The Merchant's Tale
Referencing the end of the Student's tale, where Grisilda weeps tears of joy as her family is reunited, the Merchant says, you're right, marriage is a weeping affair. I've been married two months now, and I've been weeping the entire time because my wife is so awful.
Skep: "Okay, what's bad about her?"
Merchant: "Uhh... well, she's kind of mean I guess."
The Merchant has more to say about marriage that will surely prove to be very enlightening commentary, so the Host makes him go next, and this is the story he tells:
There is a knight by the name of January who, despite reaching the age of 60, has remained unmarried his whole life. However, now that he's reached the age he could drop dead any minute, and he still hasn't produced a suitable heir, he's coming around on the marriage thing. To the point where he's waxing poetic for so long about how great marriage must be that it took me a good half hour or so of reading to get to any actual plot.
So he decides he must take a wife in short order (he also decides that she must be no older than 20, which, blegh. Half your age plus seven my dude, everybody knows that rule). He calls in his two brothers to help find a suitable bride.
One of his brothers says that marriage sucks.
January says "You're wrong."
The brother says "Okay I guess I am." Then both brothers peace out for the rest of the story.
The knight settles on a woman he likes; her name is May. The fact that they are both named after months is completely irrelevant. They get married, and they have an afterparty, as you do. As the night progresses, January is so eager to consummate the marriage that he starts shooing guests out, except for his closest friends, who get to hang around to watch the priest to bless the bed beforehand. God the Middle Ages were weird.
While this is happening, one of January's squires, named Damian, looks on with despair, because he fancies May too.
A few days later, January notices one of his squires is missing. The other squires tell him that Damian is really sick. January expresses concern, and says that he and May should go visit him after lunch.
However, after lunch, January decides he's just going to take a nap instead, but May should totally go see Damian. Of course, he's faking, and he manages to slip May a note while her handmaids aren't paying attention. Afterward, May hides in the bathroom to read the note, which says "Do you like me? Circle Yes or No."
May is extremely empathetic toward both Damien's fake sickness and lovesickness, so she circles "Yes" and slips the note back under his pillow the next time she sees him.
Some time passes, and January goes blind in his old age. He is distraught and depressed at first, but his mental health improves with time. However, as a result, he has gained something of a jealous streak. So he decides that, lest she become unfaithful, May shall never, ever leave his side. This presents something of a problem to May, who is still plotting how best to have a tryst with squire Damian.
At this point in the story, we learn that January has on his property a magnificent garden that is enclosed in stone walls, except for a single gate, to which he possesses the only key. No, I have no idea who is supposed to be maintaining this garden if nobody else can get in. However, May is fortunate enough one day to have the opportunity to press the key into wax, which she sends to Damian so that he can get a copy made.
This still doesn't sort out how May is going to get away from her husband for long enough to do the deed. One day, however, January decides he wants to take his wife for a stroll around the garden. May sends word to Damian (somehow), and using his copy of the key, he sneaks in to the garden before January and May arrive, where he hides in a bush. January and May enter the garden alone a short time later, and May uses tactical military hand signals carefully choreographed ahead of time (again, somehow) to silently instruct Damian to climb up a pear tree. January must be growing deaf, too, because he doesn't hear the other man climbing the tree, which I assure you is hardly a quiet affair.
At this point, Pluto and Proserpine come up from the underworld to check out the goings-on in this garden (no clue how they got in), and they get to chatting:
Pluto: "Look at Damian hiding up in that tree! I bet May's going to cheat on her husband. Mark my words, if she so much as looks at Damian funny, I'm going to restore January's eyesight so that he catches her in flagrante."
Proserpine: "If she gets caught, I promise she's going to come up with a really good excuse though."
Pluto: "Bah, you wives are all the same. None of you are any good. Solomon even said so himself."
Proserpine: "You're quoting Solomon? I don't care what that asshole thought. Hell, he even turned away from the one true God at the end of his life, didn't he? How can you trust anything he says?"
Skep: "Are the Roman gods Catholics now???"
Pluto decides he doesn't want to talk about it any more, meaning that he is clearly wrong. However, he already swore that he will cure January's blindness if May has coitus with Damian, and Proserpine swore that May will have a very reasonable excuse for it all, and there's no take-backsies even though they're gods (or maybe they're not, seriously nobody thought through the ramifications of having Roman deities reference the Christian God as their superior so now I have to be the one to figure out how that works I guess).
As the couple enjoys the garden, May eventually says, "Wow, you know what I just got the biggest craving for? A pear." Nobody in the world has ever said this before, but January does not find it suspicious. However, he cannot reach the pears himself, and damned if he's climbing up any trees, so he bends over to give May a boost to climb up the tree herself.
Of course, this is the tree that Damian is in, and so the two finally get to do their thing. In a tree. How was any of this worth it.
Well, as promised by Pluto, January's eyesight is magically restored by this act, and he looks up to see Damian and May going at it up there. He is understandably very confused and upset and demands an explanation.
May detaches herself from Damian and begins to gaslight January. She says, "I know what it looked like, but you've got it all wrong! I was told that wrestling with a man in a tree would restore your eyesight, so really, I did this for you!" Which is I guess the best excuse she could come up with on the fly, but really, this is just so comically bad that I had to re-read it five times just to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting the text.
Even January sees that this is a terrible excuse. "Like hell you were wrestling! I saw penetration!" But May says, no, actually, it's just like how in Return of the Jedi, Han Solo's vision was blurry for quite a while after he was unfrozen from the carbonite. Same thing here! Your eyes just needed some time to readjust, during which you weren't seeing things clearly.
Not only does January buy this, but he asks none of the other million questions I would have at this point, such as "Who even told you that wrestling a man in a tree would restore my eyesight? How would that work? Why is Damian the man in the tree? How did he even get in here?" I guess we'll chalk this one up to senility.
Anyway, May climbs down from the tree, she and January embrace, and they go inside to live happily ever after.
The Host, channeling some real Boomer energy, says, see, this story proves that all wives are awful, God I wish I'd never gotten married. (Sounds to me like a personal failing, but I digress.)
Here ends the Merchant's Tale of January.