Kenneth the Scot was uncertain how long his senses had been lost in
profound repose, when he was roused to recollection by a sense of
oppression on his chest, which at first suggested a flirting dream of
struggling with a powerful opponent, and at length recalled him fully
to his senses. He was about to demand who was there, when, opening his
eyes, he beheld the figure of the anchorite, wild and savage-looking as
we have described him, standing by his bedside, and pressing his right
hand upon his breast, while he held a small silver lamp in the other.
“Be silent,” said the hermit, as the prostrate knight looked up in
surprise; “I have that to say to you which yonder infidel must not
hear.”
These words he spoke in the French language, and not in the lingua
franca, or compound of Eastern and European dialects, which had hitherto
been used amongst them.
“Arise,” he continued, “put on thy mantle; speak not, but tread lightly,
and follow me.”
Sir Kenneth arose, and took his sword.
“It needs not,” answered the anchorite, in a whisper; “we are going
where spiritual arms avail much, and fleshly weapons are but as the reed
and the decayed gourd.”
The knight deposited his sword by the bedside as before, and, armed only
with his dagger, from which in this perilous country he never parted,
prepared to attend his mysterious host.
The hermit then moved slowly forwards, and was followed by the knight,
still under some uncertainty whether the dark form which glided
on before to show him the path was not, in fact, the creation of a
disturbed dream. They passed, like shadows, into the outer apartment,
without disturbing the paynim Emir, who lay still buried in repose.
Before the cross and altar, in the outward room, a lamp was still
burning, a missal was displayed, and on the floor lay a discipline, or
penitential scourge of small cord and wire, the lashes of which were
recently stained with blood--a token, no doubt, of the severe penance of
the recluse. Here Theodorick kneeled down, and pointed to the knight to
take his place beside him upon the sharp flints, which seemed placed for
the purpose of rendering the posture of reverential devotion as uneasy
as possible. He read many prayers of the Catholic Church, and chanted,
in a low but earnest voice, three of the penitential psalms. These last
he intermixed with sighs, and tears, and convulsive throbs, which bore
witness how deeply he felt the divine poetry which he recited. The
Scottish knight assisted with profound sincerity at these acts of
devotion, his opinion of his host beginning, in the meantime, to be so
much changed, that he doubted whether, from the severity of his penance
and the ardour of his prayers, he ought not to regard him as a saint;
and when they arose from the ground, he stood with reverence before
him, as a pupil before an honoured master. The hermit was, on his side,
silent and abstracted for the space of a few minutes.
“Look into yonder recess, my son,” he said, pointing to the farther
corner of the cell; “there thou wilt find a veil--bring it hither.”
The knight obeyed, and in a small aperture cut out of the wall, and
secured with a door of wicker, he found the veil inquired for. When he
brought it to the light, he discovered that it was torn, and soiled in
some places with some dark substance. The anchorite looked at it with
a deep but smothered emotion, and ere he could speak to the Scottish
knight, was compelled to vent his feelings in a convulsive groan.
“Thou art now about to look upon the richest treasure that the earth
possesses,” he at length said; “woe is me, that my eyes are unworthy to
be lifted towards it! Alas! I am but the vile and despised sign, which
points out to the wearied traveller a harbour of rest and security, but
must itself remain for ever without doors. In vain have I fled to the
very depths of the rocks, and the very bosom of the thirsty desert. Mine
enemy hath found me--even he whom I have denied has pursued me to my
fortresses.”
He paused again for a moment, and turning to the Scottish knight, said,
in a firmer tone of voice, “You bring me a greeting from Richard of
England?”
“I come from the Council of Christian Princes,” said the knight;
“but the King of England being indisposed, I am not honoured with his
Majesty's commands.”
“Your token?” demanded the recluse.
Sir Kenneth hesitated. Former suspicions, and the marks of insanity
which the hermit had formerly exhibited, rushed suddenly on his
thoughts; but how suspect a man whose manners were so saintly? “My
password,” he said at length, “is this--Kings begged of a beggar.”
“It is right,” said the hermit, while he paused. “I know you well; but
the sentinel upon his post--and mine is an important one--challenges
friend as well as foe.”
