and
thy purpose fairer; but it may not be---there is a
gulf betwixt us. Our breeding, our faith, alike
forbid either to pass over it. Farewell---yet, ere I
go indulge me one request. The bridal-veil hangs
over thy face; deign to raise it, and let me see the
features of which fame speaks so highly.''

``They are scarce worthy of being looked upon,''
said Rowena; ``but, expecting the same from my
visitant, I remove the veil.''

She took it off accordingly; and, partly from the
consciousness of beauty, partly from bashfulness,
she blushed so intensely, that cheek, brow, neck,
and bosom, were suffused with crimson. Rebecca
blushed also, but it was a momentary feeling; and,
mastered by higher emotions, past slowly from her
features like the crimson cloud, which changes colour
when the sun sinks beneath the horizon.

``Lady,'' she said, ``the countenance you have
deigned to show me will long dwell in my remembrance.
There reigns in it gentleness and goodness;
and if a tinge of the world's pride or vanities
may mix with an expression so lovely, how
should we chide that which is of earth for bearing
some colour of its original? Long, long will I remember
your features, and bless God that I leave
my noble deliverer united with---''

She stopped short---her eyes filled with tears.
She hastily wiped them, and answered to the anxious
enquiries of Rowena---``I am well, lady---
well. But my heart swells when I think of Torquilstone
and the lists of Templestowe.---Farewell.
One, the most trifling part of my duty, remains undischarged.
Accept this casket---startle not at its
contents.''

Rowena opened the small silver-chased casket,
and perceived a carcanet, or neck lace, with ear-jewels,
of diamonds, which were obviously of immense
value.

``It is impossible,'' she said, tendering back the
casket. ``I dare not accept a gift of such consequence.''

``Yet keep it, lady,'' returned Rebecca.---``You
have power, rank, command, influence; we have
wealth, the source both of our strength and weakness;
the value of these toys, ten times multiplied,
would not influence half so much as your slightest
wish. To you, therefore, the gift is of little value,
---and to me, what I part with is of much less. Let
me not think you deem so wretchedly ill of my
nation as your commons believe. Think ye that I
prize these sparkling fragments of stone above my
liberty? or that my father values them in comparison
to the honour of his only child? Accept them,
lady---to me they are valueless. I will never wear
jewels more.''

``You are then unhappy!'' said Rowena, struck
with the manner in which Rebecca uttered the last
words. ``O, remain with us---the counsel of holy
men will wean you from your erring law, and I will
be a sister to you.''
``No, lady,'' answered Rebecca, the same calm
melancholy reigning in her soft voice and beautiful
features---``that---may not be. I may not change the
faith of my fathers like a garment unsuited to the
climate in which I seek to dwell, and unhappy, lady,
I will not be. He, to whom I dedicate my future
life, will be my comforter, if I do His will.''

``Have you then convents, to one of which you
mean to retire?'' asked Rowena.

``No, lady,'' said the Jewess; ``but among our
people, since the time of Abraham downwards, have
been women who have devoted their thoughts to
Heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to
men, tending the sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving
the distressed. Among these will Rebecca
be numbered. Say this to thy lord, should he chance
to enquire after the fate of her whose life he saved.''

There was an involuntary tremour on Rebecca's
voice, and a tenderness of accent, which perhaps
betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed.
She hastened to bid Rowena adieu.

``Farewell,'' she said. ``May He, who made
both Jew and Christian, shower down on you his
choicest blessings! The bark that waits us hence
will be under weigh ere we can reach the port.''

She glided from the apartment, leaving Rowena
surprised as if a vision had passed before her. The
fair Saxon related the singular conference to her
husband, on whose mind it made a deep impression.
He lived long and happily with Rowena, for they
were attached to each other by the bonds of early
affection, and they loved each other the more, from
the recollection of the obstacles which had impeded
their union. Yet it would be enquiring too curiously
to ask, whether the recollection of Rebecca's
beauty and magnanimity did not recur to his mind
more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred
might altogether have approved.

Ivanhoe distinguished himself in the service of
Richard, and was graced with farther marks of the
royal favour. He might have risen still higher,
but for the premature death of the heroic Cur-de-Lion,
before the Castle of Chaluz, near Limoges.
With the life of a generous, but rash and romantic
monarch, perished all the projects which his ambition
and his generosity had formed; to whom may
be applied, with a slight alteration, the lines composed
by Johnson for Charles of Sweden---

His fate was destined to a foreign strand,
A petty fortress and an ``humble'' hand;
He left the name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a =tale=.

NOTE TO CHAPTER I.

Note A.---The Ranger or the Forest, that cuts the
foreclaws off our dogs.

A most sensible grievance of those aggrieved times were the
Forest Laws. These oppressive enactments were the produce of
the Norman Conquest, for the Saxon laws of the chase were
mild and humane; while those of William, enthusiastically attached
to the exercise and its rights, were to the last degree
tyrannical. The formation of the New Forest, bears evidence
to his passion for hunting, where he reduced many a happy village
to the condition of that one commemorated by my friend,
Mr William Stewart Rose:

``Amongst the ruins of the church
The midnight raven found a perch,
A melancholy place;
The ruthless Conqueror cast down,
Woe worth the deed, that little town,
To lengthen out his chase.''

