“I take flight!” said Wamba; “when do you ever find folly separated from valour? There lies the trophy of my sword, that good grey gelding, whom I heartily wish upon his legs again, conditioning his master lay there houghedgf in his place. It is true, I gave a little ground at first, for a motley jacket does not brook lance-heads as a steel doublet will. But if I fought not at sword’s point, you will grant me that I sounded the onset.”
“And to good purpose, honest Wamba,” replied the King. “Thy good service shall not be forgotten.”
Richard looked around, and beheld the jovial Friar on his knees, telling his rosary, while his quarter-staff, which had not been idle during the skirmish, lay on the grass beside him. His countenance was gathered so as he thought might best express the most profound contrition, his eyes being turned up, and the corners of his mouth drawn down, as Wamba expressed it, like the tassels at the mouth of a purse. Yet this demure affectation of extreme penitence was whimsically belied by a ludicrous meaning which lurked in his huge features, and seemed to pronounce his fear and repentance alike hypocritical.
“For what art thou cast down, mad priest?” said Richard; “art thou afraid thy diocesan should learn how truly thou dost serve Our Lady and St. Dunstan? Tush, man! fear it not; Richard of England betrays no secrets that pass over the flagon.”
“Nay, most gracious sovereign,” answered the hermit, well known to the curious in penny histories of Robin Hood by the name of Friar Tuck, “it is not the crosier I fear, but the sceptre. Alas! that my sacrilegious fist should ever have been applied to the ear of the Lord’s anointed!”
“Ha! ha!” said Richard, “sits the wind there? In truth, I had forgotten the buffet, though mine ear sung after it for a whole day. But if the cuff was fairly given, I will be judged by the good men around, if it was not as well repaid; or, if thou thinkest I still owe thee aught, and will stand forth for another counterbuff—”
“By no means,” replied Friar Tuck, “I had mine own returned, and with usury: may your Majesty ever pay your debts as fully!”
“If I could do so with cuffs,” said the King, “my creditors should have little reason to complain of an empty exchequer.”
“And yet,” said the Friar, resuming his demure, hypocritical countenance, “I know not what penance I ought to perform for that most sacrilegious blow—!”
“Speak no more of it, brother,” said the King; “after having stood so many cuffs from paynims and misbelievers, I were void of reason to quarrel with the buffet of a clerk so holy as he of Copmanhurst. Yet, mine honest Friar, I think it would be best both for the church and thyself that I should procure a license to unfrock thee, and retain thee as a yeoman of our guard, serving in care of our person, as formerly in attendance upon the altar of St. Dunstan.”
“My Liege,” said the Friar, “I humbly crave your pardon; and you would readily grant my excuse, did you but know how the sin of laziness has beset me. St. Dunstan—may he be gracious to us!—stands quiet in his niche, though I should forget my orisons in killing a fat buck; I stay out of my cell sometimes a night, doing I wot not what—St. Dunstan never complains—a quiet master he is, and a peaceful, as ever was made of wood. But to be a yeoman in attendance on my sovereign the King—the honour is great, doubtless—yet, if I were but to step aside to comfort a widow in one corner, or to kill a deer in another, it would be, ‘Where is the dog priest?’ says one. ‘Who has seen the accursed Tuck?’ says another. ‘The unfrocked villain destroys more venison than half the country besides,’ says one keeper; ‘And is hunting after every shy doe in the country!’ quoth a second. In fine, good my Liege, I pray you to leave me as you found me; or, if in aught you desire to extend your benevolence to me, that I may be considered as the poor clerk of St. Dunstan’s cell in Copmanhurst, to whom any small donation will be most thankfully acceptable.”
“I understand thee,” said the King, “and the holy clerk shall have a grant of vert and venisongh in my woods of Wharncliffe. Mark, however, I will but assign thee three bucks every season; but if that do not prove an apology for thy slaying thirty, I am no Christian knight nor true king.”
“Your Grace may be well assured,” said the Friar, “that, with the grace of St. Dunstan, I shall find the way of multiplying your most bounteous gift.”
“I nothing doubt it, good brother,” said the King; “and as venison is but dry food, our cellarer shall have orders to deliver to thee a butt of sack, a runlet of Malvoisie, and three hogsheads of ale of the first strike, yearly. If that will not quench thy thirst, thou must come to court, and become acquainted with my butler.”
“But for St. Dunstan?” said the Friar—
“A cope, a stole, and an altar-cloth shalt thou also have,” continued the King, crossing himself. “But we may not turn our game into earnest, lest God punish us for thinking more on our follies than on His honour and worship.”
“I will answer for my patron,” said the priest, joyously.
“Answer for thyself, Friar,” said King Richard, something sternly; but immediately stretching out his hand to the hermit, the latter, somewhat abashed, bent his knee, and saluted it. “Thou dost less honour to my extended palm than to my clenched fist,” said the monarch; “thou didst only kneel to the one, and to the other didst prostrate thyself.”
But the Friar, afraid perhaps of again giving offence by continuing the conversation in too jocose a style—a false step to be particularly guarded against by those who converse with monarchs—bowed profoundly, and fell into the rear.
At the same time, two additional personages appeared on the scene.
CHAPTER XLI
The new-comers were Wilfred of Ivanhoe, on the prior of Botolph’s palfrey, and Gurth, who attended him, on the knight’s own war-horse. The astonishment of Ivanhoe was beyond bounds when he saw his master besprinkled with blood, and six or seven dead bodies lying around in the little glade in which the battle had taken place. Nor was he less surprised to see Richard surrounded by so many silvan attendants, the outlaws, as they seemed to be, of the forest, and a perilous retinue therefore for a prince. He hesitated whether to address the King as the Black Knight-errant, or in what other manner to demean himself towards him. Richard saw his embarrassment.
“Fear not, Wilfred,” he said, “to address Richard Plantagenet as himself, since thou seest him in the company of true English hearts, although it may be they have been urged a few steps aside by warm English blood.”
“Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe,” said the gallant outlaw, stepping forward, “my assurances can add nothing to those of our sovereign; yet, let me say somewhat proudly, that of men who have suffered much, he hath not truer subjects than those who now stand around him.”
“I cannot doubt it, brave man,” said Wilfred, “since thou art of the number. But what mean these marks of death and danger—these slain men, and the bloody armour of my Prince?”