He then moved forward with the lamp, leading the way into the room which
they had left. The Saracen lay on his couch, still fast asleep. The
hermit paused by his side, and looked down on him.
“He sleeps,” he said, “in darkness, and must not be awakened.”
The attitude of the Emir did indeed convey the idea of profound repose.
One arm, flung across his body, as he lay with his face half turned to
the wall, concealed, with its loose and long sleeve, the greater part
of his face; but the high forehead was yet visible. Its nerves, which
during his waking hours were so uncommonly active, were now motionless,
as if the face had been composed of dark marble, and his long silken
eyelashes closed over his piercing and hawklike eyes. The open and
relaxed hand, and the deep, regular, and soft breathing, all gave tokens
of the most profound repose. The slumberer formed a singular group along
with the tall forms of the hermit in his shaggy dress of goat-skins,
bearing the lamp, and the knight in his close leathern coat--the former
with an austere expression of ascetic gloom, the latter with anxious
curiosity deeply impressed on his manly features.
“He sleeps soundly,” said the hermit, in the same low tone as before;
and repeating the words, though he had changed the meaning from that
which is literal to a metaphorical sense--“he sleeps in darkness, but
there shall be for him a dayspring.--O Ilderim, thy waking thoughts
are yet as vain and wild as those which are wheeling their giddy dance
through thy sleeping brain; but the trumpet shall be heard, and the
dream shall be dissolved.”
So saying, and making the knight a sign to follow him, the hermit went
towards the altar, and passing behind it, pressed a spring, which,
opening without noise, showed a small iron door wrought in the side
of the cavern, so as to be almost imperceptible, unless upon the most
severe scrutiny. The hermit, ere he ventured fully to open the door,
dropped some oil on the hinges, which the lamp supplied. A small
staircase, hewn in the rock, was discovered, when the iron door was at
length completely opened.
“Take the veil which I hold,” said the hermit, in a melancholy tone,
“and blind mine eyes; For I may not look on the treasure which thou art
presently to behold, without sin and presumption.”
Without reply, the knight hastily muffled the recluse's head in the
veil, and the latter began to ascend the staircase as one too much
accustomed to the way to require the use of light, while at the same
time he held the lamp to the Scot, who followed him for many steps up
the narrow ascent. At length they rested in a small vault of irregular
form, in one nook of which the staircase terminated, while in another
corner a corresponding stair was seen to continue the ascent. In a
third angle was a Gothic door, very rudely ornamented with the usual
attributes of clustered columns and carving, and defended by a wicket,
strongly guarded with iron, and studded with large nails. To this
last point the hermit directed his steps, which seemed to falter as he
approached it.
“Put off thy shoes,” he said to his attendant; “the ground on which
thou standest is holy. Banish from thy innermost heart each profane and
carnal thought, for to harbour such while in this place were a deadly
impiety.”
The knight laid aside his shoes as he was commanded, and the hermit
stood in the meanwhile as if communing with his soul in secret prayer,
and when he again moved, commanded the knight to knock at the wicket
three times. He did so. The door opened spontaneously--at least Sir
Kenneth beheld no one--and his senses were at once assailed by a stream
of the purest light, and by a strong and almost oppressive sense of the
richest perfumes. He stepped two or three paces back, and it was the
space of a minute ere he recovered the dazzling and overpowering effects
of the sudden change from darkness to light.
When he entered the apartment in which this brilliant lustre was
displayed, he perceived that the light proceeded from a combination of
silver lamps, fed with purest oil, and sending forth the richest odours,
hanging by silver chains from the roof of a small Gothic chapel, hewn,
like most part of the hermit's singular mansion, out of the sound and
solid rock. But whereas, in every other place which Sir Kenneth had
seen, the labour employed upon the rock had been of the simplest and
coarsest description, it had in this chapel employed the invention and
the chisels of the most able architects. The groined roofs rose from six
columns on each side, carved with the rarest skill; and the manner in
which the crossings of the concave arches were bound together, as it
were, with appropriate ornaments, were all in the finest tone of the
architecture of the age. Corresponding to the line of pillars, there
were on each side six richly-wrought niches, each of which contained the
image of one of the twelve apostles.
