Ivanhoe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (68 page)

“With these I deal not,” he continued, holding the train of her robe—“it is thee only I address; and what can counterbalance thy choice? Bethink thee, were I a fiend, yet death is a worse, and it is death who is my rival.”

“I weigh not these evils,” said Rebecca, afraid to provoke the wild knight, yet equally determined neither to endure his passion nor even feign to endure it. “Be a man, be a Christian! If indeed thy faith recommends that mercy which rather your tongues than your actions pretend, save me from this dreadful death, without seeking a requital which would change thy magnanimity into base barter.”

“No, damsel!” said the proud Templar, springing up, “thou shalt not thus impose on me: if I renounce present fame and future ambition, I renounce it for thy sake, and we will escape in company. Listen to me, Rebecca,” he said, again softening his tone; “England—Europe—is not the world. There are spheres in which we may act, ample enough even for my ambition. We will go to Palestine, where Conrade Marquis of Montserrat is my friend—a friend free as myself from the doting scruples which fetter our free-born reason: rather with Saladin will we league ourselves than endure the scorn of the bigots whom we contemn. I will form new paths to greatness,” he continued, again traversing the room with hasty strides; “Europe shall hear the loud step of him she has driven from her sons! Not the millions whom her crusaders send to slaughter can do so much to defend Palestine; not the sabres of the thousands and ten thousands of Saracens can hew their way so deep into that land for which nations are striving, as the strength and policy of me and those brethren who, in despite of yonder old bigot, will adhere to me in good and evil. Thou shalt be a queen, Rebecca: on Mount Carmel shall we pitch the throne which my valour will gain for you, and I will exchange my long-desired batoon for a sceptre!”

“A dream,” said Rebecca—“an empty vision of the night, which, were it a waking reality, affects me not. Enough, that the power which thou mightest acquire I will never share; nor hold I so light of country or religious faith as to esteem him who is willing to barter these ties, and cast away the bonds of the order of which he is a sworn member, in order to gratify an unruly passion for the daughter of another people. Put not a price on my deliverance, Sir Knight—sell not a deed of generosity—protect the oppressed for the sake of charity, and not for a selfish advantage. Go to the throne of England; Richard will listen to my appeal from these cruel men.”

“Never, Rebecca!” said the Templar, fiercely. “If I renounce my order, for thee alone will I renounce it. Ambition shall remain mine, if thou refuse my love; I will not be fooled on all hands. Stoop my crest to Richard?—ask a boon of that heart of pride? Never, Rebecca, will I place the order of the Temple at his feet in my person. I may forsake the order; I never will degrade or betray it.”

“Now God be gracious to me,” said Rebecca, “for the succour of man is wellnigh hopeless!”

“It is indeed,” said the Templar; “for, proud as thou art, thou hast in me found thy match. If I enter the lists with my spear in rest, think not any human consideration shall prevent my putting forth my strength; and think then upon thine own fate—to die the dreadful death of the worst of criminals—to be consumed upon a blazing pile—dispersed to the elements of which our strange forms are so mystically composed—not a relic left of that graceful frame, from which we could say this lived and moved! Rebecca, it is not in woman to sustain this prospect—thou wilt yield to my suit.”

“Bois-Guilbert,” answered the Jewess; “thou knowest not the heart of woman, or hast only conversed with those who are lost to her best feelings. I tell thee, proud Templar, that not in thy fiercest battles hast thou displayed more of thy vaunted courage than has been shown by woman when called upon to suffer by affection or duty. I am myself a woman, tenderly nurtured, naturally fearful of danger, and impatient of pain; yet, when we enter those fatal lists, thou to fight and I to suffer, I feel the strong assurance within me that my courage shall mount higher than thine. Farewell. I waste no more words on thee; the time that remains on earth to the daughter of Jacob must be otherwise spent: she must seek the Comforter,
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who may hide His face from His people, but who ever opens His ear to the cry of those who seek Him in sincerity and in truth.”

“We part then thus?” said the Templar, after a short pause; “would to Heaven that we had never met, or that thou hadst been noble in birth and Christian in faith! Nay, by Heaven! when I gaze on thee, and think when and how we are next to meet, I could even wish myself one of thine own degraded nation; my hand conversant with ingots and shekels, instead of spear and shield; my head bent down before each petty noble, and my look only terrible to the shivering and bankrupt debtor—this could I wish, Rebecca, to be near to thee in life, and to escape the fearful share I must have in thy death.”

