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).
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