At the upper and eastern end of the chapel stood the altar, behind
which a very rich curtain of Persian silk, embroidered deeply with gold,
covered a recess, containing, unquestionably, some image or relic of no
ordinary sanctity, in honour of which this singular place of worship
had been erected, Under the persuasion that this must be the case, the
knight advanced to the shrine, and kneeling down before it, repeated his
devotions with fervency, during which his attention was disturbed by the
curtain being suddenly raised, or rather pulled aside, how or by whom he
saw not; but in the niche which was thus disclosed he beheld a cabinet
of silver and ebony, with a double folding-door, the whole formed into
the miniature resemblance of a Gothic church.
As he gazed with anxious curiosity on the shrine, the two folding-doors
also flew open, discovering a large piece of wood, on which were
blazoned the words, VERA CRUX; at the same time a choir of female voices
sung GLORIA PATRI. The instant the strain had ceased, the shrine was
closed, and the curtain again drawn, and the knight who knelt at the
altar might now continue his devotions undisturbed, in honour of the
holy relic which had been just disclosed to his view. He did this under
the profound impression of one who had witnessed, with his own eyes, an
awful evidence of the truth of his religion; and it was some time ere,
concluding his orisons, he arose, and ventured to look around him for
the hermit, who had guided him to this sacred and mysterious spot. He
beheld him, his head still muffled in the veil which he had himself
wrapped around it, crouching, like a rated hound, upon the threshold of
the chapel; but, apparently, without venturing to cross it--the holiest
reverence, the most penitential remorse, was expressed by his posture,
which seemed that of a man borne down and crushed to the earth by the
burden of his inward feelings. It seemed to the Scot that only the
sense of the deepest penitence, remorse, and humiliation could have thus
prostrated a frame so strong and a spirit so fiery.
He approached him as if to speak; but the recluse anticipated his
purpose, murmuring in stifled tones, from beneath the fold in which his
head was muffled, and which sounded like a voice proceeding from the
cerements of a corpse,--“Abide, abide--happy thou that mayest--the
vision is not yet ended.” So saying, he reared himself from the ground,
drew back from the threshold on which he had hitherto lain prostrate,
and closed the door of the chapel, which, secured by a spring bolt
within, the snap of which resounded through the place, appeared so much
like a part of the living rock from which the cavern was hewn, that
Kenneth could hardly discern where the aperture had been. He was now
alone in the lighted chapel which contained the relic to which he had
lately rendered his homage, without other arms than his dagger, or other
companion than his pious thoughts and dauntless courage.
Uncertain what was next to happen, but resolved to abide the course of
events, Sir Kenneth paced the solitary chapel till about the time of the
earliest cock-crowing. At this dead season, when night and morning met
together, he heard, but from what quarter he could not discover, the
sound of such a small silver bell as is rung at the elevation of the
host in the ceremony, or sacrifice, as it has been called, of the mass.
The hour and the place rendered the sound fearfully solemn, and, bold as
he was, the knight withdrew himself into the farther nook of the
chapel, at the end opposite to the altar, in order to observe, without
interruption, the consequences of this unexpected signal.
He did not wait long ere the silken curtain was again withdrawn, and the
relic again presented to his view. As he sunk reverentially on his knee,
he heard the sound of the lauds, or earliest office of the Catholic
Church, sung by female voices, which united together in the performance
as they had done in the former service. The knight was soon aware that
the voices were no longer stationary in the distance, but approached the
chapel and became louder, when a door, imperceptible when closed, like
that by which he had himself entered, opened on the other side of the
vault, and gave the tones of the choir more room to swell along the
ribbed arches of the roof.
The knight fixed his eyes on the opening with breathless anxiety, and,
continuing to kneel in the attitude of devotion which the place and
scene required, expected the consequence of these preparations. A
procession appeared about to issue from the door. First, four beautiful
boys, whose arms, necks, and legs were bare, showing the bronze
complexion of the East, and contrasting with the snow-white tunics
which they wore, entered the chapel by two and two. The first pair bore
censers, which they swung from side to side, adding double fragrance
to the odours with which the chapel already was impregnated. The second
pair scattered flowers.
