861,038
gaudenzia

Príde of the
a Palio
By Marguerite Henry
Illustrated by Lynd Ward



$3.95
Gaudenzia
Pride of the Palio
By MARGUERITE Henry
Illustrated by LYND WARD
EACH SUMMER, in the ancient hill town of Siena,
Italy, there erupts one of the most extraordinary, ex-
citing, and dangerous horse races in the world—
the Palio. So furious is the rivalry that it is often
said the Palio is more battle than race, and that
"Fate is the Queen of the Palio."
This magnificent book is a true story of the Palio
—a thrilling, heart-stirring tale of a boy and a beau-
tiful half-Arabian mare who won undying fame.
Marguerite Henry tells—as only she can—how the
life of Giorgio Terni, a boy of the Maremma
marshes, became linked in strange and dramatic
fashion with that of the cart horse Gaudenzia,
whose Arabian blood brought her into the contest
of the Palio. When Gaudenzia is lamed in one of
the wild races, it is Giorgio whose devoted care
brings her back to health. And it is Giorgio who has
the joy of riding her to victory in one Palio, and
then the heartbreak of fighting her in the next. How
he wins the title “Vittorino” and how Gaudenzia
becomes the "Pride of the Palio” make a story to
enthrall the heart of every reader.
All the rich pageantry and medieval splendor that
surround this race of Siena are captured in the text
and in Lynd Ward's glowing illustrations. In Gau-
DENZIA, the swift excitement of KING OF THE WIND
and the warmth and human appeal of MISTY OF
CHINCOTEAGUE combine to make a glorious new
favorite.
RAND MNALLY & COMPANY
Chicago New York San Francisco



UNIT


PROPERTY OF
University of
Michigan
Libraries
ARTIS SCIENTIA VERITAS












GA U DENZIA
332


Gaudenzia

Pride of the Palio
By MARGUERITE HENRY
Illustrated by Lynd Ward
RAND MCNALLY & COMPANY
Chicago · New York - San Francisco


Juvenile
Collection
PZ
.H53
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
LITHOGRAPHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


CH9-242635
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
I The Umbrella Man
I Bianca, the Blind One
IV A Newborn
v The Flying Centaur
VI Giorgio Meets a Snail
VII Bring Out the Satchel !
VMI Over the Mountain
IX The Cart Horse of Casalino
X A Buyer of Ox Skins


80
87
104
III
118
124
131
139
145
154
XI The Ghost in the Warehouse
XII Rejected
XII 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 ...
160
169
176
185
191
196
203
213
219
226
236



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 trag-
edy. 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 in-


Gaudenzia
Pride of the Palio

UN






The First Signpost
CHAPTER I
I N 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 sepa-
rated. 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.
13


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 succes-
sion-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
14


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 med-
dling 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.
15


The farm was only a kilometer away, and Giorgio soon re-
turned 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 look-
ing, 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.”
17


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-0-0-0!" His voice rang out strong and clear
as the bell in the church tower. “Om-brel-lai-0-0-0! 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. Chil-
dren 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 aston-
ishment. 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.
19



The Umbrella Man
CHAPTER II
N 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 pheas-
ant 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.
10
20


“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 car-
ried 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, clap-
ping 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 serpent'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.
21


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 snort-
ing, 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 moun-
tain 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
22





it makes the hairs on your spine to quiver. Even if you do not
believe it can be so!”
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 com-
pany of knights in armor, and each had beautiful flag with em-
blem 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 hand-
kerchief.
“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 won-
der 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 under-
stand this mystic feeling-mad, wonderful?” He waved his
25


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 beau-
tiful 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, remember-
ing 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.
26


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 fine-
28


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 flop-
ping, 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 foot-
hills 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
inore 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
31


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 flop-
ping, 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 foot-
hills 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
inore 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 fist-
fuls 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 be-
came 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
32


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 cross-
ing 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
34


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, thought-
fully, she said, “This I have pondered also.” Then a look of
triumph lighted her face, as if two things suddenly fitted to-
gether. “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 market-
place. Her colt, Giorgio, is a filly. And she has the eyes to see!”
35



A Newborn
CHAPTER IV
N HE 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!
36


he laughed in relief. “The wheelbarrow—you don't need now?”
"Now I do!” Cheeks flushed in triumph, the doctor kept on
pumping air into the filly's lungs and at the same time barking
out directions: “Be quick! Fill a gunny sack with straw! Lay it
flat on the wheelbarrow!"
The gasps were coming closer together. They were stronger.
And stronger.
The doctor stopped pumping. He listened through his
stethoscope and heaved a deep sigh. “Is greatest thing I ever
see! The mare, she helped me just in time.” Proudly, he lifted
the newborn on top of the stuffed gunny sack. “We take her
now into your kitchen and dry her by your fire.”
“But why?" the farmer asked, more puzzled than before.
“Why, when already she breathes ?”
“Please to remember this, my friend. For eleven months she
is living in a very warm place. Today is windly, and it blows
cool into the barn."
Nodding, the farmer trundled the little creature past the
stalls of cows and bullocks and through the door that led into
the kitchen.
“Maria !” he called to his wife as he lifted the foal from the
wheelbarrow and placed her beside the fire. “See what it is we
bring!"
The farmer's wife, a plump, pleasant woman with eyes as
shiny as olives, came running from another room. Politely she
greeted the doctor, set out a bottle of her best wine and a glass on
the table for him. Then in an instant she was on her knees coo-
ing, “Ah, poor little one, poor dear one!" Without thinking,
she had taken off her homespun apron and was rubbing the
filly as if its ribs were a washboard.
“Brava! Brava!” cried the doctor between sips of the golden
38


wine. “Your wife," he remarked to the farmer, “is a nurse most
competent. Guard well you do not burn the little one so close to
the fire. Rub the legs and the body until nice and dry. Then take
her back to her dam.” He knelt down and put a finger in the
filly's mouth. “See? Already she sucks! By herself she will find
the mare's milk faucets. And now I must leave. Arrivederci, my
good people.”
The doctor's happy laughter rang out behind him as he
walked across the dooryard to the hitching post.
In the warm kitchen a second miracle was taking place.
The foal, yawning, looking about with her purple-brown eyes,
was stretching her forelegs, learning so soon that legs were for
standing!
The farmer slowly shook his head as if now he saw her for
the first time, her frailty, her pipestem legs.
“Already I have a name for her,” he said dully.
“So? How will you call her?”
“Farfalla. Butterfly.”
“Is so beautiful,” Maria sighed.
“Beauty, bah! Is not enough.” In the farmer's eyes was
a look almost of hatred. “A stout horse the Prince of Lom-
bardy wanted. Nice strong legs to race over the cobble streets of
Siena. With a colt by Sans Souci he hoped to win a Palio.
Better that horse doctor never came!"
With a flirt of her tail, the foal tried a step, and fell down
in a fuzzy heap.
The farmer winced, almost as if he heard a leg snap and
break. “Spindle legs have no place in Palio,” he snorted. “And
for sure I cannot use such a skinny beast in farm work. Better the
hand of death had taken her. Farfalla,” he laughed bitterly.
“She will live only the short and useless life of the butterfly.”





