Ivanhoe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (74 page)

In the meantime, a horrible noise was heard below stairs, some crying, “Secure the treacherous monks!”—others, “Down with them into the dungeon!”—others, “Pitch them from the highest battlements!”

“In the name of God!” said Cedric, addressing what seemed the spectre of his departed friend, “if thou art mortal, speak!—if a departed spirit, say for what cause thou dost revisit us, or if I can do aught that can set thy spirit at repose. Living or dead, noble Athelstane, speak to Cedric!”

“I will,” said the spectre, very composedly, “when I have collected breath, and when you give me time. Alive, saidst thou? I am as much alive as he can be who has fed on bread and water for three days, which seem three ages. Yes, bread and water, father Cedric! By Heaven, and all saints in it, better food hath not passed my weasand
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for three livelong days, and by God’s providence it is that I am now here to tell it.”

“Why, noble Athelstane,” said the Black Knight, “I myself saw you struck down by the fierce Templar towards the end of the storm at Torquilstone, and, as I thought, and Wamba reported, your skull was cloven through the teeth.”

“You thought amiss, Sir Knight,” said Athelstane, “and Wamba lied. My teeth are in good order, and that my supper shall presently find. No thanks to the Templar though, whose sword turned in his hand, so that the blade struck me flatlings, being averted by the handle of the good mace with which I warded the blow; had my steel-cap been on, I had not valued it a rush, and had dealt him such a counterbuff as would have spoilt his retreat. But as it was, down I went, stunned, indeed, but unwounded. Others, of both sides, were beaten down and slaughtered above me, so that I never recovered my senses until I found myself in a coffin—an open one, by good luck!—placed before the altar of the church of St. Edmund’s. I sneezed repeatedly—groaned—awakened, and would have arisen, when the sacristan and abbot, full of terror, came running at the noise, surprised, doubtless, and no way pleased, to find the man alive whose heirs they had proposed themselves to be. I asked for wine; they gave me some, but it must have been highly medicated, for I slept yet more deeply than before, and wakened not for many hours. I found my arms swathed down, my feet tied so fast that mine ankles ache at the very remembrance; the place was utterly dark—the oubliette,
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as I suppose, of their accursed convent, and from the close, stifled, damp smell I conceive it is also used for a place of sepulture. I had strange thoughts of what had befallen me, when the door of my dungeon creaked, and two villain monks entered. They would have persuaded me I was in purgatory, but I knew too well the pursy, short-breathed voice of the father abbot. St. Jeremy! how different from that tone with which he used to ask me for another slice of the haunch! the dog has feasted with me from Christmas to Twelfth Night.”

“Have patience, noble Athelstane,” said the King, “take breath—tell your story at leisure; beshrew me but such a tale is as well worth listening to as a romance.”

“Ay but, by the rood of Bromholme, there was no romance in the matter!” said Athelstane. “A barley loaf and a pitcher of water—that
they
gave me, the niggardly traitors, whom my father, and I myself, had enriched, when their best resources were the flitches of bacon and measures of corn out of which they wheedled poor serfs and bondsmen, in exchange for their prayers. The nest of foul, ungrateful vipers—barley bread and ditch water to such a patron as I had been! I will smoke them out of their nest, though I be excommunicated!”

“But, in the name of Our Lady, noble Athelstane,” said Cedric, grasping the hand of his friend, “how didst thou escape this imminent danger? did their hearts relent?”

“Did their hearts relent!” echoed Athelstane. “Do rocks melt with the sun? I should have been there still, had not some stir in the convent, which I find was their procession hitherward to eat my funeral feast, when they well knew how and where I had been buried alive, summoned the swarm out of their hive. I heard them droning out their death-psalms, little judging they were sung in respect for my soul by those who were thus famishing my body. They went, however, and I waited long for food; no wonder—the gouty sacristan was even too busy with his own provender to mind mine. At length down he came, with an unstable step and a strong flavour of wine and spices about his person. Good cheer had opened his heart, for he left me a nook of pasty and a flask of wine instead of my former fare. I ate, drank, and was invigorated; when, to add to my good luck, the sacristan, too totty to discharge his duty of turnkey fitly, locked the door beside the staple, so that it fell ajar. The light, the food, the wine set my invention to work. The staple to which my chains were fixed was more rusted than I or the villain abbot had supposed. Even iron could not remain without consuming in the damps of that infernal dungeon.”

