Ivanhoe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (30 page)

While, with smooth and smiling cheek, the courtiers, each in turn, followed their Prince’s example, and aimed a shaft of ridicule at Cedric, the face of the Saxon became inflamed with passion, and he glanced his eyes fiercely from one to another, as if the quick succession of so many injuries had prevented his replying to them in turn; or, like a baited bull, who, surrounded by his tormentors, is at a loss to choose from among them the immediate object of his revenge. At length he spoke, in a voice half-choked with passion; and, addressing himself to Prince John as the head and front of the offence which he had received, “Whatever,” he said, “have been the follies and vices of our race, a Saxon would have been held
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(the most emphatic term for abject worthlessness) who should in his own hall, and while his own wine-cup passed, have treated, or suffered to be treated, an unoffending guest as your Highness has this day beheld me used; and whatever was the misfortune of our fathers on the field of Hastings, those may at least be silent (here he looked at Front-de-Bœuf and the Templar) who have within these few hours once and again lost saddle and stirrup before the lance of a Saxon.”

“By my faith, a bitingjest!” said Prince John. “How like you it, sirs? Our Saxon subjects rise in spirit and courage, become shrewd in wit and bold in bearing, in these unsettled times. What say ye, my lords? By this good light, I hold it best to take our galleys and return to Normandy in time.”

“For fear of the Saxons?” said De Bracy, laughing. “We should need no weapon but our hunting spears to bring these boars to bay.”

“A truce with your raillery, Sir Knights,” said Fitzurse; “and it were well,” he added, addressing the Prince, “that your Highness should assure the worthy Cedric there is no insult intended him by jests which must sound but harshly in the ear of a stranger.”

“Insult!” answered Prince John, resuming his courtesy of demeanour; I trust it will not be thought that I could mean or permit any to be offered in my presence. Here! I fill my cup to Cedric himself, since he refuses to pledge his son’s health.”

The cup went round amid the well-dissembled applause of the courtiers, which, however, failed to make the impression on the mind of the Saxon that had been designed. He was not naturally acute of perception, but those too much undervalued his understanding who deemed that this flattering compliment would obliterate the sense of the prior insult. He was silent, however, when the royal pledge again passed around, “To Sir Athelstane of Coningsburgh.”

The knight made his obeisance, and showed his sense of the honour by draining a huge goblet in answer to it.

“And now, sirs,” said Prince John, who began to be warmed with the wine which he had drank, “having done justice to our Saxon guests, we will pray of them some requital to our courtesy.

“Worthy thane,” he continued, addressing Cedric, “may we pray you to name to us some Norman whose mention may least sully your mouth, and to wash down with a goblet of wine all bitterness which the sound may leave behind it?”

Fitzurse arose while Prince John spoke, and gliding behind the seat of the Saxon, whispered to him not to omit the opportunity of putting an end to unkindness betwixt the two races by naming Prince John. The Saxon replied not to this politic insinuation, but, rising up, and filling his cup to the brim, he addressed Prince John in these words: “Your Highness has required that I should name a Norman deserving to be remembered at our banquet. This, perchance, is a hard task, since it calls on the slave to sing the praises of the master—upon the vanquished, while pressed by all the evils of conquest, to sing the praises of the conqueror. Yet I
will
name a Norman—the first in arms and in place—the best and the noblest of his race. And the lips that shall refuse to pledge me to his well-earned fame, I term false and dishonoured, and will so maintain them with my life. I quaff this goblet to the health of Richard the Lion-hearted!”

Prince John, who had expected that his own name would have closed the Saxon’s speech, started when that of his injured brother was so unexpectedly introduced. He raised mechanically the wine-cup to his lips, then instantly set it down, to view the demeanour of the company at this unexpected proposal, which many of them felt it as unsafe to oppose as to comply with. Some of them, ancient and experienced courtiers, closely imitated the example of the Prince himself, raising the goblet to their lips, and again replacing it before them. There were many who, with a more generous feeling, exclaimed, “Long live King Richard! and may he be speedily restored to us!” And some few, among whom were Front-de-Bœuf and the Templar, in sullen disdain suffered their goblets to stand untasted before them. But no man ventured directly to gainsay a pledge filled to the health of the reigning monarch.

