The Girl Who Rode the Wind

by Stacy Gregg

As each contrada paraded past, the crowd would start up with their chants. “Lu-Lu-Lupa!” If a rival went past they would shout abuse at them. A three-year-old perched on his father’s shoulder waved his flag and shouted “Puzza!” at the Giraffe contrada. It meant “Giraffes! You stink!”

  Everywhere in the crowd, the tension threatened to bubble over into violence and I thought of Marco, dragged from his horse and beaten and kicked for coming second. Only now that I was here and it was too late, did I finally realise the truth of the Palio.

  This was not just a race, this was an ancient feud. I wasn’t a jockey. I was the champion of my people, a gladiator being sent into battle. And for a gladiator, there were only two options. Victory or death.

  “Lola!”

  It was the Capitano. He was dressed in a new costume, not his long flowing robes that he had worn in the church, but a medieval-looking skirt and tights and puffy sleeves like the other men. He was leading Nico to me.

  “It is time,” he said.

  I slid down off the back of the brown pony and vaulted up onto Nico’s back.

  “Listen to me, Lola, this is important,” the Capitano said. “Now the race is upon us, the other fantinos will try to do deals with you. They will make you offers, tell you that you will never win anyway and that they will offer you money if you will take their side and help them to victory!”

  Beneath me, Nico had started to skip anxiously, as if the soil under his hooves was a furnace and he could not bear to stand still.

  “I know, Capitano,” I said. “I’ve been told about it.”

  “Ah,” the Capitano said. “So you understand that sometimes it is in the best interest of the contrada to stand back and let another take the glory?”

  I felt myself stiffen.

  “What?”

  “Lola,” the Capitano leant close to me and hissed in a low whisper, “here is the thing. You have drawn a bad position. Very bad. You are on the outside of the track. The Contrada of the Dragon have the mighty Primo, the greatest stallion the Palio has ever known. And they have the Assassino riding for them! He has won this race thirteen times. You know you cannot beat him.”

  “Are you saying you want me to lose on purpose?” I said. “Because I won’t do that.”

  “Do you really think you can win?” the Capitano snarled. “You are a cub! Not ready for the battle!”

  A cub. Not ready for the battle! The words the wolf had spoken to me last night.

  “Capitano!”

  I heard the voice of the Prior and looked up to see the old man pushing through the crowd to reach us. He had my nonna with him, keeping his arm protectively around her. I wasn’t sure if he had heard all of our conversation, but by the look of fury on his face I was guessing he’d heard most of it.

  “For five years now,” the Prior said, “ever since you have been in charge of the Palio, the Lupa have lost the race. And always the excuses. You say we have had bad horses and terrible fantinos. Now we’ve drawn the outside track. We cannot win. And so you tell this child to lose on purpose?”

  The Capitano spluttered, “I was trying to make us some money. The Contrada of the Dragon have agreed my terms.”

  “You negotiated a deal without my consent?” the Prior said.

  “I did what is best for the contrada,” the Capitano said. “We should ally ourselves with the Dragon.”

  “And lose the race before it is run?” The Prior shook his head. “This is not the way of the Lupa. I will not allow it.”

  “You cannot stop me. The Capitano has ultimate power to advise the fantino. You should not even be here!”

  “You are right, of course,” the Prior said. “You are still the Capitano and if you choose to invoke the laws of the Palio we must leave.”

  The Capitano looked smug until the Prior added, “But if you do, I will take the decision right here and now in front of everyone to strip you of your role and I will appoint Loretta Campione as the new Capitano.”

  The Capitano’s face fell. “You are not serious.”

  “I am,” the Prior replied. “Now step out of the way and let the signora talk to her granddaughter because, of the two of you standing here right now, she is the only one who knows how to win a Palio.”

  There was a stony silence and the two men stared hard at each other. Then the Capitano reluctantly stepped back. “It makes no difference,” he said. “The race is lost anyway.”

  The Prior held my nonna’s hand to steady her as she came forward until she was right beside Nico’s shoulder.

  “Are you all right, Piccolina?” she asked.

