“Cherries nice, cherries nice, nice, come choose,Fresh and fair ones, who'll refuse?” &c.
The which he was ready to take his affidavit he had composed the day before yesterday. Then he sang an equally ORIGINAL heroic melody, of which the chorus was
“Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the sea,For Britons never, never, never slaves shall be,” &c.
The courtiers applauded this song as they did the other, all except Ivanhoe, who sat without changing a muscle of his features, until the King questioned him, when the knight, with a bow said “he thought he had heard something very like the air and the words elsewhere.” His Majesty scowled at him a savage glance from under his red bushy eyebrows; but Ivanhoe had saved the royal life that day, and the King, therefore, with difficulty controlled his indignation.
“Well,” said he, “by St. Richard and St. George, but ye never heard THIS song, for I composed it this very afternoon as I took my bath after the melee. Did I not, Blondel?”
Blondel, of course, was ready to take an affidavit that his Majesty had done as he said, and the King, thrumming on his guitar with his great red fingers and thumbs, began to sing out of tune and as follows:—
“COMMANDERS OF THE FAITHFUL.“The Pope he is a happy man,His Palace is the Vatican,And there he sits and drains his can:The Pope he is a happy man.I often say when I'm at home,I'd like to be the Pope of Rome.“And then there's Sultan Saladin,That Turkish Soldan full of sin;He has a hundred wives at least,By which his pleasure is increased:I've often wished, I hope no sin,That I were Sultan Saladin.“But no, the Pope no wife may choose,And so I would not wear his shoes;No wine may drink the proud Paynim,And so I'd rather not be him:My wife, my wine, I love I hope,And would be neither Turk nor Pope.”
“Encore! Encore! Bravo! Bis!” Everybody applauded the King's song with all his might: everybody except Ivanhoe, who preserved his abominable gravity: and when asked aloud by Roger de Backbite whether he had heard that too, said firmly, “Yes, Roger de Backbite; and so hast thou if thou darest but tell the truth.”
“Now, by St. Cicely, may I never touch gittern again,” bawled the King in a fury, “if every note, word, and thought be not mine; may I die in to-morrow's onslaught if the song be not my song. Sing thyself, Wilfrid of the Lanthorn Jaws; thou could'st sing a good song in old times.” And with all his might, and with a forced laugh, the King, who loved brutal practical jests, flung his guitar at the head of Ivanhoe.
Sir Wilfrid caught it gracefully with one hand, and making an elegant bow to the sovereign, began to chant as follows:—
“KING CANUTE.“King Canute was weary-hearted; he had reigned for years a score,Battling, struggling, pushing, fighting, killing much and robbingmore;And he thought upon his actions, walking by the wild sea-shore.“'Twixt the Chancellor and Bishop walked the King with stepssedate,Chamberlains and grooms came after, silversticks and goldsticksgreat,Chaplains, aides-de-camp, and pages,—all the officers of state.“Sliding after like his shadow, pausing when he chose to pause,If a frown his face contracted, straight the courtiers droppedtheir jaws;If to laugh the King was minded, out they burst in loud hee-haws.“But that day a something vexed him, that was clear to old andyoung:Thrice his Grace had yawned at table, when his favorite gleemensung,Once the Queen would have consoled him, but he bade her hold hertongue.“'Something ails my gracious master,' cried the Keeper of the Seal.'Sure, my lord, it is the lampreys served at dinner, or the veal?''Psha!' exclaimed the angry monarch. 'Keeper, 'tis not that Ifeel.“''Tis the HEART, and not the dinner, fool, that doth my restimpair:Can a King be great as I am, prithee, and yet know no care?Oh, I'm sick, and tired, and weary.'—Some one cried, 'The King'sarm-chair?'“Then towards the lackeys turning, quick my Lord the Keeper nodded,Straight the King's great chair was brought him, by two footmenable-bodied;Languidly he sank into it: it was comfortably wadded.“'Leading on my fierce companions,' cried be, 'over storm andbrine,I have fought and I have conquered! Where was glory like to mine?'Loudly all the courtiers echoed: 'Where is glory like to thine?'“'What avail me all my kingdoms? Weary am I now, and old;Those fair sons I have begotten, long to see me dead and cold;Would I were, and quiet buried, underneath the silent mould!“'Oh, remorse, the writhing serpent! at my bosom tears and bites;Horrid, horrid things I look on, though I put out all the lights;Ghosts of ghastly recollections troop about my bed of nights.“'Cities burning, convents blazing, red with sacrilegious fires;Mothers weeping, virgins screaming, vainly for their slaughteredsires.'—Such a tender conscience,' cries the Bishop, 'everyone admires.“'But for such unpleasant bygones, cease, my gracious lord, tosearch,They're forgotten and forgiven by our Holy Mother Church;Never, never does she leave her benefactors in the lurch.“'Look! the land is crowned with minsters, which your Grace'sbounty raised;Abbeys filled with holy men, where you and Heaven are dailypraised:YOU, my lord, to think of dying? on my conscience I'm amazed!'“'Nay, I feel,' replied King Canute, 'that my end is drawing near.''Don't say so,' exclaimed the courtiers (striving each to squeeze atear).'Sure your Grace is strong and lusty, and may live this fiftyyear.'