The Hours Before
Late on the night of the banquet, while Giorgio lay sleeping,
the captains of the contradas were meeting in secret. Some were
strengthening old alliances, and some were negotiating new ones. If one
contrada, for example, had drawn a poor horse, it would swear to help
its ally by every strategy of war.
The results of these meetings were of little concern to Giorgio, for
no one, he had been told, would exact any promises from him. And so,
exhausted from his speech, he had crawled into bed, and before his
bodyguards had stopped joking and smoking he was asleep.
But it was not a peaceful sleep; it was shot through with a frightful
dream. In writing down the name "Giorgio Terni" in the archives, the
clerk broke his pen on the letter G, and the point flew up, stabbing
the man in the throat. Immediately, terrifying things happened. The
statue of the she-wolf atop the Palazzo came alive, came howling and
hurtling down the column and put a horrible end to the clerk. Then she
fell upon Giorgio, slashing him with her fangs and claws until he was
unfit to race.
To the shock of crashing thunder Giorgio awoke. He jumped up, leaped
over the sprawling figures of his guards, and ran to the window. He
stood there, shivering, watching the storm rage. He had a strange sense
that the fire-ball lightning was full of shooting stars, and they
seemed to be spelling out the word--"O-f-f-i-c-i-a-l!" He stood there a
long time, letting the wind and the rain wash away his dream. At last,
chilled to the bone, he went back to bed. Sleep was slow in coming,
and brief. At six in the morning the church bells startled him into
consciousness. The first summons to the Palio!
His bodyguards, yawning and stretching, looked out in surprise at the
rain-soaked land.
"How is it?" Giorgio exclaimed. "If I only turn the door-knob to my
room or make tiny tiptoe steps, you hear! But crashing thunder? _No!_"
The guards laughed. As they dressed, they watched Giorgio fumble with
the ties on his fantino uniform. "Could our boy be nervous?" they
teased. "And him a veteran of two Palios!"
The bells were still playing when, minutes later, they climbed the
steps of Siena's great cathedral. In the shadowy interior, with the
candles winking and the faint light coming through the stained-glass
windows, Giorgio and the other fantinos knelt at the altar. He glanced
at Ivan-the-Terrible on his left, who was riding for the Ram, and at
Veleno on his right, fantino for the Giraffe. They were like friendly
schoolfellows. Could they, by evening, become enemy warriors? Would the
three of them now kneeling prayerfully and peacefully side by side soon
be striking each other with their nerbos?
Both fantinos were moving their lips. Giorgio wondered if they were
praying to be accepted by their contradas, or praying to win. He looked
up at the painting above the altar and read the inscription beneath the
Virgin's feet. "O Holy Mother, be thou the fount of peace for Siena,
and be thou life for Duccio because he has painted you."
It was hard not to pray for yourself. If Duccio, the great painter,
could pray thus....
"O Holy Mother," Giorgio whispered, "be thou life for Gaudenzia." He
did not realize it was the mare he was praying for, and not himself, so
closely were they tuned.
* * * * *
Nine o'clock came. Time for the last Prova, the final rehearsal before
the Palio. The day was windless, the sky gray and cloudy, the track
still slippery from last night's rain. Giorgio resolved to take no
chances. From the start to the finish he held Gaudenzia almost to a
parade canter; he must save every tendon and muscle of her legs. She
finished in last place.
As he returned to his room, he wondered if he had done the right thing.
Had he been over cautious? Would the Onda approve? Or would they think
him lily-livered, not knowing how to ride?
Torn by gnawing anxiety he washed and combed while the guards stood
by waiting. In unaccustomed soberness they placed over his arm the
blue-and-white jacket of Onda, the very one he would wear in today's
Palio, and in his hand the steel helmet. Then as a body they marched
him to the Palazzo Pubblico, not into the vast courtyard where the
horses are gathered before the race, but into the formal and forbidding
Hall of the Magistrates. Here they vanished, and Captain Tortorelli
arose out of the gloom and indicated a chair for Giorgio beside him.
Other fantinos were already there, seated about a long table, jackets
over their arms, helmets in hand. And beside each was his captain.
The city officials now entered the solemnity of the room. The Mayor,
in gray-suited dignity, sat down at the head of the table, the starter
on his right, then the veterinarian and the Deputy of the Festival.
A lean-faced clerk with a pen behind his ear took his place on the
Mayor's left. He unrolled a great sheet of paper and laid it out before
him. The sheet was empty, except for a margin of tiny colored emblems
of all the contradas, and beside them, hair-thin lines waiting to be
filled in.
With a dry cough the clerk took the pen from behind his ear and held it
poised in midair like a hummingbird before it daggers into a flower.
Giorgio's heart quailed. He tried to stop the racing jumble of his
thoughts: last year's death of Turbolento, last night's dream. The
hoarfrost voice of the scribe cut off his thinking. Slowly the man
called the roll. Each fantino stood up as his contrada was called.
