Sir Scott - Ivanhoe

“Away with this prating dotard,” said Front-de-Bœuf; “lock him up in the chapel to tell his beads till the broil be over. It will be a new thing to the saints in Torquilstone to hear aves and paters; they have not been so honoured, I trow, since they were cut out of stone.”

“Blaspheme not the holy saints, Sir Reginald,” said De Bracy, “we shall have need of their aid to-day before yon rascal rout disband.”

“I expect little aid from their hand,” said Front-de-Boeuf, “unless we were to hurl them from the battlements on the heads of the villains. There is a huge lumbering St. Christopher yonder, sufficient to bear a whole company to the earth.”

The Templar had in the meantime been looking out on the proceedings of the besiegers, with rather more attention than the brutal Front-de-Bœuf or his giddy companion.

“By the faith of mine order,” he said, “these men approach with more touch of discipline than could have been judged, however they come by it. See ye how dexterously they avail themselves of every cover which a tree or bush affords, and shun exposing themselves to the shot of our cross-bows? I spy neither banner nor pennon among them, and yet will I gage my golden chain that they are led on by some noble knight or gentleman, skilful in the practice of wars.”

“I espy him,” said De Bracy; “I see the waving of a knight’s crest, and the gleam of his armour. See yon tall man in the black mail, who is busied marshalling the farther troop of the rascaille yeomen; by St. Denis, I hold him to be the same whom we called Le Noir Faineant, who overthrew thee, Front-de-Bœuf, in the lists at Ashby.”

“So much the better,” said Front-de-Bœuf, “that he comes here to give me my revenge. Some hilding dvfellow he must be, who dared not stay to assert his claim to the tourney prize which chance had assigned him. I should in vain have sought for him where knights and nobles seek their foes, and right glad am I he hath here shown himself among yon villain yeomanry.”

The demonstrations of the enemy’s immediate approach cut off all farther discourse. Each knight repaired to his post, and at the head of the few followers whom they were able to muster, and who were in numbers inadequate to defend the whole extent of the walls, they awaited with calm determination the threatened assault.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The wandering race, sever’d from other men,

Boast yet their intercourse with human arts;

The seas, the woods, the deserts, which they haunt,

Find them acquainted with their secret treasures;

And unregarded herbs, and flowers, and blossoms,

Display undreamt-of powers when gather’d by them.

Thejew 1

Our history must needs retrograde for the space of a few pages, to inform the reader of certain passages material to his understandingthe rest of this important narrative. His own intelligence may indeed have easily anticipated that, when Ivanhoe sunk down, and seemed abandoned by all the world, it was the importunity of Rebecca which prevailed on her father to have the gallant young warrior transported from the lists to the house which, for the time, the Jews inhabited in the suburbs of Ashby.

It would not have been difficult to have persuaded Isaac to this step in any other circumstances, for his disposition was kind and grateful. But he had also the prejudices and scrupulous timidity of his persecuted people, and those were to be conquered.

“Holy Abraham!” he exclaimed, “he is a good youth, and my heart bleeds to see the gore trickle down his rich embroidered hacqueton, dwand his corslet of goodly price; but to carry him to our house! damsel, hast thou well considered? He is a Christian, and by our law we may not deal with the stranger and Gentile, save for the advantage of our commerce.”

“Speak not so, my dear father,” replied Rebecca; “we may not indeed mix with them in banquet and in jollity; but in wounds and in misery, the Gentile becometh the Jew’s brother.”

“I would I knew what the Rabbi Jacob ben Tudela would opine on it,” replied Isaac; “nevertheless, the good youth must not bleed to death. Let Seth and Reuben bear him to Ashby.”

“Nay, let them place him in my litter,” said Rebecca; “I will mount one of the palfreys.”

“That were to expose thee to the gaze of those dogs of Ishmael and of Edom,” dxwhispered Isaac, with a suspicious glance towards the crowd of knights and squires. But Rebecca was already busied in carrying her charitable purpose into effect, and listed not what he said, until Isaac, seizing the sleeve of her mantle, again exclaimed, in a hurried voice—“Beard of Aaron! what if the youth perish! If he die in our custody, shall we not be held guilty of his blood, and be torn to pieces by the multitude?”

“He will not die, my father,” said Rebecca, gently extricating herself from the grasp of Isaac—“he will not die unless we abandon him; and if so, we are indeed answerable for his blood to God and to man.”

“Nay,” said Isaac, releasing his hold, “it grieveth me as much to see the drops of his blood as if they were so many golden byzants from mine own purse; and I well know that the lessons of Miriam, daughter of the Rabbi Manasses of Byzantium, whose soul is in Paradise, have made thee skilful in the art of healing, and that thou knowest the craft of herbs and the force of elixirs. Therefore, do as thy mind giveth thee: thou art a good damsel—a blessing, and a crown, and a song of rejoicing unto me and unto my house, and unto the people of my fathers.”

The apprehensions of Isaac, however, were not ill founded; and the generous and grateful benevolence of his daughter exposed her, on her return to Ashby, to the unhallowed gaze of Brian de Bois-Guilbert. The Templar twice passed and repassed them on the road, fixing his bold and ardent look on the beautiful Jewess; and we have already seen the consequences of the admiration which her charms excited, when accident threw her into the power of that unprincipled voluptuary.

Rebecca lost no time in causing the patient to be transported to their temporary dwelling, and proceeded with her own hands to examine and to bind up his wounds. The youngest reader of romances and romantic ballads must recollect how often the females, during the dark ages, as they are called, were initiated into the mysteries of surgery, and how frequently the gallant knight submitted the wounds of his person to her cure whose eyes had yet more deeply penetrated his heart.

But the Jews, both male and female, possessed and practised the medical science in all its branches, and the monarchs and powerful barons of the time frequently committed themselves to the charge of some experienced sage among this despised people when wounded or in sickness. The aid of the Jewish physicians was not the less eagerly sought after, though a general belief prevailed among the Christians that the Jewish rabbins were deeply acquainted with the occult sciences, and particularly with the cabalistical art, which had its name and origin in the studies of the sages of Israel. Neither did the rabbins disown such acquaintance with supernatural arts, which added nothing—for what could add aught?—to the hatred with which their nation was regarded, while it diminished the contempt with which that malevolence was mingled. A Jewish magician might be the subject of equal abhorrence with a Jewish usurer, but he could not be equally despised. It is, besides, probable, considering the wonderful cures they are said to have performed, that the Jews possessed some secrets of the healing art peculiar to themselves, and which, with the exclusive spirit arising out of their condition, they took great care to conceal from the Christians amongst whom they dwelt.