“Number one to the Wolf!”
“Number five to the Dragon!”
“Number two to the Tower!”
“Number ten to Onda, the Wave!”
Giorgio shot out of the courtyard, but the way to the corral was blocked. By the time he could wriggle through, the drawing was over! And, suddenly, there was trumpet music, and drums beating wild, and the barbaresco of the Onda was leading Gaudenzia to their stable. In an agony of emptiness Giorgio melted into the throng, went tagging along like some outsider. With no halter or bridle to hold, his hands felt awkward, useless. A piece of his heart was going away with Gaudenzia.
Should he catch up with the barbaresco and tell him about the crib-biting? Should he offer his belt? Should he offer to clean Gaudenzia’s stable tomorrow, and tomorrow?
No, everything was out of his control now. In the next moments he lived a lifetime. No contrada had asked him to be their fantino. Why should they? In two Palios he had not won.
A fight started in the crowd. A young boy from the Dragon and one from the Tower began with friendly roughness, yanking each other’s caps, then grabbing contrada scarves, then arms swinging, and fists pummeling. Giorgio wanted to join in, to throw one and then the other flat on the ground. Anything would be better than having nothing to do. Someone in the crowd recognized Giorgio, pointed a finger at him. “Hey, fantino! Afoot now? Ha! Ha!”
Giorgio leaped at the lanky fellow, ready to land a left jab, when suddenly his arm was wrenched behind him. A strange, deep voice commanded: “Hold there, Giorgio! Let up! Street fighting is for boys. You face the real battle, the battle of the Palio.”
Giorgio looked into the eyes of a gentleman. At once he recognized the man. He had just seen him on the platform with all the officials. “You!” he gulped for air. “You are General Barbarulli, leader of the Onda!”
The General smiled. Then he linked his arm into Giorgio’s, and above the din spoke into his ear: “The Chief-of-the-Town-Guards tells me it is you who trained Gaudenzia.”
Giorgio nodded, scarcely breathing.
“A stroke of chance has given her to the Onda, but,” the General slowed his words, emphasizing each one, “but with Giorgio Terni as her fantino, that is not luck. That is destiny.”
Chapter XXII
SPEAK! SPEAK!
Immediately after Giorgio’s talk with General Barbarulli, four bodyguards were assigned to him. They were tall, strapping fellows—Carlo, Pinotto, Enzio, and Nello. Their eyes followed him wherever he went. They never let him alone. Even at night he could feel them peering at him, boring right through him in the dark.
“Am I a dog on a leash?” he asked, trying to make a joke of it.
The young men only laughed at the trapped-animal look of him. “We attach ourselves to you,” Carlo said kindly, “to prevent rival contradas from coming with secret offers.”
“But no one will! Even the Chief-of-the-Guards tells me that. He says I have not yet seen enough Palios.”
The boys agreed. “But we must also protect you from street fights,” Enzio explained. “We must save your hands. They are small as . . .”
“I know.” Giorgio bit his lips, then supplied the missing words. “Small as girl’s hands!”
It was scarcely any relief to swing up on Gaudenzia and ride twice a day in the Provas. For even then he was not free. He knew that he was being carefully observed, his every action noticed and weighed.
Why, he asked himself, did it take two Palios to teach him all the rules and regulations leading up to the big race? He answered himself honestly. Turbolento and Lirio, the horses he had ridden last year, had been little more than names to him—no, they had almost been nameless. But Gaudenzia was a part of his very life.
So now, for the first time, he was terrified by a rule that had not really concerned him before. According to a proclamation of the Grand Duke in 1719, the choice of the fantinos is not made final and official until the day of the Palio. If through Giorgio’s carelessness Gaudenzia were kicked and lamed as in last year’s Prova, he could be dismissed abruptly. He had been hired, yes, but he could still be replaced, even on the very morning of the Palio!
Thus, tortured by uncertainty, he took great care to keep Gaudenzia clear of the other horses, and to bring her in slowly at the finish of each Prova.
At night, however, he and Gaudenzia knew no restraints. When the moon rode high, he took secret delight in waking his bodyguards, who slept on mattresses in his room.
“Wake up, or I go alone!” he told the sleepy young giants.