Carefully he held up his jacket with both hands so the emblem would
plainly show, and waited for his captain to confirm him. This done, the
clerk recorded the fantino's name in the big registry, writing with
long, even strokes and a flourish of his pen at the end.
When it was Giorgio's turn, his foot caught in the rung of his chair,
and it seemed an eternity before he could wrench free. To make matters
worse, his hands were shaking so violently that when he held up his
jacket the dolphin seemed mockingly alive, undulating through the blue
waves of the Onda.
It brought a faint titter from the other fantinos before Captain
Tortorelli broke in: "I hereby declare ..." he paused to clear his
throat. "I declare," he repeated, "_Giorgio Terni, fantino for the
Onda._"
Never to Giorgio had a man's gruff voice or the scratchy squeak
of a pen sounded so sweet. When it was all over, he went out into
the vastness of the Piazza. The pigeons were putting on an aerial
spectacle, spiralling into the deep sky. Giorgio felt his spirits rise
with them.
The Chief-of-the-Guards came up alongside. "I can see from your face,"
he smiled, "that all is now official."
Giorgio nodded.
"So you and your guards come rest at my house," the Chief said. "For
you my wife makes her special zucchini omelette. It sits light in your
stomach, and so you sit light on my Gaudenzia! You have now until four
o'clock to eat and rest and sip the sweet wine of anticipation."
Giorgio had not visited the eagle's-nest-of-a-house for a whole month,
not since the night of his arrival with Gaudenzia. Then, there had
been a yellow moon-path on the hillside. Now a watery sun was breaking
through the clouds, drawing moisture up in a thick curtain of mist.
Only a month, he thought, but leading up to it a whole calendar of
months from October to June. And before that, years of training for
Signor Ramalli; and before that, Bianca, the Blind One; and before
that, way in the beginning, a dusty little Umbrella Man sitting
crosslegged by the fountain, reciting the deep mystery of the Palio.
"Come inside! Come inside!" the Chief-of-the-Guards laughed. "Stop
gawping. Grapevines and olive groves you have seen before. Now we eat."
Giorgio was glad that no one expected him to eat much, or to talk at
all. After the meal Pinotto, Carlo, Enzio, and Nello took their siestas
in chairs and on the sofa. But Giorgio and the Chief paced--from
balcony to dining room to kitchen and back again.
The afternoon wore slowly on. From the distance came the murmur of
Tuscans and tourists pouring through the city's gates. The swelling
noise rolled into the house through doors and windows.
An hour is very long on Palio day, and Giorgio was never good at
waiting. The tick and the tock of the clock on the wall dawdled in
maddening slowness, the hands barely moving. Every few minutes he went
to the door to check the position of the sun, as if he could not trust
the clock. When at last the bodyguards stirred to life, relief flooded
through him. The waiting was over! It was time to dress for the pageant.
As Giorgio pulled on the blue-and-white striped stockings, the blue
buskins, the quilted velvet tunic with its plaited sleeves, and the
flowing wig, a curious thing happened to him. He was no longer Giorgio
Terni, the peasant boy of Monticello; he was a warrior, risen full-clad
from some ancient grave, ready and eager for battle.
When he arrived at the church of the Onda he saw that a change had come
over Gaudenzia, too. She appeared more dazzlingly white, taller, and
more elegant. She wore a spennacchiera of plumes in her headstall, and
she too was adorned in medieval splendor--a blue velvet bodycloth with
the dolphin embroidered almost life size in gold.
Before the arch of San Guiseppe the people stood aside. There was no
talk or whispering of any kind. Solemnly they made a corridor for her
and Giorgio to enter together. The mare must be blessed within the
church, for is not the Palio a religious celebration in honor of the
Visitation of the Virgin? Is not the blessing of the horse an age-old
custom? Then, open wide the doors! Throw out the carpet. Let her enter!
In the perfect stillness, Gaudenzia's hoofbeats are the measured
beat of time. Slowly she and Giorgio proceed up the aisle while the
congregation breathes a collective sigh at her beauty.
Book in hand, the priest greets them at the altar. "Almighty and
everlasting God," his resonant words roll out, "let this animal,
Gaudenzia, receive Thy blessing, whereby it may be preserved in body,
and freed from every harm by the intercession of the blessed Saint
Anthony, through Christ our Lord. Amen."
Whispered "Amens" ripple through the crowd like muffled drums as the
priest sprinkles holy water on Gaudenzia's head. The ceremony is over!
And all at once the silence explodes in a deafening burst of joy. The
clamoring rises to delirium.
Out in the street again, a tumultuous wave of humanity surrounds
Gaudenzia. People from all walks of life want to touch her, or even
the embroidery of her bodycloth. A man still wearing his shepherd's
smock wedges himself in close to Giorgio. His face breaks into a grin,
showing the dark hole where two of his teeth are missing. He points his
shepherd's crook at Gaudenzia. "_Magnifica!_" he laughs in rapture.
And the crowd takes up the cry. "_Magnifica!_"