Susa

In the story of Costanza and Martuccio Gomito, Susa is the place where a voyage intended to end in death becomes an unexpected passage back toward life. Costanza reaches the town alone, carried by the wind to a shore more than a hundred miles beyond Tunis. There, a stranger’s care and a women’s household give her shelter while she waits without knowing what future remains possible.

Setting and place in the story

Susa appears as a town in Barbary, first named through the contrast between Costanza’s expectation and the place where she actually arrives. She has embarked alone in despair after hearing that Martuccio is dead. The boat, however, does not founder: with a northerly wind and scarcely any sea, it reaches a beach near Susa on the following day, about vespers. The account places the town a good hundred miles beyond Tunis, making the landing a substantial displacement from the destination Costanza had imagined.

The geography matters because Susa is neither the home she has left nor the reunion she eventually seeks. It is an unintended stop in a story of movement across the sea, where a change of wind overturns Costanza’s plan. The boat that carries her away from familiar life also delivers her to the first people able to protect her. Her later reunion with Martuccio takes place at Tunis, not Susa; the town’s narrative role is that of an intermediate refuge, rather than the final destination of the lovers’ return.

Costanza’s arrival and Carapresa’s help

Costanza is so absorbed in grief that she does not notice whether the boat is afloat or ashore. A poor woman on the beach, gathering her masters’ fishermen’s nets from the sun, sees the vessel strike land under full sail. She approaches, expecting to find sleeping fishermen, and discovers Costanza alone and fast asleep. The woman calls repeatedly before waking her.

When the stranger speaks Latin and asks how she came there, Costanza briefly supposes that a shift of wind has carried her back to Lipari. Looking around, she recognizes that she is in an unfamiliar country. The woman tells her that she is near Susa in Barbary. Costanza, who had hoped the sea would kill her, sits at the foot of the boat and weeps when she realizes that she has survived.

The woman is Carapresa, from Trapani, who serves Christian fishermen. Her name gives Costanza an unlooked-for occasion for hope: though she is still overwhelmed and cannot explain why, she takes the name as a good omen and begins to loosen her determination to die. Susa thus enters the tale through two forms of recognition at once: Costanza learns where she has landed, and she hears a familiar, meaningful name in an otherwise strange place.

Shelter and a new daily life

Carapresa first takes Costanza into her small hut, where she persuades her to eat some dry bread, fish, and water. Costanza then asks for advice on avoiding an assault or other affront. Carapresa answers not with promises about what may happen later, but with a practical plan: she will take Costanza to a good, elderly Saracen woman whom she serves and commend the newcomer to her care.

At Susa, Carapresa wraps Costanza from head to foot in her own mantle and brings her to the woman’s house. The elderly woman listens to Carapresa’s account, looks at Costanza, weeps, takes her by the hand, kisses her on the forehead, and receives her into the household. The house is inhabited by women, with no men present, and its residents earn their living through various crafts, making work from silk, palm fibre, and leather. The details make refuge concrete: Costanza is not simply hidden from danger but welcomed into a community with routines and useful skills.

Costanza learns some of the crafts and works alongside the other women. Their teaching also enables her to learn their language. She wins the favour of the elderly woman and the others, and the narrative presents her adjustment as gradual: she arrives bereft and unable to imagine a future, but in Susa she eats, works, communicates, and becomes part of a household. The town is therefore a setting for practical adaptation as well as protection.

A temporary refuge on the way to reunion

While Costanza remains at Susa, she is mourned at home as lost and dead. Her separation from her former life is thus real even as the town provides safety. Meanwhile, Martuccio is imprisoned in Tunis. His knowledge of the language of Barbary and his advice to the king in a war bring him into favour, setting in motion the events that will eventually make the lovers’ reunion possible.

The story’s outline carries Costanza from Susa to Tunis, where she discovers that Martuccio is alive. He marries her, and the two return rich to Lipari. Susa is not credited with causing that later change of fortune; its importance lies in keeping Costanza alive and sheltered through the interval between presumed loss and actual reunion. The sea delivers her somewhere she did not choose, and the people she meets there make that arrival survivable.