Mistress Tessa—Federigo di Neri Pegolotti

Mistress Tessa—Federigo di Neri Pegolotti is a clandestine love affair organized around domestic space, a donkey’s skull, and Tessa’s quick improvisation. At her country house in Camerata, the lovers devise a signal to arrange their meetings without repeatedly involving a servant. When the signal unexpectedly brings Federigo to the door while Tessa’s husband is home, she converts the danger of discovery into a supposed encounter with a phantom. The episode makes her household ingenuity, rather than any change in the lovers’ circumstances, the means by which the relationship continues.

The Affair and Its Setting

Mistress Tessa is Gianni Lotteringhi’s wife, described as beautiful, discreet, and well advised; she is also enamoured of Federigo di Neri Pegolotti, a handsome and spirited young man who returns her love. Gianni is a wool-comber whose success in his trade is contrasted with his simplicity in other matters. His pious associations and confidence in religious observances help shape the domestic situation in which Tessa and Federigo manage their meetings.

Tessa spends the summer at Gianni’s country house in Camerata. Gianni sometimes comes there to dine and sleep, but usually returns in the morning to his shop and his religious confraternity. The lovers’ arrangement depends on this intermittent presence: the house can serve as a meeting place precisely because Gianni is often away, while his unpredictable visits remain a risk they must negotiate.

Their first meeting takes place when Gianni fails to arrive for the evening. Federigo comes at the appointed time, and he and Tessa spend the night together. Tessa teaches him some of her husband’s lauds as they lie together, turning Gianni’s devotional practice into part of the lovers’ private encounter. Neither intends the meeting to be their last, so they devise a way to communicate without needing the maid to summon Federigo each time.

The Donkey-Skull Signal

A vineyard beside the house becomes the lovers’ signaling point. As Federigo passes on his way to and from a place farther along the road, he is to look for an ass’s skull set up on a vine pole. If its muzzle points toward Florence, he should come to Tessa after dark; if it points toward Fiesole, he should stay away because Gianni will be there. On an evening when the door is shut, three soft knocks are to bring Tessa to let him in.

The arrangement gives Tessa a discreet means of controlling access to the house without a written message or a servant’s repeated intervention. It also makes the lovers’ privacy depend on a small, visible object whose direction can be misread. In the main account, the skull points toward Florence on the evening Federigo comes, and he takes this as an invitation. The signal is practical, but not infallible: the difference between a safe visit and a dangerous one rests on what its orientation seems to promise.

The Unexpected Visit

On one evening, Tessa expects Federigo and has two fat capons prepared for him. Gianni, who is not expected, arrives late instead. Tessa is chagrined, and she and Gianni eat salt pork while the capons, together with newly laid eggs and a flask of wine, are wrapped in a white napkin and carried to a garden that can be reached without passing through the house. The food is placed at the foot of a peach tree, where Tessa sometimes dines with her lover.

In her distress at Gianni’s arrival, Tessa forgets to tell the maid to wait for Federigo and warn him away. After Tessa, Gianni, and the maid have gone to bed, Federigo comes to the door and knocks softly. Gianni hears the first knock, and Tessa pretends to have been asleep. When Federigo knocks again, Gianni nudges her and asks whether she hears it. Tessa knows who is outside, but must answer without revealing that knowledge or provoking her husband’s suspicions.

She claims that the noise is a phantom that has frightened her on recent nights. Gianni replies that his prayers and the signs of the cross have already protected their bed. Tessa nevertheless insists that the phantom should be exorcised while he is present. She invents an orison and leads him quietly to the door, where Federigo is still waiting and has begun to suspect the truth. The supposed rite directs the phantom to the garden and the foot of the peach tree, describing the capon, the eggs, and the wine without naming them plainly. At Tessa’s instruction, Gianni spits as part of the conjuration. Outside, Federigo understands the message and suppresses his laughter at Gianni’s participation.

Continuation and Competing Versions

After Tessa has repeated the conjuration three times, she returns to bed with Gianni. Federigo goes to the garden, finds the food beneath the peach tree, and carries it home to eat. At their next meeting, he and Tessa laugh together over the exorcism. The episode thus turns a failed rendezvous into a successful evasion: Federigo does not enter the house, but Tessa still communicates where he can find supper, and Gianni remains unaware of the lovers’ arrangement.

The tale also preserves an alternative explanation for the mistaken summons. In one version, the skull had actually been turned toward Fiesole, but a passing husbandman struck the vineyard pole and spun it toward Florence. Federigo consequently came when he should have stayed away; Tessa then used a different phantom prayer to explain the altered signal and send him off. The narrator reports that an elderly neighbour maintained that both episodes had occurred, but that this second one concerned another foolish husband, Gianni di Nello. The variation leaves the precise attribution unsettled while retaining the central pattern: a fragile signal creates the danger, and a woman’s improvised speech determines whether the encounter is exposed or concealed.