Alatiel’s repeated captivity and displacement

Alatiel’s repeated captivity and displacement is a chain of shipwrecks, transfers, and enforced dependencies that carries the Sultan’s daughter across Mediterranean shores. Its first reversal comes at Majorca: a storm destroys the order of her voyage, and Pericone da Visalgo turns rescue into possession. From the outset, survival depends on other people’s decisions, while Alatiel’s identity and intentions are obscured by a language she cannot speak with those around her.

Shipwreck and the First Household

Alatiel’s voyage from Alexandria becomes a disaster after the ship has passed Sardinia. Contrary winds batter it for two days; on the third night, the storm worsens, the vessel begins to founder, and the sailors escape in an overcrowded boat that sinks. Alatiel and the surviving women remain aboard, exhausted and terrified. The ship is driven onto Majorca’s shore and buried deep in the sand by the force of its impact. When daylight comes, Alatiel finds many of her attendants dead and the rest unable to tell her where they are or what has become of the crew.

Help arrives only at noon, when Pericone da Visalgo happens upon the stranded vessel. His servant boards it and finds Alatiel and her remaining companions sheltering beneath the bowsprit. Unable to understand one another’s speech, they communicate their misfortune through signs. Pericone brings the women ashore, gathers what valuables can be recovered, and takes them to his castle, where they are given food and rest. Her rich clothing and the deference shown her persuade him that Alatiel is a woman of high rank, though he cannot discover who she is.

Once Alatiel has recovered, Pericone’s hospitality gives way to pursuit. He is strongly attracted to her and first tries to win her with gestures and blandishments; she rejects him. Alatiel recognizes that she is among Christians and fears that, unable to make herself understood, she will ultimately be forced to yield. She instructs her three surviving women not to disclose her identity unless doing so might help them regain their liberty, and urges them to preserve their chastity. Pericone then exploits her unfamiliarity with wine: at a special supper, he arranges for her to be served several kinds. Drunk, she undresses in front of him and goes to bed; after their first encounter, she initiates further nights with him through gestures. The episode establishes the pattern that will recur in her travels: a change of setting narrows her choices, and those who control her circumstances interpret her silence for their own ends.

Abduction and the Rival Captains

Alatiel’s life with Pericone is overturned when his brother Marato desires her. Reading her gestures as evidence that she favors him, Marato concludes that only Pericone’s watch prevents him from possessing her. He arranges passage on a merchant vessel bound for Chiarenza, then enters Pericone’s chamber at night with trusted accomplices. They kill Pericone in his sleep and carry the tearful Alatiel away, threatening her into silence; Marato and Alatiel escape aboard the ship with much of Pericone’s valuable property.

At sea, Marato’s control proves temporary. Two Genoese shipmasters, themselves enamored of Alatiel, seize him from behind and throw him overboard while he watches from the stern. Alatiel laments her misfortune, but the captains’ attempt to console her quickly becomes a quarrel over which should take her first. Their dispute turns violent: they draw knives, and one dies while the other is gravely wounded. The ship reaches Chiarenza, where the wounded man’s relatives send Alatiel to the Prince of the Morea, whose desire to see her has already been stirred by reports of her beauty.

The prince receives her with honor, treating her not as a mistress but as a wife, and Alatiel, exhausted by successive dangers, finds this arrangement a respite. Her unknown identity and inability to speak the local language remain barriers: the prince can infer her noble standing from her bearing but cannot learn who she is. His kinsman, the Duke of Athens, comes to see her and becomes so enamored that he resolves to take her from the prince. With the aid of the prince’s chamberlain Ciuriaci, the duke secretly enters the chamber at night, murders the prince at a window overlooking the shore, and has Ciuriaci strangled. Alatiel remains asleep through the killings; the duke then lies with her, and she mistakes him for the prince before he carries her away.

