Prologue

“The man of law”‘s tale begins with the man of law which is asked by the host to tell a story, and he thinks to one that a merchant told him before and that talks about poor people and their unluckyness and the rich people like merchants.

                   The story

The story begins with a group of Syrian merchants that decide to go to Rome for pleasure; there they meet the Emperor of Rome and his daughter, Dame Constance, which was beautiful, kind and pleasant.

They stay there for a while and when they return at home; there they meet as always the Sultan of Syria, which wanted to know what the merchants did and saw in their journey.

The merchants tell the Sultan about Dame Constance, and he fells in love with her, so he decides to ask the Emperor, her father, about their marriage. There’s only a problem, to marry Constance the husband must be Christian.

Because of his love for Constance, the Sultan decides to convert himself and the whole sultanate to Christian religion, so he can marry Constance, and then the wedding is set.

After that, Constance is sent in Syria to marry his future husband, but the Sultan’s mother and some people are unhappy of the unespected change, and so during the wedding day’s fest following her plan she kills all the christians, including the Sultan, except for Constance.

Dame Constance is set on a boat and is sent away, and there she prays asking for help. After three years of sailing she’s saved by a constable and his wife Hermengild, in the kingdom of Northumberland. She has her memory lost but still has her faith, so she succeeds in converting the couple to Christianity.

A false knight however keeps trying in seducing her without succeeding, and so the Devil makes him kill Hermengild while she was sleeping and when her husband was away to Northumberland’s king Alla.

Then the knight puts the knife which killed Hermengild next to Constance when she was asleep.

Once at home the husband finds Hermengild dead and Constance asleep next to the bloody knife; so the king wants to investigate about the murder and the constable starts to tell him about how he had found Constance, so the young knight is called by king Alla to talk about Constance’s guilt.

When the false knight was witnessing about that, a lightining came from the sky and hit him, so king Alla found out that he was lying. Then the knight was killed and the kingdom of Northumberland converted to Chiristianity, so king Alla and Constance got married.

While Alla was in Scotland, Constance had a baby, Maurice, and she wrote a letter to the husband to tell him abouth his son.

But Alla’s mother, Donegild, got that letter and switched it with another where the baby was described as deformed and cursed.

Alla, once received the letter, sends another one to Constance saying that the baby had to be loved despite of his appearence, but again Donegild gets Alla’s letter and switches it with another which ordered that Constance and her son had to be sent away from Northumberland in the same ship that carried the Dame there, and this happens.

Once returned from Scotland, Alla finds out the trick of Doneglid, and so he kills her.

Constance sails for a while and then she is saved by a Senator of the father, the Emperor of Rome, but he doesn’t know who she is.

He brings her to his wife, which was also Constance’s aunt, and she takes care of her and Maurice.

King Alla, due to the murder of his mother, came in piligrimage to Rome, and when the Senator knew it he invited him to a feast. There, for the will of Constance, he brought with him Maurice, and once Alla saw him he found out that he was his son, and so thanks to the Senator he meets Constance. Then she meets her father again, and with Alla goes to England: a year later her son Maurice was crowned Emperor by the Pope after the death of his grandfather.

                    Epilogue

The Man of law concludes his story and the host asks to the next piligrim to tell the next one.

                The end