Rebecca and Rowena

"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