Meet the Pilgrims
Comte Fulk: This picture of a knight is all wrong. He's wearing the fleur-de-lis, for one thing, and that has no place in Foix or Gascony or anywhere in the Languedoc. Those colors belong to the king in Paris, who is lord of all Franks but not of me! He's a French knight, and I am Béarnais!
We begin our journey in noble company--the Count of Bèarn. For our purposes I shall invent a completely fictional character, but I'll give him a name common to this part of the country: Fulk. Our Count Fulk is in his prime, somewhere in his late forties (he's not quite sure of his exact age, nor does he much care). He has had a full and typical career for a medieval baron: he's fought in several wars including across the Pyrenees against the Moors, and has committed his share of sins.
Mèstre: I am a humble cleric from the monastery of Lescar. I have the honor to be serving as chaplain to the Comte on this journey. I dream of seeing the holy sights, but I dread the rigors of the journey.
He's a pious man, in the manner of a worldly baron, and a pilgrimage seems to him to be a good idea. Besides, he was the author of a minor atrocity that he now truly regrets and his priest has advised him that a pilgrimage to Jerusalem is the only sort of penance that will suffice.
In the narration of this virtual pilgrimage I shall engage in the small conceit of letting each of the principal pilgrims speak up from time to time. Each gets his own distinctive inset. I will let two of them introduce themselves here.
There are others who will join us along the way, but I'll let them introduce themselves as they arrive.