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

Aymer, “since I must needs meddle in this

matter, let me have the use of thy writing-tablets---though, hold

---rather than use thy pen, I would fast for twenty-four hours,

and where shall I find one?”

“If your holy scruples can dispense with using the Jew’s tablets,

for the pen I can find a remedy,” said the yeoman; and, bending

his bow, he aimed his shaft at a wild-goose which was soaring

over their heads, the advanced-guard of a phalanx of his tribe,

which were winging their way to the distant and solitary fens of

Holderness. The bird came fluttering down, transfixed with the

arrow.

“There, Prior,” said the Captain, “are quills enow to supply all

the monks of Jorvaulx for the next hundred years, an they take

not to writing chronicles.”

The Prior sat down, and at great leisure indited an epistle to

Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and having carefully sealed up the

tablets, delivered them to the Jew, saying, “This will be thy

safe-conduct to the Preceptory of Templestowe, and, as I think,

is most likely to accomplish the delivery of thy daughter, if it

be well backed with proffers of advantage and commodity at thine

own hand; for, trust me well, the good Knight Bois-Guilbert is of

their confraternity that do nought for nought.”

“Well, Prior,” said the Outlaw, “I will detain thee no longer

here than to give the Jew a quittance for the six hundred crowns

at which thy ransom is fixed---I accept of him for my pay-master;

and if I hear that ye boggle at allowing him in his accompts the

sum so paid by him, Saint Mary refuse me, an I burn not the abbey

over thine head, though I hang ten years the sooner!”

With a much worse grace than that wherewith he had penned the

letter to Bois-Guilbert, the Prior wrote an acquittance,

discharging Isaac of York of six hundred crowns, advanced to him

in his need for acquittal of his ransom, and faithfully promising

to hold true compt with him for that sum.

“And now,” said Prior Aymer, “I will pray you of restitution of

my mules and palfreys, and the freedom of the reverend brethren

attending upon me, and also of the gymmal rings, jewels, and fair

vestures, of which I have been despoiled, having now satisfied

you for my ransom as a true prisoner.”

“Touching your brethren, Sir Prior,” said Locksley, “they shall

have present freedom, it were unjust to detain them; touching

your horses and mules, they shall also be restored, with such

spending-money as may enable you to reach York, for it were cruel

to deprive you of the means of journeying.---But as concerning

rings, jewels, chains, and what else, you must understand that we

are men of tender consciences, and will not yield to a venerable

man like yourself, who should be dead to the vanities of this

life, the strong temptation to break the rule of his foundation,

by wearing rings, chains, or other vain gauds.”

“Think what you do, my masters,” said the Prior, “ere you put

your hand on the Church’s patrimony---These things are ‘inter res

sacras’, and I wot not what judgment might ensue were they to be

handled by laical hands.”

“I will take care of that, reverend Prior,” said the Hermit of

Copmanhurst; “for I will wear them myself.”

“Friend, or brother,” said the Prior, in answer to this solution

of his doubts, “if thou hast really taken religious orders, I

pray thee to look how thou wilt answer to thine official for the

share thou hast taken in this day’s work.”

“Friend Prior,” returned the Hermit, “you are to know that I

belong to a little diocese, where I am my own diocesan, and care

as little for the Bishop of York as I do for the Abbot

of Jorvaulx, the Prior, and all the convent.”

“Thou art utterly irregular,” said the Prior; “one of those

disorderly men, who, taking on them the sacred character without

due cause, profane the holy rites, and endanger the souls of

those who take counsel at their hands; ‘lapides pro pane

condonantes iis’, giving them stones instead of bread as the

Vulgate hath it.”

“Nay,” said the Friar, “an my brain-pan could have been broken by

Latin, it had not held so long together.---I say, that easing a

world of such misproud priests as thou art of their jewels and

their gimcracks, is a lawful spoiling of the Egyptians.”

“Thou be’st a hedge-priest,”*

Note I. Hedge-Priests.

said the Prior, in great wrath, “‘excommunicabo vos’.”

“Thou be’st thyself more like a thief and a heretic,” said the

Friar, equally indignant; “I will pouch up no such affront before

my parishioners, as thou thinkest it not shame to put upon me,

although I be a reverend brother to thee. ‘Ossa ejus

perfringam’, I will break your bones, as the Vulgate hath it.”

“Hola!” cried the Captain, “come the reverend brethren to such

terms?---Keep thine assurance of peace, Friar.---Prior, an thou

hast not made thy peace perfect with God, provoke the Friar no

further.---Hermit, let the reverend father depart in peace, as a

ransomed man.”

The yeomen separated the incensed priests, who continued to raise

their voices, vituperating each other in bad Latin, which the

Prior delivered the more fluently, and the Hermit with the

greater vehemence. The Prior at length recollected himself

sufficiently to be aware that he was compromising his dignity, by

squabbling with such a hedge-priest as the Outlaw’s chaplain, and

being joined by his attendants, rode off with considerably less

pomp, and in a much more apostolical condition, so far as worldly

matters were concerned, than he had exhibited before this

rencounter.

