The Reeve's Tale
Content Warning: This story contains acts of sexual assault played for laughs by Chaucer and super doesn't hold up. The acts are not detailed, and my brand of commentary is only concerned with calling out characters on their bad behavior. Nevertheless, if this kind of thing isn't for you, please feel welcome to skip forward to the Cook's Tale.
Everybody has a good laugh at the Miller's tale, except for the Reeve, who is a carpenter by trade and is feeling a little bitter about the carpenter getting the butt end of that story. He says, yeah, I could tell a story where a miller gets his, but I'm old now so I'm able to resist the temptation. But then he just goes on and on about how old he is, until the Host says, sheesh, we get it, we're better off just listening to you tell the stupid tale.
So basically what follows is the Reeve being like "oh yeah, well, I can tell a story like that too", except he can't because he goes and makes it weird, as evidenced by the content warning at the top of this page.
With that disclaimed, here's the story told by the Reeve:
Out near Cambridge there lives a miller. His name is Simkin; or at least, that's what Chaucer calls him, but in dialogue every character calls him "Simon". This is never explained, but seems like it would be one of those things linguistics nerds would chime in on.
Simkin is a big man who carries daggers on him, and he's seen as a bit of a bully. He is married to a woman who was technically nobility, but was so low down on the totem pole that it hardly matters, but she's a snobbish sort anyway. Unlike the carpenter's wife from the last story, the men leave the miller's wife alone because there is a very real possibility of stabbing.
The two of them have one daughter of around 20 years old, and a baby that's about a year or so old. This age gap is never explained, either, but if I had to guess I'd say it was due to plot contrivance.
Simkin is a good miller, but he's also a bad miller. By that I mean that he's good at milling, but bad in that whenever people come to have him mill their grain, he skims flour off the top. Usually he's pretty sneaky about this, but lately the steward at Cambridge college fell very ill, and the miller skimmed quite a lot off the top and was really very brazen about it, which kind of pissed off the college warden.
One day, two Cambridge students, John and Alan, decide they're going to go get some grain milled, promising the warden that they won't let the miller get a single crumb of flour. Usually, somebody will just drop off their grain, then come around and pick it up later; but in this case, the students make a big production of "actually, I've never seen how milling works before, what an interesting process, I think I'll stay and watch!" to keep Simkin from skimming.
Simkin, who is absolutely going to steal some flour for himself, is not at all bothered by this. While they're watching the grain, he steps outside and unties Alan's horse, which runs off toward the field where all the mares are, because horses gonna horse. When John and Alan are about to leave, they find that the horse has run off, so they drop everything to go run off after it, even though they know this means that Simkin is going to take their flour, which he certainly does.
The students recover the horse, but it takes all day, and it's definitely too late to travel. They feel pretty stupid about everything, but figure, well, we don't have a lot of options, we'll just have to pay Simkin to put us up for the night. Simkin's more than happy to take some more of their coin, but he's not an entirely ungracious host, and the ale goes around quite freely until it's time to crash for the night.
In this case, Simkin's home is not very big, and everybody has to share the bedroom: Simkin and his wife have a bed with the baby's cradle at its foot, the daughter has a bed off to the side, and Alan and John are bunked together in the third bed.
Simkin and his wife pass out and start snoring very quickly. At this point, Alan tells John, "man, we're going to go back looking like fools because the miller took our flour. We both know that's bullshit. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go have sex with his daughter." So he sneaks off to do that, and it's really icky.
John lays there a while longer thinking, yeah, the miller got us good, but at least Alan's getting what's owed to him if you discount the fact that he's doing it in the most morally reprehensible way possible. Then he decides, ah, screw it, I'll make a play of my own. John's play is to move the baby cradle to the foot of his bed, which sounds dumb but will somehow work out even though the thought process behind it is ludicrous if you really analyze it.
In the middle of the night, Simkin's wife gets up to use the bathroom. It's still pitch-black when she gets back, and she's still a little woozy from the drink, so she feels around for the crib to figure out which bed to get into. Of course, it's now at the bed that John is in, which, again, seems a bit of a stretch that he predicted that turn of events, but I guess he read the script in advance. Anyway, she gets into bed with John, and eventually he has sex with her, which is also really icky.
Alan wakes up before sunrise and tells the daughter that he's off to leave her forever now. The daughter, who has become enamored with this person after suffering abuse at his hands, says, okay, well, I should tell you that we used your flour to bake bread, here's where you can grab it on your way out.
Alan needs to wake up John, so he feels around for the crib; says, ah, that's the miller's bed then; and goes to the other bed without the crib. To the person in that bed, he says, "psst, let's get out of here, also for the record I had my way with the miller's daughter and deserve everything that's going to happen to me in the next fifteen seconds."
Simkin dramatically opens his eyes and says "I couldn't agree more." Then he lays a beating on Alan, breaking his nose and busting his mouth up. The two scuffle around in the dark a bit longer until Simkin trips and half-lands on his wife, who is freaked out and grabs a nearby staff to try and clobber Alan with, but she misses and knocks out her husband instead.
Alan and John take the opportunity to get away, steal their bread back, and bugger off back to Cambridge, having partaken in a delightful romp which will result in zero charges levied against them because this story exists in a world governed by a toxic patriarchy which persists to this day.
Here the Reeve's Tale is ended.