"The day after the bat-" groaned Ivanhoe. "Where is the Lady
Rowena?"
The castle has been taken and sacked," the lieutenant said, and pointed
to what once was Rotherwood, but was now only a heap of smoking ruins.
Not a tower was left, not a roof, not a floor, not a single human
being! Everything was flame and ruin, smash and murther!
Of course Ivanhoe fell back fainting again among the ninety seven
men-at-arms whom he had slain; and it was not until Wamba had applied a
second, and uncommonly strong dose of the elixir that he came to life
again. The good knight was, however, from long practice, so accustomed
to the severest wounds, that he bore them far more easily than common
folk, and thus was enabled to reach York upon a litter, which his men
constructed for him, with tolerable ease.
Rumor had as usual advanced before him; and he heard at the hotel where
he stopped, what had been the issue of the affair at Rotherwood. A
minute or two after his horse was stabbed, and Ivanhoe knocked down,
the western bartizan was taken by the storming-party which invested it,
and every soul slain, except Rowena and her boy; who were tied upon
horses and carried away, under a secure guard, to one of the King's
castles nobody knew whither: and Ivanhoe was recommended by the
hotel-keeper (whose house he had used in former times) to reassume his
wig and spectacles, and not call himself by his own name any more, lest
some of the King's people should lay hands on him. However, as he had
killed everybody round, about him, there was but little danger of his
discovery; and the Knight of the Spectacles, as he was called, went
about York quite unmolested, and at liberty to attend to his own
affairs.
We wish to be brief in narrating this part of the gallant hero's
existence; for his life was one of feeling rather than affection, and
the description of mere sentiment is considered by many well-informed
persons to be tedious. What were his sentiments now, it may be asked,
under the peculiar position in which he found himself? He had done his
duty by Rowena, certainly: no man could say otherwise. But as for
being in love with her any more, after what had occurred, that was a
different question. Well, come what would, he was determined still to
continue doing his duty by her; but as she was whisked away the deuce
knew whither, how could he do anything? So he resigned himself to the
fact that she was thus whisked away.
He, of course, sent emissaries about the country to endeavor to find
out where Rowena was: but these came back without any sort of
intelligence; and it was remarked, that he still remained in a perfect
state of resignation. He remained in this condition for a year, or
more; and it was said that he was becoming more cheerful, and he
certainly was growing rather fat. The Knight of the Spectacles was
voted an agreeable man in a grave way; and gave some very elegant,
though quiet, parties, and was received in the best society of York.
It was just at assize-time, the lawyers and barristers had arrived, and
the town was unusually gay; when, one morning, the attorney, whom we
have mentioned as Sir Wilfrid's man of business, and a most respectable
man, called upon his gallant client at his lodgings, and said he had a
communication of importance to make. Having to communicate with a
client of rank, who was condemned to be hanged for forgery, Sir Roger
de Backbite, the attorney said, he had been to visit that party in the
condemned cell; and on the way through the Yard, and through the bars
of another cell, had seen and recognized an old acquaintance of Sir
Wilfrid of Ivanhoe and the lawyer held him out, with a particular look,
a note, written on a piece of whity-brown paper.
What were Ivanhoe s sensations when he recognized the handwriting of
Rowena! he tremblingly dashed open the billet, and read as follows:
MY DEAREST IVAN HOE For I am thine now as erst, and my first love was
ever ever dear to me. Have I been near thee dying for a whole year,
and didst thou make no effort to rescue thy Rowena? Have ye given to
others I mention not their name nor their odious creed the heart that
ought to be mine? I send thee my forgiveness from my dying pallet of
straw. - I forgive thee the insults I have received, the cold and
hunger I have endured, the failing health of my boy, the bitterness of
my prison, thy infatuation about that Jewess, winch made our married
life miserable, and which caused thee, I am sure, to go abroad to look
after her. I forgive thee all my wrongs, and fain would bid thee
farewell. Mr. Smith hath gained over my gaoler he will tell thee how
I may see thee. Come and console my last hour by promising that thou
wilt care for my boy his boy who fell like a hero (when thou wert
absent) combating by the side of ROWENA."
