My tears, hot on my cheeks, astounded me. I touched my fingers to the wetness in wonder.
“You cannot return to Vignano. You might be recognized there. Your aunt, the village priest. Your cousins.”
“It will be better for you,” the horsemaster said softly. “A new start, a new identity. Signor di Torreforte can care for you in Corsano, where so many Palio winners are born. I have bought horses from Signor di Torreforte for the Duca d’Este’s stable—they are indeed magnificent. You will recover your spirit through the horses. All true horsemen do.”
“Women,” I said. “I am a horsewoman.”
“Sì, fantina,” said the horsemaster. “You have indeed earned that.”
Giacomo dared to pull me closer. “Virginia. You could dress as a young man and ride. No one will know the difference. There is no reason—”
I pushed him away. I looked up at them both, these two men who talked nonsense. I wiped the burning tears from my eyes, only to have more appear.
“I am not a boy,” I said. “I am Virginia Tacci.”
CHAPTER 100
Siena, Brunelli Stables, Vignano
AUGUST 1591
No one noticed the horse and rider slip out into the darkness. A light rain muffled the hoofbeats on the muddy road as they cut south and west across the hills.
By the time they reached the edge of the Crete hills, the sky had cleared and the moon blazed on the eastern horizon, throwing long shadows in front of the crippled rider and his stumbling mare.
For a Senese, there was no more sacred country than the Crete. Its expanses and rolling hills were the unobstructed view of the unfettered, indomitable spirit that was Siena.
Stella wanted to run. Weak though she was, her spirit was strong. Giorgio felt her prancing step, though every so often she lost her footing, almost buckling to the ground. Still, the night air fed the mare’s spirit; the wide, never-ending fields of the Crete invigorated her.
“Not just yet,” said Giorgio, wincing. He pulled the mare down from a canter to an extended trot. Stella had lost muscle along her backbone, making a painful ride for the sick man as her sharp bones cut into his buttocks.
Giorgio turned the horse on the crest of a hill, just outside the village of Corsano, and looked back to Siena. There was no finer view of the city, set on three hills, rinsed in the bleached light of the rising moon. He rode to a single cypress tree where a swelling breast of disturbed earth mounded a grave.
“Babbo—” he whispered. But he could not say any more as tears gushed from his eyes.
Giorgio turned away from the cypress and removed his cap. He looked across the rolling hills to the city of Siena. “They will never forget you, Virginia,” he said. “Nor will we.”
He spurred Stella into a breakneck gallop, descending the hill recklessly through the dark. A reckless gallop toward a steep ravine. Deep enough to kill a horse—and a rider, too, especially one who was half-dead already.
CHAPTER 101
En route from Ferrara to Siena
AUGUST 1591
The unmarked coach whisked us away from Ferrara. Giacomo rode beside the coachman, whether to avoid me or the stench emanating from my close encounter with the dead donkey, I did not know or care.
I bathed that night in scalding hot water in a shallow wooden tub in the village of Malabergo. The innkeeper’s wife was paid extra to bring oil soap and a reed brush to scour my skin. Giacomo had purchased a few simple linen blouses and skirts for me, and a pair of leather slippers. They had been delivered to my room in an oak chest.
The woman who bathed me must have been paid a pretty coin, for she said nothing about my stench, the nun’s habit, or the Tuscan signore who paid for my lodging. She bundled the clothes together and delivered them to Giacomo’s room—along with me, in light blue linen. My hair was still wet from the bath; my skin stung red and raw from the scrubbing.
“Grazie,” said Giacomo, nodding curtly to her. “That is all.”
After she had closed the door, Giacomo threw Anna Rosa’s habit into the fire.
“You look a damned sight better than you did a few hours ago,” he said, stabbing savagely at the burning cloth with an iron poker. A whiff of the pestilent fabric, smoking and acrid, assailed my nostrils. I covered my nose.