“'Live these fifty years!' the Bishop roared, with actions made tosuit.'Are you mad, my good Lord Keeper, thus to speak of King Canute!Men have lived a thousand years, and sure his Majesty will do't.“'Adam, Enoch, Lamech, Cainan, Mahaleel, Methusela,Lived nine hundred years apiece, and mayn't the King as well asthey?''Fervently,' exclaimed the Keeper, 'fervently I trust he may.'“'HE to die?' resumed the Bishop. 'He a mortal like to US?Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus:Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus.“'With his wondrous skill in healing ne'er a doctor can compete,Loathsome lepers, if he touch them, start up clean upon their feet;Surely he could raise the dead up, did his Highness think it meet.“'Did not once the Jewish captain stay the sun upon the hill,And, the while he slew the foemen, bid the silver moon stand still?So, no doubt, could gracious Canute, if it were his sacred will.'“'Might I stay the sun above us, good Sir Bishop?' Canute cried;'Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride?If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the tide.“'Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the sign?'Said the Bishop, bowing lowly, 'Land and sea, my lord, are thine.'Canute turned towards the ocean—'Back!' he said, 'thou foamingbrine“'From the sacred shore I stand on, I command thee to retreat;Venture not, thou stormy rebel, to approach thy master's seat:Ocean, be thou still! I bid thee come not nearer to my feet!'“But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar,And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling sounding on the shore;Back the Keeper and the Bishop, back the King and courtiers bore.“And he sternly bade them never more to kneel to human clay,But alone to praise and worship That which earth and seas obey:And his golden crown of empire never wore he from that day.King Canute is dead and gone: Parasites exist alway.”
At this ballad, which, to be sure, was awfully long, and as grave as a sermon, some of the courtiers tittered, some yawned, and some affected to be asleep and snore outright. But Roger de Backbite thinking to curry favor with the King by this piece of vulgarity, his Majesty fetched him a knock on the nose and a buffet on the ear, which, I warrant me, wakened Master Roger; to whom the King said, “Listen and be civil, slave; Wilfrid is singing about thee.—Wilfrid, thy ballad is long, but it is to the purpose, and I have grown cool during thy homily. Give me thy hand, honest friend. Ladies, good night. Gentlemen, we give the grand assault to-morrow; when I promise thee, Wilfrid, thy banner shall not be before mine.”—And the King, giving his arm to her Majesty, retired into the private pavilion.
Whilst the royal Richard and his court were feasting in the camp outside the walls of Chalus, they of the castle were in the most miserable plight that may be conceived. Hunger, as well as the fierce assaults of the besiegers, had made dire ravages in the place. The garrison's provisions of corn and cattle, their very horses, dogs, and donkeys had been eaten up—so that it might well be said by Wamba “that famine, as well as slaughter, had THINNED the garrison.” When the men of Chalus came on the walls to defend it against the scaling-parties of King Richard, they were like so many skeletons in armor; they could hardly pull their bowstrings at last, or pitch down stones on the heads of his Majesty's party, so weak had their arms become; and the gigantic Count of Chalus—a warrior as redoubtable for his size and strength as Richard Plantagenet himself—was scarcely able to lift up his battle-axe upon the day of that last assault, when Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe ran him through the—but we are advancing matters.
What should prevent me from describing the agonies of hunger which the Count (a man of large appetite) suffered in company with his heroic sons and garrison?—Nothing, but that Dante has already done the business in the notorious history of Count Ugolino; so that my efforts might be considered as mere imitations. Why should I not, if I were minded to revel in horrifying details, show you how the famished garrison drew lots, and ate themselves during the siege; and how the unlucky lot falling upon the Countess of Chalus, that heroic woman, taking an affectionate leave of her family, caused her large caldron in the castle kitchen to be set a-boiling, had onions, carrots and herbs, pepper and salt made ready, to make a savory soup, as the French like it; and when all things were quite completed, kissed her children, jumped into the caldron from off a kitchen stool, and so was stewed down in her flannel bed-gown? Dear friends, it is not from want of imagination, or from having no turn for the terrible or pathetic, that I spare you these details. I could give you some description that would spoil your dinner and night's rest, and make your hair stand on end. But why harrow your feelings? Fancy all the tortures and horrors that possibly can occur in a beleaguered and famished castle: fancy the feelings of men who know that no more quarter will be given them than they would get if they were peaceful Hungarian citizens kidnapped and brought to trial by his Majesty the Emperor of Austria; and then let us rush on to the breach and prepare once more to meet the assault of dreadful King Richard and his men.
