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

thee to be tampering and trinketing with

hellish cures, and to be giving your labour to the sons of

mischief. I tell thee, the fiend can impose diseases for the

very purpose of removing them, in order to bring into credit

some diabolical fashion of cure. Hast thou that unguent of which

thou speakest?”

The peasant, fumbling in his bosom with a trembling hand,

produced a small box, bearing some Hebrew characters on the lid,

which was, with most of the audience, a sure proof that the devil

had stood apothecary. Beaumanoir, after crossing himself, took

the box into his hand, and, learned in most of the Eastern

tongues, read with ease the motto on the lid,---“The Lion of the

tribe of Judah hath conquered.”

“Strange powers of Sathanas.”

said he, “which can convert Scripture into blasphemy, mingling

poison with our necessary food!---Is there no leech here who can

tell us the ingredients of this mystic unguent?”

Two mediciners, as they called themselves, the one a monk, the

other a barber, appeared, and avouched they knew nothing of the

materials, excepting that they savoured of myrrh and camphire,

which they took to be Oriental herbs. But with the true

professional hatred to a successful practitioner of their art,

they insinuated that, since the medicine was beyond their own

knowledge, it must necessarily have been compounded from an

unlawful and magical pharmacopeia; since they themselves, though

no conjurors, fully understood every branch of their art, so far

as it might be exercised with the good faith of a Christian.

When this medical research was ended, the Saxon peasant desired

humbly to have back the medicine which he had found so salutary;

but the Grand Master frowned severely at the request. “What is

thy name, fellow?” said he to the cripple.

“Higg, the son of Snell,” answered the peasant.

“Then Higg, son of Snell,” said the Grand Master, “I tell thee it

is better to be bedridden, than to accept the benefit of

unbelievers’ medicine that thou mayest arise and walk; better to

despoil infidels of their treasure by the strong hand, than to

accept of them benevolent gifts, or do them service for wages.

Go thou, and do as I have said.”

“Alack,” said the peasant, “an it shall not displease your

Reverence, the lesson comes too late for me, for I am but a

maimed man; but I will tell my two brethren, who serve the rich

Rabbi Nathan Ben Samuel, that your mastership says it is more

lawful to rob him than to render him faithful service.”

“Out with the prating villain!” said Beaumanoir, who was not

prepared to refute this practical application of his general

maxim.

Higg, the son of Snell, withdrew into the crowd, but, interested

in the fate of his benefactress, lingered until he should learn

her doom, even at the risk of again encountering the frown of

that severe judge, the terror of which withered his very heart

within him.

At this period of the trial, the Grand Master commanded Rebecca

to unveil herself. Opening her lips for the first time, she

replied patiently, but with dignity,---“That it was not the wont

of the daughters of her people to uncover their faces when alone

in an assembly of strangers.” The sweet tones of her voice, and

the softness of her reply, impressed on the audience a sentiment

of pity and sympathy. But Beaumanoir, in whose mind the

suppression of each feeling of humanity which could interfere

with his imagined duty, was a virtue of itself, repeated his

commands that his victim should be unveiled. The guards were

about to remove her veil accordingly, when she stood up before

the Grand Master and said, “Nay, but for the love of your own

daughters---Alas,” she said, recollecting herself, “ye have no

daughters!---yet for the remembrance of your mothers---for the

love of your sisters, and of female decency, let me not be thus

handled in your presence; it suits not a maiden to be disrobed

by such rude grooms. I will obey you,” she added, with an

expression of patient sorrow in her voice, which had almost

melted the heart of Beaumanoir himself; “ye are elders among your

people, and at your command I will show the features of an

ill-fated maiden.”

She withdrew her veil, and looked on them with a countenance in

which bashfulness contended with dignity. Her exceeding beauty

excited a murmur of surprise, and the younger knights told each

other with their eyes, in silent correspondence, that Brian’s

best apology was in the power of her real charms, rather than of

her imaginary witchcraft. But Higg, the son of Snell, felt most

deeply the effect produced by the sight of the countenance of his

benefactress.

“Let me go forth,” he said to the warders at the door of the

hall,---“let me go forth!---To look at her again will kill me,

for I have had a share in murdering her.”

“Peace, poor man,” said Rebecca, when she heard his exclamation;

“thou hast done me no harm by speaking the truth---thou canst not

aid me by thy complaints or lamentations. Peace, I pray thee

---go home and save thyself.”

Higg was about to be thrust out by the compassion of the warders,

who were apprehensive lest his clamorous grief should draw upon

them reprehension, and upon himself punishment. But he promised

to be silent, and was permitted to remain. The two men-at-arms,

with whom Albert Malvoisin had not failed to communicate upon the

import of their testimony, were now called forward. Though both

were hardened and inflexible villains, the sight of the captive

maiden, as well as her excelling beauty, at first appeared to

stagger them; but an expressive glance from the Preceptor of

Templestowe restored them to their dogged composure; and they

delivered, with a precision which would have seemed suspicious to

more impartial judges, circumstances either altogether fictitious

or trivial, and natural in themselves, but rendered pregnant with

suspicion by the exaggerated manner in which they were told, and

the sinister commentary which the witnesses added to the facts.