The disabling dogs, which might be necessary for keeping
flocks and herds, from running at the deer, was called _lawing_,
and was in general use. The Charter of the Forest designed to
lessen those evils, declares that inquisition, or view, for lawing
dogs, shall be made every third year, and shall be then done by
the view and testimony of lawful men, not otherwise; and they
whose dogs shall be then found unlawed, shall give three shillings
for mercy, and for the future no man's ox shall be taken
for lawing. Such lawing also shall be done by the assize commonly
used, and which is, that three claws shall be cut off without
the ball of the right foot. See on this subject the Historical
Essay on the Magna Charta of King John, (a most beautiful
volume), by Richard Thomson.

NOTE TO CHAPTER II.

Note B.---Negro Slaves.

The severe accuracy of some critics has objected to the complexion
of the slaves of Brian de Bois-Guilbert, as being totally
out of costume and propriety. I remember the same objection
being made to a set of sable functionaries, whom my friend, Mat
Lewis, introduced as the guards and mischief-doing satellites of
the wicked Baron, in his Castle Spectre. Mat treated the objection
with great contempt, and averred in reply, that he made
the slaves black in order to obtain a striking effect of contrast,
and that, could he have derived a similar advantage from making
his heroine blue, blue she should have been.

I do not pretend to plead the immunities of my order so highly
as this; but neither will I allow that the author of a modern
antique romance is obliged to confine himself to the introduction
of those manners only which can be proved to have absolutely existed
in the times he is depicting, so that he restrain himself to
such as are plausible and natural, and contain no obvious anachronism.
In this point of view, what can be more natural, than
that the Templars, who, we know, copied closely the luxuries of
the Asiatic warriors with whom they fought, should use the
service of the enslaved Africans, whom the fate of war transferred
to new masters? I am sure, if there are no precise proofs
of their having done so, there is nothing, on the other hand,
that can entitle us positively to conclude that they never did.
Besides, there is an instance in romance.

John of Rampayne, an excellent juggler and minstrel, undertook
to effect the escape of one Audulf de Bracy, by presenting
himself in disguise at the court of the king, where he was confined.
For this purpose, ``he stained his hair and his whole
body entirely as black as jet, so that nothing was white but his
teeth,'' and succeeded in imposing himself on the king, as an
Ethiopian minstrel. He effected, by stratagem, the escape of
the prisoner. Negroes, therefore, must have been known in
England in the dark ages.*

* Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy, prefixed to Ritson's Ancient
* Metrical Romances, p. clxxxvii.

NOTE TO CHAPTER XVII.

Note, C.---Minstrelsy.

The realm of France, it is well known, was divided betwixt
the Norman and Teutonic race, who spoke the language in
which the word Yes is pronounced as _oui_, and the inhabitants
of the southern regions, whose speech bearing some affinity to
the Italian, pronounced the same word _oc_. The poets of the former
race were called _Minstrels_, and their poems _Lays_: those of
the latter were termed _Troubadours_, and their compositions
called _sirventes_, and other names. Richard, a professed admirer
of the joyous science in all its branches, could imitate either
the minstrel or troubadour. It is less likely that he should have
been able to compose or sing an English ballad; yet so much do
we wish to assimilate Him of the Lion Heart to the band of
warriors whom he led, that the anachronism, if there be one
may readily be forgiven.

NOTE TO CHAPTER XXI.

Note D.---Battle of Stamford.

A great topographical blunder occurred here in former editions.
The bloody battle alluded to in the text, fought and won
by King Harold, over his brother the rebellious Tosti, and an
auxiliary force of Danes or Norsemen, was said, in the text, and
a corresponding note, to have taken place at Stamford, in Leicestershire,
and upon the river Welland. This is a mistake, into
which the author has been led by trusting to his memory,
and so confounding two places of the same name. The Stamford,
Strangford, or Staneford, at which the battle really was
fought, is a ford upon the river Derwent, at the distance of
about seven miles from York, and situated in that large and
opulent county. A long wooden bridge over the Derwent, the
site of which, with one remaining buttress, is still shown to the
curious traveller, was furiously contested. One Norwegian
long defended it by his single arm, and was at length pierced
with a spear thrust through the planks of the bridge from a boat
beneath.

The neighbourhood of Stamford, on the Derwent, contains
some memorials of the battle. Horseshoes, swords, and the
heads of halberds, or bills, are often found there ; one place is
called the ``Danes' well,'' another the ``Battle flats.'' From a
tradition that the weapon with which the Norwegian champion
was slain, resembled a pear, or, as others say, that the
trough or boat in which the soldier floated under the bridge to
strike the blow, had such a shape, the country people usually
begin a great market, which is held at Stamford, with an
entertainment called the Pear-pie feast, which after all may be
a corruption of the Spear-pie feast. For more particulars,
Drake's History of York may be referred to. The author's mistake
was pointed out to him, in the most obliging manner, by
Robert Belt, Esq. of Bossal House. The battle was fought in
1066.

NOTE TO CHAPTER XXII.

Note E.---The range of iron bars above that glowing
charcoal.

This horrid species of torture may remind the reader of that
to which the Spaniards subjected Guatimozin, in order to extort
a discovery of his concealed wealth. But, in fact, an instance
of similar barbarity is to be found nearer home, and occurs
in the annals of Queen Mary's time, containing so many
other examples of atrocity. Every reader must recollect, that
after the fall of the Catholic Church, and the Presbyterian
Church Government had been established by law, the rank, and
especially the wealth, of the Bishops, Abbots, Priors, and so
forth, were no longer vested in ecclesiastics, but in lay impropriators
of the church revenues, or, as the Scottish lawyers called
them, titulars of the temporalities of the benefice, though
having no claim to the spiritual character of their predecessors
in office.