The reader may consult his own feelings, and say whether Ivanhoe was
likely to be pleased or not by this letter: however, he inquired of Mr.
Smith, the solicitor, what was the plan which that gentleman had
devised for the introduction to Lady Rowena, and was informed that he
was to get a barrister's gown and wig, when the gaoler would introduce
him into the interior of the prison. These decorations, knowing
several gentlemen of the Northern Circuit, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe
easily procured, and with feelings of no small trepidation, reached the
cell, where, for the space of a year, poor Rowena had been immured.
If any person have a doubt of the correctness, of the historical
exactness of this narrative, I refer him to the "Biographic
Universelle" (article Jean sans Terre), which says, "La femme dun baron
auquel on vint demander son fils, repondit, Le roi pense-t-il que je
conflerai mon fils a un homme quia egorge son neveu de sa propre main?"
Jean fit en lever la mere et l'enfant, et la laissa _mourir _de _faim
dans les cachots."
I picture to myself, with a painful sympathy, Rowena undergoing this
disagreeable sentence. Alt her virtues, her resolution, her chaste
energy and perseverance, shine with redoubled lustre, and, for the
first time since the commencement of the history, I feel that I am
partially reconciled to her. The weary year passes she grows weaker
and more languid, thinner and thinner! At length Ivanhoe, in the
disguise of a barrister of the Northern Circuit, is introduced to her
cell, and finds his lady in the last stage of exhaustion, on the straw
of her dungeon, with her little boy in her arms. She has preserved his
life at the expense of her own, giving him the whole of the pittance
which her gaolers allowed her, and perishing herself of inanition.
There is a scene! I feel as if I had made it up, as it were, with this
lady, and that we part in peace, in consequence of in providing her
with so sublime a death-bed. Fancy Ivanhoe's entrance their
recognition the faint blush upon her worn features the pathetic way in
which she gives little Cedric in charge to him, and his promises of
protection.
"Wilfrid, my early loved
," slowly gasped she, removing her gray hair
from her furrowed temples, and gazing on her boy fondly, as he nestled
on Ivanhoe's knee "promise me, by St.
Waltheof of Templestowe promise me one boon!"
"I do," said Ivanhoe, clasping the boy, and thinking it was to that
little innocent the promise was intended to apply.
"By St. Waltheof?"
"By St. Waltheof!"
"Promise me, then," gasped Rowena, staring wildly at him, that you
never will marry a Jewess?"
"By St. Waltheof," cried Ivanhoe, "this is too much, Rowena!" But he
felt his hand grasped for a moment, the nerves then relaxed, the pale
lips ceased to quiver she was no more!
CHAPTER VI.
IVAN HOE THE WIDOWER.
HAVING placed young Cedric at school at the Hall of Dotheboyes, in
Yorkshire, and arranged his family affairs, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe
quitted a country which had no longer any charms for him, and in which
his stay was rendered the less agreeable by the notion that King John
would hang him, if ever he could lay hands on the faithful follower of
King Richard and Prince Arthur.
But there was always in those days a home and occupation for a brave
and pious knight. A saddle on a gallant war-horse, a pitched field
against the Moors, a lance wherewith to spit a turbaned infidel, or a
road to Paradise carved out by his scimitar, these were the height of
the ambition of good and religious warriors; and so renowned a champion
as Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe was sure to be well received wherever blows
were stricken for the cause of Christendom. Even among the dark
Templars, he who had twice overcome the most famous lance of their
Order was a respected though not a welcome guest: but among the
opposition company of the Knights of St. John, he was admired and
courted beyond measure; and always affectioning that Order, which
offered him, indeed, its first rank and comanderies, he did much good
service; fighting in their ranks for the glory of heaven and St.
