THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

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© 2009 Max Wickert
in an evil hour conceived and bore me, for I am the son of a duke and a queen, and am now brought
so low as to chaffer wares! Would that these merchants gave me leave to depart! For I might then
be able to serve some great lord, and would learn chivalry. But I am reduced to selling cloth. If
anyone asks me for it, I will give it to him, so that they will no longer let me play the merchant.”
That morning King Armin rode out of the city with many armed knights and came to see that fair,
which was great and beautiful; and as he rode, he reached the pavilion where Bevis was, and seeing
such a great pavilion, stopped to look, since it was well furnished with merchandise, and his
attendants encircled the pavilion. Bevis began to speak to those who stood foremost, and they
began to make jest of him. Bevis therefore knelt down before the king’s horse with a mien so gentle
and reverent that the king viewed him with interest.
Bevis began to say: “Your Sacred Majesty, I pray you by your nobleness to bid these men who stand
foremost not to ruin my merchandise, for I shall be blamed for it by the merchants, my masters.”
The king did not understand him, but an interpreter who was with him told him laughingly all the
words that Bevis had spoken.
Then the king through the mouth of that interpreter asked him whence he came, and whether he
was a Christian, and in what manner he had come to this country. King Armin would not have
asked this but for the gentle behavior that he observed in him.
Bevis said: “Your Sacred Majesty, since it pleases you to inquire about my condition, I shall tell you
of it. Know then that my father was a tradesman, that is, a miller, and my mother a hired
washerwoman; and she became enamored of another man, younger than my father, and had my
father murdered and took that other man for her husband. And afterwards she meant to poison me.
I fled, and these merchants took me up in their ship; I have been with them for six months and