Ivanhoe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (24 page)

“Assuredly,” said Rebecca, “you shall not repent you of requiting the good deed received of the stranger knight.”

“I trust so, daughter,” said Isaac, “and I trust too in the rebuilding of Zion; but as well do I hope with my own bodily eyes to see the walls and battlements of the new Temple, as to see a Christian, yea, the very best of Christians, repay a debt to a Jew, unless under the awe of the judge and jailor.”

So saying, he resumed his discontented walk through the apartment; and Rebecca, perceiving that her attempts at consolation only served to awaken new subjects of complaint, wisely desisted from her unavailing efforts—a prudential line of conduct, and we recommend to all who set up for comforters and advisers to follow it in the like circumstances.

The evening was now becoming dark, when a Jewish servant entered the apartment and placed upon the table two silver lamps, fed with perfumed oil; the richest wines and the most delicate refreshments were at the same time displayed by another Israelitish domestic on a small ebony table, inlaid with silver; for, in the interior of their houses, the Jews refused themselves no expensive indulgences. At the same time the servant informed Isaac that a Nazarene (so they termed Christians while conversing among themselves) desired to speak with him. He that would live by traffic must hold himself at the disposal of every one claiming business with him. Isaac at once replaced on the table the untasted glass of Greek wine which he had just raised to his lips, and saying hastily to his daughter, “Rebecca, veil thyself,” commanded the stranger to be admitted.

Just as Rebecca had dropped over her fine features a screen of silver gauze which reached to her feet, the door opened, and Gurth entered, wrapt in the ample folds of his Norman mantle. His appearance was rather suspicious than prepossessing, especially as, instead of doffing his bonnet, he pulled it still deeper over his rugged brow.

“Art thou Isaac the Jew of York?” said Gurth, in Saxon.

“I am,” replied Isaac, in the same language, for his traffic had rendered every tongue spoken in Britain familiar to him, “and who art thou?”

“That is not to the purpose,” answered Gurth.

“As much as my name is to thee,” replied Isaac; “for without knowing thine, how can I hold intercourse with thee?”

“Easily,” answered Gurth; “I, being to pay money, must know that I deliver it to the right person; thou, who are to receive it, wilt not, I think, care very greatly by whose hands it is delivered.”

“O,” said the Jew, “you are come to pay monies? Holy Father Abraham! that altereth our relation to each other. And from whom dost thou bring it?”

“From the Disinherited Knight,” said Gurth, “victor in this day’s tournament. It is the price of the armour supplied to him by Kirjath Jairam of Leicester, on thy recommendation. The steed is restored to thy stable. I desire to know the amount of the sum which I am to pay for the armour.”

“I said he was a good youth!” exclaimed Isaac, with joyful exultation. “A cup of wine will do thee no harm,” he added, filling and handing to the swineherd a richer draught than Gurth had ever before tasted. “And how much money,” continued Isaac, “hast thou brought with thee?”

“Holy Virgin!” said Gurth, setting down the cup, “what nectar these unbelieving dogs drink, while true Christians are fain to quaff ale as muddy and thick as the draff
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we give to hogs! What money have I brought with me?” continued the Saxon, when he had finished his uncivil ejaculation, “even but a small sum; something in hand the whilst. What, Isaac! thou must bear a conscience, though it be a Jewish one.”

“Nay, but,” said Isaac, “thy master has won goodly steeds and rich armours with the strength of his lance and of his right hand—but ’tis a good youth; the Jew will take these in present payment, and render him back the surplus.”

“My master has disposed of them already,” said Gurth.

“Ah! that was wrong,” said the Jew—“that was the part of a fool. No Christian here could buy so many horses and armour; no Jew except myself would give him half the values. But thou hast a hundred zecchins with thee in that bag,” said Isaac, prying under Gurth’s cloak, “it is a heavy one.”

“I have heads for cross-bow bolts in it,” said Gurth, readily.

“Well, then,” said Isaac, panting and hesitating between habitual love of gain and a new-born desire to be liberal in the present instance, “if I should say that I would take eighty zecchins for the good steed and the rich armour, which leaves me not a guilder’s profit, have you money to pay me?”

