Ivanhoe by Walter Scott (world best books to read .TXT) 📖

nightly revels of Front-de-Boeuf, 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-Boeuf 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-Boeuf 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-Boeuf 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-Boeuf 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.”