“Thou hast spoken the Jew,” said Rebecca, “as the persecution of such as thou art has made him. Heaven in ire has driven him from his country, but industry has opened to him the only road to power and to influence which oppression has left unbarred. Read the ancient history of the people of God, and tell me if those by whom Jehovah wrought such marvels among the nations were then a people of misers and of usurers! And know, proud knight, we number names amongst us to which your boasted northern nobility is as the gourd compared with the cedar—names that ascend far back to those high times when the Divine Presence shook the mercy-seat between the cherubim, and which derive their splendour from no earthly prince, but from the awful Voice which bade their fathers be nearest of the congregation to the Vision. Such were the princes of the House of Jacob.”

Rebecca’s colour rose as she boasted the ancient glories of her race, but faded as she added, with a sigh, “Such
were
the princes of Judah, now such no more! They are trampled down like the shorn grass, and mixed with the mire of the ways. Yet are there those among them who shame not such high descent, and of such shall be the daughter of Isaac the son of Adonikam! Farewell! I envy not thy blood-won honours; I envy not thy barbarous descent from Northern heathens; I envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth but never in thy heart nor in thy practice.”

“There is a spell on me, by Heaven!” said Bois-Guilbert. “I almost think yon besotted skeleton spoke truth, and that the reluctance with which I part from thee hath something in it more than is natural. Fair creature!” he said, approaching near her, but with great respect, “so young, so beautiful, so fearless of death! and yet doomed to die, and with infamy and agony. Who would not weep for thee? The tear, that has been a stranger to these eyelids for twenty years, moistens them as I gaze on thee. But it must be—nothing may now save thy life. Thou and I are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. Forgive me, then, and let us part at least as friends part. I have assailed thy resolution in vain, and mine own is fixed as the adamantine decrees of fate.”

“Thus,” said Rebecca, “do men throw on fate the issue of their own wild passions. But I do forgive thee, Bois-Guilbert, though the author of my early death. There are noble things which cross over thy powerful mind; but it is the garden of the sluggard, and the weeds have rushed up, and conspired to choke the fair and wholesome blossom.”

“Yes,” said the Templar, “I am, Rebecca, as thou hast spoken me, untaught, untamed; and proud that, amidst a shoal of empty fools and crafty bigots, I have retained the pre-eminent fortitude that places me above them. I have been a child of battle from my youth upward, high in my views, steady and inflexible in pursuing them. Such must I remain—proud, inflexible, and unchanging; and of this the world shall have proof. But thou forgivest me, Rebecca?”

“As freely as ever victim forgave her executioner.”

“Farewell, then,” said the Templar, and left the apartment.

The preceptor Albert waited impatiently in an adjacent chamber the return of Bois-Guilbert.

“Thou hast tarried long,” he said; “I have been as if stretched on red-hot iron with very impatience. What if the Grand Master, or his spy Conrade, had come hither? I had paid dear for my complaisance. But what ails thee, brother? Thy step totters, thy brow is as black as night. Art thou well, Bois-Guilbert?”

“Ay,” answered the Templar, “as well as the wretch who is doomed to die within an hour. Nay, by the rood, not half so well; for there be those in such state who can lay down life like a cast-off garment. By Heaven, Malvoisin, yonder girl hath wellnigh unmanned me. I am half resolved to go to the Grand Master, abjure the order to his very teeth, and refuse to act the brutality which his tyranny has imposed on me.”

“Thou art mad,” answered Malvoisin; “thou mayst thus indeed utterly ruin thyself, but canst not even find a chance thereby to save the life of this Jewess, which seems so precious in thine eyes. Beaumanoir will name another of the order to defend his judgment in thy place, and the accused will as assuredly perish as if thou hadst taken the duty imposed on thee.”

“’Tis false; I will myself take arms in her behalf,” answered the Templar, haughtily; “and should I do so, I think, Malvoisin, that thou knowest not one of the order who will keep his saddle before the point of my lance.”