On the 29th of March in the year 1199, the good King, having copiously partaken of breakfast, caused his trumpets to blow, and advanced with his host upon the breach of the castle of Chalus. Arthur de Pendennis bore his banner; Wilfrid of Ivanhoe fought on the King's right hand. Molyneux, Bishop of Bullocksmithy, doffed crosier and mitre for that day, and though fat and pursy, panted up the breach with the most resolute spirit, roaring out war-cries and curses, and wielding a prodigious mace of iron, with which he did good execution. Roger de Backbite was forced to come in attendance upon the sovereign, but took care to keep in the rear of his august master, and to shelter behind his huge triangular shield as much as possible. Many lords of note followed the King and bore the ladders; and as they were placed against the wall, the air was perfectly dark with the shower of arrows which the French archers poured out at the besiegers, and the cataract of stones, kettles, bootjacks, chests of drawers, crockery, umbrellas, congreve-rockets, bombshells, bolts and arrows and other missiles which the desperate garrison flung out on the storming-party. The King received a copper coal-scuttle right over his eyes, and a mahogany wardrobe was discharged at his morion, which would have felled an ox, and would have done for the King had not Ivanhoe warded it off skilfully. Still they advanced, the warriors falling around them like grass beneath the scythe of the mower.
The ladders were placed in spite of the hail of death raining round: the King and Ivanhoe were, of course, the first to mount them. Chalus stood in the breach, borrowing strength from despair; and roaring out, “Ha! Plantagenet, St. Barbacue for Chalus!” he dealt the King a crack across the helmet with his battle-axe, which shore off the gilt lion and crown that surmounted the steel cap. The King bent and reeled back; the besiegers were dismayed; the garrison and the Count of Chalus set up a shout of triumph: but it was premature.
As quick as thought Ivanhoe was into the Count with a thrust in tierce, which took him just at the joint of the armor, and ran him through as clean as a spit does a partridge. Uttering a horrid shriek, he fell back writhing; the King recovering staggered up the parapet; the rush of knights followed, and the union-jack was planted triumphantly on the walls, just as Ivanhoe,—but we must leave him for a moment.
“Ha, St. Richard!—ha, St. George!” the tremendous voice of the Lion-king was heard over the loudest roar of the onset. At every sweep of his blade a severed head flew over the parapet, a spouting trunk tumbled, bleeding, on the flags of the bartizan. The world hath never seen a warrior equal to that Lion-hearted Plantagenet, as he raged over the keep, his eyes flashing fire through the bars of his morion, snorting and chafing with the hot lust of battle. One by one les enfans de Chalus had fallen; there was only one left at last of all the brave race that had fought round the gallant Count:—only one, and but a boy, a fair-haired boy, a blue-eyed boy! he had been gathering pansies in the fields but yesterday—it was but a few years, and he was a baby in his mother's arms! What could his puny sword do against the most redoubted blade in Christendom?—and yet Bohemond faced the great champion of England, and met him foot to foot! Turn away, turn away, my dear young friends and kind-hearted ladies! Do not look at that ill-fated poor boy! his blade is crushed into splinters under the axe of the conqueror, and the poor child is beaten to his knee! . . .
“Now, by St. Barbacue of Limoges,” said Bertrand de Gourdon, “the butcher will never strike down yonder lambling! Hold thy hand, Sir King, or, by St. Barbacue—”
Swift as thought the veteran archer raised his arblast to his shoulder, the whizzing bolt fled from the ringing string, and the next moment crashed quivering into the corselet of Plantagenet.
'Twas a luckless shot, Bertrand of Gourdon! Maddened by the pain of the wound, the brute nature of Richard was aroused: his fiendish appetite for blood rose to madness, and grinding his teeth, and with a curse too horrible to mention, the flashing axe of the royal butcher fell down on the blond ringlets of the child, and the children of Chalus were no more! . . .
I just throw this off by way of description, and to show what MIGHT be done if I chose to indulge in this style of composition; but as in the battles which are described by the kindly chronicler, of one of whose works this present masterpiece is professedly a continuation, everything passes off agreeably—the people are slain, but without any unpleasant sensation to the reader; nay, some of the most savage and blood-stained characters of history, such is the indomitable good-humor of the great novelist, become amiable, jovial companions, for whom one has a hearty sympathy—so, if you please, we will have this fighting business at Chalus, and the garrison and honest Bertrand of Gourdon, disposed of; the former, according to the usage of the good old times, having been hung up or murdered to a man, and the latter killed in the manner described by the late Dr. Goldsmith in his History.