“I suspect I smell better, too.” I said, watching the garment turn to ash. I walked over to the window, opening the shutters. It rained quietly outside, mist rising slowly from the earth, shrouding the town.
I looked at the table, laid with a cloth, a roasted chicken, and savory dishes still steaming. A jug of wine was filled to the brim. The smell of herb-roasted fowl and crisp pancetta made my knees weak. I closed my eyes, breathing in the aroma.
“I thought we should eat. You must be famished.”
“I am used to it. Hunger is a virtue in the convent, gluttony a sin.”
He said nothing but pulled the chair out for me.
“We will fatten you up again, Virginia Tacci,” he said. “Regain your strength so you can ride colts again!”
I did not know how to respond. I sat across from the man who had brought such bitter sadness into my life. Giacomo di Torreforte had stolen a decade from my life, a decade during which all the people I had ever loved had perished.
Now he had intervened to free me from my prison.
“I do not owe you anything, Signor di Torreforte,” I said, twisting my napkin in my hands. “I do not know why you have saved me, why you risk so much to take me back to Siena. How you convinced a de’ Medici to align with a d’Este. What advantage do you seek?”
Giacomo drew a deep breath, settling into his chair. He looked at me and then back at the fire.
“I have caused you irreparable pain and sorrow. I know this.”
“I will not tell you sweet tales, Signor di Torreforte,” I said. “I will never forget your treachery. I am your worst enemy—”
He put up his hand, stopping my speech. For second, I thought he was going to strike me.
“I think you have painted a very clear picture for me, Virginia. No further elaboration is needed. And I indeed have a great deal to atone for,” he said, carving the fowl. He filled my plate with succulent slices, glistening in pan drippings and studded with roasted juniper berries.
“Come. Eat.”
“You do not expect me to ever forgive you, do you?” I said, accepting the plate from him. “Because I cannot.”
He paused, his hands still on my plate as if we were playing tug-of-war.
“No,” he said, releasing it. “I suppose you cannot. Yet. But perhaps someday.”
I thought of Giorgio and my padrino, distraught over my disappearance. My uncle dying without me at his side. Most of all, I thought of never seeing Orione again.
“Never,” I said. I stabbed at the meat with my knife and began to devour my food in silence.
Di Torreforte did not attempt to engage me in conversation. He refilled my wineglass, but he did not press me to speak. But I saw a dark shadow pass over his face.
“I am sorry we did not have an opportunity for you to pay your respects to Riccardo De’ Luca’s family before we left Ferrara,” he said finally.
My respects?
In my mind, I heard again—from a dark night that seemed so long ago—muffled cries. “Riccardo! Riccardo! Dio mio!”
I swallowed, clutching my knife, a chunk of meat still speared on the tip.
“He died in a fall, broke his neck. A failed attempt to rescue you.” Di Torreforte took a sip of wine. He watched me over the rim of the glass. “Or so went the rumor amongst the d’Este family.”
I thought of Riccardo’s deep kiss, despite his suffering. I remembered how he had pressed me close against him, wincing. His breath intoxicated me.
“He was very brave,” I said finally.
“Really? His wife did not think so,” he said, dabbing his lips with a napkin.
I stopped breathing.
“I—had not realized he was marrie
d,” I stammered.
“Indeed,” said Giacomo, watching me with a ferocity I remembered from the day he kidnapped me. “Did he not tell you that?”
He took another sip of wine. He seemed to be wrestling with his dark emotions.
“Lucia d’Este thinks her husband was a fool to have risked so much. Better to have left these matters in the hands of her uncle, Duca Alfonso. Had Riccardo been caught, he would have been banished from Ferrara as a matter of course. Persona non grata in two dukedoms—”
“Two dukedoms?”
Di Torreforte looked down into the red depths of his wine glass, brooding.
“He was in Ferrara because he had been banished from Siena,” he said at last.
I could feel the thud of each pulse of blood reach my head.
