Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio Read online

  The fountain place was so still that the drip-drip from the spigot sounded like hammer strokes.

  “Anciently,” he went on, “in old, old times before anyone remembers, city of Siena was very powerful nation.”

  Giorgio nodded to himself. This was going to be good. Not a tall tale but a true one.

  “Inside her high old walls she is divided like inside this umbrella. Only instead of cloth and ribs, she is divided sharp and clean into districts called contradas.”

  Giorgio opened his mouth. “Do they have names?”

  “Oh, splendid names—mostly for animals. One contrada is the Dragon, another the Panther, the Eagle, the Porcupine, the Wolf, the Owl. Like that,” he said, ticking them off on his nimble fingers. “Seventeen they number in all.”

  The pig came back, stole a piece of apple from a child’s fingers, and scampered away again. But the child did not even whimper. There was just the Umbrella Man, his eyes hypnotic, his voice carrying his audience along, farther and farther from Monticello.

  “In Middle Ages, each contrada was great military company of knights in armor, and each had beautiful flag with emblem in gold. And they fought blood wars.”

  Suddenly the Umbrella Man’s face beaded in sweat. His skin paled.

  “Uncle Marco! What is it?” an elderly man asked anxiously. “Are you sick?”

  “No, no.” He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “How can I explain how fierce, how strong, how loyal are feelings in each contrada even to this day?” He shook his head in despair. “Just for suppose: A father belongs to the Contrada of the Panther, the mother to the Dragon, one son to the Eagle, the other to the Ram. You see, it’s where you’re born that makes you Eagle or Ram or Panther or Dragon.”

  He stopped to blot the perspiration with a bright red handkerchief.

  “How do I explain? All year long this family lives together in happy feelings. Then come the preparations for the Palio, and—pffft!—they are enemies! In the father the Panther blood runs like fever. He forgets home; he goes to the meetings. Every afternoon, every night, in every spare time he joins the other Panthers. They make questions. ‘Who will be our jockey in the Palio race?’ ‘Shall we make the alliances with other contradas?’ ‘Who shall paint with gold the hoofs of our horse if we win?’ ‘Who shall be in charge of our Victory Dinner?’

  “And Mamma? She is not like Mamma at all. She lets the spaghetti burn. She snips and sews all day for the Dragon—mending their silken banners and the velvet costumes for the parade.

  “Mind you,” Uncle Marco shook his forefinger wildly, “some costumes were designed by Leonardo da Vinci! No wonder the Mamma’s hands tremble while she works . . . so great the honor is!”

  Giorgio interrupted. “Uncle Marco! What about the two brothers?”

  “Well, those boys, they grow warlike against each other and their father must separate them; he sends them to stay with friends or cousins in their special contradas.”

  “For both Palios?”

  “For both!” The man shrugged helplessly. “Who can understand this mystic feeling—mad, wonderful?” He waved his hand in staccato rhythm. “It is war! It is history! It is religion! All year long the Palio is a fire banked. Then it stirs; it blazes; it comes like flames sweeping down the centuries. Oh, how beautiful the faces light up and the voices sing and the banners wave!” He closed his eyes to see it all the better, and the quiet was like an intermission, only no one stirred.

  Giorgio waited in a torment of suspense until at last he had to break through. “But Uncle Marco! Speak of the race! Please!”

  The man shook off his trance. “I enter into that now.” He shivered in excitement. “First comes the story parade. Is it a common parade?” he bellowed to his rapt audience.

  “No!” they roared in reply.

  With an elfish chuckle, he clapped his hands approvingly. “Siena,” he sucked in a long breath, “lives upon remembrance of her ancient glory. Each year, for seven hundred years, she is celebrating the Victory of Montaperti. Even the gold battle car is there in the parade. And the people watch in awe, remembering their blood is the blood of their fathers shed to win that battle.”

  “But the race! The race!” Giorgio insisted.

  “All right! All right! When the parade is over, a bomb explodes bang! And out come the horses wearing the bright colors of their contradas. Away they go like quiver of arrows shot all at once. Around the town square—one time, two times, three times! And the fantinos who ride them sit bareback. They cling like the monkey. They risk life. Heads broken. Shoulders. Legs. Arms. Only the brave . . .”

