Salabaetto
Intro
- Storyteller: Dioneo
- People really love to see a tricky person deceived, Dioneo says. And the worse they are, the harder we like to see them fall.
- So this story should give them the most pleasure of all, since Madonna Jancofiore is the Queen of Deception.
Story
- Dioneo explains that there's a custom in countries with seaports to take a merchant's cargo into a warehouse owned by the local government once it's docked, so that the merchant pays the proper fees.
- The merchant would draw up a list of goods, which was made public so that other merchants could consult it and decide if anyone had items to barter.
- It was good system for trade and government, but other parties—beautiful women—used the list for more nefarious purposes.
- In Palermo, Sicily, beautiful women were notorious for consulting the lists to find out how much a man was worth. In this way, they could strip him of everything he owned.
- Enter Salabaetto, a young Florentine with 500 gold florins worth of leftover woolens to sell in Palermo. He's handsome and he knows it, so he expects to conduct a little affair while he's there.
- Madonna Jancofiore recognizes a victim when she sees him, so she sends her maidservant to tell Salabaetto that she's sick with love for him.
- He believes the maidservant, accepts a ring that Jancofiore sent, and promises to meet her at a bath house.
- Jancofiore makes a good show of it, sending slave-girls ahead of her with expensive items to make their "date" more sumptuous and to impress the gullible Florentine.
- It works. Salabaetto thinks he's in heaven as he's bathed and sprinkled with rose water—and when he finally "embraces" Jancofiore.
- She invites him to dine at her house in the evening.
- When he arrives there, he's impressed. She's made him a fancy supper and brings him to her bedroom where all her fine gowns and fancy mechanical birds are on display.
- In short, he thinks she's a fine and wealthy lady despite the rumors he's heard in town.
- After all, he is handsome and why shouldn't she be violently in love with him?
- The affair goes on for some time, until Salabaetto sells his goods at a profit and Jancofiore finds out.
- She invites him to her house and works him up into a frenzy of passion. At that moment, one of her slaves calls her out of the room.
- When she returns, she's all tears.
- Her brother, she tells Salabaetto, has written to say that he needs 1,000 pounds immediately or he's a dead man.
- If she had time, she says, she could raise twice that much. But now, alas...
- Salabaetto falls for it hook, line and sinker. He immediately offers her the 500 florins he earned from the sale of the woolens.
- Once Jancofiore has the cash in hand, she refuses to see him.
- Salabaetto kicks himself for not listening to all those rumors and warnings.
- Now he has to deal with the owners of the merchandise. Instead of returning to Pisa, he hurries to Naples.
- In Naples, he finds an old friend, Pietro dello Canigiano (FYI, a real friend of Boccaccio's), who scolds him first and then offers his help.
- On his friend's advice, he packs up some merchandise bales and oil casks and heads back to Palermo.
- When he registers his merchandise at the warehouse, Salabaetto claims that it's worth 2,000 gold florins. He also tells the officials there that he expects another cargo load worth 3,000 more.
- Of course, Jancofiore hears about this and decides that perhaps she should pay back the 500 florins to get her hands on an even bigger pile of money.
- Salabaetto visits her and she immediately gives her excuses. She also returns his money.
- The stage is set for sweet revenge. Salabaetto carries on with Jancofiore as he did before, but this time, the roles are reversed.
- He tells her that he intends to set up shop in Palermo and if she ever needs money, she should ask him.
- Then, one night, he comes to her and he's upset.
- Pirates have taken the ship with his goods and are demanding a ransom.
- But Salabaetto can't raise 1,000 gold florins on his own because no one will lend to a stranger.
- Jancofiore says she knows someone who can lend, but his interest rates are high. And she would probably have to "co-sign" for him, leveraging all of her belongings and her body against the loan.
- Salabaetto knows she's doing this to get her hands on the items in the warehouse, so he tells her that he can use the merchandise in the warehouse as collateral.
- On one condition: he gets to keep the key to his merchandise, just in case he needs to get to it.
- So they seal the deal and Salabaetto sails immediately back to Naples with his 1,500 florins.
- He settles up with his employers for the 500 and retires from business.
- As for Jancofiore, she quickly gets suspicious when Salabaetto doesn't show his face for two months.
- When she goes to inspect the merchandise, she finds that it's seawater—not olive oil—in the casks and "tow" (short, broken fibers, mostly worthless) in the bales. It's not even worth 200 florins.
- And that, Dioneo says, is how Madonna Jancofiore learned not to mess with Florentines.