After these followed, in due and majestic order, the females who
composed the choir--six, who from their black scapularies, and black
veils over their white garments, appeared to be professed nuns of the
order of Mount Carmel; and as many whose veils, being white, argued them
to be novices, or occasional inhabitants in the cloister, who were
not as yet bound to it by vows. The former held in their hands large
rosaries, while the younger and lighter figures who followed carried
each a chaplet of red and white roses. They moved in procession around
the chapel, without appearing to take the slightest notice of Kenneth,
although passing so near him that their robes almost touched him, while
they continued to sing. The knight doubted not that he was in one of
those cloisters where the noble Christian maidens had formerly openly
devoted themselves to the services of the church. Most of them had been
suppressed since the Mohammedans had reconquered Palestine, but many,
purchasing connivance by presents, or receiving it from the clemency
or contempt of the victors, still continued to observe in private the
ritual to which their vows had consecrated them. Yet, though Kenneth
knew this to be the case, the solemnity of the place and hour, the
surprise at the sudden appearance of these votaresses, and the
visionary manner in which they moved past him, had such influence on his
imagination that he could scarce conceive that the fair procession
which he beheld was formed of creatures of this world, so much did
they resemble a choir of supernatural beings, rendering homage to the
universal object of adoration.
Such was the knight's first idea, as the procession passed him, scarce
moving, save just sufficiently to continue their progress; so that,
seen by the shadowy and religious light which the lamps shed through the
clouds of incense which darkened the apartment, they appeared rather to
glide than to walk.
But as a second time, in surrounding the chapel, they passed the spot on
which he kneeled, one of the white-stoled maidens, as she glided by him,
detached from the chaplet which she carried a rosebud, which dropped
from her fingers, perhaps unconsciously, on the foot of Sir Kenneth. The
knight started as if a dart had suddenly struck his person; for, when
the mind is wound up to a high pitch of feeling and expectation,
the slightest incident, if unexpected, gives fire to the train
which imagination has already laid. But he suppressed his emotion,
recollecting how easily an incident so indifferent might have happened,
and that it was only the uniform monotony of the movement of the
choristers which made the incident in the slightest degree remarkable.
Still, while the procession, for the third time, surrounded the chapel,
the thoughts and the eyes of Kenneth followed exclusively the one among
the novices who had dropped the rosebud. Her step, her face, her form
were so completely assimilated to the rest of the choristers that it
was impossible to perceive the least marks of individuality; and yet
Kenneth's heart throbbed like a bird that would burst from its cage, as
if to assure him, by its sympathetic suggestions, that the female who
held the right file on the second rank of the novices was dearer to him,
not only than all the rest that were present, but than the whole sex
besides. The romantic passion of love, as it was cherished, and indeed
enjoined, by the rules of chivalry, associated well with the no less
romantic feelings of devotion; and they might be said much more to
enhance than to counteract each other. It was, therefore, with a glow
of expectation that had something even of a religious character that
Sir Kenneth, his sensations thrilling from his heart to the ends of
his fingers, expected some second sign of the presence of one who, he
strongly fancied, had already bestowed on him the first. Short as
the space was during which the procession again completed a third
perambulation of the chapel, it seemed an eternity to Kenneth. At length
the form which he had watched with such devoted attention drew nigh.
There was no difference betwixt that shrouded figure and the others,
with whom it moved in concert and in unison, until, just as she passed
for the third time the kneeling Crusader, a part of a little and
well-proportioned hand, so beautifully formed as to give the highest
idea of the perfect proportions of the form to which it belonged, stole
through the folds of the gauze, like a moonbeam through the fleecy cloud
of a summer night, and again a rosebud lay at the feet of the Knight of
the Leopard.