  “Uncle Marco!” cried Giorgio. “Must the fantinos belong to a contrada?”

  “No, no! They are outsiders, from beyond the city walls. But listen!” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “That race course is death trap. Up, down, up, down, and around sharp curves. Dizzy-high buildings come so close they bump the horses, almost.

  “But now comes the best part!” His voice rose in power and excitement. “If the fantino falls off, the horse can win all by himself—if . . .”

  “If what?” the children cried.

  “If no one has knocked off his spennacchiera.”

  The children’s eyes popped. “His what?”

  Uncle Marco pushed back his hat and held three fingers upright against his forehead. “This is my spen-nac-chie-ra,” and he spun out the syllables until they seemed to have springs in them. “You see, my friends, it is like colored plumes in the headband of each horse. It is the badge of his contrada.”

  With his free hand he now picked up an umbrella rib. “This is my nerbo,” he explained. “It is fierce whip of ox hide, used always by fantinos since olden years.” In make-believe anger he used it to whack his fingers away from his forehead.

  Emilio and the younger children all made imaginary plumes of their fingers and some tried to knock off their neighbor’s until the audience was in a shrieking uproar.

  While Uncle Marco waited for quiet, he went to work on the green umbrella, snipped out the offending rib, and with the long, curved needle sewed a new one in place.

  Giorgio watched with unseeing eyes. He was still far away in Siena. When the noise died down he said, “Uncle Marco, the contrada that wins, what does it win?”

  “What does it win! Why, it wins the Palio, the silken banner!”

  “Only a banner?”

  The needle went in and out, fast and faster, and the man’s face darkened in displeasure. “Only a banner! How can you say it? The picture of the Madonna is hand-painted on it! Why, the winning of the banner is like . . .” He rummaged around in his mind for something big enough . . . “is like finding the Holy Grail.”

  “Oh.” Giorgio’s face went red. He lowered his head in embarrassment.

  The time for asking questions was nearly up. The Umbrella Man was mixing cement in the old fish tin, gluing the broken dish together, fastening it through the drilled holes with fine wire. While his fingers worked, his eye stole a glance now and then at Giorgio.

  “Maybe some year you go to Siena? You see a Palio?”

  Giorgio’s head jerked up. Of course he would go! Then his eyes widened in sudden panic. Suppose the race stopped before he had saved enough money. Suppose next year, or the next, there should be no Palio!

  He spoke his fears aloud.

  “Ho! Ho!” The Umbrella Man rocked with laughter. “Palio has always been! That is fine reason why it always will be. You go any year. Time only sharpens the appetite.”

  • • •

  At sundown that evening, with the mended dish put away in the cupboard and the umbrella, good as new, hanging on its peg, Giorgio stood before the window at the end of the long room. It was flung wide to the hills of Tuscany, but the boy did not see the trees flaming from the touch of sun, nor the swallows tumbling in the sky, nor the mountains growing bluer with the oncoming night. All he saw was the clay model of the horse in his hands. As he pinched and shaped the legs to a breedy finenes
s, a piece of leftover clay fell to the floor. He picked it up, examining it in disbelief. Did he imagine, or could anyone see it for what it was?

  “Emilio! Teria!” he called. “Come here! Come and see!”

  He held up the fanlike piece of clay, the smaller end between his thumb and forefinger, and he moved it toward the head of the horse. “What is it?” he asked, scarcely daring to breathe.

  “Why, it’s a spen-nac-chie-ra!” the answer came in chorus. “A spen-nac-chie-ra!”

  Giorgio laughed out loud. He moistened his finger tips and firmly pressed the bit of clay on the poll of the horse’s head. “Let no fantino knock it off!” he spoke to the little image. “You win all by yourself, you hear?”

  Already the seed of the Palio was bursting in its furrow.

  Chapter III

  BIANCA, THE BLIND ONE

  After the Umbrella Man left, there was a sense of urgency in the way Giorgio lived and worked. If he was to become a fantino in the Palio, or a horse trainer, or only a groom, he must grow hard, wiry, quick; and stronger than boys twice his size.

