“The Lady Rowena,” said Rebecca, answering the question with more precision than it had been asked —“the Lady Rowena went not to the Prince’s feast, and, as the steward reported to us, she is now on her journey back to Rotherwood with her guardian Cedric. And touching your faithful squire Gurth—”
“Ha!” exclaimed the knight, “knowest thou his name? But thou dost,” he immediately added, “and well thou mayst, for it was from thy hand, and, as I am now convinced, from thine own generosity of spirit, that he received but yesterday a hundred zecchins.”
“Speak not of that,” said Rebecca, blushing deeply; “I see how easy it is for the tongue to betray what the heart would gladly conceal.”
“But this sum of gold,” said Ivanhoe, gravely, “my honour is concerned in repaying it to your father.”
“Let it be as thou wilt,” said Rebecca, “when eight days have passed away; but think not, and speak not, now of aught that may retard thy recovery.”
“Be it so, kind maiden,” said Ivanhoe; “I were most ungrateful to dispute thy commands. But one word of the fate of poor Gurth, and I have done with questioning thee.”
“I grieve to tell thee, Sir Knight,” answered the Jewess, “that he is in custody by the order of Cedric.” And then observing the distress which her communication gave to Wilfred, she instantly added, “But the steward Oswald said, that if nothing occurred to renew his master’s displeasure against him, he was sure that Cedric would pardon Gurth, a faithful serf, and one who stood high in favour, and who had but committed this error out of the love which he bore to Cedric’s son. And he said, moreover, that he and his comrades, and especially Wamba, the Jester, were resolved to warn Gurth to make his escape by the way, in case Cedric’s ire against him could not be mitigated.”
“Would to God they may keep their purpose!” said Ivanhoe; “but it seems as if I were destined to bring ruin on whomsoever hath shown kindness to me. My king, by whom I was honoured and distinguished—thou seest that the brother most indebted to him is raising his arms to grasp his crown; my regard hath brought restraint and trouble on the fairest of her sex; and now my father in his mood may slay this poor bondsman, but for his love and loyal service to me! Thou seest, maiden, what an ill-fated wretch thou dost labour to assist; be wise, and let me go, ere the misfortunes which track my footsteps like slot-hounds shall involve thee also in their pursuit.”
“Nay,” said Rebecca, “thy weakness and thy grief, Sir Knight, make thee miscalculate the purposes of Heaven. Thou hast been restored to thy country when it most needed the assistance of a strong hand and a true heart, and thou hast humbled the pride of thine enemies and those of thy king, when their horn was most highly exalted; and for the evil which thou hast sustained, seest thou not that Heaven has raised thee a helper and a physician, even among the most despised of the land? Therefore, be of good courage, and trust that thou art preserved for some marvel which thine arm shall work before this people. Adieu; and having taken the medicine which I shall send thee by the hand of Reuben, compose thyself again to rest, that thou mayst be the more able to endure the journey on the succeeding day.”
Ivanhoe was convinced by the reasoning, and obeyed the directions, of Rebecca. The draught which Reuben administered was of a sedative and narcotic quality, and secured the patient sound and undisturbed slumbers. In the morning his kind physician found him entirely free from feverish symptoms, and fit to undergo the fatigue of a journey.
He was deposited in the horse-litter which had brought him from the lists, and every precaution taken for his travelling with ease. In one circumstance only even the entreaties of Rebecca were unable to secure sufficient attention to the accommodation of the wounded knight. Isaac, like the enriched traveller of Juvenal’s
In another point of view, however, the Jew’s haste proved somewhat more than good speed. The rapidity with which he insisted on travelling bred several disputes between him and the party whom he had hired to attend him as a guard. These men were Saxons, and not free by any means from the national love of ease and good living which the Normans stigmatised as laziness and gluttony. Reversing Shylock’s position, they had accepted the employment in hopes of feeding upon the wealthy Jew, and were very much displeased when they found themselves disappointed by the rapidity with which he insisted on their proceeding. They remonstrated also upon the risk of damage to their horses by these forced marches. Finally, there arose betwixt Isaac and his satellites a deadly feud concerning the quantity of wine and ale to be allowed for consumption at each meal. And thus it happened, that when the alarm of danger approached, and that which Isaac feared was likely to come upon him, he was deserted by the discontented mercenaries, on whose protection he had relied without using the means necessary to secure their attachment.
In this deplorable condition, the Jew, with his daughter and her wounded patient, were found by Cedric, as has already been noticed, and soon afterwards fell into the power of De Bracy and his confederates. Little notice was at first taken of the horse-litter, and it might have remained behind but for the curiosity of De Bracy, who looked into it under the impression that it might contain the object of his enterprise, for Rowena had not unveiled herself. But De Bracy’s astonishment was considerable when he discovered that the litter contained a wounded man, who, conceiving himself to have fallen into the power of Saxon outlaws, with whom his name might be a protection for himself and his friends, frankly avowed himself to be Wilfred of Ivanhoe.
The ideas of chivalrous honour, which, amidst his wildness and levity, never utterly abandoned De Bracy, prohibited him from doing the knight any injury in his defenceless condition, and equally interdicted his betraying him to Front-de-B?uf, who would have had no scruples to put to death, under any circumstances, the rival claimant of the fief of Ivanhoe. On the other hand, to liberate a suitor preferred by the Lady Rowena, as the events of the tournament, and indeed Wilfred’s previous banishment from his father’s house, had made matter of notoriety, was a pitch far above the flight of De Bracy’s generosity. A middle course betwixt good and evil was all which he found himself capable of adopting, and he commanded two of his own squires to keep close by the litter, and to suffer no one to approach it. If questioned, they were directed by their master to say that the empty litter of the Lady Rowena was employed to transport one of their comrades who had been wounded in the scuffle. On arriving at Torquilstone, while the Knight Templar and the lord of that castle were each intent upon their own schemes, the one on the Jew’s treasure, and the other on his daughter, De Bracy’s squires conveyed Ivanhoe, still under the name of a wounded comrade, to a distant apartment. This explanation was accordingly returned by these men to Front-de-B?uf, when he questioned them why they did not make for the battlements upon the alarm.
“A wounded companion!” he replied in great wrath and astonishment. “No wonder that churls and yeomen wax so presumptuous as even to lay leaguer before castles, and that clowns and swineherds send defiances to nobles, since men-at-arms have turned sick men’s nurses, and Free Companions are grown keepers of dying folks’ curtains, when the castle is about to be assailed. To the battlements, ye loitering villains!” he exclaimed, raising his stentorian voice till the arches around rung again—“to the battlements, or I will splinter your bones with this truncheon!”
The men sulkily replied, “That they desired nothing better than to go to the battlements, providing Front- de-B?uf would bear them out with their master, who had commanded them to tend the dying man.”
“The dying man, knaves!” rejoined the baron; “I promise thee, we shall all be dying men an we stand not to it the more stoutly. But I will relieve the guard upon this caitiff companion of yours. Here, Urfried—hag—fiend of a Saxon witch—hearest me not? Tend me this bedridden fellow, since he must needs be tended, whilst these knaves use their weapons. Here be two arblasts, comrades, with windlaces and quarrells3—to the barbican with you, and see you drive each bolt through a Saxon brain.”
The men, who, like most of their description, were fond of enterprise and detested inaction, went joyfully to the scene of danger as they were commanded, and thus the charge of Ivanhoe was transferred to Urfried, or Ulrica. But she, whose brain was burning with remembrance of injuries and with hopes of vengeance, was readily induced to devolve upon Rebecca the care of her patient.