It remained that the Jew should produce some security for the

ransom which he was to pay on the Prior’s account, as well as

upon his own. He gave, accordingly, an order sealed with his

signet, to a brother of his tribe at York, requiring him to pay

to the bearer the sum of a thousand crowns, and to deliver

certain merchandises specified in the note.

“My brother Sheva,” he said, groaning deeply, “hath the key of my

warehouses.”

“And of the vaulted chamber,” whispered Locksley.

“No, no---may Heaven forefend!” said Isaac; “evil is the hour

that let any one whomsoever into that secret!”

“It is safe with me,” said the Outlaw, “so be that this thy

scroll produce the sum therein nominated and set down.---But what

now, Isaac? art dead? art stupefied? hath the payment of a

thousand crowns put thy daughter’s peril out of thy mind?”

The Jew started to his feet---“No, Diccon, no---I will presently

set forth.---Farewell, thou whom I may not call good, and dare

not and will not call evil.”

Yet ere Isaac departed, the Outlaw Chief bestowed on him this

parting advice:---“Be liberal of thine offers, Isaac, and spare

not thy purse for thy daughter’s safety. Credit me, that the

gold thou shalt spare in her cause, will hereafter give thee as

much agony as if it were poured molten down thy throat.”

Isaac acquiesced with a deep groan, and set forth on his journey,

accompanied by two tall foresters, who were to be his guides, and

at the same time his guards, through the wood.

The Black Knight, who had seen with no small interest these

various proceedings, now took his leave of the Outlaw in turn;

nor could he avoid expressing his surprise at having witnessed

so much of civil policy amongst persons cast out from all the

ordinary protection and influence of the laws.

“Good fruit, Sir Knight,” said the yeoman, “will sometimes grow

on a sorry tree; and evil times are not always productive of evil

alone and unmixed. Amongst those who are drawn into this lawless

state, there are, doubtless, numbers who wish to exercise its

license with some moderation, and some who regret, it may be,

that they are obliged to follow such a trade at all.”

“And to one of those,” said the Knight, “I am now, I presume,

speaking?”

“Sir Knight,” said the Outlaw, “we have each our secret. You are

welcome to form your judgment of me, and I may use my conjectures

touching you, though neither of our shafts may hit the mark they

are shot at. But as I do not pray to be admitted into your

mystery, be not offended that I preserve my own.”

“I crave pardon, brave Outlaw,” said the Knight, “your reproof is

just. But it may be we shall meet hereafter with less of

concealment on either side.---Meanwhile we part friends, do we

not?”

“There is my hand upon it,” said Locksley; “and I will call it

the hand of a true Englishman, though an outlaw for the present.”

“And there is mine in return,” said the Knight, “and I hold it

honoured by being clasped with yours. For he that does good,

having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only

for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he

forbears. Fare thee well, gallant Outlaw!” Thus parted that

fair fellowship; and He of the Fetterlock, mounting upon his

strong war-horse, rode off through the forest.

CHAPTER XXXIV

KING JOHN.---I’ll tell thee what, my friend,

He is a very serpent in my way;

And wheresoe’er this foot of mine doth tread,

He lies before me.---Dost thou understand me?

King John

There was brave feasting in the Castle of York, to which Prince

John had invited those nobles, prelates, and leaders, by whose

assistance he hoped to carry through his ambitious projects upon

his brother’s throne. Waldemar Fitzurse, his able and politic

agent, was at secret work among them, tempering all to that pitch

of courage which was necessary in making an open declaration of

their purpose. But their enterprise was delayed by the absence

of more than one main limb of the confederacy. The stubborn and

daring, though brutal courage of Front-de-Boeuf; the buoyant

spirits and bold bearing of De Bracy; the sagacity, martial

experience, and renowned valour of Brian de Bois-Guilbert, were

important to the success of their conspiracy; and, while cursing

in secret their unnecessary and unmeaning absence, neither John

nor his adviser dared to proceed without them. Isaac the Jew

also seemed to have vanished, and with him the hope of certain

sums of money, making up the subsidy for which Prince John had

contracted with that Israelite and his brethren. This deficiency

was likely to prove perilous in an emergency so critical.

It was on the morning after the fall of Torquilstone, that a

confused report began to spread abroad in the city of York, that

De Bracy and Bois-Guilbert, with their confederate

Front-de-Boeuf, had been taken or slain. Waldemar brought the

rumour to Prince John, announcing, that he feared its truth the

more that they had set out with a small attendance, for the

purpose of committing an assault on the Saxon Cedric and his

attendants. At another time the Prince would have treated this

deed of violence as a good jest; but now, that it interfered with

and impeded his own plans, he exclaimed against the perpetrators,

and spoke of the broken laws, and the infringement of public

order and of private property, in a tone which might have become

King Alfred.

“The unprincipled marauders,” he said---“were I ever to become

monarch of England, I would hang such transgressors over the

drawbridges of their own castles.”

“But to become monarch of England,” said his Ahithophel coolly,

“it is necessary not only that your Grace should endure the

transgressions of these unprincipled marauders, but that you

should afford them your protection, notwithstanding your laudable

zeal for the laws they are in the habit of infringing. We shall

be finely helped, if the churl Saxons should have realized your

Grace’s vision, of