  His mother and father could not understand the change in their eldest. Instead of turning over for an extra sleep in the morning, he was up before the sun—feeding the cats in the kitchen, clanking the copper pitchers as he went to fetch the drinking water, graining Pippa, mending harness.

  And when the cocks had only begun to crow, he was already at the door with the donkey hitched to the cart. Together he and his father went whistling off into the morning.

  It was only nine kilometers to their farm, but the road wound down through stern country. Pippa was trail-wise. Where the footing was good she went trotting along, ears flopping, tail swinging; but through the tangled brake where the wild boar lurked, she kept her head down, watchful, snuffing. Of the few hovels they passed she always remembered the one where the swineherd and his poor donkey had lived; there she slowed her steps and gave out a sad, wheezy bray. Giorgio’s whistling stopped, for he remembered, too. Then he looked away, looked at the great dark hulk of Mount Amiata, and knew that on the other side the morning sun was warming the foothills and somewhere there in the brightness was the ancient, walled city of Siena. The very name made his hairs stir. It was like a finger beckoning to him, urging him to hurry in his growing.

  He always sat up straight then and called out, “Pippa! Get along! We go to work.”

  Plash! Plash! Pippa’s feet plunged through the ditch at the edge of their farm, clambered up the other side, and headed for the barn.

  To Giorgio, his whole life seemed wrapped up in the big barn made of bricks and straw. Here were the horses his father bought and sold—sometimes five, sometimes seven—and here were the team of white bullocks, and the milk-cow, and a frisky goat and her twin kids. With a sad sort of smile Babbo each morning encouraged Giorgio to grain the horses well, for the more fat on their bones the better price they would bring.

  There was one mare, however, that Giorgio fed meagerly, for he loved her most and wanted no one to buy her. She was steel-gray with lively ears and enormous eyes, but they were blind. He felt guilty in his heart when he grained the others; it was like sending them to their death. But he felt guiltier still when he gave only small measure to Bianca, the blind one. Her ribs showed when he cleaned her off, and when he rode her, his legs could feel each one separately. He took to sitting well forward to ease his conscience. Then he was scarcely any weight at all.

  To make up for the scanty meals, he often brought her fistfuls of clover. And in her stall the straw bedding was always the deepest.

  One day Giorgio’s father, pointing to Bianca, said, “That one is a terrible sorrow to me. It is not enough she is blind and unable to work. But besides, she does not fatten.”

  “Give her time, Babbo.”

  “Time! Already dozens of horses come and go, but Bianca, she stays. And only from pity I took her. I say to myself, ‘We give her two, three weeks of good eating; then we let her go.’ ” The father shook his head, frowning. “A blind mare, she is good for nothing.”

  “Maybe,” Giorgio ventured, “she could make a good colt.”

  “No, no. Her colts, too, could come blind. And she is not good for the riding, either.”

  “Oh, but she is! She is more sure-footed than . . .” Giorgio suddenly broke off his praise. If anyone knew how big-going she was and how willing and trustful, she would be sold in a hurry to some traveler, or even as a race horse. Then he would never see her again. Never ride her again. Never feel her lips nuzzling his neck to make sure that he was he! “Yes,” he nodded in agreement, “it is too bad about the blind one.” And he became very busy, mucking out her stall to hide his blushing.

  Giorgio’s tasks were endless. With the bullock team he plowed and cultivated the cornfield. By hand he hoed the beans and peas. He milked the cow. He kept the rabbit hutch clean. He staked out the she-goat by day and brought her in at night.

  But these seemed mere child’s tasks. He liked better to swing the scythe in harvest time. Cutting down the sun-ripened hay was man’s work. He could feel his muscles hardening, his lungs swelling. He took a fierce pride in piling the hay around a pole, piling it higher and higher until it was ready for the thatched roof that became the watershed.

  If he tired toward the end of the day, he made himself remember the mocking grin of the swineherd and the voice sneering, “You meddling runt, you!” The memory gave him a new burst of strength. He gripped the scythe like one possessed of a demon, and he cut the hay in great wide swaths.