Having enjoyed his triumph for about a minute, Cedric said to his companion, “Up, noble Athelstane! we have remained here long enough, since we have requited the hospitable courtesy of Prince John’s banquet. Those who wish to know further of our rude Saxon manners must henceforth seek us in the homes of our fathers, since we have seen enough of royal banquets and enough of Norman courtesy.”

So saying, he arose and left the banqueting-room, followed by Athelstane, and by several other guests, who, partaking of the Saxon lineage, held themselves insulted by the sarcasms of Prince John and his courtiers.

“By the bones of St. Thomas,” said Prince John, as they retreated, “the Saxon churls have borne off the best of the day, and have retreated with triumph!”

“Conclamatum est, poculatum est,”
said Prior Aymer: “we have drunk and we have shouted, it were time we left our wine flagons.”

“The monk hath some fair penitent to shrive to-night, that he is in such a hurry to depart,” said De Bracy.

“Not so, Sir Knight,” replied the Abbot; “but I must move several miles forward this evening upon my homeward journey.”

“They are breaking up,” said the Prince in a whisper to Fitzurse; “their fears anticipate the event, and this coward Prior is the first to shrink from me.”

“Fear not, my lord,” said Waldemar; “I will show him such reasons as shall induce him to join us when we hold our meeting at York. Sir Prior,” he said, “I must speak with you in private before you mount your palfrey.”

The other guests were now fast dispersing, with the exception of those immediately attached to Prince John’s faction and his retinue.

“This, then, is the result of your advice,” said the Prince, turning an angry countenance upon Fitzurse; “that I should be bearded at my own board by a drunken Saxon churl, and that, on the mere sound of my brother’s name, men should fall off from me as if I had the leprosy?”

“Have patience, sir,” replied his counsellor; “I might retort your accusation, and blame the inconsiderate levity which foiled my design, and misled your own better judgment. But this is no time for recrimination. De Bracy and I will instantly go among these shuffling cowards and convince them they have gone too far to recede.”

“It will be in vain,” said Prince John, pacing the apartment with disordered steps, and expressing himself with an agitation to which the wine he had drunk partly contributed—“it will be in vain; they have seen the handwriting on the wall—they have marked the paw of the lion in the sand—they have heard his approaching roar shake the wood; nothing will reanimate their courage.”

“Would to God,” said Fitzurse to De Bracy, “that aught could reanimate his own! His brother’s very name is an ague to him. Unhappy are the counsellors of a prince who wants fortitude and perseverance alike in good and in evil!”

No spider ever took more pains to repair the shattered meshes of his web than did Waldemar Fitzurse to reunite and combine the scattered members of Prince John’s cabal. Few of these were attached to him from inclination, and none from personal regard. It was therefore necessary that Fitzurse should open to them new prospects of advantage, and remind them of those which they at present enjoyed. To the young and wild nobles he held out the prospect of unpunished license and uncontrolled revelry, to the ambitious that of power, and to the covetous that of increased wealth and extended domains. The leaders of the mercenaries received a donation in gold—an argument the most persuasive to their minds, and without which all others would have proved in vain. Promises were still more liberally distributed than money by this active agent; and, in fine, nothing was left undone that could determine the wavering or animate the disheartened. The return of King Richard he spoke of as an event altogether beyond the reach of probability; yet, when he observed, from the doubtful looks and uncertain answers which he received, that this was the apprehension by which the minds of his accomplices were most haunted, he boldly treated that event, should it really take place, as one which ought not to alter their political calculations.

