Messer Torello d'Istria’s miraculous return to Pavia turns a supposed death and an imminent remarriage into a public reunion. Carried asleep from Saladin’s palace on a richly furnished bed, Torello reaches his home city just before the deadline he had asked Madam Adalieta to observe; there, the ring she once gave him becomes the means by which she recognizes him at her new wedding feast. His return resolves their long separation and completes a story in which hospitality is repaid by hospitality across distance and danger.

The promise and the false report of death

Before joining the crusade, Torello had asked his wife to wait a year, a month, and a day after his departure before marrying again, unless she received certain news that he was alive. He knew that a young, beautiful woman of high family might face pressure from her relatives if he were believed dead, so he specified a term in the hope of protecting her from an unwanted match. Madam Adalieta wept at his leaving and gave him a ring, asking him to remember her if she died before they met again.

Torello went from Genoa by ship to Acre, where sickness and the capture of the surviving Christian forces by Saladin brought him as a prisoner to Alexandria. Because he feared to reveal who he was, he put his skill at training hawks to use and came to Saladin’s notice. Saladin took him from prison into his service as falconer, but neither man initially recognized the other. Torello’s thoughts remained fixed on Pavia. When Genoese ambassadors came to negotiate the ransom of their townsmen, he sent a letter through one of them to his uncle, the abbot at San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, to let his wife know he was alive and would return as soon as he could.

The message never reached its destination. A Provençal gentleman, Messer Torello de Dignes, had died and been buried among the Christian forces on the day of their capture. Because the two men shared a name, reports that Torello was dead were mistakenly understood to refer to the lord of Pavia. His wife and kinsfolk believed the report, and her grief lasted for months. When her relatives pressed her to marry, she refused repeatedly, then agreed only on condition that she would not go to her new husband until the time she had promised Torello had elapsed.

A journey against the deadline

In Alexandria, Torello saw a man who had sailed with the Genoese ambassadors and asked about the voyage. He learned that the galleon had been driven by a violent northerly wind onto the quicksands of Barbary, where all aboard had perished. Since the letter to his uncle had gone with the ship, Torello concluded that no one at Pavia could know he was alive. With only a few days left in the waiting term, he assumed that Adalieta must have remarried. Grief and the belief that he had lost her overcame him: he stopped sleeping and eating, took to his bed, and resolved to die.

Saladin, who loved Torello, learned the reason for his distress and reproached him for not having spoken sooner. He promised to get Torello to Pavia within the remaining time, and summoned a magician whose skill he had tested before. The magician said that Torello could be transported in one night, but must first be put to sleep. Saladin understood the urgency: he praised Adalieta’s character and acknowledged that Torello’s attachment to her was worth honoring, although he would have preferred to keep his friend beside him as an equal in governing his realm.

For the departure, Saladin ordered an exceptionally splendid bed made in a great hall of his palace. It was furnished with velvet and cloth of gold, a coverlet worked with figures and set with pearls and precious stones, and matching pillows. Torello, now recovered and strong, was dressed in costly Saracen clothes and a long turban-cloth. Saladin and many of his barons came to take leave of him. The magician’s work was not merely a means of escape: it was a final act of friendship, intended to return Torello to his wife in the manner and with the honor his host believed he deserved.

The bed in the church

Saladin’s parting gifts made the journey a spectacular departure from ordinary travel. He placed a costly crown on the bed for Torello’s wife, put a brilliant carbuncle ring on Torello’s finger, and gave him a richly garnished sword and a breast clasp set with pearls and other precious stones. Gold basins filled with doubloons, strings of pearls, rings, girdles, and further valuables were arranged around him. After kissing Torello goodbye, Saladin ordered the magician to proceed. The bed, with Torello still asleep upon it, disappeared before the sultan and his barons.

It reappeared in the church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro at Pavia. At matins, the sacristan entered carrying a light, glimpsed the extraordinary bed, and fled in fright. The abbot and monks followed to investigate, but stood at a distance, uncertain what they were seeing. When the sleeping draught wore off, Torello awoke and recognized that he had been taken to the place he had requested. The monks fled again at his sigh. He called his uncle by name and explained that he was alive and had returned from overseas. The abbot, who had believed him dead for months, gradually overcame his fear and welcomed him back.

The abbot then told Torello what had happened in Pavia: Madam Adalieta had married again under pressure from her relatives and was to go that very morning to her new husband. Torello asked that his return be kept secret until he could see her at the wedding. Once it was day, the abbot arranged to attend the feast with him, presenting the disguised Torello as an ambassador from Saladin to the King of France. Seated opposite his wife, Torello watched her appear troubled, but her certainty that he was dead, together with his beard and foreign dress, kept her from recognizing him.

The ring and the public reunion

Torello arranged a discreet test. Through a page, he asked that the bride send him the wine cup in keeping with a custom he attributed to his country. Adalieta, treating the apparent ambassador as a distinguished guest, had a large gilded cup washed, filled, and brought to him. As he drank, Torello concealed the ring she had given him at his departure in the cup, then returned it with a little wine remaining.

When Adalieta uncovered the cup, she found the ring. She examined it and recognized the token she had given her husband. The discovery transformed the wedding feast: she overturned the table before her, cried out that Torello was there, and ran to him, embracing him so fiercely that no one could initially draw her away. The recognition was not produced by his changed appearance or a spoken claim, but by an object that had crossed the separation with him and still belonged to their shared past.

Torello told the company what had happened since his departure and explained that the new bridegroom had married Adalieta believing him dead. The bridegroom answered generously that Torello should do as he pleased. Adalieta put off the ring and crown from the new marriage and took up the ring she had recovered from the cup and the crown sent by Saladin. The wedding party accompanied the reunited couple to Torello’s house, where they comforted his grieving friends, relatives, and townspeople, who regarded his return as nearly miraculous. Torello shared his jewels with the man who had paid the wedding expenses, the abbot, and others; he also sent Saladin messages of his safe return and continued to call himself Saladin’s friend and servant. He and Adalieta lived together for many years, and Torello practiced hospitality and courtesy more generously than before. The ending makes the return more than a rescue from separation: the hospitality Torello once offered strangers abroad is answered by Saladin’s generosity, and the recovered marriage becomes the occasion for its renewed practice at home.