“Riccardo De’ Luca was always a reckless fool.” I heard the bitter disdain in his voice. “Did you know him well? Or was his botched attempt simply to honor Siena?”
I gathered my skirts, preparing to rise from the table.
“Forgive me, Signor di Torreforte. I think it is best if I return to my room to rest. The long ride has tired me.”
Di Torreforte poured himself more wine. “Everyone in Siena knew the fool loved you, but a married man risking—”
“Shut up!” I shouted, pounding my fist on the table. My wine spilled, staining the white linen. “Why—why did you hate Riccardo so?”
Di Torreforte’s face contorted, muscles twitching under his skin. I suppose the long day, the risks he had taken, the conflicts he suffered, provoked him to confess what he said next.
“I hated him, just as I hated all the other Senese, for detesting my Florentine blood. But then! Then he accused me of sneaking into the Drago stall to cut that mare’s fetlocks—I would never have done such a thing! I would sooner murder my own mother than harm a horse.”
I thought of the gentle care di Torreforte had given his horses—the insistence of a rubdown and rest, despite his haste to reach Ferrara.
“Then who?” I said. “Who cut Caramella’s fetlocks?”
His voice was harsh. “The Granduca Francesco was behind it. I am certain of it. Just as he was behind the boards thrown into Via del Capitano.”
Giacomo di Torreforte stood, quickly striding to my side to ease out the chair.
“Virginia. You have had a most exhausting day,” he said, casting his eyes down at the floor. “Forgive me. I have much to atone for. My temper and rancor are just two of my sins.”
I looked at his face.
Did he have any idea how many dreams had been crushed in the past few hours?
I thought I was returning to my old life, my memories.
But that life was no more than the smoking ashes in the hearth.
CHAPTER 102
Siena, Crete Hills
AUGUST 1591
The sight of Siena rising above the hilly country of the Crete was magical. Somehow the distance enhanced the walled city and its towers, a magical vision rising over the sun-bleached hills.
I hung out the window of the carriage, staring. The wind made my eyes sting, so I finally had to withdraw into the cabin.
“Even our view from Vignano—so close and perfect!—does not compare with this,” I said.
“There is something special about the perspective,” said di Torreforte, smiling for the first time since I had met him. “The perfect distance from the city, the surrounding hills for contrast. Wait until you see Siena in the winter mists. It is magical.”
His words echoed my own thoughts. How strange that we should think alike about anything.
“You should paint it,” I said, turning away from him to look again.
It was the first time we had shared a moment of peace together, where I had addressed him as a friend. I wondered if my heart was softening toward him.
“I could never do it justice,” he said with a curt wave of his hand. “I do not have the technique for landscapes.” He gazed down at the muddy floor of our coach. “I have too many failures. My betters have proved that.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps portraits would suit your talent better?”
He opened his hands, a gesture of surrender.
“The maestro once told me I had a talent for drawing anatomy and facial features. But he also told me I had not learned to love my subjects enough to find their spirit. He said my portraits were cold and stiff as the canvas on which they were painted.”
He stole a look at me, like a young boy. “The maestro accused me of being misanthropic. At the time, I considered it a compliment.”
I nodded. I knew too well the man he had been. But part of me was alert to the man he was becoming. “What else did your maestro tell you?”
Giacomo looked out the window toward Siena. He laughed sadly, shaking his head.
“He told me to find a muse. That was his answer to any artist’s dilemma. Find a muse and a passion. Like Giorgio had for painting horses.”
The stone buildings of the di Torreforte family’s Villa Corsano were imposing, standing solid and grand on the brow of a hill overlooking the vast vineyards and pastureland.
We passed a chapel across the road from the di Torreforte villa. In the slanting sunlight of late afternoon, the stone took on the tawny color of the grass field beside it.
