William Griffin

Young Ethelbert, King of Kent, goes to Paris to collect a substantial debt. Old Charibert, King of the Franks, greets him, stalls him a hundred times, then promises his daughter’s weight in gold. On second thought he gives her away instead. Bertha is large, but she’s beauteous, bounteous, bumptious. Ethelbert is small, but he’s a fierce warrior who bows to no one. But she nearly kills him by opening a door just as he was about to knock on it. She tends to his splattered nose and his wounded pride. He likes her jolly jokes, but she grows sad, thinking that Bert, like all the other young men she’s met, will run away from a big fat blob like herself. She won’t be sad ever again, promises Bert, not while he’s alive. Having met their match, then, they decide to make a match, even though her parents and the bishop don’t think it’s a good match. Ethelbert, you see, is a pagan, and Bertha, a Christian. A beautiful marriage and a wild wedding reception take place, complete with pop-up cake, dwarf-tossing, competitive dancing, and truly horrid foods that only a young reader can like. By the way, it’s A.D. 562 for anyone who wants to know.

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