As for the Lion-hearted, we all very well know that the shaft of Bertrand de Gourdon put an end to the royal hero—and that from that 29th of March he never robbed nor murdered any more. And we have legends in recondite books of the manner of the King's death.
“You must die, my son,” said the venerable Walter of Rouen, as Berengaria was carried shrieking from the King's tent. “Repent, Sir King, and separate yourself from your children!”
“It is ill jesting with a dying man,” replied the King. “Children have I none, my good lord bishop, to inherit after me.”
“Richard of England,” said the archbishop, turning up his fine eyes, “your vices are your children. Ambition is your eldest child, Cruelty is your second child, Luxury is your third child; and you have nourished them from your youth up. Separate yourself from these sinful ones, and prepare your soul, for the hour of departure draweth nigh.”
Violent, wicked, sinful, as he might have been, Richard of England met his death like a Christian man. Peace be to the soul of the brave! When the news came to King Philip of France, he sternly forbade his courtiers to rejoice at the death of his enemy. “It is no matter of joy but of dolor,” he said, “that the bulwark of Christendom and the bravest king of Europe is no more.”
Meanwhile what has become of Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, whom we left in the act of rescuing his sovereign by running the Count of Chalus through the body?
As the good knight stooped down to pick his sword out of the corpse of his fallen foe, some one coming behind him suddenly thrust a dagger into his back at a place where his shirt-of-mail was open (for Sir Wilfrid had armed that morning in a hurry, and it was his breast, not his back, that he was accustomed ordinarily to protect); and when poor Wamba came up on the rampart, which he did when the fighting was over,—being such a fool that he could not be got to thrust his head into danger for glory's sake—he found his dear knight with the dagger in his back lying without life upon the body of the Count de Chalus whom he had anon slain.
Ah, what a howl poor Wamba set up when he found his master killed! How he lamented over the corpse of that noble knight and friend! What mattered it to him that Richard the King was borne wounded to his tent, and that Bertrand de Gourdon was flayed alive? At another time the sight of this spectacle might have amused the simple knave; but now all his thoughts were of his lord: so good, so gentle, so kind, so loyal, so frank with the great, so tender to the poor, so truthful of speech, so modest regarding his own merit, so true a gentleman, in a word, that anybody might, with reason, deplore him.
As Wamba opened the dear knight's corselet, he found a locket round his neck, in which there was some hair; not flaxen like that of my Lady Rowena, who was almost as fair as an Albino, but as black, Wamba thought, as the locks of the Jewish maiden whom the knight had rescued in the lists of Templestowe. A bit of Rowena's hair was in Sir Wilfrid's possession, too; but that was in his purse along with his seal of arms, and a couple of groats: for the good knight never kept any money, so generous was he of his largesses when money came in.
Wamba took the purse, and seal, and groats, but he left the locket of hair round his master's neck, and when he returned to England never said a word about the circumstance. After all, how should he know whose hair it was? It might have been the knight's grandmother's hair for aught the fool knew; so he kept his counsel when he brought back the sad news and tokens to the disconsolate widow at Rotherwood.
The poor fellow would never have left the body at all, and indeed sat by it all night, and until the gray of the morning; when, seeing two suspicious-looking characters advancing towards him, he fled in dismay, supposing that they were marauders who were out searching for booty among the dead bodies; and having not the least courage, he fled from these, and tumbled down the breach, and never stopped running as fast as his legs would carry him, until he reached the tent of his late beloved master.
The news of the knight's demise, it appeared, had been known at his quarters long before; for his servants were gone, and had ridden off on his horses; his chests were plundered: there was not so much as a shirt-collar left in his drawers, and the very bed and blankets had been carried away by these FAITHFUL attendants. Who had slain Ivanhoe? That remains a mystery to the present day; but Roger de Backbite, whose nose he had pulled for defamation, and who was behind him in the assault at Chalus, was seen two years afterwards at the court of King John in an embroidered velvet waistcoat which Rowena could have sworn she had worked for Ivanhoe, and about which the widow would have made some little noise, but that—but that she was no longer a widow.
That she truly deplored the death of her lord cannot be questioned, for she ordered the deepest mourning which any milliner in York could supply, and erected a monument to his memory as big as a minster. But she was a lady of such fine principles, that she did not allow her grief to overmaster her; and an opportunity speedily arising for uniting the two best Saxon families in England, by an alliance between herself and the gentleman who offered himself to her, Rowena sacrificed her inclination to remain single, to her sense of duty; and contracted a second matrimonial engagement.
