Day the Ninth

Day the Ninth marks a deliberate change in the storytelling routine: under Emilia’s governance, each member of the company may speak according to personal inclination rather than follow a shared subject. Its opening pairs that formal freedom with the group’s familiar daily order, as the storytellers leave the palace for a morning walk, return for music and a meal, and assemble again for their tales.

Governance and Storytelling Rule

The transition from the end of the eighth day introduces Day the Ninth with Emilia as its governor. The day’s rule is explicit: each person may discourse according to what pleases them and what they most like. Rather than channeling all the tellers toward a single assigned topic, this arrangement makes individual preference the principle organizing the day’s stories.

That change occurs within a larger framework established for the company during the plague. The group consists of seven women and three young men, and the storytelling project is presented as a source of comfort, especially for women whose restricted lives leave them fewer ways to distract themselves from sorrowful thoughts. Day the Ninth’s open choice of subject gives the company a particularly broad space for that shared diversion.

The Morning Outing

The day begins with Emilia summoning her companions and leading them from the palace to a nearby coppice. The light is changing the color of the sky, and flowers are lifting their heads in the meadows. There, the company encounters wild goats, deer, and other animals standing close at hand, apparently made unafraid of hunters by the prevailing pestilence. The visitors approach them, move from one animal to another, and watch them run and skip.

As the sun rises higher, the company turns back. Its members wear garlands of oak leaves and carry flowers and fragrant herbs; their cheerful procession of singing, conversation, and laughter makes their defiance of the surrounding danger visible without suggesting that the plague has ended. The animals’ unusual tameness and the company’s festive appearance place vulnerability and pleasure side by side at the opening of the day.

The Company’s Daily Order

On returning to the palace, the group finds its servants in good spirits and everything arranged in orderly fashion. The storytellers rest briefly, then hear six canzonets, each merrier than the one before, before washing their hands and taking their places at table as the queen directs. They eat cheerfully, dance and make music afterward, and then, at the queen’s command, those who wish to do so retire to rest.

When the customary hour arrives, the company gathers again in its usual place to tell stories. The sequence—from the outing and return, through song, food, dance, and rest, to the evening assembly—shows that the freedom of the day’s subject does not dissolve the social structure that sustains the storytelling. The rule grants latitude within a dependable communal routine.

Beginning the Day’s Tales

At the evening gathering, the queen asks Filomena to begin. Filomena smiles and starts the day’s storytelling, linking the formal announcement of unrestricted choice to the actual performance of the first tale. Day the Ninth thus opens not with a new subject imposed from above, but with an invitation to tell according to individual preference, carried out within the company’s established rhythm of shared entertainment.