Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio Read online

  Contents

  Foreword

  I The First Signpost

  II The Umbrella Man

  III Bianca, the Blind One

  IV A Newborn

  V The Flying Centaur

  VI Giorgio Meets a Snail

  VII Bring Out the Satchel!

  VIII Over the Mountain

  IX The Cart Horse of Casalino

  X A Buyer of Ox Skins

  XI The Ghost in the Warehouse

  XII Rejected

  XIII The Goddess Fortuna

  XIV At the Curve of San Martino

  XV The Odd Pieces Again

  XVI The Rabbit’s Foot and the Horn

  XVII Gaudenzia, Joy of Living

  XVIII Back Home to the Maremma

  XIX No Morning Glory

  XX A Simple Plan

  XXI Half-bred

  XXII Speak! Speak!

  XXIII The Hours Before

  XXIV Have You Fear? Have You Fear?

  XXV Behold, the Palio!

  XXVI Victor of the Piazza

  XXVII A Time to Seek

  XXVIII All Roads Lead to Rome

  XXIX The Three Acts

  XXX Duel Between Horse and Man

  XXXI At the Victory Dinner

  And Now . . .

  About Marguerite Henry

  To the half-bred Arabian, Gaudenzia, and to her boy trainer, Giorgio, who lived this book with honor and valor

  FOREWORD

  For months I wrote the story of the Palio in my mind. I pictured a fearless boy rider in this wildest of all horse races, a boy who dared defy the ancient rules and willed his horse to win—in spite of the strict orders of his captain.

  When I finally went to Siena and faced the real battle of the Palio, I had to scuttle my preconceived plot. No rider, no matter how brave, would ever defy the ancient rules of the race. They are as firm and immutable as the walls of the city.

  But the story I found was of heroic proportions, much bigger than the one I had dreamed. A peasant boy, named Giorgio Terni, and a half-bred Arabian mare seemed pawns of fate, doomed to a life of tragedy. Their battle to outwit destiny is a drama of human and animal courage.

  The secret plotting of the Palio is so strange that I had to journey from America to Siena three times in order to understand the inner workings. There is a need in the people to relive the past, a need so intense that they change themselves into knights and noblemen of the Middle Ages for a brief moment each year.

  While I was there, I myself became embroiled in the passion of the Palio. I attended the solemn ritualistic banquet on the eve of the race, and afterward I went with Giorgio Terni and his bodyguards to listen to music in the heart of the Piazza, and I went with him into the stable of the mare, Gaudenzia. I wanted to study this courageous youth who was fully aware that tomorrow his blood and that of his mount might crimson the race course.

  I visited with Giorgio’s parents, too, and with his brother and sister in the huddled village of Monticello, far away in the Maremma country. Because I spoke no Italian we had to communicate in pantomime, but it was more exciting than any game of charades. It concerned life, and death.

  Twice I watched spellbound the pageant-parade on Palio day, and twice I shouted and prayed during the breakneck race that Gaudenzia would sweep wildly through the pack to victory.

  Dozens of people—cobblers and captains, peasants and princes—gave of their time and energy to help make this book an authentic recreation of the oldest horse race in the long history of the sport of kings.

  At last I understood that the Palio is a fire banked but never quenched. Every summer it blazes anew into a festival of such drama and color that the characters who take part might have stepped out of the Middle Ages.

  MARGUERITE HENRY

  Chapter I

  THE FIRST SIGNPOST

  In a hill town of Italy, close by the Tyrrhenian Sea, lives the boy, Giorgio Terni. He is slight of build but hard-muscled and lithe, with dark wavy hair and amber eyes the color of a young fox’s. His town, Monticello Amiata, is named for nearby Mount Amiata. But the countryside that dips down to the sea is known as the Maremma, or “marshy place.” It was once wild and desolate, and it bred strong, earthy men who grappled their living from the wetlands.

  In the rest of Italy people still think of the Maremma as a savage, wind-blown place where land and sea are not yet separated. They have heard that only work horses and bullocks are reared there, and the people who survive the fever-laden mosquitoes are wild as the sea that goes to meet the sky.