  “I’m OK, Nonna.”

  “Good girl!” Nonna said. “Now, ignore the Capitano. Forget everything he said to you because he is a fool. A rider can still win, even if they have drawn a position right at the outside of the track. You just need to ride the perfect race, and you will do that because you are my granddaughter.”

  I smiled at this and Nonna grunted with satisfaction. “Right. Here is how you will ride. You see the first corner? I have told you already that it is the most treacherous one on the course. The other riders will shove you and kick you, force you out to the edge of the track, send you crashing into the wall. You must ride a tight line, Piccolina, do not let them push you out.

  “Once you are clear of the first turn, do not take the lead. You must hold Nico back now, pull him back if you need to and wait to make your move.”

  “How far back?”

  “You keep him right at the rear until the very last lap.”

  “Right at the rear? You mean behind everyone?”

  Nonna nodded. “Let them tire their horses out. Keep Nico in range, and wait. Hold him until the very last lap, then you make your move.”

  She paused and looked around, as if she was worried about being overheard, then she leant close to me. “Piccolina, do not draw attention to yourself, but if you look behind me you will see a fantino on a big grey horse. He wears purple, green and yellow, the colours of the Dragon. Do you see him?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “That is Assassino, the Assassin. He will stop at nothing to beat you. Do not let your guard down for a moment. When you make your challenge at the end of the race, the Assassin will be right up there at the front waiting for you. His horse, Primo, he is fast, very fast. But your Nico is faster –”

  The bells sounded, their clamour the signal for everyone except the fantinos and their mounts to clear the track.

  Nonna reached up and grasped my hand one last time. “Good luck, Piccolina. May fortune favour you. Ride the wind!”

  The time had come. We were about to race.

  When my dad was still a jockey, I remember watching him in the changing rooms at Aqueduct as he put on his boots. He was about to race and yet he looked totally calm, humming away to himself as he threaded the laces.

  “Don’t you feel scared?” I asked him.

  “Of course I do, Lola,” Dad said. “You always get nerves before a race. Any jockey who says they don’t, they’re either a liar or a fool.”

  “Why are they fools?”

  “Because a rider needs the fear, that’s what gets the adrenaline pumping. You get that shot of adrenaline and suddenly: POW! Your brain goes into overdrive. Your reactions speed up, and it’s like you can see everything around you as if the whole world is in slow motion and you’re going at the speed of light.”

  “So being afraid is good?”

  Dad gave his laces a jerk. “A little bit of the fear is very good. But too much? No. Then you tip over the edge in the other direction. You panic and make the wrong move, you second-guess yourself. You take crazy risks.”

  “How will I know if I have the right amount of the fear in me?”

  “You’ll never know until the time comes, Lola,” he said. “That’s how life works. It isn’t until we’re put to the test that we know if we’ve got the stuff inside of us.”

  As the bells chimed out and the Prior ushered my nonna from the track,
I looked out over the crowded piazza and I felt the fear rip through me like electricity.

  This was no wild-ride-at-an-amusement-park fear, that sense of excitement you get freewheeling down a hill on your bike with your feet in mid-air off the pedals. My fear disabled me. I felt my legs turn to jelly and I was struck with the sudden, desperate urge to pee.

  Nico felt my nerves. He started to act crazy, crab-stepping his way down the track, past the crowds in the piazza to the steps of the town hall, in an agitated, sideways jog, swinging his hindquarters, tail swishing, a foam of white sweat forming on his neck.

  “Easy Nico.” I tried to calm him with a stroke on the neck but my hands were shaking too much. The bell sounded again but the other fantinos ignored it and continued their parading around the piazza with their chests puffed out and chins held high as if they had already won the race, riding glory laps and raising their hands to high-five the crowd as they breezed past the stands. Behind the barriers the capitanos were bellowing instructions at them, but their voices were drowned out by the deafening roar of the crowds. Everywhere you looked everything was a haze of heat and noise, madness and chaos. My arms were killing me from trying to hold onto Nico. He had his ears flat back and every time another horse came near him he acted like a stallion, giving these little squeals, all tensed up with his neck arched, and his tail swishing so vigorously it was like a jet propeller behind him. He was ready to explode.

