THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

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© 2009 Max Wickert
her for wife, promising that he would be baptized. But when he sent for her and had her in his
power, he in order to humiliate her had her stripped naked and tied head down on a bench. He then
sent for a great mastiff and had her covered several times by it, and she grew heavy with this Pulican.
While pregnant, she fled to King Armin in Armenia and gave birth to this animal, and died in the
pangs of childbirth. King Armin, curious to see what might become of this animal, had it raised,
and when it was grown up kept it in prison or chained up for safety. And Pulican was its name. It is
for this beast that Drusiana asked her father, and he sent it to her at Apollonia in chains. With it he
sent his cousin, Floris, with the above-mentioned sixty knights. And she was hopping that God
would send back to her Bevis, her true husband.
Having entered the sea, they sailed for many days before they arrived in Apollonia, where a great
feast was held. And she lived in Apollonia until one year was almost spent, in a private palace of
that King Marcabrun. Then she began to lament greatly because Bevis could not be found, and
prayed constantly to God that he might give him back to her, if he was still alive.
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Three years and four months had passed since Bevis had been imprisoned in the city of Sinella in
Slovenia, and the court marveled greatly that he was still alive, since, according to what Margery had
made publicly known, he had been given nothing every day but a little crust of bread and some
water. But in private she had sent a little dog to him by a passage underground who carried him
bread and wine and whatever else he needed, and by these means he had survived. But only
Margery and Bevis knew of this.
It happened one day that the captain of those ten men who guarded the tower in which Bevis was
imprisoned said to his companions: “By the god Apollyon, that god of the Christians has wrought a