Grumbling, they dressed and went out with him into the night. They pounded heavily on the locked door of the stable of Onda. It was easier to wake Gaudenzia than the sleeping barbaresco.
“Open!” shouted Giorgio, and it was the mare’s stomping and pawing that finally woke the groom. She remembered well the routine of galloping in the dark, and the time clock in her mind said, “Now.”
The city lay asleep. In the twisty streets, small yellow flames flickered here and there before shrines to the Virgin Mary. But in the shell of Il Campo the moon shone clear and bold.
This was the real Prova! The four young men and the barbaresco, watching in the deep moon shadow, nearly forgot themselves in awed excitement. They were fully awake now. They wanted to shout and cheer at the smooth-flying gallop. Around the treacherous curves Gaudenzia went flying as if she were suspended on pulleys. Only an occasional spark from her hoofs showed she was earthbound.
In less than an hour they were all back in bed again. For Giorgio and Gaudenzia, sleep was sweet after the moonlight gallop.
• • •
July first, the day before the Palio, turned hot, with a brassy sun. The morning Prova took place at the hour of nine. General Barbarulli was on hand to observe, and afterward he stopped Giorgio on the way to the stable. He looked at Gaudenzia, but not at her head. He seemed to see only the heel that had been hurt last year.
“She goes sound?” He clipped out the questions. “She goes true? Her legs, are they cool after the running?”
“Si, si, General.”
“The Provas are nearly over, son. Already there have been four. If all goes well in the last two, you will be fantino for the Contrada of the Wave, and tomorrow your name will be inscribed in the archives, officially.”
Giorgio managed an anxious nod. He waited for the General’s next words.
“Thus far she has not won a single Prova.” Something in the man’s voice told Giorgio that he was in no way displeased.
“Tonight,” he went on, “is the banquet before the Palio. As you know, it is the great meeting of our people. You must come and you will be seated between Captain Tortorelli and myself. Your bodyguards will bring you at the hour of eight. From you only a short speech will be expected.”
“A speech! Me? A speech!” Giorgio grabbed a handful of Gaudenzia’s mane as if he might topple off. The bodyguards came up then to accompany him to the stable. His lips moved drily. “A speech I must make,” he mumbled in deep misery.
• • •
All that afternoon Giorgio struggled with pencil and paper. As the result of his labors he produced only three small sentences. These he copied neatly on a clean sheet and folded it into the breast pocket of his good suit.
Promptly at the stated hour Pinotto, Carlo, Enzio, and Nello led him toward the church of the Wave. He felt like a prisoner on his way to execution, as they wound in single file through the narrow streets, through the arch of San Guiseppe, then through the doors of the church itself, and down the wide, winding staircase into another world deep under the sanctuary.
Giorgio stood gaping at the splendor. The banquet hall was high-vaulted and vast. Already many people were seated in their places at the rows of tables, but some were still standing in clusters, deep in conversation. With the entrance of the burly guards towering over the slight figure of Giorgio, all faces turned in his direction.
“Look! Our fantino! He comes!”
; General Barbarulli signaled the bodyguards to come to the speakers’ platform. For one frozen moment Giorgio saw the scene and remembered. Yes! There was the long table on the raised flooring, and the snow-pure cloth spread over it, and the serious-faced men seated on one side only. It was like the painting of the Last Supper, the one hanging above his mother’s and father’s bed. Overawed, he wanted to bolt, wanted to hide behind his bodyguards, but they were gone! They had stepped down from the platform and melted into the crowd.
The General and Captain Tortorelli welcomed Giorgio with cordial handshakes. Nervously, he felt for his speech in the place where his pocket should be, but his hand felt cotton, not wool, and he looked down and saw he had no pocket! He remembered now he was wearing the uniform of the Wave, the white-and-blue fantino uniform which the contrada had sent over. His speech was still in his room, in the pocket of his good suit hanging on the peg!
The Captain shook his hand a second time. “Do not worry,” he said encouragingly. “All good fantinos are nervous. Those who joke have a gross heart.” Then he introduced Giorgio to the vicar, the chancellor, the captain’s assistant, the steward, and all the councilors.
