Ivanhoe - Walter Scott (e ink ebook reader txt) 📗
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him!---And my father!---oh, my father! evil is it with his
daughter, when his grey hairs are not remembered because of the
golden locks of youth!---What know I but that these evils are the
messengers of Jehovah’s wrath to the unnatural child, who thinks
of a stranger’s captivity before a parent’s? who forgets the
desolation of Judah, and looks upon the comeliness of a Gentile
and a stranger?---But I will tear this folly from my heart,
though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!”
She wrapped herself closely in her veil, and sat down at a
distance from the couch of the wounded knight, with her back
turned towards it, fortifying, or endeavouring to fortify her
mind, not only against the impending evils from without, but also
against those treacherous feelings which assailed her from
within.
CHAPTER XXX
Approach the chamber, look upon his bed.
His is the passing of no peaceful ghost,
Which, as the lark arises to the sky,
‘Mid morning’s sweetest breeze and softest dew,
Is wing’d to heaven by good men’s sighs and tears!---
Anselm parts otherwise.
Old Play
During the interval of quiet which followed the first success of
the besiegers, while the one party was preparing to pursue their
advantage, and the other to strengthen their means of defence,
the Templar and De Bracy held brief council together in the hall
of the castle.
“Where is Front-de-Boeuf?” said the latter, who had superintended
the defence of the fortress on the other side; “men say he hath
been slain.”
“He lives,” said the Templar, coolly, “lives as yet; but had he
worn the bull’s head of which he bears the name, and ten plates
of iron to fence it withal, he must have gone down before yonder
fatal axe. Yet a few hours, and Front-de-Boeuf is with his
fathers---a powerful limb lopped off Prince John’s enterprise.”
“And a brave addition to the kingdom of Satan,” said De Bracy;
“this comes of reviling saints and angels, and ordering images of
holy things and holy men to be flung down on the heads of these
rascaille yeomen.”
“Go to---thou art a fool,” said the Templar; “thy superstition is
upon a level with Front-de-Boeuf’s want of faith; neither of you
can render a reason for your belief or unbelief.”
“Benedicite, Sir Templar,” replied De Bracy, “pray you to keep
better rule with your tongue when I am the theme of it. By the
Mother of Heaven, I am a better Christian man than thou and thy
fellowship; for the ‘bruit’ goeth shrewdly out, that the most
holy Order of the Temple of Zion nurseth not a few heretics
within its bosom, and that Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert is of the
number.”
“Care not thou for such reports,” said the Templar; “but let us
think of making good the castle.---How fought these villain
yeomen on thy side?”
“Like fiends incarnate,” said De Bracy. “They swarmed close up to
the walls, headed, as I think, by the knave who won the prize at
the archery, for I knew his horn and baldric. And this is old
Fitzurse’s boasted policy, encouraging these malapert knaves to
rebel against us! Had I not been armed in proof, the villain had
marked me down seven times with as little remorse as if I had
been a buck in season. He told every rivet on my armour with a
cloth-yard shaft, that rapped against my ribs with as little
compunction as if my bones had been of iron---But that I wore a
shirt of Spanish mail under my plate-coat, I had been fairly
sped.”
“But you maintained your post?” said the Templar. “We lost the
outwork on our part.”
“That is a shrewd loss,” said De Bracy; “the knaves will find
cover there to assault the castle more closely, and may, if not
well watched, gain some unguarded corner of a tower, or some
forgotten window, and so break in upon us. Our numbers are too
few for the defence of every point, and the men complain that
they can nowhere show themselves, but they are the mark for as
many arrows as a parish-butt on a holyday even. Front-de-Boeuf
is dying too, so we shall receive no more aid from his bull’s
head and brutal strength. How think you, Sir Brian, were we not
better make a virtue of necessity, and compound with the rogues
by delivering up our prisoners?”
“How?” exclaimed the Templar; “deliver up our prisoners, and
stand an object alike of ridicule and execration, as the doughty
warriors who dared by a night-attack to possess themselves of the
persons of a party of defenceless travellers, yet could not make
good a strong castle against a vagabond troop of outlaws, led by
swineherds, jesters, and the very refuse of mankind?---Shame on
thy counsel, Maurice de Bracy!---The ruins of this castle shall
bury both my body and my shame, ere I consent to such base and
dishonourable composition.”
“Let us to the walls, then,” said De Bracy, carelessly; “that man
never breathed, be he Turk or Templar, who held life at lighter
rate than I do. But I trust there is no dishonour in wishing I
had here some two scores of my gallant troop of Free Companions?
---Oh, my brave lances! if ye knew but how hard your captain were
this day bested, how soon should I see my banner at the head of
your clump of spears! And how short while would these rabble
villains stand to endure your encounter!”
“Wish for whom thou wilt,” said the Templar, “but let us make
what defence we can with the soldiers who remain---They are
chiefly Front-de-Boeuf’s followers, hated by the English for a
thousand acts of insolence and oppression.”