The Prince of Lombardy did not come to see the colt for
several days. He was a busy man—an art collector and a sports-
man who raced his horses not only in Italy but in France and
Spain. His burning desire, however, was to win a Palio. This, he
knew, required a special kind of horse, one not too finely wrought.
He knew too that the marshy land of the Maremma made
an excellent breeding ground, developing horses with strong,
heavy bone. And so he let the farmers of the Maremma bring
their mares to his Arabian stallion to be bred. Then if the
mating brought forth a strong, rugged colt, he would agree to
buy it at weaning time.
When he finally arrived at Magliano Toscano late one
afternoon, the farmer broke into a nervous sweat. Maybe, he
thought to himself, the Prince will buy the little one, not for the
Palio but for racing on dirt tracks.
The mare and colt were out in a field at the time, wallow-
ing in a sea of grass. The farmer whistled them in, and as they
approached, he turned to the Prince. “Here comes Farfalla!"
He trumpeted the words as if they could make the filly as big
as the shout. “She will lighten in color, Signore, and become
pure white, like Sans Souci. No?”
A quizzical expression crossed the Prince's face. He watched
the foal dance and curvet in front of him. His eyes went over
her, inch by inch, studying her legs, her hindquarters. After a
seeming eternity, he repeated her name. “Farfalla,” he mused.
“The name suits her well. She appears capricious, nervous; not
what I had hoped. She has none of the bulk and brawn of the
dam. But nonetheless I will pay the cost of the veterinarian, and
it is my hope you will find some use for her."
Waving his gauntlets in good-bye, he stepped into his open-
top car and roared off into the twilight.
41



The Flying Centaur
CHAPTER V
IN HE filly grew—skittish and frivolous as her name.
Every time the farmer let her out of her stall she
bolted past him, and snorting like a steam engine, she
flew down the aisle, sending goats and geese scuttling out of her
way. Then at the end stall she slowed just long enough to sink
her teeth into the buttocks of the black bullock. In the split sec-
ond before he could kick back, she was out in the sunlight,
squeaking a high hello to the world.
"It is a painful thing for the bullock," the farmer told his
wife one day. “But if he is not there, the rascal nips me in the
pants instead.”
The wife burst into a fit of laughter. She threw her apron
over her face to stifle her merriment.
“Bah!" the farmer stormed. “Women and fillies, they think
alike! For them biting is a funny joke.” And he stomped out
of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.
42


Away in Monticello, young Giorgio Terni inquired of trav-
elers and tradesmen about the daughter of Sans Souci. He
learned only that she was fiery and mischievous, unlike her
work-horse mother. But he dreamed often that she had taken
the place of his blind mare. In his dreaming she was an Arabian
all the way—an Arabian whose ancestors had raced swiftly
across the sun-scorched desert. She would be steel-gray, of
course, with her muzzle nearly black, and her fine legs black
from knees and hocks to hoof, and her eyes enormous and dark.
As for size, he thought of her as big enough.
He longed to see her, but Magliano Toscano was many
kilometers away, and now was the season of the grape harvest.
Each morning before daybreak, the whole family piled
into the donkey cart and drove off to their vineyard. Up and
down the rows they snipped the purple bunches, dew-drenched
in the morning, shiny warm in the glare of noon. They filled
basket after basket to roundness, and emptied them into big
tubs. It was Giorgio who lugged them, two at a time, to the wine
shed, dumping the grapes, stems and all, into a huge vat. Then
at dusk after the animals had been fed, he clambered up the
wall of the vat, grasped the pole across the open top, swung
himself inside, and with his bare feet pushed down the slippery
seeds and skins that had risen to the surface.
One evening when the family, dusty and weary, was re-
turning home by starlight, Giorgio spoke shyly to his mother.
“Some day I would go to Magliano to see the filly of Sans Souci
... if only I had the time.”
“Maybe on Sunday after the mass,” the mother suggested.
“I will go!” he cried, and the weariness of the long day
suddenly melted.
But Giorgio did not go. On the next Sunday he was chosen
43


watchkeeper of the church. And now the Sundays stretched
out longer than all the other days. He had to scrub the floor
inside the church and sweep the earth outside. He had to dust
the altars. He had to arrange the benches and chairs. He had
to play the bells, calling the people from houses and barns. He
had to help serve mass. And when the services were over, he
remained on watch. Alone in the deep hush, he listened to the
wind moaning in the cypress trees, reminding him that each
tree in the churchyard stood for a soldier dead. He tried to
close his ears to the dismal sound, but the trees kept on whis-
pering, and the mourning doves added their plaintive lament.
There was reward, however, in being watchkeeper. It
meant that the people of Monticello considered him more man
than boy. His voice was changing, too, and now when he sang
in the choir it cracked, sliding far off key.
"Tsk, tsk!” the father remarked one Sunday. “Our Giorgio
is getting a voice most strange. More howl than human. Some-
times,” he laughed, “I look up quick to see, is he growing flap
ears like basset hound, or great furred ones, like Pippa? Be-
cause he knows how animals think, must he sing like them, too?”
The family was seated around the table eating their Sun-
day supper of fritto misto, a mixed fry of little fish from the
River Orcia.
Emilio put down his fork in great seriousness. “Maybe
some day my big brother will be saint of the animals, like Saint
Francis of Assisi,” he said proudly. “Then, Babbo, you will not
laugh.”
Giorgio's eyes glanced up from his plate and found the
Palio horse he had made, standing big-chested on a shelf. He
saw that the spennacchiera had fallen off, and he got up to
press it back in place.
44



The mother watched him cross the room. “There are many
ways,” she said softly, “for a boy to bring honor to Monticello.”
Her eyes and Giorgio's met and held for a brief instant.
It was late in November when the farm work lessened
and the fun began. Hard by the village of Monticello were
horse-rearing farms, and often in the afternoons the older boys
who helped in the barns challenged Giorgio to a race. He was
quick to accept each time, but he seldom rode the same horse
twice. “Never do I want to love one so much," he explained
to his father, “the way it was with Bianca, the blind one.”
45



Giorgio Meets a Snail
CHAPTER VI
TS Giorgio rode to one victory after another, more and
more people came to watch. Word of his skill began
I to travel. It trickled like a wind with a growing
strength, first to the little towns on the fringe of the Maremma,
then to the foothills of Mount Amiata, and finally it sifted
through the mountain passes to the ancient walled city of
Siena.
There, at the bottom of a steep, winding street known as
Fontebranda, lived a horseman belonging to the Contrada of

