Datini-Bad It hadn't been easy that last week, what with managing excess staff, bringing in all the available crops from all the Datini farms, lifting bridges from roads that might see the passage of armed cavalry, (I mention in passing that ancestors of mine in a later war, were reputed to have made a nasty guerrilla weapon just for passing cavalry, that is horseshoe shaped devices, thrown into the road with triangular spikes facing up, which when trodden upon lamed the horses. It was the American War of Independence. My ancestors left for Nova Scotia…) seeing to the collection of outstanding debts, and generally doing all the things that historians six hundred years later (both men and women) would say that women didn't do.

So, when Margherita received a lengthy letter full of more instruction with the following button pushing line: "About that tunic you found, the one that has given me so much grief, your brain is so small that you would have found it if you'd looked where I told you, instead of following your own whims", her reply, also embedded in much businesslike discussion, was:

In the matter of the tunic, about which you say you are upset by my failure, to that specifically I have no wish to reply whether it was my fault or not, but I wish you to remember through your goodness, since I have so little brain, how the business of this tunic went. I remind you that you yourself had loaned it and it was you who had it returned and, remember, that you had all that straw mattress stuffing removed from the bed in the room on the ground floor and you said that you had put it here, and I remember that you looked for it two or three times in my bed and your own self that said while you were searching: “There is no need to search here, since I left it on the bed of the ground floor room”, and you said: “I put it on the bench, since I was removing the straw and I put it on the bench”. When the tunic was discovered, I was in the hall and was dictating to Guido who said to me: “We have found a tunic” and I said “Where?”, and they said: “On the bench on the edge of Francesco’s bed” and then I remembered, when you had been looking, that you said to me:"I left it on the bench” and I said “Then that must be that tunic that Francesco lost” because of the details you gave me; but you said it was in the room on the ground floor: I leave it to your discretion as to whose was the fault.

She also claimed to be unable to deal with some personnel issues around debt collecting because her brain was known to be too small.

Of course , when your husband is in Florence 60 km. away, and you've just had a fight, mediated unsatisfactorily through a scribe and a courier named Arghomento on a donkey (name not specified), advice about never going to sleep on a quarrel is pretty much useless.

So, I wondered as I translated Margherita's next letter, dictated immediately after, and before receiving a reply from Francesco, if I detected some anger management. First there was the slightly hopeful opening:

Today, through the brother of Benedetto’s wife, we wrote you a letter; Fattalbuio was here and said that you had not received it. (With luck some marauder picked it off…)

Then there is the following:

I am sending you through Arghomento a hamper in which are several mushrooms, which were sent to me last evening and several frogs, they are fresh, taken today at dusk, but I had them cooked to save you the trouble…I am baking 25 loaves of bread…Let me know if you decide not to come to Prato and I will send bread.

I frequently use food when trying to paper over the cracks…