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

yet stir not when the heel is lifted up against

him!---And my father!---oh, my father! evil is it with his

daughter, when his grey hairs are not remembered because of the

golden locks of youth!---What know I but that these evils are the

messengers of Jehovah’s wrath to the unnatural child, who thinks

of a stranger’s captivity before a parent’s? who forgets the

desolation of Judah, and looks upon the comeliness of a Gentile

and a stranger?---But I will tear this folly from my heart,

though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!”

She wrapped herself closely in her veil, and sat down at a

distance from the couch of the wounded knight, with her back

turned towards it, fortifying, or endeavouring to fortify her

mind, not only against the impending evils from without, but also

against those treacherous feelings which assailed her from

within.

CHAPTER XXX

Approach the chamber, look upon his bed.

His is the passing of no peaceful ghost,

Which, as the lark arises to the sky,

‘Mid morning’s sweetest breeze and softest dew,

Is wing’d to heaven by good men’s sighs and tears!---

Anselm parts otherwise.

Old Play

During the interval of quiet which followed the first success of

the besiegers, while the one party was preparing to pursue their

advantage, and the other to strengthen their means of defence,

the Templar and De Bracy held brief council together in the hall

of the castle.

“Where is Front-de-Boeuf?” said the latter, who had superintended

the defence of the fortress on the other side; “men say he hath

been slain.”

“He lives,” said the Templar, coolly, “lives as yet; but had he

worn the bull’s head of which he bears the name, and ten plates

of iron to fence it withal, he must have gone down before yonder

fatal axe. Yet a few hours, and Front-de-Boeuf is with his

fathers---a powerful limb lopped off Prince John’s enterprise.”

“And a brave addition to the kingdom of Satan,” said De Bracy;

“this comes of reviling saints and angels, and ordering images of

holy things and holy men to be flung down on the heads of these

rascaille yeomen.”

“Go to---thou art a fool,” said the Templar; “thy superstition is

upon a level with Front-de-Boeuf’s want of faith; neither of you

can render a reason for your belief or unbelief.”

“Benedicite, Sir Templar,” replied De Bracy, “pray you to keep

better rule with your tongue when I am the theme of it. By the

Mother of Heaven, I am a better Christian man than thou and thy

fellowship; for the ‘bruit’ goeth shrewdly out, that the most

holy Order of the Temple of Zion nurseth not a few heretics

within its bosom, and that Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert is of the

number.”

“Care not thou for such reports,” said the Templar; “but let us

think of making good the castle.---How fought these villain

yeomen on thy side?”

“Like fiends incarnate,” said De Bracy. “They swarmed close up to

the walls, headed, as I think, by the knave who won the prize at

the archery, for I knew his horn and baldric. And this is old

Fitzurse’s boasted policy, encouraging these malapert knaves to

rebel against us! Had I not been armed in proof, the villain had

marked me down seven times with as little remorse as if I had

been a buck in season. He told every rivet on my armour with a

cloth-yard shaft, that rapped against my ribs with as little

compunction as if my bones had been of iron---But that I wore a

shirt of Spanish mail under my plate-coat, I had been fairly

sped.”

“But you maintained your post?” said the Templar. “We lost the

outwork on our part.”

“That is a shrewd loss,” said De Bracy; “the knaves will find

cover there to assault the castle more closely, and may, if not

well watched, gain some unguarded corner of a tower, or some

forgotten window, and so break in upon us. Our numbers are too

few for the defence of every point, and the men complain that

they can nowhere show themselves, but they are the mark for as

many arrows as a parish-butt on a holyday even. Front-de-Boeuf

is dying too, so we shall receive no more aid from his bull’s

head and brutal strength. How think you, Sir Brian, were we not

better make a virtue of necessity, and compound with the rogues

by delivering up our prisoners?”

“How?” exclaimed the Templar; “deliver up our prisoners, and

stand an object alike of ridicule and execration, as the doughty

warriors who dared by a night-attack to possess themselves of the

persons of a party of defenceless travellers, yet could not make

good a strong castle against a vagabond troop of outlaws, led by

swineherds, jesters, and the very refuse of mankind?---Shame on

thy counsel, Maurice de Bracy!---The ruins of this castle shall

bury both my body and my shame, ere I consent to such base and

dishonourable composition.”

“Let us to the walls, then,” said De Bracy, carelessly; “that man

never breathed, be he Turk or Templar, who held life at lighter

rate than I do. But I trust there is no dishonour in wishing I

had here some two scores of my gallant troop of Free Companions?

---Oh, my brave lances! if ye knew but how hard your captain were

this day bested, how soon should I see my banner at the head of

your clump of spears! And how short while would these rabble

villains stand to endure your encounter!”

“Wish for whom thou wilt,” said the Templar, “but let us make

what defence we can with the soldiers who remain---They are

chiefly Front-de-Boeuf’s followers, hated by the English for a

thousand acts of insolence and oppression.”

