Cecco Fortarrigo

Cecco Fortarrigo is a reckless gambler who turns his own ruin into an opportunity to rob and discredit his master, Cecco Angiolieri. In Neifile’s tale, he first loses his money and clothes at play, then steals the funds meant for Angiolieri’s journey; when the theft is exposed, he reverses the accusation, gets Angiolieri seized by countrymen, and rides away in his clothes. The story’s decisive irony is that Angiolieri’s prudent plans are undone not by a subtler scheme of his own, but by the disorderly servant he reluctantly agreed to take along.

Identity and Introduction

Both men are grown and share the name Cecco, but the story distinguishes them by family and character: Fortarrigo is the son of Messer Fortarrigo, while Angiolieri is the son of Messer Angiolieri. The two are unlike in most respects. Their common grievance is that their fathers hate them, and this shared circumstance has made them friends who often keep company. The friendship brings Fortarrigo close enough to Angiolieri to turn a private journey and its preparations into opportunities for theft.

Angiolieri is described as handsome and well-mannered. He believes that the provision his father gives him will not allow him to live adequately in Siena, and seeks to improve his position by joining a cardinal who is in the Marches of Ancona as the Pope’s Legate. He arranges to receive at once what his father would otherwise provide over six months, so that he can equip himself with clothes and a horse and make an honourable appearance. Fortarrigo’s access to that money and equipment is thus a direct consequence of Angiolieri’s attempt to advance his prospects.

The Service He Promises and Breaks

When Fortarrigo hears that Angiolieri is looking for a travelling attendant, he asks to go with him, offering to serve as lackey and manservant for his expenses alone. Angiolieri refuses at first, not because he doubts Fortarrigo’s capacity for service, but because he knows him to be a gambler and at times a drunkard. Fortarrigo answers with many prayers and oaths, promising to keep away from both habits. Angiolieri eventually consents, making the journey depend on a promise that Fortarrigo promptly violates.

They set out and dine at Buonconvento. Because the weather is hot after dinner, Angiolieri has a bed prepared at the inn, undresses with Fortarrigo’s help, and goes to sleep, ordering him to wake him at the appointed hour. As soon as his master is asleep, Fortarrigo goes to a tavern, drinks, and gambles. He loses first the money he has with him and then the clothes he is wearing. Rather than accept the loss or return to his duties, he goes back to the inn in his shirt, sees Angiolieri still asleep, takes money from his purse, and loses that money at play as well.

The Reversal at the Inn

Angiolieri wakes, dresses, and looks for his servant. Finding him absent, he assumes Fortarrigo has fallen asleep drunk somewhere, as he has sometimes done before, and decides to leave him behind and seek another servant at Corsignano. But when he prepares to pay the bill, he discovers that he has no money. The inn is thrown into an uproar as he declares that he has been robbed and threatens to have the host and everyone in the household taken prisoner to Siena.

Fortarrigo returns at this moment, intending to take his master’s clothes as he has taken the money. Seeing Angiolieri ready to mount, he delays him with a story about a doublet supposedly held in pawn: its owner, he says, will soon arrive and redeem it for thirty-five shillings rather than the thirty-eight it is worth. The delay does not conceal the theft. Someone identifies Fortarrigo as the person who took Angiolieri’s money and shows that the sum corresponds to what Fortarrigo lost at play. Angiolieri, enraged, reproaches him and threatens to have him hanged or outlawed from Siena. He refrains from doing him a mischief because he fears the other people present more than he fears God.

The False Accusation and Its Cost

Angiolieri turns his palfrey toward Torrenieri to escape Fortarrigo’s demands. Fortarrigo follows him for a good two miles in his shirt, continuing to ask for his doublet. When Angiolieri rides faster to rid himself of the nuisance, Fortarrigo spots husbandmen working in a field beside the road and calls on them to stop the rider. They approach carrying spades and mattocks and seize Angiolieri, taking the shirt-clad pursuer’s appearance as evidence that the mounted man has robbed him.

Fortarrigo sustains the reversal by acting as the injured party. He accuses Angiolieri of taking his property and tells the countrymen that Angiolieri had gambled away his own possessions before leaving him in such a plight at the inn. Angiolieri explains what happened, but the countrymen do not heed him. With their aid, Fortarrigo pulls him from the palfrey, strips him, puts on his clothes, and rides away on his horse. He later claims everywhere that he won both horse and clothes from Angiolieri. The stolen garments and the public story of a gambling loss make the reversal complete: the victim’s earlier intention to travel as a well-equipped man is replaced by the appearance of a penniless wrongdoer.

Angiolieri returns to Buonconvento poor, barefoot, and wearing only his shirt. Ashamed, he does not go directly back to Siena. He borrows clothes, rides the horse Fortarrigo had been riding, and goes to his kinsfolk at Corsignano, where he stays until his father supplies him anew. Fortarrigo’s theft therefore costs Angiolieri the money, clothes, and horse prepared for his journey to the cardinal, and forces him into dependence on his family once more. The tale says that Fortarrigo’s villainy was eventually punished, but gives no further account of that punishment.

Narrative Role and Significance

Neifile introduces Fortarrigo’s story after the company has laughed at Calandrino’s folly. She contrasts Calandrino’s unwitting disclosure of his wife’s private diversions with a tale in which one man’s knavery defeats another’s wit and causes him grievous hurt and confusion. Fortarrigo’s own conduct is not presented as admirable ingenuity: he breaks his promise of sobriety, steals from the man who has taken him into service, and exploits the countrymen’s mistaken reading of the scene. The effectiveness of his trick depends on appearances—the shirt, the horse, the clothes, and the accusation—rather than on any proof that Angiolieri has committed the theft.

The story’s reversal also unsettles the difference between foresight and control. Angiolieri has planned his journey, secured six months’ provision in advance, and attempted to choose a capable attendant; yet his practical preparations give Fortarrigo access to the very resources he needs to ruin him. Neifile closes by saying that Fortarrigo’s knavery baffled Angiolieri’s fair advisement, while also noting that the villainy did not go unpunished in due time and place. The ending thus grants Fortarrigo a striking immediate victory without treating it as a final or just resolution.