“Barely,” said Gurth, though the sum demanded was more reasonable than he expected, “and it will leave my master nigh penniless. Nevertheless, if such be your least offer, I must be content.”

“Fill thyself another goblet of wine,” said the Jew. “Ah! eighty zecchins is too little. It leaveth no profit for the usages of the monies; and, besides, the good horse may have suffered wrong in this day’s encounter. O, it was a hard and a dangerous meeting! man and steed rushing on each other like wild bulls of Bashan! the horse cannot but have had wrong.”

“And I say,” replied Gurth, “he is sound, wind and limb; and you may see him now in your stable. And I say, over and above, that seventy zecchins is enough for the armour, and I hope a Christian’s word is as good as a Jew’s. If you will not take seventy, I will carry this bag (and he shook it till the contents jingled) back to my master.”

“Nay, nay!” said Isaac; “lay down the talents—the shekels—the eighty zecchins, and thou shalt see I will consider thee liberally.”

Gurth at length complied; and telling out eighty zecchins upon the table, the Jew delivered out to him an acquittance for the horse and suit of armour. The Jew’s hand trembled for joy as he wrapped up the first seventy pieces of gold. The last ten he told over with much deliberation, pausing, and saying something as he took each piece from the table and dropt it into his purse. It seemed as if his avarice were struggling with his better nature, and compelling him to pouch zecchin after zecchin, while his generosity urged him to restore some part at least to his benefactor, or as a donation to his agent. His whole speech ran nearly thus:

“Seventy-one, seventy-two—thy master is a good youth—seventy-three—an excellent youth—seventy-four—that piece hath been clipt within the ring
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—seventy-five—and that looketh light of weight—seventy-six—when thy master wants money, let him come to Isaac of York—seventy-seven—that is, with reasonable security.” Here he made a considerable pause, and Gurth had good hope that the last three pieces might escape the fate of their comrades; but the enumeration proceeded—“Seventy-eight—thou art a good fellow—seventy—nine—and deservest something for thyself—”

Here the Jew paused again, and looked at the last zecchin, intending, doubtless, to bestow it upon Gurth. He weighed it upon the tip of his finger, and made it ring by dropping it upon the table. Had it rung too flat, or had it felt a hair’s breadth too light, generosity had carried the day; but, unhappily for Gurth, the chime was full and true, the zecchin plump, newly coined, and a grain above weight. Isaac could not find in his heart to part with it, so dropt it into his purse as if in absence of mind, with the words, “Eighty completes the tale, and I trust thy master will reward thee handsomely. Surely,” he added, looking earnestly at the bag, “thou hast more coins in that pouch?”

Gurth grinned, which was his nearest approach to a laugh, as he replied, “About the same quantity which thou hast just told over so carefully.” He then folded the quittance, and put it under his cap, adding, “Peril of thy beard, Jew, see that this be full and ample!” He filled himself, unbidden, a third goblet of wine, and left the apartment without ceremony.

“Rebecca,” said the Jew, “that Ishmaelite hath gone somewhat beyond me. Nevertheless, his master is a good youth; ay, and I am well pleased that he hath gained shekels of gold and shekels of silver, even by the speed of his horse and by the strength of his lance, which, like that of Goliath the Philistine, might vie with a weaver’s beam.”

As he turned to receive Rebecca’s answer, he observed that during his chaffering with Gurth she had left the apartment unperceived.

In the meanwhile, Gurth had descended the stair, and, having reached the dark ante-chamber or hall, was puzzling about to discover the entrance, when a figure in white, shown by a small silver lamp which she held in her hand, beckoned him into a side apartment. Gurth had some reluctance to obey the summons. Rough and impetuous as a wild boar where only earthly force was to be apprehended, he had all the characteristic terrors of a Saxon respecting fauns, forest fiends, white women, and the whole of the superstitions which his ancestors had brought with them from the wilds of Germany. He remembered, moreover, that he was in the house of a Jew, a people who, besides the other unamiable qualities which popular report ascribed to them, were supposed to be profound necromancers and cabalists. Nevertheless, after a moment’s pause, he obeyed the beckoning summons of the apparition, and followed her into the apartment which she indicated, where he found, to his joyful surprise, that his fair guide was the beautiful Jewess whom he had seen at the tournament, and a short time in her father’s apartment.