The circumstances of their evidence would have been, in modern

days, divided into two classes---those which were immaterial, and

those which were actually and physically impossible. But both

were, in those ignorant and superstitions times, easily credited

as proofs of guilt.---The first class set forth, that Rebecca was

heard to mutter to herself in an unknown tongue---that the songs

she sung by fits were of a strangely sweet sound, which made the

ears of the hearer tingle, and his heart throb---that she spoke

at times to herself, and seemed to look upward for a reply---that

her garments were of a strange and mystic form, unlike those of

women of good repute---that she had rings impressed with

cabalistical devices, and that strange characters were broidered

on her veil.

All these circumstances, so natural and so trivial, were gravely

listened to as proofs, or, at least, as affording strong

suspicions that Rebecca had unlawful correspondence with mystical

powers.

But there was less equivocal testimony, which the credulity of

the assembly, or of the greater part, greedily swallowed, however

incredible. One of the soldiers had seen her work a cure upon a

wounded man, brought with them to the castle of Torquilstone.

She did, he said, make certain signs upon the wound, and repeated

certain mysterious words, which he blessed God he understood not,

when the iron head of a square cross-bow bolt disengaged itself

from the wound, the bleeding was stanched, the wound was closed,

and the dying man was, within a quarter of an hour, walking upon

the ramparts, and assisting the witness in managing a mangonel,

or machine for hurling stones. This legend was probably founded

upon the fact, that Rebecca had attended on the wounded Ivanhoe

when in the castle of Torquilstone. But it was the more

difficult to dispute the accuracy of the witness, as, in order to

produce real evidence in support of his verbal testimony, he drew

from his pouch the very bolt-head, which, according to his story,

had been miraculously extracted from the wound; and as the iron

weighed a full ounce, it completely confirmed the tale, however

marvellous.

His comrade had been a witness from a neighbouring battlement of

the scene betwixt Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert, when she was upon

the point of precipitating herself from the top of the tower.

Not to be behind his companion, this fellow stated, that he had

seen Rebecca perch herself upon the parapet of the turret, and

there take the form of a milk-white swan, under which appearance

she flitted three times round the castle of Torquilstone; then

again settle on the turret, and once more assume the female form.

Less than one half of this weighty evidence would have been

sufficient to convict any old woman, poor and ugly, even though

she had not been a Jewess. United with that fatal circumstance,

the body of proof was too weighty for Rebecca’s youth, though

combined with the most exquisite beauty.

The Grand Master had collected the suffrages, and now in a solemn

tone demanded of Rebecca what she had to say against the sentence

of condemnation, which he was about to pronounce.

“To invoke your pity,” said the lovely Jewess, with a voice

somewhat tremulous with emotion, “would, I am aware, be as

useless as I should hold it mean. To state that to relieve the

sick and wounded of another religion, cannot be displeasing to

the acknowledged Founder of both our faiths, were also

unavailing; to plead that many things which these men (whom may

Heaven pardon!) have spoken against me are impossible, would

avail me but little, since you believe in their possibility; and

still less would it advantage me to explain, that the

peculiarities of my dress, language, and manners, are those of my

people---I had well-nigh said of my country, but alas! we have no

country. Nor will I even vindicate myself at the expense of my

oppressor, who stands there listening to the fictions and

surmises which seem to convert the tyrant into the victim.---God

be judge between him and me! but rather would I submit to ten

such deaths as your pleasure may denounce against me, than

listen to the suit which that man of Belial has urged upon me

---friendless, defenceless, and his prisoner. But he is of your

own faith, and his lightest affirmance would weigh down the most

solemn protestations of the distressed Jewess. I will not

therefore return to himself the charge brought against me---but

to himself---Yes, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, to thyself I appeal,

whether these accusations are not false? as monstrous and

calumnious as they are deadly?”

There was a pause; all eyes turned to Brain de Bois-Guilbert. He

was silent.

“Speak,” she said, “if thou art a man---if thou art a Christian,

speak!---I conjure thee, by the habit which thou dost wear, by

the name thou dost inherit---by the knighthood thou dost vaunt

---by the honour of thy mother---by the tomb and the bones of thy

father---I conjure thee to say, are these things true?”

“Answer her, brother,” said the Grand Master, “if the Enemy with

whom thou dost wrestle will give thee power.”

In fact, Bois-Guilbert seemed agitated by contending passions,

which almost convulsed his features, and it was with a

constrained voice that at last he replied, looking to Rebecca,

---“The scroll!---the scroll!”

“Ay,” said Beaumanoir, “this is indeed testimony! The victim of

her witcheries can only name the fatal scroll, the spell

inscribed on which is, doubtless, the cause of his silence.”

But Rebecca put another interpretation on the words extorted as

it were from Bois-Guilbert, and glancing her eye upon the slip of

parchment which she continued to hold in her hand, she read

written thereupon in the Arabian character, “Demand a Champion!”

The murmuring commentary which ran through the assembly at