From the Duke’s Chamber to Chios

After the Duke of Athens carried Alatiel away, another seizure followed. Constantine, the brother of the duke’s wife, secretly prepared a light vessel and went with armed companions to the garden where Alatiel was staying. Pretending that he had come to speak for the duke, he drew her alone toward a gate opening onto the sea; there his men seized her and carried her aboard. Constantine told the household that he meant not to deprive the duke of his mistress but to avenge the affront done to his sister. The explanation did not change the fact of Alatiel’s removal: once more, men turned her beauty into the cause and justification of a transfer she had not chosen.

The party rowed through the night and reached Aegina after daybreak. Constantine stayed there briefly, then took Alatiel to Chios, a place he considered safe from his father’s anger and from any attempt to recover her. She wept over her misfortune, but in time Constantine comforted her and she again accommodated herself to the life fortune had assigned her. The repeated movement—from palace to ship, from one man’s household to another—makes safety provisional: each new refuge depends on the power of the man who has taken her there.

Captured Again, Then Left Behind

That precarious security ended when Osbech, King of the Turks, raided Chios. Hearing that Constantine lived there heedlessly with a woman he had stolen, Osbech entered the city by night with light ships and armed men. The attackers surprised people in their beds, killed those who took up arms, burned the city, and carried away captives and booty. Among the prisoners Osbech recognized Alatiel, whom he had seen with Constantine, and promptly made her his wife. For several months they lived together in apparent happiness.

Osbech’s marriage did not give Alatiel lasting protection. Before the raid, the Emperor had been negotiating with Bassano, King of Cappadocia, for a joint attack on Osbech, but their agreement had stalled over Bassano’s demands. After Constantine’s capture, the Emperor accepted those terms and pressed Bassano to attack. Osbech marched against Bassano, leaving Alatiel at Smyrna in the care of his servant Antiochus. Bassano defeated and killed Osbech, and advanced toward Smyrna as the population submitted to the victor.

Antiochus, though older and bound by loyalty to his absent master, fell in love with Alatiel. He knew her language, a rare relief after years in which she had been unable to understand or be understood by those around her. Their familiarity became a secret love affair. When news arrived that Osbech had died and Bassano was approaching, Antiochus and Alatiel took valuable possessions belonging to Osbech and escaped to Rhodes, choosing flight over waiting for the new conqueror.

Rhodes, Antiochus, and the Voyage to Cyprus

In Rhodes, Antiochus fell gravely ill and, as death approached, asked his merchant friend to take responsibility for Alatiel and the possessions he would leave behind. He spoke of the lady as the person he had loved more than himself and feared that, after his death, she would remain a stranger without support. Alatiel and the merchant wept and promised to honor his request. Antiochus died soon afterward, and they buried him with respect.

When the merchant had finished his business in Rhodes and prepared to sail back to Cyprus aboard a Catalan carrack, he asked Alatiel what she wished to do. She chose to accompany him, hoping that, in memory of Antiochus, the merchant would care for her as a sister. To protect her from possible affront on the voyage, he told others she was his wife. They shared a small cabin and a single narrow bed, so that their arrangement would not contradict his claim. Neither had set out from Rhodes intending a new liaison; but darkness, proximity, and the warmth of the bed drew them into intimacy before they reached Baffa. There the merchant’s protective fiction became a relationship they had both accepted.

Recognition at Baffa

Alatiel remained at Baffa while the merchant went to Armenia on business. One day Antigonus of Famagosta, an older gentleman with little wealth but considerable experience, passed the house and saw her at a window. Her beauty stirred a sense of recognition, though he could not at first remember where he had seen her. Alatiel recognized him: she had known him in Alexandria, where he had held a significant position in her father’s service.

The recognition gave Alatiel a chance to speak to someone from her former life. She disclosed herself to Antigonus, explaining that the affection she felt on seeing him had overcome her reason to remain concealed. She asked him to hear the story of her fortunes and, if no way existed to restore her, to keep her identity secret. Antigonus invited her to recount what had happened. She told him, weeping, of the events from her shipwreck on Majorca to their meeting at Baffa. For the first time in her long displacement, the successive episodes could be understood together by someone who knew her original status and could act on that knowledge.