When the food was served, Giorgio ate, though he hardly knew what he ate. His ears heard the stirring battle songs of defiance, of threats, but all the while his mind was trying to recall those three little sentences he had painstakingly written down. They were gone from him. Gone as completely as if some other hand had formed them.
“We are all united in the warm atmosphere of this dinner. In joy and friendship . . .”
“Oh, Mamma mia!” breathed Giorgio, dropping his fork with a clatter. “The speeches, they begin!”
“We of the Wave,” the General was intoning, “regard this, our banquet hall, as our other home, our other hearth-place of Love and Brotherhood. Many of our families have separated for the Palio, each member having gone back to the contrada where he was born. In their place, many of us are hosts to some kinsman or friend. So first we greet and welcome those who are our guests.”
Of one accord the contradaioli applauded.
The General smiled affably. “The Palio lifts us out of the everyday life,” he continued. “We are caught up in the golden net of hope, of ambition, of glory. In four hundred years the magnificent colors of the Wave—blue for the billows and white for the foam—have won thirty-nine victories! Will Gaudenzia and Giorgio make it forty?”
“Si! Si! Si!” Wild cries bounced from wall to wall.
Giorgio listened in an agony of suspense. He could feel his chest going in and out against the place where his pocket and his speech should have been. “Please, O Mother of Perpetual Help, let him talk on and on! Let him forget I am here. Or maybe you could make an earthquake . . . or an eruption like Vesuvius . . .”
But the only eruption was a burst of applause as the General sat down and Captain Tortorelli arose.
Giorgio closed his eyes.
Captain Tortorelli half-closed his eyes, too, but he was in ecstasy. “How beautiful is the Piazza of Siena with ten fantinos in battle!” His voice resounded through the great hall. “Some call them ten assassins. Yes, the eyes of an assassin are dangerous, but in the danger they are fiercely beautiful.”
Giorgio began to shake all over. The Captain was making a half turn toward him, was facing him now, speaking to him, and the force of his breath caused the hairs on Giorgio’s head to quiver. “Fate is Queen of the Palio!” the voice rolled on. “We can prepare for victory, morally and materially, but never certainly. Only Fate and the fantino can decide between victory and defeat.
“Some tasks,” he concluded, “need a big man. Others, a small one. Some fantinos are big and strong, but some are bird-light and think more of their mount than of their own safety. Giorgio Terni, you are such a one.” He raised his glass in a toast to the boy at his side. “Our fate is in your hands.”
“Bravo! Bravissimo!” the councilmen and contradaioli cheered. Then all about there was a great gaping silence—full of eyes, full of question marks. What would the boy say? What promises would he make?
“Speak! Speak!” the people shouted in encouragement.
Giorgio rose to his feet. In the dead silence he nodded to the Captain, and then to the audience. He opened his mouth, but no sound came. He glanced imploringly into the sea of faces, but no one could prompt him. His eyes swept the room, took in the marble angels on either side of the stage. Their cornucopias were sending forth pink and red carnations, but not help. And no help came from the painted dolphin on the wall, its mouth dripping red beads of blood as if it had been caught by some fisherman’s hook. And as he stood helpless the silence grew deeper, until it was a roaring in his ears. In desperation he looked upward to the vaulted ceiling, and followed the arches that came together in a central point. It was like the chalice of an Easter lily; no, it was more like the inside of an umbrella.
An umbrella! Suddenly the face of the Umbrella Man loomed in front of him, and in spite of his terror he felt strength welling up in him. Now he wanted to talk.
“Signori of the Wave!” he began in a voice that had an odd kind of dignity in it. “Gaudenzia and I, we were both reared in the Maremma, and we fit well to each other. Tomorrow we go into battle together. Fear does not choke our courage. For us it is not victory or defeat. We think only the one thought—”
“Vic-to-ry! Vic-to-ry! Viva Giorgio!”
The crowd had finished his speech for him.
Chapter XXIII
THE HOURS BEFORE
Late on the night of the banquet, while Giorgio lay sleeping, the captains of the contradas were meeting in secret. Some were strengthening old alliances, and some were negotiating new ones. If one contrada, for example, had drawn a poor horse, it would swear to help its ally by every strategy of war.