47


the Snail. He was owner of some rental properties, farms and
homes, and he lived comfortably on the rents they brought
in. But what he really lived on was an intangible thing, a pride
in his daughter, Anna. For her he would have plucked the moon
and the stars. But since she shared his love of horses, he settled
for a fine stable. He kept four horses, sometimes five, and he
made sure they were burnished like copper, trained by the most
skilled, and ridden by men with sensitive hands.
His name was Signor Ramalli. He had never won a Palio,
but he never gave up trying. One day in the spring of the year
he made an excursion to the Maremma for the express purpose
of seeking out a certain horseboy. He did not leave Siena until
after his noon meal, and he stopped here and there in villages
along the road to buy a bottle of olive oil, a jug of wine, and a
brisket of veal; so it was nearing nightfall when he reached the
hilltop village of Monticello. He inquired of a cobbler the way
to Giorgio's house. The man poked his head into Signor Ra-
malli's automobile and with a breath rich in garlic directed him
up the steep, tortuous lane to a flight of steps flanked by potted
geraniums.
When the Signore found the house, there was scarce room
enough to park his car nearby, but he managed to wedge it in a
crook of space made by several lanes coming together. Then
with a smile for the curious children who gathered around, he
walked up the worn steps and knocked on the door.
Giorgio's small brother opened it. “Buona sera,” he said
politely. “I am Emilio. And I have a sister Teria who bosses
me, and a big brother who is watchkeeper of the church.” All
in the same breath he added, “Your vest is nice; it looks like
our newborn calf.”
“Newborn calf it is!” The man laughed in amusement.
48


Emilio's mother came hurrying out of the bedroom, tying
a fresh apron over her black dress. She saw at a glance that the
stranger was a city man from over the mountain.
“Buona sera,” she said. “Please to excuse our little Emilio.
He chatters like the wren.”
Signor Ramalli bowed and removed his hat. “You have
an elder son, Giorgio?” he asked.
"Si,” the mother replied anxiously. “Has something hap-
pened to him?”
“No, no, Signora. Everything is most right.”
“Then will you please to come in and have a coffee while
you wait? At this moment Giorgio should be in the barn, bed-
ding our donkey. Soon he comes.”
“Thank you kindly, but I will go to find him; that is, if you
will be so good as to direct me.”
The mother stepped out onto the porch. “You go only a
little downhill,” she said, "just beyond the public fountain.
As you go, it is on your right hand. My little Emilio here can
take you, but he must hurry back.”
Emilio, flushed with importance, took the stranger's hand
and led him the short distance to the stable. “Giorgio!” he
called out. “Here is a Signore who wants to see you!" Then
reluctantly he turned and headed for home, glancing back at
every step.
Giorgio was leading Pippa out between the shafts of the
cart. “You come to see me?” he asked of the strange man.
Signor Ramalli stepped up and shook hands briskly. “Go
on working, Giorgio, while I talk. From the fragrant smells at
your house I believe a good bean soup is simmering, and I must
not delay you."
Giorgio pulled the cart to the far end of the stable and
49



tilted the shafts against the wall. The donkey, freed, trotted to
an empty manger and in a raucous bray demanded her supper.
Signor Ramalli sized up the boy as he watched him pour
out a measure of grain. He could not help thinking how small
Giorgio appeared in the bigness of the barn, but he was not
going to change his mind now. The boy might be little, yet he
50


was wiry, had good muscle, straight, sturdy legs, and he worked
quickly and with purpose. The man laughed softly to himself;
he was analyzing the boy as he would a horse!
“I am Ramalli of Siena,” he explained. “I am a Snail.”
Giorgio spun around. “You are what?” He took in the
man's features, and saw on his forehead a wen bigger than the
bulb on a snail's antenna. Is that why, he wondered, the man
calls himself a snail?
“I belong to the Contrada of the Snail.”
“Oh?” The word contrada sparked a lightning chain of
thought direct to the Palio.
“My main activity is horses and racing.”
Giorgio stopped his work. He bowed to the man as if he
were a king or a cardinal. Then in his excitement he began
scratching the donkey, kneading down the dark stripe along
her back. He took a breath, listening.
: "I have heard of your skill in racing, and ...” Signor
Ramalli paused to let the full weight of his words take meaning.
“I propose that you ride for me.”
The boy's heart seemed to stop altogether, then hammered
wildly against his chest. Speechless, he waited for more.
“Yes,” the man was saying, “I propose that you ride for
me in the little races in the provinces.”
Giorgio felt suddenly as if he had been dropped into a well.
“Wh-wh-where?” he stammered, hoping he had misunderstood.
“In the nearby small towns—in Asciano, in Montalcino, in
Poggibonsi, and others. You can continue to work on your
father's farm, and come away only on festival days. And you
will not need to bother with special racing costume.”
Signor Ramalli came forward, and now he too began ruf-
Aling Pippa's mane. “Does it not please you?” he asked.
51


Giorgio blushed, trying to hide his disappointment. In his
mind he could hear his father saying, “All in one day Rome
was not built! Time it takes to build a city; and time, too, to
build a man.”
Everything was quiet, except for Pippa's teeth grinding
the grain to a mealy mush.
At last Giorgio nodded soberly and replied in a voice he
hardly knew as his own. “Grazie, Signor Ramalli, I will ride
for you.”
Across the donkey's back man and boy shook hands.
“In Siena,” Signor Ramalli smiled, "each contrada has
‘protectors.' Do you know what they are, my boy?” He waited
for an answer, but when none came he went on. “A protector
is a person who believes in the people of a certain contrada and
does all he can to help them; he offers friendship, advice, and
money, too. It is a kind of kinship.”
“I understand.”
“It is my wish now to be protector to the little runt of
Monticello !” He smiled again, and the term from his lips took
on a note of affection. “In you,” he said with a final warm
handclasp, “I have great faith.”
That night in bed Giorgio lay awake a long time, thrash-
ing out his disappointment. To race in the little festivals was
not what he had hoped for; but perhapshe tried to comfort
himself—perhaps it was a beginning.
52



Bring Out the Satchel !
CHAPTER VII
VIORGIO'S disappointment vanished with his first race.
In the company of a strong, willing horse how could
he be anything but sublimely happy? Compared to the
lesser creatures he raced against, the entries he rode for Signor
Ramalli were always in top condition, sleek and fit. And so,
nearly always he won.
The entire family basked in Giorgio's good fortune. He
brought home trinkets and treats from hilltown and valley.
From Asciano one evening he burst into the kitchen with an
armful of surprises for everyone—a singing canary for Teria,

53


three goldfish for Emilio, a brooch for his mother, and a pouch
of tobacco for his father; even a mouse toy for Mom-cat and
her kittens. For himself he had bought a shiny new flute with
extra stops.
Later that evening, with the younger children in bed and
the supper dishes done, the mother turned to Giorgio. “Now
then,” she spoke in delighted anticipation, “stop playing your
flute, close the light, and come tell to Babbo and me how you
won at Asciano. In the dark,” she added, “our mind goes to
the place and we live better those moments with you. Besides,
it saves the electricity.”
White moonlight flooded the room. It silhouetted the
father, comfortable on the couch, head leaning against the wall,
pipe jutting out in sharp profile. Now and then it belched a little
shower of sparks.
“I did not win today,” Giorgio announced.
If he had flung a stick of dynamite into the room, the
effect could not have been greater.
“No! Oh no!” the mother cried in dismay. “Where then
came the money for birds and brooches and fish? Where?
Where!"
The father jerked bolt upright. His mouth fell open, and
the pipe clattered to the floor. “How can this be?” he de-
manded. “Explain yourself, boy!”
Giorgio deliberately lifted his flute and tootled a string
of giddy notes to the faraway mountains. Then he laid it down.
“I did not win,” he said simply. “My horse won. I was passenger
only.”
“Bravo! Bravo!” The father laughed in relief. “Of you I am
proud. Man should not pump himself up when the victory is
not his own.”
54