“The better,” said De Bracy; “the rugged slaves will defend
themselves to the last drop of their blood, ere they encounter
the revenge of the peasants without. Let us up and be doing,
then, Brian de Bois-Guilbert; and, live or die, thou shalt see
Maurice de Bracy bear himself this day as a gentleman of blood
and lineage.”
“To the walls!” answered the Templar; and they both ascended the
battlements to do all that skill could dictate, and manhood
accomplish, in defence of the place. They readily agreed that
the point of greatest danger was that opposite to the outwork of
which the assailants had possessed themselves. The castle,
indeed, was divided from that barbican by the moat, and it was
impossible that the besiegers could assail the postern-door, with
which the outwork corresponded, without surmounting that
obstacle; but it was the opinion both of the Templar and De
Bracy, that the besiegers, if governed by the same policy their
leader had already displayed, would endeavour, by a formidable
assault, to draw the chief part of the defenders’ observation to
this point, and take measures to avail themselves of every
negligence which might take place in the defence elsewhere. To
guard against such an evil, their numbers only permitted the
knights to place sentinels from space to space along the walls in
communication with each other, who might give the alarm whenever
danger was threatened. Meanwhile, they agreed that De Bracy
should command the defence at the postern, and the Templar should
keep with him a score of men or thereabouts as a body of reserve,
ready to hasten to any other point which might be suddenly
threatened. The loss of the barbican had also this unfortunate
effect, that, notwithstanding the superior height of the castle
walls, the besieged could not see from them, with the same
precision as before, the operations of the enemy; for some
straggling underwood approached so near the sallyport of the
outwork, that the assailants might introduce into it whatever
force they thought proper, not only under cover, but even
without the knowledge of the defenders. Utterly uncertain,
therefore, upon what point the storm was to burst, De Bracy and
his companion were under the necessity of providing against every
possible contingency, and their followers, however brave,
experienced the anxious dejection of mind incident to men
enclosed by enemies, who possessed the power of choosing their
time and mode of attack.
Meanwhile, the lord of the beleaguered and endangered castle lay
upon a bed of bodily pain and mental agony. He had not the usual
resource of bigots in that superstitious period, most of whom
were wont to atone for the crimes they were guilty of by
liberality to the church, stupefying by this means their terrors
by the idea of atonement and forgiveness; and although the refuge
which success thus purchased, was no more like to the peace of
mind which follows on sincere repentance, than the turbid
stupefaction procured by opium resembles healthy and natural
slumbers, it was still a state of mind preferable to the agonies
of awakened remorse. But among the vices of Front-de-Boeuf, a
hard and griping man, avarice was predominant; and he preferred
setting church and churchmen at defiance, to purchasing from them
pardon and absolution at the price of treasure and of manors.
Nor did the Templar, an infidel of another stamp, justly
characterise his associate, when he said Front-de-Boeuf could
assign no cause for his unbelief and contempt for the established
faith; for the Baron would have alleged that the Church sold her
wares too dear, that the spiritual freedom which she put up to
sale was only to be bought like that of the chief captain of
Jerusalem, “with a great sum,” and Front-de-Boeuf preferred
denying the virtue of the medicine, to paying the expense of the
physician.
But the moment had now arrived when earth and all his treasures
were gliding from before his eyes, and when the savage Baron’s
heart, though hard as a nether millstone, became appalled as he
gazed forward into the waste darkness of futurity. The fever of
his body aided the impatience and agony of his mind, and his
death-bed exhibited a mixture of the newly awakened feelings of
horror, combating with the fixed and inveterate obstinacy of his
disposition;---a fearful state of mind, only to be equalled in
those tremendous regions, where there are complaints without
hope, remorse without repentance, a dreadful sense of present
agony, and a presentiment that it cannot cease or be diminished!
“Where be these dog-priests now,” growled the Baron, “who set
such price on their ghostly mummery?---where be all those unshod
Carmelites, for whom old Front-de-Boeuf founded the convent of St
Anne, robbing his heir of many a fair rood of meadow, and many a
fat field and close---where be the greedy hounds now?---Swilling,
I warrant me, at the ale, or playing their juggling tricks at the
bedside of some miserly churl.---Me, the heir of their founder
---me, whom their foundation binds them to pray for---me
---ungrateful villains as they are!---they suffer to die like the
houseless dog on yonder common, unshriven and unhouseled!---Tell
the Templar to come hither---he is a priest, and may do something
---But no!---as well confess myself to the devil as to Brian de
Bois-Guilbert, who recks neither of heaven nor of hell.---I have
heard old men talk of prayer---prayer by their own voice---Such
need not to court or to bribe the false priest---But I---I dare
not!”
“Lives Reginald Front-de-Boeuf,” said a broken and shrill voice
close by his bedside, “to say there is that which he dares not!”
The evil conscience and the shaken nerves of Front-de-Boeuf
heard, in this strange interruption to his soliloquy, the voice
of one of those demons, who, as the superstition of the times
believed, beset the beds of dying men to distract their thoughts,
and turn them from the meditations which concerned their eternal
welfare. He shuddered and drew himself together; but, instantly
summoning up his wonted resolution, he exclaimed, “Who is there?
---what art thou, that darest to echo my
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