“Take breath, noble Athelstane,” said Richard, “and partake of some refreshment, ere you proceed with a tale so dreadful.”

“Partake!” quoth Athelstane. “I have been partaking five times to-day; and yet a morsel of that savoury ham were not altogether foreign to the matter: and I pray you, fair sir, to do me reason in a cup of wine.”

The guests, though still agape with astonishment, pledged their resuscitated landlord, who thus proceeded in his story:—He had indeed now many more auditors than those to whom it was commenced, for Edith, having given certain necessary orders for arranging matters within the castle, had followed the dead-alive up to the strangers’ apartment, attended by as many of the guests, male and female, as could squeeze into the small room, while others, crowding the staircase, caught up an erroneous edition of the story, and transmitted it still more inaccurately to those beneath, who again sent it forth to the vulgar without, in a fashion totally irreconcilable to the real fact. Athelstane, however, went on as follows with the history of his escape:—

“Finding myself freed from the staple, I dragged myself upstairs as well as a man loaded with shackles, and emaciated with fasting, might; and after much groping about, I was at length directed, by the sound of a jolly roundelay, to the apartment where the worthy sacristan, an it so please ye, was holding a devil’s mass with a huge beetle-browed, broad-shouldered brother of the grey-frock and cowl, who looked much more like a thief than a clergyman. I burst in upon them, and the fashion of my grave-clothes, as well as the clanking of my chains, made me more resemble an inhabitant of the other world than of this. Both stood aghast; but when I knocked down the sacristan with my fist, the other fellow, his pot-companion, fetched a blow at me with a huge quarter-staff.”

“This must be our Friar Tuck, for a count’s ransom,” said Richard, looking at Ivanhoe.

“He may be the devil, an he will,” said Athelstane. “Fortunately, he missed the aim; he missed the aim; and on my approaching to grapple with him, took to his heels and ran for it. I failed not to set my own heels at liberty by means of the fetter-key, which hung amongst others at the sexton’s belt; and I had thoughts of beating out the knave’s brains with the bunch of keys, but gratitude for the nook of pasty and the flask of wine which the rascal had imparted to my captivity came over my heart; so, with a brace of hearty kicks, I left him on the floor, pouched some baked meat and a leathern bottle of wine, with which the two venerable brethren had been regaling, went to the stable, and found in a private stall mine own best palfrey, which, doubtless, had been set apart for the holy father abbot’s particular use. Hither I came with all the speed the beast could compass—man and mother’s son flying before me wherever I came, taking me for a spectre, the more especially as, to prevent my being recognised, I drew the corpse-hood over my face. I had not gained admittance into my own castle, had I not been supposed to be the attendant of a juggler who is making the people in the castle-yard very merry, considering they are assembled to celebrate their lord’s funeral. I say the sewer thought I was dressed to bear a part in the tregetour’s
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mummery, and so I got admission, and did but disclose myself to my mother, and eat a hasty morsel, ere I came in quest of you, my noble friend.”

“And you have found me,” said Cedric, “ready to resume our brave projects of honour and liberty. I tell thee, never will dawn a morrow so auspicious as the next for the deliverance of the noble Saxon race.”

“Talk not to me of delivering any one,” said Athelstane; “it is well I am delivered myself. I am more intent on punishing that villain abbot. He shall hang on the top of this Castle of Coningsburgh, in his cope and stole; and if the stairs be too strait to admit his fat carcass, I will have him craned up from without.”

“But, my son,” said Edith, “consider his sacred office.”

“Consider my three days’ fast,” replied Athelstane; “I will have their blood every one of them. Front-de-Bœuf was burnt alive for a less matter, for he kept a good table for his prisoners, only put too much garlic in his last dish of pottage. But these hypocritical, ungrateful slaves, so often the self-invited flatterers at my board, who gave me neither pottage nor garlic, more or less—they die, by the soul of Hengist!”

