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

noble knights,” exclaimed Father Ambrose, amidst the bustle

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