From his first days of racing, Giorgio felt himself a man.
He changed from short pants to long. He had his hair cut
oftener and kept it slicked back to discourage the waviness. He
walked more erect, trying to make himself taller.
All summer long he was excused from farm work when-
ever a race was held nearby. Signor Ramalli himself seldom
attended, but when he did, he was accompanied by little Anna.
The two of them shouted and cheered so lustily that it seemed
to Giorgio his horse sailed in on the sound waves of their voices.
Summer spent itself. The time of harvest came again to
the Maremma. And afterward the wind blew cold and the
autumn rains sluiced down the mountains, making rivers of the
little streams. Giorgio and his father no longer went to the farm,
and for now, racing days were over and done with.
To help out the family, Giorgio went to work for the town
cobbler. It was interesting at first to learn to use a lapstone and
awl, and it was fun to sew with a pig's whisker, driving it like
a dagger in and out of the leather. As he worked, he made
believe that the tap-tap of the cobbler's hammer was the tattoo
of horses' hoofs.
In a few days, however, the newness wore off. Then the
tiny shop became a prison. It closed in on him, choking off his
breath. The tap-tap never varied from trot to gallop to walk.
It was deadly monotonous, always the same-tap-tap-tap-tap-
until some days his head was fit to burst. As the door and then
the single window had to be closed against the increasing cold,
the pungent smells of turpentine and benzine and neatsfoot oil
were almost more than he could bear. All these, mixed with
the perspiration of feet and the garlic of the cobbler's breath,
made a stench that lingered in Giorgio's nostrils long after he
reached home.
55


As if this were not torment enough, he often made mis-
takes at his bench-filing a heel unevenly so the wearer walked
quite unbalanced and raised a storm of protest; or hammering
nails so they protruded inside the sole and gave no end of dis-
comfort. For these blunders, he sometimes had to forfeit most
of his meager pay.
But at last the winter days dragged to a close, and all at
once spring came in with a rush and a flood. Melting snows
bubbled and boiled down the mountainsides. Fruit trees ex-
ploded in white popcorn buds. Birds gathered up more straws
than their beaks could hold.
Giorgio felt like a bird, too, a bird suddenly released from
its cage. Once again he and his father were out in the fields.
Each worked with a zest to his own goal, the father to win the
land, the boy to harden his muscles, to increase his wind power.
They ate with the same spirit and gusto, opening the lunch
bag as if it held the secret to more power and strength.
“We stoke and stoke to make the hotter fire! Not so,
Giorgio?" Babbo asked every noon. And they laughed as their
hands broke open the crisp loaf of bread and their hard white
teeth bit into it and then into a chunk of wild boar sausage.
Noisily they chewed them both together so that the deliciousness
of one brought out the deliciousness of the other. Some days there
was a good thick pea soup as a surprise. Then they sang a rollick-
ing blessing after instead of before their meal.
“We bellow out so deep from the soul,” the father chuckled,
"that God in His heaven can hear without even pushing aside
the clouds. Eh, son?" And they both roared in laughter.
Afterward they lay down on the earth and snored like tired
animals.
Plowing. Harrowing. Seeding. No task too big, none too
56


Everyone waited on Giorgio as if he were king. Emilio
hung up his lunch bag after fingering inside for the crumbs.
Teria brought him a cup of hot coffee.
The mother handed him one of her long hairpins. “Here,
Giorgio, with this you have a fine letter opener.”
The father entered unnoticed. “Is it no more the habit in
this house to greet the father come home from work?”
Hurriedly the children showered him with hugs, then ran
back to Giorgio.
“Let me open it!" shouted Emilio.
“No,” Signora Terni said firmly. “It is Giorgio's.”
Giorgio stood very still. He took the letter and the hairpin
with trembling hands. The blood throbbed in his head. He had
once received flute music sent from Rome, but that was in a
thin roll with his name printed by machine. This was a real
letter, handwritten in black ink.
“Don't stab too deep,” the mother warned. “You might
cut also the paper inside.”
Cautiously, as if a Jack-in-the-box might pop out, Giorgio
slit the envelope. He unfolded the fine white paper and silently
read the few lines. His face paled, then flushed.
“What is it?" asked the mother in alarm.
“What does it say?” cried Teria.
“The news, is it good?” asked Babbo.
“Is it bad?” shouted Emilio.
If Mount Amiata had suddenly risen from its base and
marched across the valley, Giorgio could not have been more
amazed. “It's from Signor Ramalli! Never before has he written
me!”
“Read it out,” cried Teria.
cleared his throat and read slowly:
Gia
58


“Siena, 16 March, 1952
“Dear Giorgio:
"If your Babbo can spare you from the fields, I desire you to
come at once to Siena. I have now four extraordinary horses
and would wish you to be their trainer. The Palio of July, as
you know, is on the second. We must hurry.
“Expecting you soon, I am,
V. Ramalli"
Grown as he was, Giorgio grasped Emilio by one fat hand
and swung him around and around until the pots and pans on
the wall went flying. Then he swooped up the letter and held
it on high as if it were the Palio banner itself..
“Mammina!” he cried. “Everybody! Everybody! Bring out
the satchel. I go to Siena."



Over the Mountain
CHAPTER VIII

ABBO rose to his feet. In the darkening room his eyes
gleamed in pride. “I have goose flesh! I cannot be-
lieve it could be! Today a letter is come. Tomorrow
our Giorgio goes over the mountain. To please Signor Ramalli,"
he declared, “he must arrive in Siena tomorrow.”
Plans were quickly made. It was decided that in his new
importance Giorgio should not walk the long way to Casalino
to catch the autobus that would carry him to the train at Sant'
Angelo, and thence to Siena. Instead, the entire family would
drive him in the donkey cart directly to Sant'Angelo, where
they could all bid him good-bye at the railway station.
It happened just so. Even Pippa took part, giving out a
60


until it reached the summit, the bleak bare summit where the
sharp wind held a bitterness that made his eyes weep.
“Boy!” The voice of an old woman startled him. “Close
that window, if you please. My old bones shudder with the
cold. Besides, your face grows red and smudged.”
Giorgio quickly closed the window, wiped his face on his
new handkerchief, and found a seat. He placed his satchel
between his legs and tirelessly scanned the horizon as the train
began to roll down out of the high country. Every frowning
castle in the distance, every bold fortress, every hamlet he mis-
took for the city of his dream. But when at last he caught his
first glimpse, he knew it for Siena, yet was unprepared for its
splendor. In the clearness of early evening the jewel-like city
rose up on the shoulders of three hills, its slender towers jutting
into the sky. They were like none he had ever seen. One was
shining white with stripings of black, like a zebra; the others
were pink and carmine, or was this rosy color a trick of the
setting sun?
His heart raced. He felt her ancientness at once. Here
were battlemented walls, and pinnacled domes, and steeples
piled high and higher—all jumbled, yet ordered.
Siena! Siena!
It was the hour of early evening when the train pulled into
the station. Giorgio was first to jump out. He hurried through
the groups of waiting people, impatient to find Signor Ramalli.
Searching faces, hoping to see one he dared ask directions, he
threaded the network of narrow streets. The people seemed dif-
ferent to him, like figures in a painting. He wondered if they
might even speak a different language!
Slight-built as he was, he kept clumsily bumping into the
62