That Athelstane was the man, I suppose no reader familiar with life, and novels which are a rescript of life, and are all strictly natural and edifying, can for a moment doubt. Cardinal Pandulfo tied the knot for them: and lest there should be any doubt about Ivanhoe's death (for his body was never sent home after all, nor seen after Wamba ran away from it), his Eminence procured a Papal decree annulling the former marriage, so that Rowena became Mrs. Athelstane with a clear conscience. And who shall be surprised, if she was happier with the stupid and boozy Thane than with the gentle and melancholy Wilfrid? Did women never have a predilection for fools, I should like to know; or fall in love with donkeys, before the time of the amours of Bottom and Titania? Ah! Mary, had you not preferred an ass to a man, would you have married Jack Bray, when a Michael Angelo offered? Ah! Fanny, were you not a woman, would you persist in adoring Tom Hiccups, who beats you, and comes home tipsy from the Club? Yes, Rowena cared a hundred times more about tipsy Athelstane than ever she had done for gentle Ivanhoe, and so great was her infatuation about the former, that she would sit upon his knee in the presence of all her maidens, and let him smoke his cigars in the very drawing-room.
This is the epitaph she caused to be written by Father Drono (who piqued himself upon his Latinity) on the stone commemorating the death of her late lord:—
Hic est Guilfridus, belli dum vixit avidus:Cum gladio et lancea, Normania et quoque FranciaVerbera dura dabat: per Turcos multum equitabat:Guilbertum occidit: atque Hierosolyma vidit.Heu! nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militis ossa,Uxor Athelstani est conjux castissima Thani.
And this is the translation which the doggerel knave Wamba made of the Latin lines:
“REQUIESCAT.“Under the stone you behold,Buried, and coffined, and cold,Lieth Sir Wilfrid the Bold.“Always he marched in advance,Warring in Flanders and France,Doughty with sword and with lance.“Famous in Saracen fight,Rode in his youth the good knight,Scattering Paynims in flight.“Brian the Templar untrue,Fairly in tourney he slew,Saw Hierusalem too.“Now he is buried and gone,Lying beneath the gray stone:Where shall you find such a one?“Long time his widow deplored,Weeping the fate of her lord,Sadly cut off by the sword.“When she was eased of her pain,Came the good Lord Athelstane,When her ladyship married again.”
Athelstane burst into a loud laugh, when he heard it, at the last line, but Rowena would have had the fool whipped, had not the Thane interceded; and to him, she said, she could refuse nothing.
I trust nobody will suppose, from the events described in the last chapter, that our friend Ivanhoe is really dead. Because we have given him an epitaph or two and a monument, are these any reasons that he should be really gone out of the world? No: as in the pantomime, when we see Clown and Pantaloon lay out Harlequin and cry over him, we are always sure that Master Harlequin will be up at the next minute alert and shining in his glistening coat; and, after giving a box on the ears to the pair of them, will be taking a dance with Columbine, or leaping gayly through the clock-face, or into the three-pair-of-stairs' window:—so Sir Wilfrid, the Harlequin of our Christmas piece, may be run through a little, or may make believe to be dead, but will assuredly rise up again when he is wanted, and show himself at the right moment.
The suspicious-looking characters from whom Wamba ran away were no cut-throats and plunderers, as the poor knave imagined, but no other than Ivanhoe's friend, the hermit, and a reverend brother of his, who visited the scene of the late battle in order to see if any Christians still survived there, whom they might shrive and get ready for heaven, or to whom they might possibly offer the benefit of their skill as leeches. Both were prodigiously learned in the healing art; and had about them those precious elixirs which so often occur in romances, and with which patients are so miraculously restored. Abruptly dropping his master's head from his lap as he fled, poor Wamba caused the knight's pate to fall with rather a heavy thump to the ground, and if the knave had but stayed a minute longer, he would have heard Sir Wilfrid utter a deep groan. But though the fool heard him not, the holy hermits did; and to recognize the gallant Wilfrid, to withdraw the enormous dagger still sticking out of his back, to wash the wound with a portion of the precious elixir, and to pour a little of it down his throat, was with the excellent hermits the work of an instant: which remedies being applied, one of the good men took the knight by the heels and the other by the head, and bore him daintily from the castle to their hermitage in a neighboring rock. As for the Count of Chalus, and the remainder of the slain, the hermits were too much occupied with Ivanhoe's case to mind them, and did not, it appears, give them any elixir: so that, if they are really dead, they must stay on the rampart stark and cold; or if otherwise, when the scene closes upon them as it does now, they may get up, shake themselves, go to the slips and drink a pot of porter, or change their stage-clothes and go home to supper. My dear readers, you may settle the matter among yourselves as you like. If you wish to kill the characters really off, let them be dead, and have done with them: but, entre nous, I don't believe they are any more dead than you or I are, and sometimes doubt whether there is a single syllable of truth in this whole story.