This second intimation could not be accidental---it could not be
fortuitous, the resemblance of that half-seen but beautiful female hand
with one which his lips had once touched, and, while they touched it,
had internally sworn allegiance to the lovely owner. Had further proof
been wanting, there was the glimmer of that matchless ruby ring on that
snow-white finger, whose invaluable worth Kenneth would yet have prized
less than the slightest sign which that finger could have made; and,
veiled too, as she was, he might see, by chance or by favour, a stray
curl of the dark tresses, each hair of which was dearer to him a hundred
times than a chain of massive gold. It was the lady of his love! But
that she should be here--in the savage and sequestered desert--among
vestals, who rendered themselves habitants of wilds and of caverns, that
they might perform in secret those Christian rites which they dared
not assist in openly; that this should be so, in truth and in reality,
seemed too incredible--it must be a dream--a delusive trance of the
imagination. While these thoughts passed through the mind of Kenneth,
the same passage, by which the procession had entered the chapel,
received them on their return. The young sacristans, the sable nuns,
vanished successively through the open door. At length she from whom he
had received this double intimation passed also; yet, in passing, turned
her head, slightly indeed, but perceptibly, towards the place where he
remained fixed as an image. He marked the last wave of her veil--it was
gone--and a darkness sunk upon his soul, scarce less palpable than that
which almost immediately enveloped his external sense; for the last
chorister had no sooner crossed the threshold of the door than it shut
with a loud sound, and at the same instant the voices of the choir were
silent, the lights of the chapel were at once extinguished, and Sir
Kenneth remained solitary and in total darkness. But to Kenneth,
solitude, and darkness, and the uncertainty of his mysterious situation
were as nothing--he thought not of them--cared not for them--cared for
nought in the world save the flitting vision which had just glided past
him, and the tokens of her favour which she had bestowed. To grope on
the floor for the buds which she had dropped--to press them to his lips,
to his bosom, now alternately, now together--to rivet his lips to the
cold stones on which, as near as he could judge, she had so lately
stepped--to play all the extravagances which strong affection suggests
and vindicates to those who yield themselves up to it, were but the
tokens of passionate love common to all ages. But it was peculiar to the
times of chivalry that, in his wildest rapture, the knight imagined of
no attempt to follow or to trace the object of such romantic attachment;
that he thought of her as of a deity, who, having deigned to show
herself for an instant to her devoted worshipper, had again returned
to the darkness of her sanctuary--or as an influential planet, which,
having darted in some auspicious minute one favourable ray, wrapped
itself again in its veil of mist. The motions of the lady of his love
were to him those of a superior being, who was to move without watch or
control, rejoice him by her appearance, or depress him by her absence,
animate him by her kindness, or drive him to despair by her cruelty--all
at her own free will, and without other importunity or remonstrance than
that expressed by the most devoted services of the heart and sword of
the champion, whose sole object in life was to fulfil her commands, and,
by the splendour of his own achievements, to exalt her fame.
Such were the rules of chivalry, and of the love which was its ruling
principle. But Sir Kenneth's attachment was rendered romantic by other
and still more peculiar circumstances. He had never even heard the sound
of his lady's voice, though he had often beheld her beauty with rapture.
She moved in a circle which his rank of knighthood permitted him
indeed to approach, but not to mingle with; and highly as he stood
distinguished for warlike skill and enterprise, still the poor Scottish
soldier was compelled to worship his divinity at a distance almost as
great as divides the Persian from the sun which he adores. But when was
the pride of woman too lofty to overlook the passionate devotion of
a lover, however inferior in degree? Her eye had been on him in the
tournament, her ear had heard his praises in the report of the battles
which were daily fought; and while count, duke, and lord contended
for her grace, it flowed, unwillingly perhaps at first, or even
unconsciously, towards the poor Knight of the Leopard, who, to support
his rank, had little besides his sword. When she looked, and when she
listened, the lady saw and heard enough to encourage her in a partiality
which had at first crept on her unawares. If a knight's personal beauty
was praised, even the most prudish dames of the military court of
England would make an exception in favour of the Scottish Kenneth;
and it oftentimes happened that, notwithstanding the very considerable
largesses which princes and peers bestowed on the minstrels, an
impartial spirit of independence would seize the poet, and the harp was
swept to the heroism of one who had neither palfreys nor garments to
bestow in guerdon of his applause.
