Chapters I-II

The Brothers Inspect their Kingdoms

Gadifer now returned with all his knights to the Chastel du Chief, ‘the strongest and noblest place in his kingdom’, where he was greeted with joy by the people.

But after a week of feasting and celebration he announced to twelve of his worthiest knights that ‘“he’s a poor shepherd who doesn’t know his flock”’: he wanted to inspect his kingdom and learn of his people’s troubles. ‘“Tomorrow morning we shall go and visit the kingdom with two hundred men-at-arms to bring order to our people and punishment to wrongdoers, if such there be, and peace to those in conflict and guidance to the lost and wayward.”’

From town to town and castle to castle he journeyed and did as he’d declared, until he came to the wild parts of Scotland, where he and his company of two hundred knights rode for two days without seeing a soul.

Then they found themselves in a fine stretch of meadowland where cattle grazed, and among them ran children clad only in fleece. Estonné and six other knights rode forward to see if they could find the children’s parents, and the children fled screaming and wailing. Estonné managed to catch a girl, whose fleece fell off, leaving her naked; he saw that she was about twelve years old, and lovely in face and body, and he said to his companions that ‘if she were properly brought up she’d be a real beauty. The girl began to claw and bite him and screamed like a wild thing, but he wouldn’t let her go; instead he wrapped her in his cloak for decency’s sake.’ The king looked at the girl and saw ‘the beauty of her body and limbs’ and her long, uncut, sun-bleached hair, and began to question her; but she replied by crying for her mother and father in an unrecognisable language, ‘for her Greek tongue was so altered that the king and his knights could barely understand it’. Then the wild children returned from the forest where they’d fled, and behind them came three hundred men ‘amazing to behold, wrapped in skins of cow or deer, their unkempt hair trailing down their backs, bleached by the sun for their heads were bare, and each was clutching an enormous club’.