She asked him the particulars of his transaction with Isaac, which he detailed accurately.

“My father did but jest with thee, good fellow,” said Rebecca; “he owes thy master deeper kindness than these arms and steed could pay, were their value tenfold. What sum didst thou pay my father even now?”

“Eighty zecchins,” said Gurth, surprised at the question.

“In this purse,” said Rebecca, “thou wilt find a hundred. Restore to thy master that which is his due, and enrich thyself with the remainder. Haste—begone—stay not to render thanks! and beware how you pass through this crowded town, where thou mayst easily lose both thy burden and thy life. Reuben,” she added, clapping her hands together, “light forth this stranger, and fail not to draw lock and bar behind him.”

Reuben, a dark-browed and black-bearded Israelite, obeyed her summons, with a torch in his hand; undid the outward door of the house, and conducting Gurth across a paved court, let him out through a wicket in the entrance-gate, which he closed behind him with such bolts and chains as would well have become that of a prison.

“By St. Dunstan,” said Gurth, as he stumbled up the dark avenue, “this is no Jewess, but an angel from heaven! Ten zecchins from my brave young master—twenty from this pearl of Zion! Oh, happy day! Such another, Gurth, will redeem thy bondage, and make thee a brother as free of thy guild as the best. And then do I lay down my swineherd’s horn and staff, and take the freeman’s sword and buckler, and follow my young master to the death, without hiding either my face or my name.”

The nocturnal adventures of Gurth were not yet concluded; indeed, he himself became partly of that mind when, after passing one or two straggling houses which stood in the outskirts of the village, he found himself in a deep lane, running between two banks overgrown with hazel and holly, while here and there a dwarf oak flung its arms altogether across the path. The lane was, moreover, much rutted and broken up by the carriages which had recently transported articles of various kinds to the tournament; and it was dark, for the banks and bushes intercepted the light of the harvest moon.

From the village were heard the distant sounds of revelry, mixed occasionally with loud laughter, sometimes broken by screams, and sometimes by wild strains of distant music. All these sounds, intimating the disorderly state of the town, crowded with military nobles and their dissolute attendants, gave Gurth some uneasiness. “The Jewess was right,” he said to himself. “By heaven and St. Dunstan, I would I were safe at my journey’s end with all this treasure! Here are such numbers, I will not say of arrant thieves, but of errant knights and errant squires, errant monks and errant minstrels, errant jugglers and errant jesters, that a man with a single merk would be in danger, much more a poor swineherd with a whole bagful of zecchins. Would I were out of the shade of these infernal bushes, that I might at least see any of St. Nicholas’s clerks
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before they spring on my shoulders!”

Gurth accordingly hastened his pace, in order to gain the open common to which the lane led, but was not so fortunate as to accomplish his object. Just as he had attained the upper end of the lane, where the underwood was thickest, four men sprung upon him, even as his fears anticipated, two from each side of the road, and seized him so fast that resistance, if at first practicable, would have been now too late. “Surrender your charge,” said one of them; “we are the deliverers of the commonwealth, who ease every man of his burden.”

“You should not ease me of mine so lightly,” muttered Gurth, whose surly honesty could not be tamed even by the pressure of immediate violence, “had I it but in my power to give three strokes in its defense.”

“We shall see that presently,” said the robber; and, speaking to his companions, he added, “bring along the knave. I see he would have his head broken as well as his purse cut, and so be let blood in two veins at once.”

Gurth was hurried along agreeably to this mandate, and having been dragged somewhat roughly over the bank on the left-hand side of the lane, found himself in a straggling thicket, which lay betwixt it and the open common. He was compelled to follow his rough conductors into the very depth of this cover, where they stopt unexpectedly in an irregular open space, free in a great measure from trees, and on which, therefore, the beams of the moon fell without much interruption from boughs and leaves. Here his captors were joined by two other persons, apparently belonging to the gang. They had short swords by their sides, and quarter-staves in their hands, and Gurth could now observe that all six wore visors, which rendered their occupation a matter of no question, even had their former proceedings left it in doubt.