passers-by. Each time he tried to work up his courage to ask,
but no one took notice of him. It was like walking in sleep
until a deep-timbered voice broke into it.
“Young lad! Come here!” The voice belonged to the Chief-
of-the-Town-Guards. He was an enormous man, handsome in
a dark blue uniform with gold epaulets. “Young lad, you will
find better the walking if you move with, not against, the prom-
enaders. Now,” he asked solicitously, “can I help you?”
Giorgio felt a surge of relief. They spoke the same lan-
guage! “Signor Ramalli,” he burst out, “his house I must find.
If you please!”
The Chief-of-the-Guards looked down from his great
height. “To find Signor Ramalli's house,” he said, "you have
only to follow your nose.”
“My nose?”
“Yes,” he laughed, “your nose. You go down and down
the Via Fontebranda, and when your nose is stinging with the
stench of animal hides in brine, then you are there. Almost.”
He held onto Giorgio with one white-gloved hand while with
the other he stopped an autobus to let by a team of scrawny
horses drawing a load of wood.
“Feed the bony beasts,” he cried to the portly driver, “in-
stead of yourself !”
Then he turned again to Giorgio. “Now, young man, after
the smell from the slaughterhouse you will run into a new smell
of lye and bleach from the public laundry. Then turn in at the
next doorway, and there you are!”
Giorgio hesitated. “But my Signor Ramalli must have a
stable.”
“Yes, yes, I know," the Chief replied in friendly annoyance.
“It is as I said. Through the bad smells you must go until you


come to the nice fragrance of horses and hay. You see, lad, the
house of the Ramallis is at the end of the street, with mag-
nificent vista of the valley beyond.”
No directions were ever given more clearly. Down, down
the Via Fontebranda Giorgio hurried half-running, not to get
past the cow hides in brine, but because the descent was almost
perpendicular.
Just as the Chief had said, the last door belonged to the
Ramallis. The family of three welcomed him as if he were a son
come home. They were in the dining room, and at once the
mother and daughter arose to set an extra place.
Signor Ramalli hooked his thumbs into his calf vest and
smiled at Giorgio. “After we eat, we give you choice of two
rooms for your sleeping quarters. One is in our home, and the
other is the empty storeroom over the stable where you can
hear the slightest whinny in the night. That room, though barer,
is bigger and ..."
"I would rather prefer the storeroom,” Giorgio interrupted,
“where I can be closer to my horses."
It was, in fact, a tremendous room. It faced the east where
the first rays of the sun came slanting in, touching off the strings
of purple onions and garlic, and peppers, shiny red. Besides
these gay decorations there was a wide and comfortable brass
bed, a trestle table and chair, and an ancient sea chest that had
been emptied for Giorgio's clothes.
Comfortable as his room was, it was only a place to sleep.
Sixteen hours of the day he lived with his horses. There were
three mares and a gelding depending on him for all the creature
comforts of food and water, and new shoes, and warm blankets
at night, and small friendly talk.
But more, Signor Ramalli was depending on him to bring


them all into bloom for the July Palio. This was high challenge.
Here he was, still a boy in his teens, barely shoulder-high to his
pupils; yet he was master of their destiny! Ambra needed
schooling in being mounted; a race could be lost before it began.
Lubiana was stubborn, always wanting her own way. Dorina
was awkward at maneuvering; she could lose the Palio at the
hairpin turns.
Imperiale, however, posed the most interesting problem.
He was a big-going fellow, part Arabian, sired by the famous
Sans Souci. What he needed was soothing words to quiet his
nervous habit of biting on the wood of his stall. He reminded
Giorgio of a frightened child chewing his fingernails.
Each day Signor Ramalli grew more pleased with Giorgio.
The boy was two persons in one--skilled trainer in the morning;
stableboy in the afternoon. He attacked the cleaning of the
stalls, the oiling of the bridle leathers, the currying and groom-
ing with the same chin-thrust of determination as he did the
fine art of teaching.
And so, nothing was good enough for him. Morning and
night, he ate at table with the family, but this, instead of mak-
ing him feel jolly, stirred up the beginnings of homesickness.
There was something about Anna that reminded him not of his
sister, Teria, but of Emilio—a kind of puckish eagerness, want-
ing to know about the horses, wanting to help, wanting to ride.
It was after supper, after darkness, that doubt and anguish
and the sharp pangs of homesickness set in in earnest. His dream
of the Palio seemed as far away as ever. “I am only an out-
sider,” he thought as he sat alone and forlorn on the sea chest.
“I belong to no contrada, for I am not born Sienese. There are
seventeen contradas, yet no one of them has asked me to ride.
I have four horses, but I have none.” He smiled a crooked smile,
66


Palazzo Pubblico, where the city officials worked, and his eyes
went up and up its soaring tower until he imagined he saw a bell
ringer away up there, no bigger than a spider.
He tried not to torture himself by studying the race course
around the empty shell, or wondering which contrada might some
day choose him as their fantino. Instead, his mind went back
to the years before the Palio, when men battled bulls in the
square. If he half-closed his eyes, he could array himself in coat
of mail and he could see the blade of his spear flashing silver in
the moonlight as he thrust it into the flesh of a charging bull.
Then heavy with weariness, as if he had slain a score of bulls, he
trudged back to his room and slept.
But in sleep he could not wear the blinders. His dreams
were always of the Palio.
As the first month wore itself out, Signor Ramalli sensed
a growing restlessness in the boy. One day he recognized it
openly.
“Tomorrow," he said to Giorgio, “is a Sunday. A quick
journey to Monticello is the best cure I know for ailments like
homesickness. In a day you will come back feeling more con-
tent here. Now then, in the morning when I get out my car to
take my wife and Anna to the early mass, I will at the same
time take you to the station. My wife will prepare for you a
little lunch to carry, and I will buy you a ticket, both ways.”
He held out his hand. Giorgio put his small calloused one
inside the great warmth of the Signore's and felt it close around
his with a clasp so strong it made him blink. Giorgio's heart
leaped in joy.
68



II
ALT
SALLE
CA
SI
-
VA
126
2
ALAM
AS
USU
NO
1
12
TA
EIN
21
UN
RABATT
MAA
1
SA
down the road, twice looking over his shoulder at the fine Arab
head with the small ears pricked against the sky. He thought
he heard a nervous whinny, but it might have been the breeze
in the poplars.
He strode to Monticello as if there were springs inside him.
Along the way people welcomed him, called him by name. “Hi,
Giorgio, how is it being a city fellow?"
But the real welcome came within the encompassing walls
of home. To his family he was already a hero. They fluttered
about him, taking off his jacket, pouring him coffee, peppering
him with questions.
“How do they treat you? Do you get nice white bread with
your meals, and is the spaghetti cooked done? Do you get used
to those noisy streets?” This was Mamma talking.
“Do you like Anna more than me?” This was Teria.
71


