THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

166
© 2009 Max Wickert
Paris and while he was riding toward Orleans, he presently came upon a herdsman guarding his
sheep. Charlot said to him: “Would you like to change your clothes for mine?” The shepherd,
content with the offer, took Charlot’s garments and gave him his. (The shepherd’s father later sold
all these garments, except for the jerkin.). Charlot then smeared himself all over with mud and
continued, not knowing whither to go. In the evening he came to the monastery of Saint-Omer.
The abbot was a dear friend of Pepin’s and had once been one of his servants. Charlot entered the
abbey cloister. Some of the monks, who did not recognize him, asked him whether he wished to
stay with them. When he said yes, they took him to the abbot and he came to an agreement with
him. He put on a monastic robe and became so good a servant to the abbot that he said to his
monks: “This page of mine is certainly no peasant’s son.” He asked him what his name was and
Charlot said that he was called Mainet 37 . The abbot asked him: “Do you have a father?” He
answered that he did not.
Meanwhile the two bastards, with the aid of Gryphon of Maganza, seized power and the whole
Maganza clan returned to Paris, crowned Ulric king of France, and made Lanfroy seneschal and
commander-in-chief of the army. They had a ban published that, on pain of hanging, any man who
had news of Charlot should report it to the king of France. In those days, Sergius was Pope of
Rome, of old Maganza descent, and he ordered the excommunication of any man who harbored
Charlot, or assisted him with help or force or counsel. (Leo was then crowned Emperor, and after
Leo his brother Constantine became emperor, and after Constantine, Michael. These emperors
ruled for twenty-six years, and after them Charlemagne was named emperor, as the story will relate
presently.)
37 The young Charles’ alias can be taken either as a diminutive of the ‘magne’ in Charlemagne [i.e. ‘Little Big
Man’] or as a reference to the river Maine, the place of his birth. (See chapter 17 above and note.)