Barkley Bohner, Celebrity Philosopher

Chapter Eighteen

In case you're wondering: The reason God laughs at us has nothing to do with His indifference to our suffering. It's simply that God sees the banana peel that we are about to slip on. Life imitates slapstick.

According to my father-in-law, we have no choice but to laugh along. "The banana peel wins every time," he told me, this time over vanilla calamari. "You think you can change that?"

Anyway …

One fine day in 1145, Betsy the Resourceful, now known as "The Bitch," begins calling in her loans. A certain Balbo the Bloated retorts, "You and what army?" He wakes up the next morning only to discover he no longer has an army. Too late he finds they are now in the employ of Betsy.

Talk about banana peel. That afternoon, the pigs feast on Head of Balbo on a Stick.

Over the next several months, lords far and wide wake up to discover that they, too, no longer have armies at their disposal. Using their former armies as her own collection agency, Betsy compassionately releases the lords from the obligation of land and wealth, not to mention a few from the burden of life.

Soon, Betsy commands a considerable fighting force made up of the repossessed private armies of the defaulting lords. This sets the scene for an historic showdown. 

In full battle array, Betsy, now known as “The Indomitable,” leads her army to the River Thames, in plain view of the armies of King Stephen. There, drums beating, trumpets blaring, she makes a great show of promenading her troops back and forth. 

The army makes camp. In the full heat of the afternoon sun, Betsy emerges from her tent, barefoot and clad in a fine spun garment. She makes her way down to the riverbank, attended to by three maidens.

There, within range of Stephen's longbows, she strips off her garment and bathes naked in the water. She takes her time. She swims. She frolics. Upon completion of her ablutions, she slips into something comfortable and retires for the evening. 

The next day, a shaken Stephen sends a delegation to Betsy’s camp, with an offer of truce.

Later in the day, in a tent upon a meadow, Betsy the Indomitable, assisted by her two deputy Betsy's – Agnes the Unlikely and Sybil the Supple – hammers out with the King’s Men the historic “Concord of a Few Slight Misunderstandings Amended.” By terms of the Concord, Stephen formally recognizes all of Betsy’s recently acquired holdings and interests, including rights in rem and rights in personam.

As a sweetener, the King’s Men offer the House of Bonheur a hereditary peerage in the form of a coveted Earldom. Betsy politely declines, and is heard to remark in an aside to Agnes and Sybil: “Rue be the day by which the House of Bonheur yields to empty male conceits.” 

The day after, beneath an oak tree in a glade, Betsy and her company hammer out with the King’s Men a “Treaty of Considerable Considerations Considered,” whereby she turns over one-third of her army to Stephen on the condition that he assumes all its expenses and keeps it confined to castles.

Two weeks later, Betsy ratifies a similar Treaty with Matilda, this time handing over one-third of her army on the condition that she only use it to lay siege to the armies in Stephen’s castles. Betsy holds onto the rest of her army, just in case. 

The treaties have the effect of containing hostilities, which drag on for several more years, keeping men-at-arms gainfully occupied in mutual self-elimination, much to the relief of practically everyone.  

Meanwhile, sightings of recently-pauperized lords, pacing the moors, shaking their fists at the sky, muttering incoherently to themselves, are reported far and wide. 

Betsy reigns supreme. 

In the years following, Betsy - now known variously as "The Magnanimous" and “The Magnificent” – turns her attention to Bonheur-on-Gyrdd.

Overnight, the town becomes a thriving city and a center of commerce. Three and four centuries later, chroniclers will describe the city that Betsy built as "Eden rystoredd," the fairest place in all Christendom, peopled by “men most gyfted and wymmen of joysum dysposition.”

In due course – in 1160 – Betsy, of miraculous birth and of many names, succumbs to a strange reemergence of the malady of the orange bile. Her bones are laid to rest in a place of honor in the latest addition to the Cathedral of Saint Credocian of Thessalonia, actually an entirely new edifice that dwarfs the old Cathedral.

Lord High Cardinal Rimple the Compliant, delivering an eloquent eulogy, remarks that of all her names, “Betsy the Resourceful” is the one by which she should be best remembered. Betsy’s daughter, “Betsy the Remarkable,” nods her head in approval.

In the words of a much later chronicler: "Thus concludeth Chapter the First of the Improbably Verifiable and Remarkable History of the House of Bonheur.