  “Lola!” It was Frannie, waving to me. He had taken his position behind the rope right by the inside of the track. He gave me the thumbs up as if to ask if I was OK and all I could do was nod. I wasn’t OK at all. I was pretty sure I was about to throw up. On either side of me at the rope the fantinos began to shove their way into position. I was hyperventilating, unable to breathe. My heart was pounding like I was going to have a heart attack.

  Then the rope pulled taut, a single thread on which everything depended, and in that instant everything changed. In a flash my sickness was gone and I felt my blood surge, filling my veins with steel. The fear that had sapped me and turned me to jelly just moments before had mutated. Now it transformed into pure adrenaline, making my heart beat at double-speed, turning the blur around me into sharp focus. The sand of the piazza stretched ahead of me, shimmering like pure gold, and I felt Nico gather himself up, his hindquarters set to propel us like rocket thrusters. We were ready for this. I had the stuff.

  Nico broke so fast he almost sprang across the rope as it was still falling, and immediately I began to pump my arms and legs to drive him on.

  “Go!” I leant forward and urged him on. “Go, Nico!”

  We were right in amongst the pack and all around me there were fantinos driving and pushing and jostling for position. Nonna had told me I would need to hold my line into the corner, but it was only now that I realised how impossible this was, as all the riders surged at once for the same gap.

  I was stuck on the outside of the fantino for the Eagle contrada and he kept shoving me further and further out until I had nowhere to go. I gave a squeal as my leg was crushed hard against the mattresses, leaving me no choice but to pull Nico up hard and let the Eagle pass.

  Outwitted at the first turn! We had completely lost our advantage and had been driven to the back of the pack. Pull yourself together, don’t get rattled, you can come back from this, I told myself. Even though we were right at the back of the field now, Nico felt good. He was running strong, his breath coming in excited, raspy snorts.

  I could see Umberto up ahead, trailing second-to-last and dropping further behind with each stride. He’d been hoping for the ride on Dante, but after the trial races the stallion had been handed to one of the famous fantinos and Umberto had no choice but to take the ride for the Snail contrada who had put him on a sluggish dark bay named Benita. The mare was already flagging. As I pulled up alongside them Umberto raised a hand and gave me a high-five.

  “This will not be my day,” he shouted, “but it could be yours, Lola, good luck! Ride to win, kid!”

  Passing Umberto’s horse seemed to give Nico the boost he needed. He was in the race now and stretching out to gain on the others and his strides chewed up the ground as I passed by the next two riders.

  I was right up alongside the Giraffe fantino, keeping a wary eye on him, when I heard a cry on the other side of me.

  “Lola! Look out!” I turned just in time to see the fantino from the Unicorn contrada lining me up for a brutal shoulder charge that would have caught me completely off-guard.

  Leonardo swept in between us and before the Unicorn could swing his whip Leonardo had moved to block him, as if duelling with a sword.

  “Leonardo!” I was about to swerve to go to his aid but Leonardo shook his head.

  “Keep going!” Leonardo shouted. “You ride on. I got this. Go! Go!”

  I did as he said and bent down low over Nico’s neck, urging him on. We were flying now, and as we passed the town hall the screams of the crowd around us were deafening. One lap down, two laps to go. I was in the middle of the field now and at the first turn I kept my line and rode on and out the other side. We had reached the straight and I felt Nico pulling like a train, desperate to be let go.

  “No!” I fought to keep him back. “It’s too soon. Not yet, not yet …”

  Nico was reefing at the reins, determined to be let free. I gave him his head just a little, enough so that he could reach the pack in front of us. There were three horses racing abreast and we tucked in behind them. Being boxed in like this gave my arms a rest, as I assessed the field.

  The lack of stamina was beginning to show for some. I saw the Panther, the Owl and the Eagle – the early leaders, flagging. They had run the tank dry just like Nonna said they would, But Nico was still running strong and when I saw the hole open up by the railing I knew that this was it. Our time had come.