The moments when she listened to the praises of her lover became
gradually more and more dear to the high-born Edith, relieving the
flattery with which her ear was weary, and presenting to her a subject
of secret contemplation, more worthy, as he seemed by general report,
than those who surpassed him in rank and in the gifts of fortune. As her
attention became constantly, though cautiously, fixed on Sir Kenneth,
she grew more and more convinced of his personal devotion to herself and
more and more certain in her mind that in Kenneth of Scotland she beheld
the fated knight doomed to share with her through weal and woe--and the
prospect looked gloomy and dangerous--the passionate attachment to which
the poets of the age ascribed such universal dominion, and which its
manners and morals placed nearly on the same rank with devotion itself.
Let us not disguise the truth from our readers. When Edith became aware
of the state of her own sentiments, chivalrous as were her sentiments,
becoming a maiden not distant from the throne of England--gratified as
her pride must have been with the mute though unceasing homage rendered
to her by the knight whom she had distinguished, there were moments
when the feelings of the woman, loving and beloved, murmured against the
restraints of state and form by which she was surrounded, and when she
almost blamed the timidity of her lover, who seemed resolved not to
infringe them. The etiquette, to use a modern phrase, of birth and rank,
had drawn around her a magical circle, beyond which Sir Kenneth might
indeed bow and gaze, but within which he could no more pass than an
evoked spirit can transgress the boundaries prescribed by the rod of a
powerful enchanter. The thought involuntarily pressed on her that she
herself must venture, were it but the point of her fairy foot, beyond
the prescribed boundary, if she ever hoped to give a lover so reserved
and bashful an opportunity of so slight a favour as but to salute her
shoe-tie. There was an example--the noted precedent of the “King's
daughter of Hungary,” who thus generously encouraged the “squire of low
degree;” and Edith, though of kingly blood, was no king's daughter, any
more than her lover was of low degree--fortune had put no such extreme
barrier in obstacle to their affections. Something, however, within
the maiden's bosom--that modest pride which throws fetters even on love
itself forbade her, notwithstanding the superiority of her condition, to
make those advances, which, in every case, delicacy assigns to the other
sex; above all, Sir Kenneth was a knight so gentle and honourable, so
highly accomplished, as her imagination at least suggested, together
with the strictest feelings of what was due to himself and to her,
that however constrained her attitude might be while receiving his
adorations, like the image of some deity, who is neither supposed to
feel nor to reply to the homage of its votaries, still the idol feared
that to step prematurely from her pedestal would be to degrade herself
in the eyes of her devoted worshipper.
Yet the devout adorer of an actual idol can even discover signs of
approbation in the rigid and immovable features of a marble image;
and it is no wonder that something, which could be as favourably
interpreted, glanced from the bright eye of the lovely Edith, whose
beauty, indeed, consisted rather more in that very power of expression,
than an absolute regularity of contour or brilliancy of complexion. Some
slight marks of distinction had escaped from her, notwithstanding her
own jealous vigilance, else how could Sir Kenneth have so readily and
so undoubtingly recognized the lovely hand, of which scarce two fingers
were visible from under the veil, or how could he have rested so
thoroughly assured that two flowers, successively dropped on the spot,
were intended as a recognition on the part of his lady-love? By what
train of observation--by what secret signs, looks, or gestures--by what
instinctive freemasonry of love, this degree of intelligence came to
subsist between Edith and her lover, we cannot attempt to trace; for we
are old, and such slight vestiges of affection, quickly discovered by
younger eyes, defy the power of ours. Enough that such affection
did subsist between parties who had never even spoken to one
another--though, on the side of Edith, it was checked by a deep sense of
the difficulties and dangers which must necessarily attend the further
progress of their attachment; and upon that of the knight by a thousand
doubts and fears lest he had overestimated the slight tokens of the
lady's notice, varied, as they necessarily were, by long intervals
of apparent coldness, during which either the fear of exciting the
observation of others, and thus drawing danger upon her lover, or that
of sinking in his esteem by seeming too willing to be won, made her
behave with indifference, and as if unobservant of his presence.
This narrative, tedious perhaps, but which the story renders necessary,
may serve to explain the state of intelligence, if it deserves so strong
a name, betwixt the lovers, when Edith's unexpected appearance in the
chapel produced so powerful an effect on the feelings of her knight.