Alatiel—Marato

Alatiel and Marato’s relationship is formed through violence rather than courtship: Marato kills his brother Pericone da Visalgo, takes Alatiel from Pericone’s house, and carries her off by ship. The episode makes their intimacy inseparable from captivity. Although Alatiel later grows accustomed to Marato’s company, she begins the voyage weeping under threat, and their connection is cut short when the ship’s masters kill Marato for access to her.

From Pericone’s Household to Marato’s Ship

Before Marato enters her story, Alatiel has already been driven far from her former life. A storm wrecks the ship carrying her near Majorca, and the men who escape in a shallop perish. Alatiel and her women survive aboard the stranded vessel, but the episode leaves her vulnerable to successive changes of custody. By the time she is with Pericone, the narrator describes her as having fallen from the position of a king’s bride to the mistress of a country gentleman.

Pericone’s brother Marato, about twenty-five years old, sees Alatiel and desires her. He interprets her gestures as evidence that she favors him, and decides that Pericone’s vigilance is the only obstacle between him and what he wants. The account gives his interpretation as his own inference, not as an expression of Alatiel’s freely stated wishes. Her inability to make herself understood in words also shapes the conditions of the relationship: earlier, she had communicated with Pericone through actions rather than speech.

Marato arranges an escape with two young Genoese shipmasters whose vessel is bound for Chiarenza. After nightfall he enters Pericone’s house with trusted companions. They reach the chamber where Pericone is sleeping beside Alatiel, kill him in his sleep, and take her. Awake and in tears, Alatiel is threatened with death if she cries out. Marato and Alatiel then embark, while his companions leave with much of Pericone’s most valuable property. The voyage that follows begins with a killing, an abduction, and a threat—not with a mutual agreement to leave together.

Captivity and Unequal Intimacy

At sea, Alatiel bitterly laments this new misfortune. The narrator says that Marato comforts her in a way that makes her familiar with him; after a time, she begins to take pleasure in what fortune has allotted her. That change records how the story presents their continuing intimacy, but it does not erase the circumstances in which it begins: Marato has taken her by force, and she is isolated aboard his ship. The narration’s language of comfort and habituation sits beside its account of her tears and the threat used to silence her.

Their relationship is thus neither a settled partnership nor a courtship that develops through negotiation. Marato’s desire drives the plot: he reads Alatiel’s gestures as favor, secretly conspires with the shipmasters, and removes her from Pericone’s household. Alatiel’s position is instead defined by repeated displacement. She mourns the loss of her previous circumstances, then adapts to the immediate conditions aboard the ship. The narrative describes that adaptation without suggesting she had control over the events that brought her there.

The Shipmasters’ Attack and the Relationship’s End

The two shipmasters also become enamored of Alatiel. While the ship is under sail, they see Marato standing at the poop, seize him from behind, and cast him into the sea. No one notices his disappearance until the vessel has gone more than a mile. Alatiel hears what has happened and sees that Marato cannot be recovered; she begins to lament her own misfortune again.

The shipmasters then approach her with soft words and promises, but their supposed consolation turns into a contest over which man will possess her first. Unable to agree, they quarrel, draw knives, and attack one another. One dies from the blows; the other survives, grievously wounded. Their violence brings Marato’s relationship with Alatiel to a sudden end and exposes the danger that has governed her successive attachments: men repeatedly treat her beauty as a reason to claim, transfer, or fight over her. By the time the wounded master and Alatiel reach Chiarenza, she fears that his kinsfolk and friends may turn their anger against her. The episode leaves her once more dependent on others for safety, with Marato dead and no secure relationship remaining.