“The better,” said De Bracy; “the rugged slaves will defend

themselves to the last drop of their blood, ere they encounter

the revenge of the peasants without. Let us up and be doing,

then, Brian de Bois-Guilbert; and, live or die, thou shalt see

Maurice de Bracy bear himself this day as a gentleman of blood

and lineage.”

“To the walls!” answered the Templar; and they both ascended the

battlements to do all that skill could dictate, and manhood

accomplish, in defence of the place. They readily agreed that

the point of greatest danger was that opposite to the outwork of

which the assailants had possessed themselves. The castle,

indeed, was divided from that barbican by the moat, and it was

impossible that the besiegers could assail the postern-door, with

which the outwork corresponded, without surmounting that

obstacle; but it was the opinion both of the Templar and De

Bracy, that the besiegers, if governed by the same policy their

leader had already displayed, would endeavour, by a formidable

assault, to draw the chief part of the defenders’ observation to

this point, and take measures to avail themselves of every

negligence which might take place in the defence elsewhere. To

guard against such an evil, their numbers only permitted the

knights to place sentinels from space to space along the walls in

communication with each other, who might give the alarm whenever

danger was threatened. Meanwhile, they agreed that De Bracy

should command the defence at the postern, and the Templar should

keep with him a score of men or thereabouts as a body of reserve,

ready to hasten to any other point which might be suddenly

threatened. The loss of the barbican had also this unfortunate

effect, that, notwithstanding the superior height of the castle

walls, the besieged could not see from them, with the same

precision as before, the operations of the enemy; for some

straggling underwood approached so near the sallyport of the

outwork, that the assailants might introduce into it whatever

force they thought proper, not only under cover, but even

without the knowledge of the defenders. Utterly uncertain,

therefore, upon what point the storm was to burst, De Bracy and

his companion were under the necessity of providing against every

possible contingency, and their followers, however brave,

experienced the anxious dejection of mind incident to men

enclosed by enemies, who possessed the power of choosing their

time and mode of attack.

Meanwhile, the lord of the beleaguered and endangered castle lay

upon a bed of bodily pain and mental agony. He had not the usual

resource of bigots in that superstitious period, most of whom

were wont to atone for the crimes they were guilty of by

liberality to the church, stupefying by this means their terrors

by the idea of atonement and forgiveness; and although the refuge

which success thus purchased, was no more like to the peace of

mind which follows on sincere repentance, than the turbid

stupefaction procured by opium resembles healthy and natural

slumbers, it was still a state of mind preferable to the agonies

of awakened remorse. But among the vices of Front-de-Boeuf, a

hard and griping man, avarice was predominant; and he preferred

setting church and churchmen at defiance, to purchasing from them

pardon and absolution at the price of treasure and of manors.

Nor did the Templar, an infidel of another stamp, justly

characterise his associate, when he said Front-de-Boeuf could

assign no cause for his unbelief and contempt for the established

faith; for the Baron would have alleged that the Church sold her

wares too dear, that the spiritual freedom which she put up to

sale was only to be bought like that of the chief captain of

Jerusalem, “with a great sum,” and Front-de-Boeuf preferred

denying the virtue of the medicine, to paying the expense of the

physician.

But the moment had now arrived when earth and all his treasures

were gliding from before his eyes, and when the savage Baron’s

heart, though hard as a nether millstone, became appalled as he

gazed forward into the waste darkness of futurity. The fever of

his body aided the impatience and agony of his mind, and his

death-bed exhibited a mixture of the newly awakened feelings of

horror, combating with the fixed and inveterate obstinacy of his

disposition;---a fearful state of mind, only to be equalled in

those tremendous regions, where there are complaints without

hope, remorse without repentance, a dreadful sense of present

agony, and a presentiment that it cannot cease or be diminished!

“Where be these dog-priests now,” growled the Baron, “who set

such price on their ghostly mummery?---where be all those unshod

Carmelites, for whom old Front-de-Boeuf founded the convent of St

Anne, robbing his heir of many a fair rood of meadow, and many a

fat field and close---where be the greedy hounds now?---Swilling,

I warrant me, at the ale, or playing their juggling tricks at the

bedside of some miserly churl.---Me, the heir of their founder

---me, whom their foundation binds them to pray for---me

---ungrateful villains as they are!---they suffer to die like the

houseless dog on yonder common, unshriven and unhouseled!---Tell

the Templar to come hither---he is a priest, and may do something

---But no!---as well confess myself to the devil as to Brian de

Bois-Guilbert, who recks neither of heaven nor of hell.---I have

heard old men talk of prayer---prayer by their own voice---Such

need not to court or to bribe the false priest---But I---I dare

not!”

“Lives Reginald Front-de-Boeuf,” said a broken and shrill voice

close by his bedside, “to say there is that which he dares not!”

The evil conscience and the shaken nerves of Front-de-Boeuf

heard, in this strange interruption to his soliloquy, the voice

of one of those demons, who, as the superstition of the times

believed, beset the beds of dying men to distract their thoughts,

and turn them from the meditations which concerned their eternal

welfare. He shuddered and drew himself together; but, instantly

summoning up his wonted resolution, he exclaimed, “Who is there?

---what art thou, that darest to echo my