Pentamerone – Sapia Liccardia

Sapia the Glutton, as Burton calls it, has the following faux Jacobean summary
“Sapia with her ability maintaineth herself in all honour, in spite of the bad example of her sisters, their father being away. She laugheth at her lover, and foreseeing the danger which overshadoweth her, she surpasseth it; and at last the king’s son taketh her to wife.” Like most of these stories, it parks the moral up front. Basically it’s that it is better to have good judgement than money, because one comes and goes, but the other will be with you in need.

Long ago there lived a merchant named Marcone, with three daughters: Bella, Canzoll and Sapia the Glutton. He had to go to market, and knowing the eldest were great flirts, he nailed the windows shut. Then he gave each girl a ring with an enchanted gemstone, that would change colour if they were “unseemly”. As soon as he leaves his elder daughters attempt to pry open the windows. His youngest daughter has a crying fit about how this is a house, not an orange seller’s cart, which is an odd sort of thing to say, but ties in surprisingly sharply with early Australian sex work and the Razor Gangs in Sydney, as one of the main players was an Italian grocer who worked a cart. Moving on.

Opposite their house is the king’s palace. The king has three sons. The boys make eyes at the girls, then blow kisses of the hand., then talk, then make promises, then scaled the walls of the house. The two older girls and boys go off, but Sapia slides out of Prince Torre’s grasp, like an eel, and locks herself in her room. He’s forced to “hold the mule while his brothers are filling sacks at the mill.” in Burton’s version. He leaves discontented, and his passion grows over the days which follow, as do the bellies of the older sisters.

They get sick of being chided by Sapia, so they conspire with Torre. The sisters claim that they have the worst cravings for some of the king’s bread. Sapia agrees to collect it, so they lower her out of the window that the king’s sons have smashed in, dressed as a beggar. She begged at the king’s palace, and the Prince, being in on the scheme, leapt out and grabbed her. Fortunately, she had a sharp comb in the back of her hair. She fled, and he was maimed for a few days.

A few days later, the conspiracy tries again. The sisters send Sapia to steal two pears from the king’s garden. Sapia meets the king;’s son in the garden, and gets him to climb up for the pears. After he throws them down she pinches his ladder and heads home, leaving him to be rescued by a gardener. He vows revenge.

The sisters give birth to two beautiful boys, and fearing their father’s imminent return, get Sapia to take the children to the palace. She puts a baby in the bed of each of the older princes, and a large stone in Torre’s. The older princes think their kids are great, and Torre is angry he didn’t get one. He throws himself dramatically on the bed to sulk, and knocks himself out on the stone.

Marcone rolls back into town, and checks the chastity rings. He’s a terrible person, and grabs his sword to torture the girls, but they are saved by the arrival of a couple of princes with wedding proposals. He decides that all’s well that ends well, and agrees. He also throws Sapia into the bargain, which she thinks is unwise. She makes a statue of herself out of sugar and pastry before the wedding, then leaves the celebration early claiming fatigue. She slides the statue into her bed, and hides.

Her husband comes in and says “Now shalt thou pay me, 0 ungrateful bitch, for all the anguish and heartsore thou hast caused me ; now shalt thou perceive what it is for a cricket to compete with an elephant; now shalt thou pay for all, and I will make thee remember the comb in the linen bag, the ladder taken from under the tree, and the other tricks thou hast played me.’ then he stabs the statue in her bed with a poignard. Not satisfied, he then says ‘And I will even drink thy blood.’ While he’s sucking the sugary centre out of the statue he is overcome by the metaphor, and believing he should not have slain such a sweet damsel, he begins to lament and weep and generally carry on, to the point where he decides to kill himself.

Sapia launches herself out of the closet and grabs his wrist saying ‘I’m alive. By the way I was only vexing you to check your constancy. Pardon me for my misdeeds.” And then they have make-up sex and live happily ever after. Remember, this guy’s meant to be the hero, and quite a catch. This sort of oversensitivity is meant to be a sign of nobility, princess and the pea style.

In the version of this I read first, Beautiful Angiola, they don’t make up by having it away: they eat the statue together. That’s even weirder, but I like it more, because it seems like a mystery cult initiation.