Ivanhoe

He then gave the letter to Gurth, who shook his head gruffly, and passed it to Wamba. The Jester looked at each of the four corners of the paper with such a grin of affected intelligence as a monkey is apt to assume upon similar occasions, then cut a caper, and gave the letter to Locksley.

“If the long letters were bows, and the short letters broad arrows, I might know something of the matter,” said the brave yeoman; “but as the matter stands, the meaning is as safe, for me, as the stag that’s at twelve miles’ distance.”

“I must be clerk, then,” said the Black Knight; and taking the letter from Locksley, he first read it over to himself, and then explained the meaning in Saxon to his confederates.

“Execute the noble Cedric!” exclaimed Wamba; “by the rood, thou must be mistaken, Sir Knight.”

“Not I, my worthy friend,” replied the knight, “I have explained the words as they are here set down.”

“Then, by St. Thomas of Canterbury,” replied Gurth, “we will have the castle, should we tear it down with our hands!”

“We have nothing else to tear it with,” replied Wamba; “but mine are scarce fit to make mammocks^cy of freestone and mortar.”

“‘Tis but a contrivance to gain time,” said Locksley; “they dare not do a deed for which I could exact a fearful penalty.”

“I would,” said the Black Knight, “there were some one among us who could obtain admission into the castle, and discover how the case stands with the besieged. Methinks, as they require a confessor to be sent, this holy hermit might at once exercise his pious vocation and procure us the information we desire.”

“A plague on thee and thy advice!” said the pious hermit; “I tell thee, Sir Slothful Knight, that when I doff my friar’s frock, my priesthood, my sanctity, my very Latin, are put off along with it; and when in my green jerkin I can better kill twenty deer than confess one Christian.”

“I fear,” said the Black Knight—“I fear greatly there is no one here that is qualified to take upon him, for the nonce, this same character of father confessor?”

All looked on each other, and were silent.

“I see,” said Wamba, after a short pause, “that the fool must be still the fool, and put his neck in the venture which wise men shrink from. You must know, my dear cousins and countrymen, that I wore russet before I wore motley, and was bred to be a friar, until a brain-fever came upon me and left me just wit enough to be a fool. I trust, with the assistance of the good hermit’s frock, together with the priesthood, sanctity, and learning which are stitched into the cowl of it, I shall be found qualified to administer both worldly and ghostly comfort to our worthy master Cedric and his companions in adversity.”

“Hath he sense enough, thinkst thou?” said the Black Knight, addressing Gurth.

“I know not,” said Gurth; “but if he hath not, it will be the first time he hath wanted wit to turn his jolly to account.”

“On with the frock, then, good fellow,” quoth the Knight, “and let thy master send us an account of their situation within the castle. Their numbers must be few, and it is five to one they may be accessible by a sudden and bold attack. Time wears—away with thee.”

“And, in the meantime,” said Locksley, “we will beset the place so closely that not so much as a fly shall carry news from thence. So that, my good friend,” he continued, addressing Wamba, “thou mayst assure these tyrants that whatever violence they exercise on the persons of their prisoners shall be most severely repaid upon their own.”

“Pax vobiscum,”^cz said Wamba, who was now muffled in his religious disguise.

And so saying, he imitated the solemn and stately deportment of a friar, and departed to execute his mission.

CHAPTER XXVI

The hottest horse will oft be cool,
The dullest will show fire;
The friar will often play the fool,
The fool will play the friar.

Old Song¹

When the Jester, arrayed in the cowl and frock of the hermit, and having his knotted cord twisted round his middle, stood beforethe portal of the castle of Front-de-B?uf, the warder demanded of him his name and errand.

“Pax vobiscum,” answered the Jester, “I am a poor brother of the Order of St. Francis, who come hither to do my office to certain unhappy prisoners now secured within this castle.”

“Thou art a bold friar,” said the warder, “to come hither, where, saving our own drunken confessor, a cock of thy feather hath not crowed these twenty years.”

“Yet I pray thee, do mine errand to the lord of the castle,” answered the pretended friar; “trust me, it will find good acceptance with him, and the cock shall crow, that the whole castle shall hear him.”

“Gramercy,” said the warder; “but if I come to shame for leav ing my post upon thine errand, I will try whether a friar’s grey gown be proof against a grey-goose shaft.”

With this threat he left his turret, and carried to the hall of the castle his unwonted intelligence, that a holy friar stood before the gate and demanded instant admission. With no small wonder he received his master’s commands to admit the holy man immediately; and, having previously manned the entrance to guard against surprise, he obeyed, without further scruple, the commands which he had received. The hare-brained self-conceit which had emboldened Wamba to undertake this dangerous office was scarce sufficient to support him when he found himself in the presence of a man so dreadful, and so much dreaded, as Reginald Front-de-B?uf, and he brought out his Pax vobiscum, to which he, in a good measure, trusted for supporting his character, with more anxiety and hesitation than had hitherto accompanied it. But Front-de-B?uf was accustomed to see men of all ranks tremble in his presence, so that the timidity of the supposed father did not give him any cause of suspicion. “Who and whence art thou, priest?” said he.

“Pax vobiscum,” reiterated the Jester, “I am a poor servant of St. Francis, who, travelling through this wilderness, have fallen among thieves as Scripture hath it—quidam viator incidit in latrones ^da—which thieves have sent me unto this castle in order to do my ghostly office on two persons condemned by your honourable justice.”

“Ay, right,” answered Front-de-B?uf; “and canst thou tell me, holy father, the number of those banditti?”

“Gallant sir,” answered the Jester, “nomen illis legio^db—their name is legion.”

“Tell me in plain terms what numbers there are, or, priest, thy cloak and cord will ill protect thee.”

“Alas!” said the supposed friar, “cor meum eructavit,^dc that is to say, I was like to burst with fear! but I conceive they may be, what of yeomen, what of commons, at least five hundred men.”

“What!” sid the Templar, who came into the hall that moment, “muster the wasps so thick here? It is time to stifle such a mischievous brood.” Then taking Front-de-B?uf aside, “Knowest thou the priest?”

“He is a stranger from a distant convent,” said Front-de-B?uf; “I know him not.”

“Then trust him not with thy purpose in words,” answered the Templar. “Let him carry a written order to De Bracy’s company of Free Companions, to repair instantly to their master’s aid. In the meantime, and that the shaveling may suspect nothing, permit him to go freely about his task of preparing these Saxon hogs for the