  But now things are changing. The bogs and sea ponds are being ditched and drained, and the tangle of brown swamp grass is giving way to fields of golden wheat, and to olive groves and vineyards.

  Giorgio’s father is one of the new farmers. He cultivates a narrow strip of land, and at harvest time pays a little money to the state so that in twenty or thirty years it will be his. But at heart the new farmers remain unchanged. The love of animals is strong in their blood, and they tell with pride that the horses of the Maremma stand taller and show more stamina than those bred elsewhere.

  It was in Giorgio’s thirteenth year that he resolved to make animals his life. Two experiences came to him in swift succession—one brutal, one tantalizing. When he thought about them later, he knew they were signposts, pointing the way to his future.

  Work-hardened and tough as he was, the first one shook him like a thunderbolt. He was driving Pippa, his donkey, from the hilltop village of Monticello down to the valley of his father’s farmland. It was a clear, bright day, with only a capful of wind. Spring was in the air—grapevines sending out new runners, swallows hunting straws.

  Then all at once the bright morning went black with horror. Near a wayside shrine Giorgio came upon a swineherd mercilessly beating a small, shaggy donkey. With each blow the dust rose in little clouds from the donkey’s back. As Giorgio drove up, he saw that the creature was trying to lunge away, but he was tied fast to a tree. The sight threw the boy into a blinding rage. He jumped from the cart and caught at the rope.

  “Stop it!” he shouted to the swineherd. “You’ll kill him!”

  The man turned in surprise, sweat dripping from the beardy stubble on his chin. He jerked the rope from Giorgio’s hand. “Why not kill him?” he bawled out. “Too stubborn he is to live!” Taking a fresh hold on the stick, he hit the donkey across the rump, the back, the ears.

  “Stop!” Giorgio shouted again. He braced his feet. His arm muscles went hard and tight. He waited for the stick to crack across his face. But it did not come. It kept right on flogging the mouse-colored donkey, a-whack, a-whing, and a-whack, until with a grunt more sob than bray, he fell to his knees.

  Giorgio crouched over the poor beast and stroked his head. Nearby he saw two crates filled with squealing pigs. He gave the swineherd a scornful look. “Let me load your donkey,” he cried. “Let me drive him to market.”

  With one arm the man flung the boy out of his path, then came stalking at him, making bull’s horns of his first and fourth fingers. He thrust them almost into Giorgio’s eyes. “You meddling runt! How’d you like the stick against your hide! Run for your life, or I . . .” His hand came up in a threat.

  Giorgio stood his ground. He was only a little afraid. He hated the smell of the sweat-dripping man.

  Something in the boy’s face made the man change his mind. He threw the stick far off into the field. “All right, you runt!” He spat the words between his yellowed teeth. “You so smart, you load Long-ears! You drive my shoats to market.”

  “I will! But first I drive Pippa to our farm.” The boy ran back to his cart, lifted Pippa’s head with the lines, and down the road the donkey clippety
-clopped as if there were no time to lose. Giorgio glanced back to make sure the swineherd would wait. The man had flopped down in a slab of shade made by the shrine. He was mopping his face and at the same time pulling a plug of tobacco from his pocket.

  The farm was only a kilometer away, and Giorgio soon returned on foot. With tiny new carrots and a pocketful of grain, he coaxed the donkey to his feet. Carefully he loaded him with the crates of pigs, making sure the ropes did not bind, and he tucked rags under the pack to cushion the weight against the sores. Then slowly he led the donkey to market, talking and praising him all the way. The swineherd, sullen and silent, plodded along behind.

  Three times that week Giorgio worked Long-ears, and he neither kicked nor balked. He seemed to know a friend was leading him. He accepted each load meekly, as if it were the sun or the rain. He even let himself be ridden, the boy sitting far back between the crates singing “Fu-ni-cu-li! Fu-ni-cu-la!” at the top of his lungs.

  The market men poked fun at the swineherd. “Giorgio, he makes cuckoo of you!” they laughed in his face. “Long-ears is fine worker, for the boy.”