Well, Ivanhoe was taken to the hermits' cell, and there doctored by the holy fathers for his hurts; which were of such a severe and dangerous order, that he was under medical treatment for a very considerable time. When he woke up from his delirium, and asked how long he had been ill, fancy his astonishment when he heard that he had been in the fever for six years! He thought the reverend fathers were joking at first, but their profession forbade them from that sort of levity; and besides, he could not possibly have got well any sooner, because the story would have been sadly put out had he appeared earlier. And it proves how good the fathers were to him, and how very nearly that scoundrel of a Roger de Backbite's dagger had finished him, that he did not get well under this great length of time; during the whole of which the fathers tended him without ever thinking of a fee. I know of a kind physician in this town who does as much sometimes; but I won't do him the ill service of mentioning his name here.
Ivanhoe, being now quickly pronounced well, trimmed his beard, which by this time hung down considerably below his knees, and calling for his suit of chain-armor, which before had fitted his elegant person as tight as wax, now put it on, and it bagged and hung so loosely about him, that even the good friars laughed at his absurd appearance. It was impossible that he should go about the country in such a garb as that: the very boys would laugh at him: so the friars gave him one of their old gowns, in which he disguised himself, and after taking an affectionate farewell of his friends, set forth on his return to his native country. As he went along, he learned that Richard was dead, that John reigned, that Prince Arthur had been poisoned, and was of course made acquainted with various other facts of public importance recorded in Pinnock's Catechism and the Historic Page.
But these subjects did not interest him near so much as his own private affairs; and I can fancy that his legs trembled under him, and his pilgrim's staff shook with emotion, as at length, after many perils, he came in sight of his paternal mansion of Rotherwood, and saw once more the chimneys smoking, the shadows of the oaks over the grass in the sunset, and the rooks winging over the trees. He heard the supper gong sounding: he knew his way to the door well enough; he entered the familiar hall with a benedicite, and without any more words took his place.
You might have thought for a moment that the gray friar trembled and his shrunken cheek looked deadly pale; but he recovered himself presently: nor could you see his pallor for the cowl which covered his face.
A little boy was playing on Athelstane's knee; Rowena smiling and patting the Saxon Thane fondly on his broad bullhead, filled him a huge cup of spiced wine from a golden jug. He drained a quart of the liquor, and, turning round, addressed the friar:—
“And so, gray frere, thou sawest good King Richard fall at Chalus by the bolt of that felon bowman?”
“We did, an it please you. The brothers of our house attended the good King in his last moments: in truth, he made a Christian ending!”
“And didst thou see the archer flayed alive? It must have been rare sport,” roared Athelstane, laughing hugely at the joke. “How the fellow must have howled!”
“My love!” said Rowena, interposing tenderly, and putting a pretty white finger on his lip.
“I would have liked to see it too,” cried the boy.
“That's my own little Cedric, and so thou shalt. And, friar, didst see my poor kinsman Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe? They say he fought well at Chalus!”
“My sweet lord,” again interposed Rowena, “mention him not.”
“Why? Because thou and he were so tender in days of yore—when you could not bear my plain face, being all in love with his pale one?”
“Those times are past now, dear Athelstane,” said his affectionate wife, looking up to the ceiling.
“Marry, thou never couldst forgive him the Jewess, Rowena.”
“The odious hussy! don't mention the name of the unbelieving creature,” exclaimed the lady.
“Well, well, poor Wil was a good lad—a thought melancholy and milksop though. Why, a pint of sack fuddled his poor brains.”
“Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe was a good lance,” said the friar. “I have heard there was none better in Christendom. He lay in our convent after his wounds, and it was there we tended him till he died. He was buried in our north cloister.”
“And there's an end of him,” said Athelstane. “But come, this is dismal talk. Where's Wamba the Jester? Let us have a song. Stir up, Wamba, and don't lie like a dog in the fire! Sing us a song, thou crack-brained jester, and leave off whimpering for bygones. Tush, man! There be many good fellows left in this world.”
“There be buzzards in eagles' nests,” Wamba said, who was lying stretched before the fire, sharing the hearth with the Thane's dogs. “There be dead men alive, and live men dead. There be merry songs and dismal songs. Marry, and the merriest are the saddest sometimes. I will leave off motley and wear black, gossip Athelstane. I will turn howler at funerals, and then, perhaps, I shall be merry. Motley is fit for mutes, and black for fools. Give me some drink, gossip, for my voice is as cracked as my brain.”
“Drink and sing, thou beast, and cease prating,” the Thane said.