  “OK, Nico, let’s go!”

  Nico gave a snort of excitement and I felt him unleash the speed that he had been holding back all this time. All I had to do was cluck him on and he flew through the gap between the horses in front of us. We were so quick the fantinos didn’t have a chance to lay a hand on us. In only two strides we were out and in the clear and bearing down on the leaders. There were just two riders ahead of us, Frannie on his big bay, Roccia, and the Assassin on Primo.

  As we came into the third lap Nico’s strides were no longer fluid, I could feel the effort in them. This was the moment my nonna had told me about, when a truly great horse finds himself at the end of his run and must dig down deep and find something more inside himself.

  “You can do it, Nico,” I urged him. “It’s in you, I know it is.”

  Nico heard me and I’m sure he understood. He gathered his limbs underneath him and he sprinted. I felt him stretch out low to the ground and as I urged him and called to him he responded with every muscle and fibre until we were flying.

  When we ran up alongside Frannie, his horse tried his best to keep stride with us, but it was futile. Nico was too much for Roccia. We were a neck ahead and then a length and then two. I looked back over my shoulder for a moment and I saw the look of disappointment on Frannie’s face, but he nodded his head bravely to me. “It’s yours this time, Lola,” he called out. “Go!”

  We were halfway around the third lap now and only the Assassin and Primo stood between us and victory. Ahead of us I could see Primo’s mighty grey rump, rising and falling with every stride, and I realised just how enormous the grey horse really was. He was a monster! Seventeen hands and musclebound, with the thick neck of a stallion and powerful haunches. So much bigger than Nico, and yet we were gaining on him.

  Nico wasn’t daunted by this big grey beast. Unflinching and unbowed, he began to inch forward, fighting stride for stride to take the lead from Primo.

  For a moment the two horses were neck and neck and then Nico just managed to get his nose out in front and then his neck. He had beaten Primo! We had taken the lead! There was no one else ahead of us now. I c
ould see the finish line. We were going to win and Primo, the unbeatable, incredible Primo, was about to lose.

  And then from out of nowhere, I felt this blow, like a truck had hit us. Later, in the hospital, Frannie, who witnessed everything, would tell me that this was the moment when the Assassin rammed Primo right into Nico’s hindquarters.

  “It was the most dangerous thing I have ever seen,” Frannie told me. “He risked his own horse’s life to take you down. He was willing to die, I think, as long as it meant you didn’t win.”

  There was the moment of impact as Primo hit us, and then, even worse, the sickening feeling as we plummeted downwards in slow motion, Nico struggling to regain his footing in the soft, deep sand by the mattress barrier. I did the only thing I could, I grabbed frantically at the reins trying to help him rebalance. For a second it seemed certain that we were going down in a tangle of limbs and then I felt Nico plant both forelegs to give a little buck with his hindquarters, correcting his stride, and then we were up and galloping once more and I could hear the crowd right beside us roar with joy.

  “Lupa! Lupa! Lupa!”

  The line was so close now, but I knew the fight between us was not over. The Assassin was powering up beside us again. He had his whip raised and as he drew up next to us he began to lash with it, trying to hit out at Nico.

  “Leave him alone!” I was screaming at him, but he kept raining blow after blow. When he struck Nico’s shoulder there was blood where the whip had cut the flesh and when I saw it, I guess that was when I lost it.

  I no longer cared about winning the race. All I wanted was to protect my horse.

  “Over all these years I’ve seen a lot in the Palio,” Frannie told me, “but never before a fantino actually throw themselves from a galloping horse to attack another rider.”

  I didn’t really mean to jump. I only tried to shove the Assassin, to get him away from Nico, but as my hands grabbed his silks, a chasm opened up between our horses and I refused to let him go, dragging him down with me as I plummeted into the void.

  When I landed on the dirt, it was reflexes that made me cradle my head just in time as the horses right behind me came over the top of us. Through the slits of my fingers I saw the hooves pass a whisker above me. Then I heard the roar of the crowd and I knew the race was done and that they were coming for me. Coming to punish me for what I had done.