  The taunts enraged the man, and when no one was looking, he continued to take out his fury on the donkey. There came a morning when the little beast no longer felt the pain of the floggings. He was dead.

  When the news reached Giorgio, he stopped what he was doing and made a hard fist of his right hand. Then he struck the palm of his other hand again and again, until the stinging made him quit. The hurt somehow helped him feel better, as if he had delivered the blows to the swineherd’s fat, dripping face.

  On the surface, life went on as before. Giorgio worked in the fields with his father and his younger brother, Emilio. And he worked for his mother and his sister, fetching water in great copper pitchers from the street fountain, and carrying trays of neatly shaped dough to the public bake oven. But he thought often of the swineherd’s cruelty.

  One noontime when he and his father had stopped their span of white bullocks, he spoke in great seriousness. “Babbo,” he asked, “you will not laugh if I tell you what I will do when I have a few more years?”

  “I will not laugh,” the father replied as he opened Giorgio’s schoolbag that now served as lunchbag.

  “You promise it?”

  “I promise.”

  The boy accepted the hunk of bread and the wild boar sausage the father offered. Then his arm made a great arc toward the mountains. “Some day,” he said in a hushed tone, “I will be a trainer of animals, not just donkeys. And I will climb Mount Amiata and live in the land on the other side.”

  The father nodded as he chewed. Young boys’ heads were full of dreams. He had once dreamed of leaving the Maremma country himself. “It costs dear to travel,” he warned.

  “That I know, Babbo, but I will have my own horse and he will take me.” Giorgio’s imagination was on fire. “Everyone will try to buy him. For me he will walk forward or backward, trot or gallop, or spin around in a circle. All this he will do—not in fear, but because he wants to please me.”

  “For you, my son, I hope all comes true. But do you forget that times are hard and your Babbo has to sell horseflesh for eating, not riding?”

  Giorgio was only half listening; he was on a big-going horse, sailing right over the cone of Mount Amiata.

  • • •

  If the swineherd and his donkey had planted a seed in Giorgio’s mind, it was the Umbrella Man who made it grow. He came yodeling into Monticello one misting morning three months later.

  “Om-brel-lai-o-o-o!” His voice rang out strong and clear as the bell in the church tower. “Om-brel-lai-o-o-o! I doctor the broken ribs! I patch and mend! Pots and pans, and china, too. Om-brel-lai-o-o-o!” And he strung out the word until it rolled and bounced from house to house.

  Shutters flew open, heads popped out of windows. A crock of geraniums fell with a crash on the cobblestones below. Children danced for joy, old men brandished their canes like batons. Giorgio, who had been filling pitchers at the public fountain, ran for home, spilling the water as he flew.

  “Mammina!” he cried as he burst into the kitchen. “He is here! Uncle Marco, the Umbrella Man!”

  His mother turned away from the stove, smiling. It was good for a change to have Giorgio seem more boy than man. She took from the opposite wall, next to the family’s hats and caps, an enormous green umbrella with a loose hanging fold made by a broken rib. “The tinker man works magic if he can fix this,” she laughed.

  In a flash Giorgio was at the door, umbrella in hand.

  “Wait, son! Wait!” She looked at the eager boy and quickly counted in her mind the pieces of money in the sugar pot—the soldi and the lire. Yes, if she carried the big red hen and one or two rabbits to market, there would again be the same money in the pot.

  She went to the end of the narrow room that served as kitchen, dining, and living room. Opening the bottom doors of a tall cupboard, she took out the broken pieces of a bake dish. It was the one, Giorgio saw, that he had clumsily dropped on the stone floor. Next she counted out a hundred lire.

  “Now then,” she said, putting the money and the broken dish into his hands, “go quickly. With the umbrella and the bake dish to mend, you can ask more questions than anyone who brings just the umbrella. You are happy, no?”

  Thinking of the cost, Giorgio looked at his mother in astonishment. Ever since the incident of the donkey she had tried in little ways to make up for his sorrow. She had fried crispy hot fritelle for him when it wasn’t even a feast day. And only last night he had found under his pillow the last piece of nougat left from Christmas. Now this joy! For it was Uncle Marco’s rule that whoever brought him the most work could ask the most questions.