“If Richard returns,” said Fitzurse, “he returns to enrich his needy and impoverished crusaders at the expense of those who did not follow him to the Holy Land. He returns to call to a fearful reckoning those who, during his absence, have done aught that can be construed offence or encroachment upon either the laws of the land or the privileges of the crown. He returns to avenge upon the Orders of the Temple and the Hospital the preference which they showed to Philip of France during the wars in the Holy Land. He returns, in fine, to punish as a rebel every adherent of his brother Prince John. Are ye afraid of his power?” continued the artful confidant of that Prince; “We acknowledge him a strong and valiant knight; but these are not the days of King Arthur, when a champion could encounter an army. If Richard indeed comes back, it must be alone, unfollowed, unfriended. The bones of his gallant army have whitened the sands of Palestine. The few of his followers who have returned have straggled hither like this Wilfred of Ivanhoe, beggared and broken men. And what talk ye of Richard’s right of birth?” he proceeded, in answer to those who objected scruples on that head. “Is Richard’s title of primogeniture more decidedly certain than that of Duke Robert of Normandy, the Conqueror’s eldest son? And yet William the Red and Henry, his second and third brothers, were successively preferred to him by the voice of the nation. Robert had every merit which can be pleaded for Richard: he was a bold knight, a good leader, generous to his friends and to the church, and, to crown the whole, a crusader and a conqueror of the Holy Sepulchre; and yet he died a blind and miserable prisoner in the Castle of Cardiff, because he opposed himself to the will of the people, who chose that he should not rule over them. It is our right,” he said, “to choose from the blood royal the prince who is best qualified to hold the supreme power—that is,” said he, correcting himself, “him whose election will best promote the interests of the nobility. In personal qualifications,” he added, “it was possible that Prince John might be inferior to his brother Richard; but when it was considered that the latter returned with the sword of vengeance in his hand, while the former held out rewards, immunities, privileges, wealth, and honours, it could not be doubted which was the king whom in wisdom the nobility were called on to support.”

These, and many more arguments, some adapted to the peculiar circumstances of those whom he addressed, had the expected weight with the nobles of Prince John’s faction. Most of them consented to attend the proposed meeting at York, for the purpose of making general arrangements for placing the crown upon the head of Prince John.

It was late at night when, worn out and exhausted with his various exertions, however gratified with the result, Fitzurse, returning to the Castle of Ashby, met with De Bracy, who had exchanged his banqueting garments for a short green kirtle,
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with hose of the same cloth and colour, a leathern cap or headpiece, a short sword, a horn slung over his shoulder, a long-bow in his hand, and a bundle of arrows stuck in his belt. Had Fitzurse met this figure in an outer apartment, he would have passed him without notice, as one of the yeomen of the guard; but finding him in the inner hall, he looked at him with more attention, and recognised the Norman knight in the dress of an English yeoman.

“What mummery is this, De Bracy?” said Fitzurse, somewhat angrily; “is this a time for Christmas gambols and quaint maskings, when the fate of our master, Prince John, is on the very verge of decision? Why hast thou not been, like me, among these heartless cravens whom the very name of King Richard terrifies, as it is said to do the children of the Saracens?”

“I have been attending to mine own business,” answered De Bracy, calmly, “as you, Fitzurse, have been minding yours.”

“I minding mine own business!” echoed Waldemar; “I have been engaged in that of Prince John, our joint patron.”

“As if thou hadst any other reason for that, Waldemar,” said De Bracy, “than the promotion of thine own individual interest! Come, Fitzurse, we know each other: ambition is thy pursuit, pleasure is mine, and they become our different ages. Of Prince John thou thinkest as I do—that he is too weak to be a determined monarch, too tyrannical to be an easy monarch, too insolent and presumptuous to be a popular monarch, and too fickle and timid to be long a monarch of any kind. But he is a monarch by whom Fitzurse and De Bracy hope to rise and thrive; and therefore you aid him with your policy, and I with the lances of my Free Companions.”

“A hopeful auxiliary,” said Fitzurse, impatiently, “playing the fool in the very moment of utter necessity. What on earth dost thou purpose by this absurd disguise at a moment so urgent?”