“I would soon have beat him into courtesy,” observed Brian; “I am accustomed to deal with such spirits: Our Turkish captives are as fierce and intractable as Odin himself could have been; yet two months in my household, under the management of my master of the slaves, has made them humble, submissive, serviceable, and observant of your will. Marry, sir, you must be aware of the poison and the dagger; for they use either with free will when you give them the slightest opportunity.”
“Ay, but,” answered Prior Aymer, “every land has its own manners and fashions; and, besides that beating this fellow could procure us no information respecting the road to Cedric’s house, it would have been sure to have established a quarrel betwixt you and him had we found our way thither. Remember what I told you: this wealthy franklin is proud, fierce, jealous, and irritable, a withstander of the nobility, and even of his neighbors, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf and Philip Malvoisin, who are no babies to strive with. He stands up sternly for the privileges of his race, and is so proud of his uninterrupted descend from Hereward, a renowned champion of the Heptarchy, that he is universally called Cedric the Saxon; and makes a boast of his belonging to a people from whom many others endeaver to hide their descent, lest they should encounter a share of the vae victis, or severities imposed upon the vanquished.”
“Prior Aymer,” said the Templar, “you are a man of gallantry, learned in the study of beauty, and as expert as a troubadour in all matters concerning the arrets of love; but I shall expect much beauty in this celebrated Rowena to counterbalance the self-denial and forbearance which I must exert if I am to court the favor of such a seditious churl as you have described her father Cedric.”
“Cedric is not her father,” replied the Prior, “and is but of remote relation: she is descended from higher blood than even he pretends to, and is but distantly connected with him by birth. Her guardian, however, he is, self-constituted as I believe; but his ward is as dear to him as if she were his own child. Of her beauty you shall soon be judge; and if the purity of her complexion, and the majestic, yet soft expression of a mild blue eye, do not chase from your memory the black-tressed girls of Palestine, ay, or the houris of old Mahound’s paradise, I am an infidel, and no true son of the church.”
“Should your boasted beauty,” said the Templar, “be weighed in the balance and found wanting, you know our wager?”
“My gold collar,” answered the Prior, “against ten butts of Chian wine;—they are mine as securely as if they were already in the convent vaults, under the key of old Dennis the cellarer.”
“And I am myself to be judge,” said the Templar, “and am only to be convicted on my own admission, that I have seen no maiden so beautiful since Pentecost was a twelvemonth. Ran it not so?—Prior, your collar is in danger; I will wear it over my gorget in the lists of Ashby-de-la-Zouche.”
“Win it fairly,” said the Prior, “and wear it as ye will; I will trust your giving true response, on your word as a knight and as a churchman. Yet, brother, take my advice, and file your tongue to a little more courtesy than your habits of predominating over infidel captives and Eastern bondsmen have accustomed you. Cedric the Saxon, if offended—and he is noway slack in taking offence—is a man who, without respect to your knighthood, my high office, or the sanctity of either, would clear his house of us, and send us to lodge with the larks, though the hour were midnight. And be careful how you look on Rowena, whom he cherishes with the most jealous care; an he take the least alarm in that quarter we are but lost men. It is said he banished his only son from his family for lifting his eyes in the way of affection towards this beauty, who may be worshipped, it seems, at a distance, but is not to be approached with other thoughts than such as we bring to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin.”
“Well, you have said enough,” answered the Templar; “I will for a night put on the needful restraint, and deport me as meekly as a maiden; but as for the fear of his expelling us by violence, myself and squires, with Hamet and Abdalla, will warrant you against that disgrace. Doubt not that we shall be strong enough to make good our quarters.”
“We must not let it come so far,” answered the Prior; “but here is the clown’s sunken cross, and the night is so dark that we can hardly see which of the roads we are to follow. He bid us turn, I think to the left.”
“To the right,” said Brian, “to the best of my remembrance.”
“To the left, certainly, the left; I remember his pointing with his wooden sword.”
“Ay, but he held his sword in his left hand, and so pointed across his body with it,” said the Templar.
Each maintained his opinion with sufficient obstinacy, as is usual in all such cases; the attendants were appealed to, but they had not been near enough to hear Wamba’s directions. At length Brian remarked, what had at first escaped him in the twilight; “Here is someone either asleep, or lying dead at the foot of this cross—Hugo, stir him with the butt-end of thy lance.”
This was no sooner done than the figure arose, exclaiming in good French, “Whosoever thou art, it is discourteous in you to disturb my thoughts.”
“We did but wish to ask you,” said the Prior, “the road to Rotherwood, the abode
