THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

erected by the pass, so that no help should arrive from Rome unless the camp knew of it
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© 2009 Max Wickert
beforehand. He was also urgently counseled to send an embassy to Charles, King of France, and
Balant was chosen as the message-bearer, and he set out in mid-March or early April. Having given
these commands, King Anglant had a ban proclaimed to the effect that whoever would bring him
Richier, alive or dead, should gain the kingship of Apulia and Calabria. He sent ten thousand
craftsmen and laborer to Aspramont, with an escort of sixty thousand knights. In the narrowest
pass of that mountain range, they erected a huge tower-fortress with a great circuit of walls attached
to it that surrounded the entire peak on which the tower stood. That wall was three miles around,
so that a huge army could be lodged inside it to guard the passes and to give battle to the Christians.
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King Anglant had Galiziella sent for but could not get her back. That winter was very harsh. Many
times, by day or by night, did Richier attack the camp. Six months had passed since Galiziella grew
with child, it being the month of March when spring began to rise and the sun to enter the sign of
Aries, and the traitor Bertram, who for love of Galiziella was ever plotting to have Richier killed,
thought of nothing else day and night. It happened that, for the ease of the guardsmen who were
continually stationed by the three brothers, they divided the night watch into three groups, and one
would call the next. The evening watch would take over from the day watch, the day watch from
the midnight watch, and the midnight watch from the evening watch, and thus they would relieve
one another to lessen their labors. They kept watch in this manner for most of the winter. On the
fourteenth of March, it was Bertram’s turn to command the midnight watch, and he, tempted by the
demon, said to his guardsmen: “I want to go outside; keep good watch,” and took two men with
him. When he was outside the wall, he made one of them stay a little way from the other and killed
them both, for none of them could not see what the other was doing. Then he went to the Saracen