“Did you bring me something? A calf vest, maybe? Is the
bump still on Signor Ramalli's forehead?” This was Emilio.
And at long last, from Babbo, the question Giorgio wanted
first: "How do you get along with the training of the horses?
Tell us all about."
"We-11-11,” Giorgio answered importantly, “I have four
horses in my stable. I get along pretty well. Of course, there are
some difficulties. First I have Ambra. She is fine, but has strong
dislike for bridling. Then I have Lubiana, who is fine too, but
sometimes stubborn like mule. And Dorina, she is awkward in
changing gaits."
He saved the best until last. “And I have Imperiale. He
is Arab, and he flies!” He turned his chair to face his father.
"Now it is I who ask. Babbo! I saw today at Casalino a mare,
gray and lightly specked with brown. She is poor and thin, and
she pulls a miserable cart with traces and harness held together
by rope. But she looks to be one of San Souci's get."
“She is !" exclaimed the father.
Giorgio's heart was a hammer. He could hardly wait to
tell Signor Ramalli that now he was a real horseman. His ques-
tions came fast
"How old is she?
“From where does she come?
“Why is she not racing instead of pulling the cart?
“Has she colts?"
The father scraped his chair away from the table. He
reached for the stool in front of the cupboard and propped his
stockinged feet on it. He lovsoned his bclt and gave a happy
grunt. It was good to have man-talk in the house again!
"That poor mare," he began, folding his hands across his
stomach, "is sold for convenience from one to the other. She


has the nervous tic, so that forever she is biting on wood, on
anything. And her throat ..."
“I know, Babbo. It makes the throat swell.”
The father nodded, proud of his son's knowledge. “Men
beat her, thinking it will stop the biting, but it only gets worse.
Now she is good just for carting things from here to there.”
Teria interrupted to place before Giorgio a slice of ham and
an onion, and the mother brought out a whole loaf of white
bread, newly baked and still warm.
“Do you want the crust, Giorgio, or just a thin slice?"
“The crust as always, Mamma, if you please.”
“Emilio!” commanded the father. “Your brother cannot
eat without a good glass of wine.”
Fearful of missing a word, Emilio flew to the grotto of a
cellar behind the front steps and returned breathless with a
dusty old flask.
Giorgio was busy scooping out a little hollow in the crust
with the point of his knife.
“What you doing, Giorgio?” asked the father. “You not
eating the ham?”
“No, thank you,” he said, noticing how little was left. “I am
just hungry to taste again our onions cut up in the crust with
vinegar and salt, and maybe some capers, if we have ..."
The capers appeared as if by magic from Teria's hand.
Between bites, Giorgio interrupted the silence which sur-
rounded him. “But why,” he asked of Babbo, “do they sell that
mare from one to the other? Is it the nervous tic?”
The father pursed his lips, thinking.
“That can be controlled,” Giorgio added quickly. “The
great Sans Souci had it, and my Imperiale has it, too. Is it only
because of that?"
73


“No.” The father paused.
“What, then?”
“Well, you can't believe it, but ill luck trails her like smoke
from fire. Already she has four colts of no account.”
“Four!”
The father nodded. “The first time she got twins, but they
died before lifting their heads above the straw.”
“And then?”
“Next time her colt is crippled in foaling and has to be put
down.”
Giorgio stopped eating and sat silent. After a moment he
said, “And the fourth colt? Dead, too?”
“No. Not him. He will make big stout plow horse when he
is grown. He is no more like Farfalla than bull is like deer.”
The mother, who had been listening all this while, now
plucked at Giorgio's sleeve. “Farfalla is the one ..." she
whispered softly. “She is the one born in Magliano Toscano on
the day Bianca ..."
Giorgio felt the hairs on his skin prickle. So this Arab mare,
fastened with ropes to the traces of a shabby cart, was Bianca's
successor! He nodded and smiled wistfully in remembrance.
The next morning Giorgio was back at work in Siena, hap-
pier and more content there. And for the first time he felt
encouraged that Dorina and Imperiale might be ready for the
July Palio. As he schooled the well-bred gelding, teaching him
to make smaller and ever smaller turns, his mind flew back to
the cart horse of Casalino. Clear as a vignette he saw her jibbing
her head against the sky.
“It would be a miracle from God,” he thought to himself,
“to harness that wildness, to calm the frightened soul."
74



A Buyer of Ox Skins
CHAPTER X
T IT was on the day Giorgio returned to Siena that Farfalla
was sold again. A buyer of ox skins, Signor Busisi by
I name, was making one of his regular trips to the Ma-
remma. He was a big-framed, bushy-browed man with a shock
of white hair. As he drove along in his shiny new Fiat, he was
sorting skins in his mind—all sizes, all qualities. He was not
even thinking about horses. And he was trying very hard not to
notice his nagging indigestion.
Signor Busisi was from Siena, and therefore he was first of
all a strong contrada man with a passion for the Palio. Besides,
he was a canny judge of horseflesh. In years past his horses had
won no less than five Palio banners, a record few owners could
match! And when he had no entry for the Palio, he sat as a
judge of the trials, helping to choose the ten horses that would
run, out of the twenty or more presented. His fellow judges held
him in great respect, often waiting for him to nod the decisive
"yes" or "no.”
Of course, being an honest man and a realistic one, Signor
Busisi admitted to himself that over the years he had purchased
75


some weedy horses with faults too numerous and embarrassing
to think about. And so he did not think about them. Besides, he
was getting on in years, trying to ignore the pains around his
heart and the frequent attacks of indigestion. “I've got a lot of
age on me,” he told himself. “No time for regrets; for me
the spring flowers will bloom only a few times more. Better it
is to look ahead.” And so in the years remaining he was de-
termined to live each day as if it were the last to shine upon him.
On this morning of April the Maremma country was the
color of clear emeralds, the birds singing, and nothing between
earth and sky except, coming over the hill ahead, a tall, airy-
striding cart horse.
The Signore slowed down and pulled off to the edge of the
road. He got out and unbuckled his belt a notch. The pangs of
indigestion were sharpening. Perhaps walking around a bit,
exchanging the time of day with a country carter, might ease
the pain.
Before he greeted the man, he unconsciously took stock of
the mare. To himself he said, "She must be well over sixteen
hands high. Good legs and feet. Fine bone beneath the rough
coat. Barrel too thin, head and throttle excellent. Eyes dom-
inant."
The carter meanwhile was sizing up the automobile and
the owner. “Is new—the car. Is old—the man. And rich. I
wonder, will he permit that I haul goods for him from here
to there?”
“Buon giorno,” Signor Busisi said in a loud voice, noticing
the ear trumpet.
The carter bowed until his chin touched his grease-stained
shirt.
“Your mare,” the Signore began, “how is she called ?”


