THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

105
© 2009 Max Wickert
It happened that as soon as Bevis had parted from the cottage where he left Pulican and Drusiana,
Pulican (since the day was fair) rose up, took up his bow and quiver and his sword, and entered the
forest to hunt wildfowl to feed himself and the lady. Having taken some, he returned to the cottage
and found at two stones’ throw nearby two lions who were at that moment feeding on a stag. These
lions had passed near the cottage and taken and killed that stage just forty spans from the cottage.
When Drusiana saw them, she grew afraid, took the two children in her arms and fled through the
forest in terror. She thought that the lions had killed Pulican and that Bevis was lost or dead in the
wilderness. Therefore she fled in such terror through the woods, with her children in her arms.
Amidst all this, Pulican arrived and saw the two lions. He did not stay near them, but ran to the
cottage and, not finding Drusiana, began calling. But she by mischance was already more than a
league away. Pulican began to grieve, thinking that the lions had devoured Drusiana and her sons,
and said: “Woe is me, sorrowful man! What will Bevis say, to whom he so strongly commended
Drusiana and her children?” In his grief, he did not use his nose to follow Drusiana’s traces, but
took his sword in hand and assailed the two lions. With his first blow, he split the skull of the first
and hurled him dead to the ground, though the lion gave him a huge wound in the chest.
But the other lion did even worse, for he clawed him with his paws from behind, ripping open his
armor and his flesh, and tried to take him up by the neck in his mouth. But Pulican turned around
so nimbly that he did not succeed, and stabbed his bowels with the point of his sword so that it
pierced through to the other side. The lion hurled itself against Pulican and assailed his body with
his claws, ripping the front of his body. Nevertheless Pulican stabbed at him again so that the lion
fell dead to the ground. Pulican could not take twenty steps before he fell to earth like a dead man,
with his bowels dropping from his body. There he lay all that day and the night that followed. The
next morning Bevis returned to the cottage.