The results of these meetings were of little concern to Giorgio, for no one, he had been told, would exact any promises from him. And so, exhausted from his speech, he had crawled into bed, and before his bodyguards had stopped joking and smoking he was asleep.
But it was not a peaceful sleep; it was shot through with a frightful dream. In writing down the name “Giorgio Terni” in the archives, the clerk broke his pen on the letter G, and the point flew up, stabbing the man in the throat. Immediately, terrifying things happened. The statue of the she-wolf atop the Palazzo came alive, came howling and hurtling down the column and put a horrible end to the clerk. Then she fell upon Giorgio, slashing him with her fangs and claws until he was unfit to race.
To the shock of crashing thunder Giorgio awoke. He jumped up, leaped over the sprawling figures of his guards, and ran to the window. He stood there, shivering, watching the storm rage. He had a strange sense that the fireball lightning was full of shooting stars, and they seemed to be spelling out the word—“O-f-f-i-c-i-a-l!” He stood there a long time, letting the wind and the rain wash away his dream. At last, chilled to the bone, he went back to bed. Sleep was slow in coming, and brief. At six in the morning the church bells startled him into consciousness. The first summons to the Palio!
His bodyguards, yawning and stretching, looked out in surprise at the rain-soaked land.
“How is it?” Giorgio exclaimed. “If I only turn the doorknob to my room or make tiny tiptoe steps, you hear! But crashing thunder? No!”
The guards laughed. As they dressed, they watched Giorgio fumble with the ties on his fantino uniform. “Could our boy be nervous?” they teased. “And him a veteran of two Palios!”
The bells were still playing when, minutes later, they climbed the steps of Siena’s great cathedral. In the shadowy interior, with the candles winking and the faint light coming through the stained-glass windows, Giorgio and the other fantinos knelt at the altar. He glanced at Ivan-the-Terrible on his left, who was riding for the Ram, and at Veleno on his right, fantino for the Giraffe. They were like friendly schoolfellows. Could they, by evening, become enemy warriors? Would the three of them now kneeling prayerfully and peacefully si
de by side soon be striking each other with their nerbos?
Both fantinos were moving their lips. Giorgio wondered if they were praying to be accepted by their contradas, or praying to win. He looked up at the painting above the altar and read the inscription beneath the Virgin’s feet. “O Holy Mother, be thou the fount of peace for Siena, and be thou life for Duccio because he has painted you.”
It was hard not to pray for yourself. If Duccio, the great painter, could pray thus . . .
“O Holy Mother,” Giorgio whispered, “be thou life for Gaudenzia.” He did not realize it was the mare he was praying for, and not himself, so closely were they tuned.
• • •
Nine o’clock came. Time for the last Prova, the final rehearsal before the Palio. The day was windless, the sky gray and cloudy, the track still slippery from last night’s rain. Giorgio resolved to take no chances. From the start to the finish he held Gaudenzia almost to a parade canter; he must save every tendon and muscle of her legs. She finished in last place.
As he returned to his room, he wondered if he had done the right thing. Had he been over cautious? Would the Onda approve? Or would they think him lily-livered, not knowing how to ride?
Torn by gnawing anxiety he washed and combed while the guards stood by waiting. In unaccustomed soberness they placed over his arm the blue-and-white jacket of Onda, the very one he would wear in today’s Palio, and in his hand the steel helmet. Then as a body they marched him to the Palazzo Pubblico, not into the vast courtyard where the horses are gathered before the race, but into the formal and forbidding Hall of the Magistrates. Here they vanished, and Captain Tortorelli arose out of the gloom and indicated a chair for Giorgio beside him. Other fantinos were already there, seated about a long table, jackets over their arms, helmets in hand. And beside each was his captain.
The city officials now entered the solemnity of the room. The Mayor, in gray-suited dignity, sat down at the head of the table, the starter on his right, then the veterinarian and the Deputy of the Festival. A lean-faced clerk with a pen behind his ear took his place on the Mayor’s left. He unrolled a great sheet of paper and laid it out before him. The sheet was empty, except for a margin of tiny colored emblems of all the contradas, and beside them, hair-thin lines waiting to be filled in.
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