THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

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© 2009 Max Wickert
love increased, and she sent food to him for the great love she bore him, hoping that the time would
come when she would have her will. In this manner Bevis remained in prison for three years and
four months.
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King Armin, having inquired for Bevis in order to give him Drusiana for wife, unable to find him or
to tell what had occurred, feared that he might be dead. He made diligent search for him and tried
to make out where he might be. At last he found his armor and his horse, without his sword. He
that that he might have fled for fear at what he had done to Duke Hewellyn. And so his search and
state of mind continued for two years and some months. Finally, finding him not, he determined to
marry Drusiana to King Marcabrun, and often asked Drusiana’s about it, but she would in no wise
consent. At last the king used force and she assented with one condition. She would do as he
wished, but wanted to delay the marriage for one year. King Marcabrun was satisfied with this. So
her troth was plighted, and she was put under the guard of forty gentlewomen and ladies-in-waiting,
and one of her cousins, whose name was Floris, with sixty knights. Drusiana thought: “If I were in
Apollonia, perhaps Bevis would come to me.”
And King Marcabrun married her and went to his own country, and prepared the feast, inviting
many barons to it. And she had Swallowtail brought there, and brought with her Bevis’ armor; and
she sent for a prisoner of hers, called Pulican, who was half man, half dog. He was a dog from the
waist down, and a man from the waist up. He could run so fast that no other animal could overtake
him, and he could speak very well. He was the son of a dog and of a Christian gentlewoman. His
mother was from a city of Armenia called Capadocia. A Turk, King of Lycaonia and Isauria, had for
a long time waged furious war upon it and, being unable to conquer it, had made peace and taken