“That is Pieve di San Giovanni Battista a Corsano,” said di Torreforte, nodding. The Parish of St. John the Baptist. “The young priest dreams of running a little school to teach the poor and orphans how to read. Perhaps, Virginia—”
“Do not say more. I need time to adjust to these changes.”
“Of course. Forgive me,” he said, bowing his head. “Changes take time.”
“It looks quite old,” I said, looking at the weather-worn stone.
“They say the baptistry was built more than five hundred years ago,” he said.
“San Giovanni Battista. Aren’t you Giacomo Giovanni? Were you named for the saint?” I asked.
Di Torreforte looked at me, then turned away.
“Yes,” he said, his voice muffled. “My father was very fond of San Giovanni. I think I disappointed him. It is a fine church. But . . . I haven’t set foot in the parish since my boyhood days.”
He looked away again. “We visited here often. I spent long stretches of my boyhood here. Many of our Palio horses were bred right here.”
“Not in Florence?”
“No. Florence was my father’s family home.”
“You are a Florentine by birth—”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I was sent to school in Florence, living in our family house on the Arno. But my mother was from Oca, and I was born and baptized there in the contrada.”
An Oca? A Senese?
I did not have time to consider further as we entered the gates of the estate.
A great crowd of servants had gathered in the cobbled courtyard to welcome us. Di Torreforte helped me from the carriage. I studied the maids, grooms, cooks, scullery maids. I saw no one I recognized amongst their eager faces.
“This is my cousin, Silvia Notari di Giovanni,” said di Torreforte. He looked at me intently. “Signorina Notari di Giovanni will be here at Villa Corsano for an extended stay. Please welcome her and give her any service she may require. The signorina should be considered the mistress of Corsano for the duration of her stay, which I hope will be a very long time.”
It took me a moment to realize he was referring to me as a signorina, now of the nobility.
The women stared hard at me, then spread their skirts wide in their outstretched hands, curtsying. The men ducked their heads, eyes lowered to the paving stones.
I felt Giacomo di Torreforte take my arm, escorting me through the foyer into the searing heat of the kitchen. Over a crackling fire in a wide hearth was an array of pots simmering with rich dishes seasoned with wild Tuscan herbs: rosemary, sage, and oregano. Haunches of meat hung from the ceiling on a long bar running from wall to wall. A calico cat looked up expectantly at the red h
ams, waiting for any drop of fat to fall on the stone floor.
“Let me show you to your room,” said the housekeeper, dressed in gray with a white kerchief tied over her hair. I nodded, following her to the stairs.
At the first step, her waist jingled with scores of keys. The sound made me start. I jumped away from her, stumbling. I clutched the bannister, gasping.
“Signorina! What is wrong?” she asked.
The keys. Mother Superior and her power to keep me locked forever behind the convent walls.
I collected myself. “Nothing. The coach ride has left me reeling still.”
“It is a long trip from Ferrara,” said the housekeeper. “You may not have your legs steady for some time.”
I said nothing. My legs would be steady once I was back on a horse.
We argued, though only briefly, the first day I was ready to ride.
I refused to dress as a boy.
“The servants know full well who I am. I am Signorina Silvia Notari di Giovanni.” My new name still felt strange in my mouth. Hard enough to get used to the name of the woman I had suddenly become without the extra confusion of dressing as the boy I never could have been. “Why should I try to disguise myself?”
Before Giacomo could object, I stamped my foot. “I am proud I am a woman, a ragazza-fantino.” Then I shook my head. “Ah, but look at me. I am not the villanella who rode the Palio. After so many years without riding, I have lost my hands, my seat, my legs. Give me a gentle horse until I recover my riding skills.”
Giacomo found a mare that the housekeeper’s grandchildren rode. He had a groom bring the saddled horse to the courtyard.
“Here, she will do,” he said. I saw the sadness in his eyes. The villanella riding a children’s mount.
“Good,” I said. I put my hands on my hips. “Now take off the saddle, Signor di Torreforte.”
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