work.”
“Friend Prior,” returned the hermit, “you are to know that I belong to a little diocese where I am my own diocesan, and care as little for the Bishop of York as I do for the Abbot of Jorvaulx, the Prior, and all the convent.”
“Thou art utterly irregular,” said the Prior—“one of those disorderly men who, taking on them the sacred character without due cause, profane the holy rites, and endanger the souls of those who take counsel at their hands;
“Nay,” said the Friar, “an my brain-pan could have been broken by Latin, it had not held so long together. I say, that easing a world of such misproud priests as thou art of their jewels and their gimcracks is a lawful spoiling of the Egyptians.”
“Thou be’st a hedge-priest,”5 said the Prior, in great wrath,
“Thou be’st thyself more like a thief and a heretic,” said the Friar, equally indignant; “I will pouch up no such affront before my parishioners as thou thinkest it not shame to put upon me, although I be a reverend brother to thee.
“Hola!” cried the captain, “come the reverend brethren to such terms? Keep thine assurance of peace, Friar. Prior, an thou hast not made thy peace perfect with God, provoke the Friar no further. Hermit, let the reverend father depart in peace, as a ransomed man.”
The yeomen separated the incensed priests, who continued to raise their voices, vituperating each other in bad Latin, which the Prior delivered the more fluently, and the hermit with the greater vehemence. The Prior at length recollected himself sufficiently to be aware that he was compromising his dignity by squabbling with such a hedge-priest as the outlaw’s chaplain, and being joined by his attendants, rode off with considerably less pomp, and in a much more apostolical condition, so far as worldly matters were concerned, than he had exhibited before this rencounter.
It remained that the Jew should produce some security for the ransom which he was to pay on the Prior’s account, as well as upon his own. He gave, accordingly, an order sealed with his signet, to a brother of his tribe at York, requiring him to pay to the bearer the sum of a thousand [eleven hundred] crowns, and to deliver certain merchandises specified in the note.
“My brother Sheva,” he said, groaning deeply, “hath the key of my warehouses.”
“And of the vaulted chamber,” whispered Locksley.
“No, no—may Heaven forefend!” said Isaac; “evil is the hour that let any one whomsoever into that secret!”
“It is safe with me,” said the outlaw, “so be that this thy scroll produce the sum therein nominated and set down. But what now, Isaac? art dead? art stupified? hath the payment of a thousand crowns put thy daughter’s peril out of thy mind?”
The Jew started to his feet—“No, Diccon, no; I will presently set forth. Farewell, thou whom I may not call good, and dare not, and will not, call evil.”
Yet, ere Isaac departed, the outlaw chief bestowed on him this parting advice: “Be liberal of thine offers, Isaac, and spare not thy purse for thy daughter’s safety. Credit me, that the gold thou shalt spare in her cause will hereafter give thee as much agony as if it were poured molten down thy throat.”
Isaac acquiesced with a deep groan, and set forth on his journey, accompanied by two tall foresters, who were to be his guides, and at the same time his guards, through the wood.
The Black Knight, who had seen with no small interest these various proceedings, now took his leave of the outlaw in turn; nor could he avoid expressing his surprise at having witnessed so much of civil policy amongst persons cast out from all the ordinary protection and influence of the laws.
“Good fruit, Sir Knight,” said the yeoman, “will sometimes grow on a sorry tree; and evil times are not always productive of evil alone and unmixed. Amongst those who are drawn into this lawless state, there are, doubtless, numbers who wish to exercise its license with some moderation, and some who regret, it may be, that they are obliged to follow such a trade at all.”
“And to one of those,” said the Knight, “I am now, I presume, speaking?”
“Sir Knight,” said the outlaw, “we have each our secret. You are welcome to form your judgment of me, and I may use my conjectures touching you, though neither of our shafts may hit the mark they are shot at. But as I do not pray to be admitted into your mystery, be not offended that I preserve my own.”
“I crave pardon, brave outlaw,” said the Knight, “your reproof is just. But it may be we shall meet hereafter with less of concealment on either side. Meanwhile we part friends, do we not?”
“There is my hand upon it,” said Locksley; “and I will call it the hand of a true Englishman, though an outlaw for the present.”
“And there is mine in return,” said the Knight, “and I hold it honoured by being clasped with yours. For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears. Fare thee well, gallant outlaw!”
Thus parted that fair fellowship; and he of the Fetterlock, mounting upon his strong war-horse, rode off through the forest.
CHAPTER XXXIV
There was brave feasting in the Castle of York, to which Prince John had invited those nobles, prelates, and leaders by whose assistance he hoped to carry through his ambitious projects upon his brother’s throne. Waldemar Fitzurse, his able and politic agent, was at secret work among them, tempering all to that pitch of courage which was necessary in making an open declaration of their purpose. But their enterprise was delayed by the absence of more than one main limb of the confederacy. The stubborn and daring, though brutal, courage of Front-de-B?uf; the buoyant spirits and bold bearing of De Bracy; the sagacity, martial experience, and renowned valour of Brian de Bois-Guilbert, were important to the success of their conspiracy; and, while cursing in secret their unnecessary and unmeaning absence, neither John nor his adviser dared to proceed without them. Isaac the Jew, also seemed to have vanished, and with him the hope of certain sums of money, making up the subsidy for which Prince John had contracted with that Israelite and his brethren. This deficiency was likely to prove perilous in an emergency so critical.
It was on the morning after the fall of Torquilstone, that a confused report began to spread abroad in the city of York that De Bracy and Bois-Guilbert, with their confederate Front-de-B?uf, had been taken or slain. Waldemar brought the rumour to Prince John, announcing, that he feared its truth the more that they had set out with a small attendance, for the purpose of committing an assault on the Saxon Cedric and his attendants. At another time the Prince would have treated this deed of violence as a good jest; but now that it interfered with and impeded his own plans, he exclaimed against the perpetrators, and spoke of the broken laws, and the infringement of public order and of private property, in a tone which might have become King Alfred.
“The unprincipled marauders!” he said; “were I ever to become monarch of England, I would hang such transgressors over the drawbridges of their own castles.”