“Ay, but thou forgettest,” said the wily adviser, “thou wilt have neither leisure nor opportunity to execute this mad project. Go to Lucas Beaumanoir, and say thou has renounced thy vow of obedience, and see how long the despotic old man will leave thee in personal freedom. The words shall scarce have left thy lips, ere thou wilt either be an hundred feet under ground, in the dungeon of the preceptory, to abide trial as a recreant knight; or, if his opinion holds concerning thy possession, thou wilt be enjoying straw, darkness, and chains in some distant convent cell, stunned with exorcisms, and drenched with holy water, to expel the foul fiend which hath obtained dominion over thee. Thou must to the lists, Brian, or thou art a lost and dishonoured man.”

“I will break forth and fly,” said Bois-Guilbert—“fly to some distant land, to which folly and fanaticism have not yet found their way. No drop of the blood of this most excellent creature shall be spilled by my sanction.”

“Thou canst not fly,” said the preceptor: “thy ravings have excited suspicion, and thou wilt not be permitted to leave the preceptory. Go and make the essay: present thyself before the gate, and command the bridge to be lowered, and mark what answer thou shalt receive. Thou art surprised and offended; but is it not the better for thee? Wert thou to fly, what would ensue but the reversal of thy arms, the dishonour of thine ancestry, the degradation of thy rank? Think on it. Where shall thine old companions in arms hide their heads when Brian de Bois-Guilbert, the best lance of the Templars, is proclaimed recreant, amid the hisses of the assembled people? What grief will be at the Court of France! With what joy will the haughty Richard hear the news, that the knight that set him hard in Palestine, and wellnigh darkened his renown, has lost fame and honour for a Jewish girl, whom he could not even save by so costly a sacrifice!”

“Malvoisin,” said the Knight, “I thank thee—thou hast touched the string at which my heart most readily thrills! Come of it what may, recreant shall never be added to the name of Bois-Guilbert. Would to God, Richard, or any of his vaunting minions of England, would appear in these lists! But they will be empty—no one will risk to break a lance for the innocent, the forlorn.”

“The better for thee, if it prove so,” said the preceptor; “if no champion appears, it is not by thy means that this unlucky damsel shall die, but by the doom of the Grand Master, with whom rests all the blame, and who will count that blame for praise and commendation.”

“True,” said Bois-Guilbert; “if no champion appears, I am but a part of the pageant, sitting indeed on horseback in the lists, but having no part in what is to follow.”

“None whatever,” said Malvoisin—“no more than the armed image of St. George when it makes part of a procession.”

“Well, I will resume my resolution,” replied the haughty Templar. “She has despised me—repulsed me—reviled me; and wherefore should I offer up for her whatever of estimation I have in the opinion of others? Malvoisin, I will appear in the lists.”

He left the apartment hastily as he uttered these words, and the preceptor followed, to watch and confirm him in his resolution; for in Bois-Guilbert’s fame he had himself a strong interest, expecting much advantage from his being one day at the head of the order, not to mention the preferment of which Mont-Fitchet had given him hopes, on condition he would forward the condemnation of the unfortunate Rebecca. Yet although, in combating his friend’s better feelings, he possessed all the advantage which a wily, composed, selfish disposition has over a man agitated by strong and contending passions, it required all Malvoisin’s art to keep Bois-Guilbert steady to the purpose he had prevailed on him to adopt. He was obliged to watch him closely to prevent his resuming his purpose of flight, to intercept his communication with the Grand Master, lest he should come to an open rupture with his superior, and to renew, from time to time, the various arguments by which he endeavoured to show that, in appearing as champion on this occasion, Bois-Guilbert, without either accelerating or ensuring the fate of Rebecca, would follow the only course by which he could save himself from degradation and disgrace.

When the Black Knight—for it becomes necessary to resume the train of his adventures—left the trysting-tree of the generous outlaw, he held his way straight to a neighbouring religious house, of small extent and revenue, called the priory of St. Botolph, to which the wounded Ivanhoe had been removed when the castle was taken, under the guidance of the faithful Gurth and the magnanimous Wamba. It is unnecessary at present to mention what took place in the interim betwixt Wilfred and his deliverer; suffice it to say that, after long and grave communication, messengers were despatched by the prior in several directions, and that on the succeeding morning the Black Knight was about to set forth on his journey, accompanied by the jester, Wamba, who attended as his guide.