And Wamba, touching his rebeck wildly, sat up in the chimney-side and curled his lean shanks together and began:—
“LOVE AT TWO SCORE.“Ho! pretty page, with dimpled chin,That never has known the barber's shear,All your aim is woman to win—This is the way that boys begin—Wait till you've come to forty year!“Curly gold locks cover foolish brains,Billing and cooing is all your cheer,Sighing and singing of midnight strainsUnder Bonnybells' window-panes.Wait till you've come to forty year!“Forty times over let Michaelmas pass,Grizzling hair the brain doth clear;Then you know a boy is an ass,Then you know the worth of a lass,Once you have come to forty year.“Pledge me round, I bid ye declare,All good fellows whose beards are gray:Did not the fairest of the fairCommon grow, and wearisome, ereEver a month was passed away?“The reddest lips that ever have kissed,The brightest eyes that ever have shone,May pray and whisper and we not list,Or look away and never be missed,Ere yet ever a month was gone.“Gillian's dead, Heaven rest her bier,How I loved her twenty years syne!Marian's married, but I sit here,Alive and merry at forty year,Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine.”
“Who taught thee that merry lay, Wamba, thou son of Witless?” roared Athelstane, clattering his cup on the table and shouting the chorus.
“It was a good and holy hermit, sir, the pious clerk of Copmanhurst, that you wot of, who played many a prank with us in the days that we knew King Richard. Ah, noble sir, that was a jovial time and a good priest.”
“They say the holy priest is sure of the next bishopric, my love,” said Rowena. “His Majesty hath taken him into much favor. My Lord of Huntingdon looked very well at the last ball; but I never could see any beauty in the Countess—a freckled, blowsy thing, whom they used to call Maid Marian: though, for the matter of that, what between her flirtations with Major Littlejohn and Captain Scarlett, really—”
“Jealous again—haw! haw!” laughed Athelstane.
“I am above jealousy, and scorn it,” Rowena answered, drawing herself up very majestically.
“Well, well, Wamba's was a good song,” Athelstane said.
“Nay, a wicked song,” said Rowena, turning up her eyes as usual. “What! rail at woman's love? Prefer a filthy wine cup to a true wife? Woman's love is eternal, my Athelstane. He who questions it would be a blasphemer were he not a fool. The well-born and well-nurtured gentlewoman loves once and once only.”
“I pray you, madam, pardon me, I—I am not well,” said the gray friar, rising abruptly from his settle, and tottering down the steps of the dais. Wamba sprung after him, his bells jingling as he rose, and casting his arms around the apparently fainting man, he led him away into the court. “There be dead men alive and live men dead,” whispered he. “There be coffins to laugh at and marriages to cry over. Said I not sooth, holy friar?” And when they had got out into the solitary court, which was deserted by all the followers of the Thane, who were mingling in the drunken revelry in the hall, Wamba, seeing that none were by, knelt down, and kissing the friar's garment, said, “I knew thee, I knew thee, my lord and my liege!”
“Get up,” said Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, scarcely able to articulate: “only fools are faithful.”
And he passed on, and into the little chapel where his father lay buried. All night long the friar spent there: and Wamba the Jester lay outside watching as mute as the saint over the porch.
When the morning came, Wumba was gone; and the knave being in the habit of wandering hither and thither as he chose, little notice was taken of his absence by a master and mistress who had not much sense of humor. As for Sir Wilfrid, a gentleman of his delicacy of feelings could not be expected to remain in a house where things so naturally disagreeable to him were occurring, and he quitted Rotherwood incontinently, after paying a dutiful visit to the tomb where his old father, Cedric, was buried; and hastened on to York, at which city he made himself known to the family attorney, a most respectable man, in whose hands his ready money was deposited, and took up a sum sufficient to fit himself out with credit, and a handsome retinue, as became a knight of consideration. But he changed his name, wore a wig and spectacles, and disguised himself entirely, so that it was impossible his friends or the public should know him, and thus metamorphosed, went about whithersoever his fancy led him. He was present at a public ball at York, which the lord mayor gave, danced Sir Roger de Coverley in the very same set with Rowena—(who was disgusted that Maid Marian took precedence of her)—he saw little Athelstane overeat himself at the supper and pledge his big father in a cup of sack; he met the Reverend Mr. Tuck at a missionary meeting, where he seconded a resolution proposed by that eminent divine;—in fine, he saw a score of his old acquaintances, none of whom recognized in him the warrior of Palestine and Templestowe. Having a large fortune and nothing to do, he went about this country performing charities, slaying robbers, rescuing the distressed, and achieving noble feats of arms. Dragons and giants existed in his day no more, or be sure he would have had a fling at them: for the truth is, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe was somewhat sick of the life which the hermits of Chalus had restored to him, and felt himself so friendless and solitary that he would not have been sorry to come to an end of it. Ah, my dear friends and intelligent British public, are there not others who are melancholy under a mask of gayety, and who, in the midst of crowds, are lonely? Liston was a most melancholy man; Grimaldi had feelings; and there are others I wot of:—but psha!—let us have the next chapter.