Waltheof, and slaying many thousands of the heathen in Prussia, Poland,
and those savage Northern countries. The only fault that the great and
gallant, though severe and ascetic Folko of Heydenbraten, the chief of
the Order of St. John, found with the melancholy warrior, whose lance
did such good service to the cause, was, that he did not persecute the
Jews as so religious a knight should. He let off sundry captives of
that persuasion whom he had taken with his sword and his spear, saved
others from torture, and actually ransomed the two last grinders of a
venerable rabbi (that Roger de Cartright, an English knight of the
Order, was about to extort from the elderly Israelite,) with a hundred
crowns and a gimmal ring, which were all the property he possessed.
Whenever he so ransomed or benefited one of this religion, he would
moreover give them a little token or a message (were the good knight
out of money), saying, "Take this token, and remember this deed was
done by Wilfrid the Disinherited, for the services whilome rendered to
him by Rebecca, the daughter of Isaac of York!" So among themselves,
and in their meetings and synagogues, and in their restless travels
from land to land, when they of Jewry cursed and reviled all
Christians, as such abominable heathens will, they nevertheless
excepted the name of the Desdichado, or the doubly-disinherited as he
now was, the Desdichado-Doblado.
The account of all the battles, storms, and scala does in which Sir
Wilfrid took part, would only weary the reader; for the dropping off
one heathen's head with an axe must be very like the decapitation of
any other unbeliever. Suffice it to say, that wherever this kind of
work was to be done, and Sir Wilfrid was in the way, he was the man to
perform it. It would astonish you were you to see the account that
Wamba kept of his master's achievements, and of the Bulgarians,
Bohemians, Croatians, slain or maimed by his hand. And as, in those
days, a reputation for valor had an immense effect upon the soft hearts
of women, and even the ugliest man, were he a stout warrior, was looked
upon with favor by Beauty: so Ivanhoe, who was by no means ill-favored,
though now becoming rather elderly, made conquests over female breasts
as well as over Saracens, and had more than one direct offer of
marriage made to him by princesses, countesses, and noble ladies
possessing both charms and money, which they were anxious to place at
the disposal of a champion so renowned. It is related that the Duchess
Regent of Kartoffelberg offered him her hand, and the ducal crown of
Kartoffelberg, which he had rescued from the unbelieving Prussians; but
Ivanhoe evaded the Duchess's offer, by riding away from her capital
secretly at midnight and hiding himself in a convent of Knights
Hospitallers on the borders of Poland. And it is a fact that the
Princess Rosalia Seraphina of Pumpernickel, the most lovely woman of
her time, became so frantically attached to him, that she followed him
on a campaign, and was discovered with his baggage disguised as
horse-boy. But no princess, no beauty, no female blandishments had any
charms for Ivanhoe: no hermit practised a more austere celibacy. The
severity of his morals contrasted so remarkably with the lax and
dissolute manner of the young lords and nobles in the courts which he
frequented, that these young springgalds would sometimes sneer and call
him Monk and Milksop; but his courage in the day of battle was so
terrible and admirable, that I promise you the youthful libertines did
not sneer then; and the most reckless of them often turned pale when
they couched their lances to follow Ivanhoe. Holy Waltheof! it was an
awful sight to see him with his pale calm face, his shield upon his
breast, his heavy lance before him, charging a squadron of heathen
Bohemians, or a regiment of Cossacks! Wherever he saw the enemy,
Ivanhoe assaulted him: and when and people remonstrated with him, and
said if he attacked such and such a post, breach, castle, or army, he
would be slain, "And suppose I be?" he answered, giving them to
understand that he would as lief the Battle of Life were over
altogether.
While he was thus making war against the Northern infidels news was
carried all over Christendom of a catastrophe which had befallen the
good cause in the South of Europe, where the Spanish Christians had met
with such a defeat and massacre at the hands of the Moors as had never
been known in the proudest day of Saladin.
