Gaudenzia
Pride of the Palio
By MARGUERITE HENRY
Illustrated by Lynd Ward
RAND McNALLY & COMPANY
Chicago New York San Francisco
Copyright 1960 by Rand McNally & Company
Copyright 1960 under International Copyright Union
by Rand McNally & Company
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-8264
Edition of 1960
A
LITHOGRAPHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
* * * * *
_To the half-bred Arabian, Gaudenzia,
and to her boy trainer, Giorgio,
who lived this book
with honor and valor_
* * * * *
CONTENTS
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 ...
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
Gaudenzia
Pride of the Palio
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 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.