The rascally manner in which the chicken-livered successor of Richard of the Lion-heart conducted himself to all parties, to his relatives, his nobles, and his people, is a matter notorious, and set forth clearly in the Historic Page: hence, although nothing, except perhaps success, can, in my opinion, excuse disaffection to the sovereign, or appearance in armed rebellion against him, the loyal reader will make allowance for two of the principal personages of this narrative, who will have to appear in the present chapter in the odious character of rebels to their lord and king. It must be remembered, in partial exculpation of the fault of Athelstane and Rowena, (a fault for which they were bitterly punished, as you shall presently hear,) that the monarch exasperated his subjects in a variety of ways,—that before he murdered his royal nephew, Prince Arthur, there was a great question whether he was the rightful king of England at all,—that his behavior as an uncle, and a family man, was likely to wound the feelings of any lady and mother,—finally, that there were palliations for the conduct of Rowena and Ivanhoe, which it now becomes our duty to relate.
When his Majesty destroyed Prince Arthur, the Lady Rowena, who was one of the ladies of honor to the Queen, gave up her place at court at once, and retired to her castle of Rotherwood. Expressions made use of by her, and derogatory to the character of the sovereign, were carried to the monarch's ears, by some of those parasites, doubtless, by whom it is the curse of kings to be attended; and John swore, by St. Peter's teeth, that he would be revenged upon the haughty Saxon lady,—a kind of oath which, though he did not trouble himself about all other oaths, he was never known to break. It was not for some years after he had registered this vow, that he was enabled to keep it.
Had Ivanhoe been present at Ronen, when the King meditated his horrid designs against his nephew, there is little doubt that Sir Wilfrid would have prevented them, and rescued the boy: for Ivanhoe was, as we need scarcely say, a hero of romance; and it is the custom and duty of all gentlemen of that profession to be present on all occasions of historic interest, to be engaged in all conspiracies, royal interviews, and remarkable occurrences: and hence Sir Wilfrid would certainly have rescued the young Prince, had he been anywhere in the neighborhood of Rouen, where the foul tragedy occurred. But he was a couple of hundred leagues off, at Chalus, when the circumstance happened; tied down in his bed as crazy as a Bedlamite, and raving ceaselessly in the Hebrew tongue (which he had caught up during a previous illness in which he was tended by a maiden of that nation) about a certain Rebecca Ben Isaacs, of whom, being a married man, he never would have thought, had he been in his sound senses. During this delirium, what were politics to him, or he to politics? King John or King Arthur was entirely indifferent to a man who announced to his nurse-tenders, the good hermits of Chalus before mentioned, that he was the Marquis of Jericho, and about to marry Rebecca the Queen of Sheba. In a word, he only heard of what had occurred when he reached England, and his senses were restored to him. Whether was he happier, sound of brain and entirely miserable, (as any man would be who found so admirable a wife as Rowena married again,) or perfectly crazy, the husband of the beautiful Rebecca? I don't know which he liked best.
Howbeit the conduct of King John inspired Sir Wilfrid with so thorough a detestation of that sovereign, that he never could be brought to take service under him; to get himself presented at St. James's, or in any way to acknowledge, but by stern acquiescence, the authority of the sanguinary successor of his beloved King Richard. It was Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, I need scarcely say, who got the Barons of England to league together and extort from the king that famous instrument and palladium of our liberties at present in the British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury—the Magna Charta. His name does not naturally appear in the list of Barons, because he was only a knight, and a knight in disguise too: nor does Athelstane's signature figure on that document. Athelstane, in the first place, could not write; nor did he care a pennypiece about politics, so long as he could drink his wine at home undisturbed, and have his hunting and shooting in quiet.
It was not until the King wanted to interfere with the sport of every gentleman in England (as we know by reference to the Historic Page that this odious monarch did), that Athelstane broke out into open rebellion, along with several Yorkshire squires and noblemen. It is recorded of the King, that he forbade every man to hunt his own deer; and, in order to secure an obedience to his orders, this Herod of a monarch wanted to secure the eldest sons of all the nobility and gentry, as hostages for the good behavior of their parents.
Athelstane was anxious about his game—Rowena was anxious about her son. The former swore that he would hunt his deer in spite of all Norman tyrants—the latter asked, should she give up her boy to the ruffian who had murdered his own nephew?* The speeches of both were brought to the King at York; and, furious, he ordered an instant attack upon Rotherwood, and that the lord and lady of that castle should be brought before him dead or alive.