Return to Her Father

Antigonus promised to restore Alatiel to her father and then to the King of Algarve as a bride. He went at once to Famagosta and asked the King of Cyprus to honor both the king and himself by facilitating her return, at little cost to the crown. He identified her as the Sultan’s daughter, long believed drowned, and explained that she had endured hardship while preserving her identity and seeking to return to her father. The King of Cyprus agreed to send her under Antigonus’s protection, recognizing the honor and benefit such a service could bring.

Alatiel was brought to Famagosta and received by the king and queen with great honor and hospitality. When they asked about her adventures, she related them according to Antigonus’s instructions. A few days later, at her request, the King of Cyprus sent her toward her father under Antigonus’s charge, accompanied by a substantial company of men and women. Her father received her with joy, as did Antigonus and the rest of the party. The return closes the chain of enforced transfers not with another captor’s claim but with recognition of her parentage and a protected passage home; the promised marriage to the King of Algarve is presented as Antigonus’s next step, not as an outcome shown in this passage.

Narrative Pattern and Significance

Emilia introduces the tale as a lesson in Fortune’s changes: hearing of them, she says, can make the fortunate wary and console the unfortunate. Alatiel’s history gives that claim its shape through reversals that repeatedly unsettle any apparent security. A rescue can become possession, a household can become a site of danger, and a new protector cannot guarantee that the next change will be benign. The pattern makes displacement more than a sequence of journeys: it is the condition under which other people repeatedly gain power to define Alatiel’s circumstances.

The story also distinguishes physical survival from the recovery of identity. For much of her journey, Alatiel’s origins remain unknown to those around her, and the language barrier limits what she can explain or negotiate. Her recognition of Antigonus changes that condition: someone who knew her before her losses can connect the displaced woman at Baffa to the Sultan’s daughter presumed drowned. When she recounts her history to him, the separate reversals become a story that can be understood and acted upon. The final return therefore restores not only her location but also the social identity that had been obscured throughout her travels. Antigonus’s promise of a marriage to the King of Algarve points toward a further settlement, but the passage ends with Alatiel returned to her father, not with that marriage completed.

Recognition as a Form of Rescue

Antigonus’s ability to help Alatiel rests not on wealth or command but on recognition: he remembers her from Alexandria, where he had served her father, and she can therefore entrust him with the identity she has concealed. His own fortunes have declined through his involvement in the affairs of the King of Cyprus, so his appeal presents Alatiel’s return as a service that can honor the king while also aiding Antigonus. The king responds with royal generosity, and the queen joins him in receiving Alatiel. At their request, Alatiel recounts her adventures in accordance with Antigonus’s instructions; her story can now be heard within a court that knows who she is and can arrange her passage home. The escort sent with her makes the final change more than a return journey: her movement, long dictated by private captors and unstable protectors, is at last conducted under public protection.

The Tale’s Measure of Fortune

Emilia frames Alatiel’s history as both a warning and a consolation. After the company has laughed at the adventures related by Fiammetta, she turns from comic reversals to a story she describes as true and deeply pitiful, though it ends happily. Fortune’s changes, she argues, should not weary either the fortunate or the unfortunate: hearing of them can rouse the comfortable from complacency and console those in distress. Yet the framing refuses to let the happy ending cancel what came before. Emilia emphasizes that Alatiel’s bitterness was so prolonged that she can scarcely believe later joy could have assuaged it. The tale’s return to her father therefore supplies resolution without making the intervening losses seem slight; its consolation depends on recognizing both the possibility of restoration and the weight of what restoration cannot undo.

The Costs of Being Passed Between Protectors

Alatiel’s reactions show how each transfer changes the danger she must anticipate. When Marato is thrown overboard, she laments less for him than for her own misfortune; after the shipmasters turn on each other, she fears that their kinsmen and friends will make her answer for the violence. The wounded captain’s relatives then send her to the Prince of the Morea, a decision she welcomes because it seems to release her from immediate peril. Such moments distinguish relief from safety: Alatiel can recognize which circumstance is less dangerous without gaining control over what follows, and the protection offered by one group repeatedly gives way to another person’s claim upon her.