From Calais Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe took the diligence across country to Limoges, sending on Gurth, his squire, with the horses and the rest of his attendants: with the exception of Wamba, who travelled not only as the knight's fool, but as his valet, and who, perched on the roof of the carriage, amused himself by blowing tunes upon the conducteur's French horn. The good King Richard was, as Ivanhoe learned, in the Limousin, encamped before a little place called Chalus; the lord whereof, though a vassal of the King's, was holding the castle against his sovereign with a resolution and valor which caused a great fury and annoyance on the part of the Monarch with the Lion Heart. For brave and magnanimous as he was, the Lion-hearted one did not love to be balked any more than another; and, like the royal animal whom he was said to resemble, he commonly tore his adversary to pieces, and then, perchance, had leisure to think how brave the latter had been. The Count of Chalus had found, it was said, a pot of money; the royal Richard wanted it. As the count denied that he had it, why did he not open the gates of his castle at once? It was a clear proof that he was guilty; and the King was determined to punish this rebel, and have his money and his life too.
He had naturally brought no breaching guns with him, because those instruments were not yet invented: and though he had assaulted the place a score of times with the utmost fury, his Majesty had been beaten back on every occasion, until he was so savage that it was dangerous to approach the British Lion. The Lion's wife, the lovely Berengaria, scarcely ventured to come near him. He flung the joint-stools in his tent at the heads of the officers of state, and kicked his aides-de-camp round his pavilion; and, in fact, a maid of honor, who brought a sack-posset in to his Majesty from the Queen after he came in from the assault, came spinning like a football out of the royal tent just as Ivanhoe entered it.
"Send me my drum-major to flog that woman!" roared out the infuriate King. "By the bones of St. Barnabas she has burned the sack! By St. Wittikind, I will have her flayed alive. Ha, St.
George! ha, St. Richard! whom have we here?" And he lifted up his demi-culverin, or curtal-axe--a weapon weighing about thirteen hundredweight--and was about to fling it at the intruder's head, when the latter, kneeling gracefully on one knee, said calmly, "It is I, my good liege, Wilfrid of Ivanhoe.""What, Wilfrid of Templestowe, Wilfrid the married man, Wilfrid the henpecked!" cried the King with a sudden burst of good-humor, flinging away the culverin from him, as though it had been a reed (it lighted three hundred yards off, on the foot of Hugo de Bunyon, who was smoking a cigar at the door of his tent, and caused that redoubted warrior to limp for some days after). "What, Wilfrid my gossip? Art come to see the lion's den? There are bones in it, man, bones and carcasses, and the lion is angry," said the King, with a terrific glare of his eyes. "But tush! we will talk of that anon. Ho! bring two gallons of hypocras for the King and the good Knight, Wilfrid of Ivanhoe. Thou art come in time, Wilfrid, for, by St. Richard and St. George, we will give a grand assault to-morrow. There will be bones broken, ha!""I care not, my liege," said Ivanhoe, pledging the sovereign respectfully, and tossing off the whole contents of the bowl of hypocras to his Highness's good health. And he at once appeared to be taken into high favor; not a little to the envy of many of the persons surrounding the King.
As his Majesty said, there was fighting and feasting in plenty before Chalus. Day after day, the besiegers made assaults upon the castle, but it was held so stoutly by the Count of Chalus and his gallant garrison, that each afternoon beheld the attacking-parties returning disconsolately to their tents, leaving behind them many of their own slain, and bringing back with them store of broken heads and maimed limbs, received in the unsuccessful onset. The valor displayed by Ivanhoe in all these contests was prodigious;and the way in which he escaped death from the discharges of mangonels, catapults, battering-rams, twenty-four pounders, boiling oil, and other artillery, with which the besieged received their enemies, was remarkable. After a day's fighting, Gurth and Wamba used to pick the arrows out of their intrepid master's coat-of-mail, as if they had been so many almonds in a pudding. 'Twas well for the good knight, that under his first coat-of armor he wore a choice suit of Toledan steel, perfectly impervious to arrow-shots, and given to him by a certain Jew, named Isaac of York, to whom he had done some considerable services a few years back.