“Si, si. She for sale.”
“Not so quick, my good man,” the Signore bellowed. “I
only ask how you call her.”
The carter was unabashed. He grinned, showing yellow,
horselike teeth. “She has the name Farfalla. She is daughter
from Maremma mare and Sans Souci.”
"Incredible!” the Signore exclaimed. “That accounts for the
quality look.”
“Eh?” the driver asked, holding up his trumpet.
“Incredible!”
The grin widened. “How long you stay in Maremma?”
“Today only.”
The carter scratched his nose thoughtfully. Money jingling
in his pocket and wine on the table would be better than a no-
good mare. “Signore,” he said in a nasal, wheedling voice,
“you like buy my mare?”
Signor Busisi made no answer. At close range he saw that


she was no longer young. “What age has she?” he asked.
“Eh?”
“How many years has she?”
“Oh, she very young. She has only four years,” the man
boasted, smiling at his deception.
Signor Busisi ignored the answer. There was that certain
something about her—perhaps it was the arch of the neck and
the high-flowing tail, perhaps it was the enormousness of the
eyes. But somehow, in spite of her rough coat and her shoes too
big and the ramshackle cart, in spite of everything, she had
dignity and nobility. The Signore felt that the carter and he,
himself, suffered by comparison.
All at once his indigestion was gone! Excitement caught
hold of him. He did not want another horse for his own; he
felt himself too old. But he was not too old to place her, to
give her a chance. She could be good, even great. “Who knows
without the trial?” he asked himself.
Sensing a quick sale, the carter was like a tiger cat sniffing
its prey. And agile as the cat he leaped from the cart_eyes
greedy, hands ready. He held out the reins.
“Not yet! Not yet!” Signor Busisi protested. “I make only
the offer."
“And I only look at her shoes,” the carter lied. “A stone
maybe is caught. I take best care of Farfalla. Always I stop to
clean out her feet.”
“I am certain you do.”
“What you say you give me?”
“I did not say. But I do now. I will give sixty thousand
lire."
The carter sneered. “Six thousand lire!” he shouted an-
grily. “More money I could get for one old, deaf, mangy donkey



The Ghost in the Warehouse
CHAPTER XI
M YAGER to make the sale, the carter of Casalino delivered
the mare to Siena within the week. And while he went
to a restaurant and ordered himself a heaping plate
of veal! scallopini in anticipation of the sixty thousand lire,
Signor Busisi went to the bank to draw out the money.
On his way up the few stairs to the grilled portal, the
Signore found himself side by side with a slight young man. He
turned to see who it might be, and his face lighted. “Doctor
Celli!” he exclaimed in pleased recognition. He hooked his arm
80


through the young man's, swung him around, and led him back
down the steps to the courtyard.
“Doctor Celli!” he beamed, unable to conceal his delight.
“Think of my bumping into Fate twice in one week! May I
delay you a moment? No?”
The gray eyes in the sun-browned face smiled. “Naturally,
Signor Busisi. For you, my work can always wait.”
“I had not thought to find you so soon.”
“To find me?"
“Yes, you. This life is a big puzzle, Celli, jumbled with odd-
shaped pieces. Then presto, the pieces, they fit!”
“Am I one of the odd pieces?” the doctor laughed.
“Let us say you were.”
“And the other?”
“The other piece is . . ." the Signore ran his fingers through
his shaggy white hair. Then he straightened to his full height
and spoke in staccato excitement. “The other piece is an Arab-
ian mare. She is called by the name Farfalla, and she moves
as easily as an oiled machine. I found her in the Maremma.
Quite by happenstance.” The words now came more slowly.
“Doctor Celli, you are the one to prescribe for her. She has the
nervous tic.”
The young man burst into fresh laughter. “Do you forget,
Signore, I am a doctor of accounting, not of medicine?”
“I know, I know; but a doctor of this or that is smart
enough to work magic in other fields. Besides, you are a horse-
man. You have a villa and hunting reserves, and as I recall,
there is on your farm a good road, long and straight, fit for
gallops. And," he paused a moment in his eagerness, “in less
than three months, the Palio!”.
The two men in the courtyard stood facing a statue, very
81


tall, of Bandini, a celebrated economist, but neither one saw it.
Nor were they conscious of the people going in and out of the
bank. They were both seeing the same vision: Piazza del Campo
in battle array-flags flying, lances gleaming, knights and nobles
marching, horses dancing at the ropes, fantinos tense and ready.
In their veins all of the ancient feelings boiled up again.
For a long moment the silence seemed unbreakable. Then
at last Signor Busisi exploded. “You, Celli! You belong to the
Contrada of the Unicorn. No?”
“Si, si."
“Your contrada is small and has won few Palios. No?”
Again the young man agreed.
“How sad for you, but ..." the Signore waved his arms
to heaven, “think how sweet your frenzy if a horse owned by
you should win, even for another contrada!”
“A thousand times I thank you, Signor Busisi, but I never
buy the cat in the bag.”
“But, Celli! You do not have to buy the cat in the bag.
This Farfalla by Sans Souci is here, right here in Siena! You
have only to look!"
Respecting Signor Busisi as he did, Doctor Celli went early
the next morning to see Farfalla. She was stabled temporarily
in an old, dank warehouse used for storing ox hides. As he left
the sunlight and crossed the doorsill, he stood blinking among
the flies and the smells of dried blood and brine. A chill went
through him. Out of the shadowy darkness the figure of the
mare loomed like a gray ghost. Suddenly she scented the stran-
ger and reared into the air, as if she would pitch him heels over
head if he tried to mount. Then she retreated into a corner, her
ears laid flat, her nostrils snorting, her lips drawn back.
82



It was several moments before Doctor Celli's eyes became
accustomed to the dark. Then he took note of the fresh teeth
marks on the wooden crib. “This cribbing is a thing she will
not outgrow,” he warned himself. “Yet nervous horses are like
nervous people; they work in bursts of energy. For a race, this
is good.”
Back and forth he argued with himself. “She is too old to
buy! Already she looks to be a six- or seven-year-old !”
And he answered himself. “But some horses come late to
their full glory.” He remembered the mighty Lipizzans of
Vienna whose training did not begin until they were six. Per-
haps she, too, would be a late bloomer. And if she was daughter
to the noble Sans Souci, and if Signor Busisi liked her, that was
enough.
He heard a cough behind him, and turned to find the
Signore standing silently in the doorway.


“Restive, she is," the Signore said, “and pitifully underfed.
But the Arabian blood is unmistakable, no?"
Already Doctor Celli had taken the hurdles in his mind.
“Signor Busisi," he said, “from the fresh teeth marks it is plain
that she is a nervous cribber. You already have told me this.
Yet in spite of it, her possibilities intrigue me."
“Ah," the Signore replied, a wistful note in his voice, is
it not something beautiful to offer her the chance of fulfillment
in this life?"
Within the span of the next ten minutes the walls of the
warehouse echoed with excited voices. The haggling over the
price began in a series of crescendosup down, up down, up
down,
The louder the talk, the quieter Farfalla became. The hub-
bub seemed to be the very balm she needed, and Signor Busisi
was quick to point it out. “Notice, Celli,” he laughed, “the mare
is now tranquil."
At last the two men were shaking hands to seal their agree-
ment, both looking tremendously pleased.
The Signore took a deep breath, feeling his tired old heart
skip a beat. “The pieces of the puzzle, they fit nice and pre-
cise," he sighed. “For sheer happiness my heart is bursting.”
And he smiled, as if he had given to the mare and the man
their destiny.
As smoke lifts in an uprising wind, so ill fortune lifted for
Farfalla. She began a new life. From the dingy, malodorous
warehouse she was suddenly living on a wind-brushed hilltop
beyond the city walls. It was from gloom to Paradise!
She had a nice box stall with sparrows for company, and
outside her door she could hear pigs rooting and geese making