“But the Pope, my noble friend,” said Cedric—

“But the devil, my noble friend,” answered Athelstane; “they die, and no more of them. Were they the best monks upon earth, the world would go on without them.”

“For shame, noble Athelstane,” said Cedric; “forget such wretches in the career of glory which lies open before thee. Tell this Norman prince, Richard of Anjou, that, lion-hearted as he is, he shall not hold undisputed the throne of Alfred, while a male descendant of the Holy Confessor lives to dispute it.”

“How!” said Athelstane, “is this the noble King Richard?”

“It is Richard Plantagenet himself,” said Cedric; “yet I need not remind thee that, coming hither a guest of free-will, he may neither be injured nor detained prisoner: thou well knowest thy duty to him as his host.”

“Ay, by my faith!” said Athelstane; “and my duty as a subject besides, for I here tender him my allegiance, heart and hand.”

“My son,” said Edith, “think on thy royal rights!”

“Think on the freedom of England, degenerate prince!” said Cedric.

“Mother and friend,” said Athelstane, “a truce to your upbraidings ! Bread and water and a dungeon are marvellous mortifiers of ambition, and I rise from the tomb a wiser man than I descended into it. One half of those vain follies were puffed into mine ear by that perfidious Abbot Wolfram, and you may now judge if he is a counsellor to be trusted. Since these plots were set in agitation, I have had nothing but hurried journeys, indigestions, blows and bruises, imprisonments, and starvation; besides that they can only end in the murder of some thousands of quiet folk. I tell you, I will be king in my own domains, and nowhere else; and my first act of dominion shall be to hang the abbot.”

“And my ward Rowena,” said Cedric—“I trust you intend not to desert her?”

“Father Cedric,” said Athelstane, “be reasonable. The Lady Rowena cares not for me; she loves the little finger of my kinsman Wilfred’s glove better than my whole person. There she stands to avouch it. Nay, blush not, kinswoman; there is no shame in loving a courtly knight better than a country franklin; and do not laugh neither, Rowena, for grave-clothes and a thin visage are, God knows no matter of merriment. Nay, an thou wilt needs laugh, I will find thee a better jest. Give me thy hand, or rather lend it me, for I but ask it in the way of friendship. Here, cousin Wilfred of Ivanhoe, in thy favour I renounce and abjure—Hey! by St. Dunstan, our cousin Wilfred hath vanished! Yet, unless my eyes are still dazzled with the fasting I have undergone, I saw him stand there but even now.”

All now looked around and inquired for Ivanhoe; but he had vanished. It was at length discovered that a Jew had been to seek him; and that, after a very brief conference, he had called for Gurth and his armour, and had left the castle.

“Fair cousin,” said Athelstane to Rowena, “could I think that this sudden disappearance of Ivanhoe was occasioned by other than the weightiest reason, I would myself resume—”

But he had no sooner let go her hand, on first observing that Ivanhoe had disappeared, than Rowena, who had found her situation extremely embarrassing, had taken the first opportunity to escape from the apartment.

“Certainly,” quoth Athelstane, “women are the least to be trusted of all animals, monks and abbots excepted. I am an infidel, if I expected not thanks from her, and perhaps a kiss to boot. These cursed grave-clothes have surely a spell on them, every one flies from me. To you I turn, noble King Richard, with the vows of allegiance, which, as a liege subject—”

But King Richard was gone also, and no one knew whither. At length it was learned that he had hastened to the courtyard, summoned to his presence the Jew who had spoken with Ivanhoe, and, after a moment’s speech with him, had called vehemently to horse, thrown himself upon a steed, compelled the Jew to mount another, and set off at a rate which, according to Wamba, rendered the old Jew’s neck not worth a penny’s purchase.

“By my halidome!” said Athelstane, “it is certain that Zernebock hath possessed himself of my castle in my absence. I return in my grave-clothes, a pledge restored from the very sepulchre, and every one I speak to vanishes as soon as they hear my voice! But it skills not talking of it. Come, my friends, such of you as are left, follow me to the banquet-hall, lest any more of us disappear. It is, I trust, as yet tolerably furnished, as becomes the obsequies of an ancient Saxon noble; and should we tarry any longer, who knows but the devil may fly off with the supper?”