Thursday, the 9th of Shaban, in the 605th year of the Hejira, is known
all over the West as the _amun-al-ark, the year of the battle of
Alarcos, gained over the Christians by the Moslems of Andaluz, on which
fatal day Christendom suffered a defeat so signal, that it was feared
the Spanish peninsula would be entirely wrested away from the dominion
of the Cross. On that day the Franks lost 150,000 men and 30,000
prisoners. A man-slave sold among the unbelievers for a dirhem; a
donkey for the same; a sword, half a dirhem;
a horse, five dirhems.
Hundreds of thousands of these various sorts of booty were in the
possession of the triumphant followers of Yakoob-al-Mansoor. Curses on
his head! But he was a brave warrior, and the Christians before him
seemed to forget that they were the descendants of the brave Cid, the
_Kanbitoor, as the Moorish hounds (in their jargon) denominated the
famous Canpeador.
A general move for the rescue of the faithful in Spain crusade against
the infidels triumphing there, was preached throughout Europe by all
the most eloquent clergy; and thousands and thousands of valorous
knights and nobles, accompanied by well-meaning varlets and vassals of
the lower sort, trooped from all sides to the rescue. The Straits of
Gibel-al-Tariff, at which spot the Moor, passing from Barbary, first
planted his accursed foot on the Christian soil, were crowded with the
galleys of the Templars and the Knights of St. John, who flung succors
into the menaced kingdoms of the peninsula; the inland sea swarmed with
their ships hasting from their forts and islands, from Rhodes and
Byzantium, from Jaffa and Ascalon. The Pyrenean peaks beheld the
pennons and glittered with the armor of the knights marching out of
France into Spain; and, finally in a ship that set sail direct from
Bohemia, where Sir Wilfrid happened to be quartered at the time when
the news of the defeat of Alarcos came and alarmed all good Christians,
Ivanhoe landed at Barcelona, and proceeded to slaughter the Moors
forthwith.
He brought letters of introduction from his friend Folko of
Heydenbraten, the Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John, to the
venerable Baldomero de Garbanzos, Grand Master of the renowned order of
Saint Jago. The chief of Saint Jago's knights paid the greatest
respect to a warrior whose fame was already so widely known in
Christendom; and Ivanhoe had the pleasure of being appointed to all the
posts of danger and forlorn hopes that could be devised in his honor.
He would be called up twice or thrice in a night to fight the Moors: he
led ambushes, scaled breaches, was blown up by mines; was wounded many
hundred times (recovering, thanks to the elixir, of which Wamba always
carried a supply); he was the terror of the Saracens, and the
admiration and wonder of the Christians.
To describe his deeds, would, I say, be tedious; one day's battle was
like that of another. I am not writing in ten volumes like Monsieur
Alexandre Dumas, or even in three like other great authors. We have no
room for the recounting of Sir Wilfrid's deeds of valor. Whenever he
took a Moorish town, it was remarked, that he went anxiously into the
Jewish quarters and inquired amongst the Hebrews, who were in great
numbers in Spain, for Rebecca, the daughter of Isaac. Many Jews,
according to his wont, he ransomed, and created so much scandal by this
proceedings and by the manifest favor which he showed to the people of
that nation, that the Master of Saint Jago remonstrated with him, and
it is probable he would have been cast into the Inquisition and
roasted, but that his prodigious valor and success against the Moors
counterbalanced his heretical partiality for the children of Jacob.
It chanced that the good knight was present at the siege of Xixona in
Andalusia, entering the breach first, according to his wont, and
slaving, with his own hand, the Moorish lieutenant of the town, and
several hundred more of its unbelieving defenders. He had very nearly
done for the Alfaqui, or governor a veteran warrior with a crooked
scimitar and a beard as white as snow but a couple of hundred of the
Alfaqui's bodyguard flung themselves between Ivanhoe and their chief,
and the old fellow escaped with his life, leaving a handful of his
beard in the grasp of the English knight. The strictly military
business being done, and such of the garrison as did not escape put, as
by right, to the sword, the good knight, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, took