THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

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© 2009 Max Wickert
Tower. She threatened that she would make him die by degrees and set a guard of ten Saracens at
the gate of that tower.
On the following night she went to the tower by a trap door which led underground, and when she
opened the trap door, Bevis feared that she was a serpent that was coming to attack him and which
had been placed in that tower to devour whoever was imprisoned there. Finding a rusty sword that
had belonged to a Christian who had starved to death in that tower, he stood ready to kill her with it.
But when he heard her open and saw the light of her little torch, he dropped the sword.
When Margery had entered to him, she greeted him and asked his name, and how he had arrived in
that region. Bevis told her all that had befallen him from the day of his birth up to that moment.
She had such pity for him that she wept while Bevis retold his fate, and then she said: “Sir knight, by
my faith, if you will be guided by me, I will bring you out of this prison, and I shall so prevail on my
father that he will grant your life and make you captain of all our people. What I wish from you is
that you become my husband.” Bevis replied, “My lady, if I promised something to you on oath and
do not keep promise, I would be a recreant knight. I have already told you of the love that I have
sworn to Drusiana, which I will in no wise betray, and I would rather die than break my oath.”
Margery replied: “Blessed are those who love sincerely. But I beg you not to wish to die rather
before you abandon your love.” But no matter how much she flattered or threatened him, Bevis
never consented to any of her demands. She then set a term of a month to think about this matter
and departed. But every day she had a little dog sent through an opening beneath the exit, with food
and drink for Bevis food and tied it to his neck.
A month passed and she never spoke with him until the month was over. Then she went to speak
with him, but could not bend him to her will, for he ever asked for death instead; meanwhile her