  He felt better then, and to reward himself for the extra work he went around to the barn, bridled Bianca, and rode pell-mell into the gathering dusk. It was good to let the wind wash his face, to let the smooth, rocking motion ease his body. He could ride for miles through weeds and grasses without crossing a road, and he exulted in the fearlessness with which Bianca faced the unknown.

  Heading back to the stable one night, Giorgio let his bare legs dangle along the mare’s sides, and to his surprise he could not feel her ribs.

  “Babbo!” he exclaimed when he brought her in. “Bianca is shaping up! But please . . .”

  The father interrupted. “I know, I know, and it is costing dear. Since you grain her night and morning, I grain her extra at noon. A heaping measure I give her, with sugar added.”

  Giorgio looked up in fear. “Please, Babbo, please don’t sell her. I pretend always she is mine. With her, the eyes are not needed. She’s got eyes—in her ears, in her feet, in her heart. Babbo, don’t sell her.”

  There was a mark of pain between the father’s eyes. “Son,” he said, “she goes sure-footed only with you. With the others she stumbles. Her owner before us told me she breaks a man’s leg in falling on him. Giorgio, I got nothing to say. Families come first. Emilio and Teria and Mamma got to eat.”

  • • •

  Two mornings later the blind mare’s stall was empty. Giorgio felt himself too old to cry. He found some of her tail hairs caught in the wood of the manger, and very gently he pulled them out, as if they were still a part of her. He braided them and put them as a keepsake in the back of the big watch his grandfather had left him.

  It was not until he arrived in Monticello that evening and his mother said, “Giorgio, maybe somebody today hurt you?” that he wept. The room was empty. Emilio and Teria had gone to their cousins’ for supper and the father was unhooking Pippa. Now, alone with his mother, the boy’s pent-up feelings burst.

  She put her mending aside and with a quiet hand on his shoulder said, “I think I know. It is Bianca who is gone this time. Your father, too, is troubled. All night long he can’t sleep.”

  Giorgio did not ask the fate of the blind mare. He knew. But in his sorrow he clung to a frail thread of comfort. After his voice steadied he asked, “When a creature goes to die, do you believe . . .” The words came strained, begging for help, trying to find a way to ask it. “That is, do you think a newborn comes to take the place of the other?”


  The mother understood the boy’s need. Slowly, thoughtfully, she said, “This I have pondered also.” Then a look of triumph lighted her face, as if two things suddenly fitted together. “Si!” she said with conviction, “when one leaves this life, another must come into it. Yesterday,” she went on, “when I was washing our bed linen at the public washbasins, a farmer from Magliano Toscano galloped by.” She drove her needle in and out of a button already sewn fast. “He was followed by a veterinarian on a second beast. They were in a very great hurry. You see,” she added with a quick catch of her breath, “the farmer’s mare had been bred to the Arabian stallion, Sans Souci, and she was due to foal. Her colt, of course, would be of royal blood!”

  “Well, did she?”

  The mother’s hand made the sign of the cross. Then she looked happily at Giorgio and her voice was full of assurance. “She did! The news today carried all the way to our marketplace. Her colt, Giorgio, is a filly. And she has the eyes to see!”

  Chapter IV

  A NEWBORN

  The daughter of Sans Souci was already foaled when the farmer and the horse doctor arrived in Magliano Toscano. She was already dropped on the bed of straw, and there she lay, flat and wet, like a rug left out in the rain. Her eyes were closed and her nostrils not even fluttering.

  The doctor, a sharp-eyed, determined little man, hastily pulled out his stethoscope, and falling to his knees in the straw, held it to the foal’s side, listening. The farmer stood looking on, pale and helpless. No less a person than Sans Souci’s owner, the Prince of Lombardy, wanted to buy the foal, but only if it were sound and sturdy. He had even agreed to pay the horse doctor’s fee. Would he, if she died? She must not die!

  “The heart?” the farmer whispered anxiously. “It beats? No?”

  “Only faint,” the doctor replied, “like butterfly wings.” Straightening up, he snapped out his orders. “You got to help. Lift her up! No! No! Not like that. By her hind legs, hang her upside down. The blood, it’s got to flow to the brain.”