  “Si! Si!” he answered, kissing her soundly on the cheek. Then he threw back his head, and whinnying like a King Horse ran joyously out of the house.

  Chapter II

  THE UMBRELLA MAN

  On the edge of the public fountain, where three narrow lanes come together, the Umbrella Man sat perched like some Robin Hood alighted only for the moment. He wore a brimmed hat with the tail feathers of a cock pheasant stuck through the felt. His shoes were brown leather curled upward at the toes, and the soles were of wood, rubbed shiny. When he lifted his arms one could tell that his jacket had once been bright green. Now it was powdered by dust—not gray dust, not brown, but tawny red—testimony to long days of walking the hills of Tuscany.

  Yet with all his traveling the Umbrella Man showed no sign of weariness. His eyes, dark and beady, sparkled in delight, as if this were a day he had long awaited, as if it held a special quality, rare and magical.

  “Buon giorno! Buon giorno!” He opened wide his arms to welcome his friends who came laughing and breathless to greet him. One other boy brought a sagging umbrella, and a girl carried a pitcher with a broken snout. They, with Giorgio, placed their crippled possessions at his feet, like precious offerings laid before a god.

  Before starting to work, Uncle Marco looked from face to face, beaming. He was actor as well as tinker. He had certain little curtain-raiser habits to whet the excitement. First he made a ritual of taking off his hat, running his fingers over the bright glinting feathers, and putting it back on again at a rakish angle. Then while his audience watched in growing impatience, he took a copper mug from his pocket, and let the fountain water flow into it. He drank long and heartily, sucking the water through his ragged red whiskers with a loud hissing sound.

  “Bello! Bello!” he sang out. “No water so delicious as water of Monticello!” His voice rolled strong and vibrant, full of the juices of living. “Bello, bello—Monticello!” he sang again, clapping his hands, chuckling over his rhyme.

  At last, with a grand flourish, he unhooked the pack on his back and spread out its contents on the cobblestones.

  The children craned their necks to see umbrella ribs made of canewood, patches of green and black and purple cloth, rolls of thin wire, an old fish tin, a needle curved like a s
erpent’s tongue, and a wondrous drill that looked for all the world like a bow and arrow. With a jovial wink in Giorgio’s direction, the Umbrella Man now took up the broken bake dish.

  “Giorgio Terni!” he pronounced in his best stage voice. “With you we begin. Of the world beyond the mountain, what is it you want to know? Ask, boy.”

  Giorgio’s heart beat wildly. He swallowed; he gulped. Emilio, his little brother, and Teria, his sister, crowded in on him, nudging him with their elbows. “Ask it!” they urged. “Ask!”

  Giorgio knew what to ask, but he muffled and stammered the words so they ran all together. “YoujustcomefromSiena?” he whispered.

  “Eh? Speak out. Speak out, boy! Forte!”

  “You just come from over the mountain? From city of Siena?” This time the question could be heard by everyone, even by people leaning out the windows.

  The pheasant feathers danced and nodded a vigorous “yes,” and the twinkling black eyes looked up, encouraging the next question.

  “You see the big horse race? The Palio?”

  “I see it, all right. I see both July and August Palio!”

  Everyone pressed close, heads canted, listening.

  A spotted pig wandered into the crowd, snuffling and snorting, but went unnoticed. All eyes were fixed on the Umbrella Man, watching fascinated, as slowly, deliberately, he worked on the bake dish. First he loosened the bowstring of the drill. Then he sawed away clockwise, then counterclockwise, making the tip of the arrow drill a neat little hole in the dish.

  Impatience mounted while he drilled three more holes and inspected each one carefully, nodding in approval.

  “We wire and glue later. Now then,” he sighed, with a glance to the far-off hills. “Now I carry everyone over the mountain to old, walled city of Siena!” He opened up the big green umbrella as if they could all hang onto the spokes and fly away together.

  “The Palio,” he began, taking a deep breath, “is fierce battle and race all at same time. If I tell you, you must listen. Even if it makes the hairs on your spine to quiver. Even if you do not believe it can be so!”