friendly clacking noises. From her stable a grass-grown lane
wound down and leveled off, straight as a string. The stretch of
straightness began at a small bridge and flowed quietly through
woods and farmland.
Each day was like the one before, and they were all good.
Mornings when the mist lay wet and shining upon the land,
she was saddled and bridled, and away she trotted without
the nuisance of a cart joggling along behind. No rumbly noises
at all. And no collar across her shoulders, nor leathers holding
her back. Only a light hand on the reins and the light weight of
Doctor Celli in the saddle. Occasionally a span of oxen would
loom into sight and plod by, but to Farfalla they were placid
old friends, remembered from the Maremma.
In this pleasant way the days and weeks of training for
the Palio slipped by, one like the other. But along toward
the end of June, with the selection of the horses only three days
away, Doctor Celli was sent on a business errand to Rome.
Scarcely had he left Siena when the sky clouded and the rain
began. It pelted down in big drops, far apart at first, then
closer and closer until they formed a thick curtain. Hour on
hour the rain drummed ceaselessly against the small window of
Farfalla's stable, until the noise and the eerie darkness threw
her into a terror. She jerked her head up and down, more des-
perate with each moment, and she clamped her teeth on the
uprights of her stall, biting them, peeling slivers of wood, and
at the same time sucking in great mouthfuls of air.
Night and morning, the tenant farmer sloshed through the
rain to look in on her. He saw to it that she had fresh water
and grain and sweet meadow hay. But he cut his visits short,
for she reared and snorted at the shadows made by his lantern,
and her ghost-white color made his own flesh creep. He noticed


her appetite was poor, but he attributed it to the foul weather
and the lack of exercise. What he failed to notice was the
swelling of her throat, and her belly becoming hard and dis-
tended.
When Doctor Celli returned, on the evening of the second
day, he hurried at once to the stable. It was the very eve
before the selection of the horses, and he wanted to be sure that
Farfalla was as fit and happy as he had left her. With his hat
dripping and his raincoat glossy wet, he entered her stall. To
his horror he found her rolling from side to side, pawing the air
in an agony of pain. He called in a veterinarian at once, but
with all the aids of stomach pump and quieting medicines she
still could not be readied in time for the trials.

86


The Chief nodded. “She suffers severe with the colic. Now
only fourteen horses remain in the trials.”
Giorgio felt honored that the Chief had stopped traffic for
him and had called him by name. But the news was in no way
startling, for who was Doctor Celli and how could an unknown
mare affect his chances?
When the judges accepted Dorina and Imperiale, too, in
the trial races, Giorgio felt an inward satisfaction, yet he was
not surprised. He had known all along they would be chosen.
They were ready. They were sound. They were, as the judges
agreed, “neither too fine-boned for the cobblestone track, nor
too clumsy for the perils of the course.”
But when Dorina was assigned to the Contrada of the
Panther and Imperiale to the Giraffe, it came as a shock that
neither one hired him as fantino.
“Did I not train these horses? Do I not know their ways?
Why,” he implored Signor Ramalli, “why did they not choose
me.?"
Out of kindness the man gave no real answer at all. He only
shrugged and said, “Man's ways are strange, Giorgio, very
strange.” And to lessen the blow, he added, “Perhaps, months
ago they hired their fantinos.”
Little Anna, however, told the truth. On the morning of
the Palio she came into the stable while Giorgio was solemnly
mucking out the two empty stalls. “Poor unhappy Dorina and
Imperiale,” she said. “They must be homesick in the strange
stables of their contradas. And maybe they will bolt when the
new fantinos leap on their backs.”
Giorgio flushed. Even this small girl felt pity for him, and
took this way of showing it. He turned his back on her, but every
fiber of him was listening.
88


She prattled on. “I think it most foolish of the Panthers
and the Giraffes to choose riders from far away.”
Giorgio wondered. Did she know the real reason? “Why
did they?” he blurted.
Anna stood twisting her braids, almost afraid to say. “You
promise not to tell Babbo if I tell you?”
“I promise,” he quickly agreed.
“Well, then,” she began importantly, “to our house came
some visitors. You see, it is sad, and Babbo already is sad. So
you must not sadden him more. You promise?”
“Twice now I promise.”
“Well, one man says to Babbo, 'Giorgio is too young for
Palio battle,' and the other says, 'Giorgio is not only young, he
is puny. And his hands ...'” Anna caught her lips between
her teeth and hesitated.
“Go on! Go on!”
“They say, “His hands are . . . girls hands. They cannot
whack with the nerbo and hold the reins too.”
Blood climbed hot in Giorgio's cheeks. “Girl's hands!” Was
that it? He would show the Giraffe! He would show the Pan-
ther! He would show all the contradas! Because his hands were
small, did this make them weak? Because he had less beard
than other fantinos, did this make him green in the handling
of horses? No! A thousand times no! Some boys are old before
their time. “I was born old,” he thought. He could never re-
member when he had not worked, nor when in the sweat of his
work he had not dreamed of doing great things, of proving
himself big for his size.
The day that was to have been all shining glory turned to
ashes. In dull numbness Giorgio lived out the Palio of July
second. As the sound of shields rattling and drums beating and
89


battle cries came to him, he bridled Lubiana and rode far out-
side the city walls. She was not good enough for the Palio;
neither was he. He rode for hours. He could almost have
reached Monticello, but purposely he went the opposite way.
How could he face the unasked questions of Mamma and
Babbo? How could he face Emilio wearing a spennacchiera in
his thatch of hair, daring his little friends to knock it off?
It was long past dark when he returned to the city. From
within the walls he heard music coming toward him. The
Wolves were chanting their victory song, loud in celebration.
Unable to bear the haunting sadness, he led Lubiana
through the narrow side streets to her stable. Then, exhausted,
he tip-toed to his room and fell across the bed. He lay there
staring into the darkness, the din of the drums beating through
his tired brain.
From that day on, Giorgio worked his string of horses
with renewed dedication. It was the only way to hide his hurt.
Men and children came in twos and threes to watch, then in
knots of ten or more. He was hardly aware of them. He did not
look to see if they were peasants or landowners, strangers or
Sienese.
One early morning when he was working Imperiale, a new
exercise boy came to Giorgio's favorite road to school his mare.
He was really not a boy at all, but a small-headed, long-bodied
weasel of a man, and he rode a tight rein.
Giorgio made a quick appraisal of the mare, and some-
thing within him snapped. His heart seemed to stop in its beat-
ing, then began to race wildly. The creature was an Arabian,
her mantle a gleaming gray, flecked with brown. And her head
was delicately shaped, with the muzzle small, and the eyes
was
90


enormous and wide-set. There was no mistaking the eyes. He
did not even need to think. She was, she had to be—Farfalla!
Unconsciously he slowed the pace of his mount. He
thought: “She is like a piece of sculpture. Some day I will make
a statue of her. And I will give it to our museum at school and
there she will stand among my childish works.”
All this he thought before he deigned to look at the groom
who had bitted Farfalla too tightly. Should he tell the clumsy
fellow you handle an Arabian differently from all others? That
you ride with almost a slack rein? And the whip, does he not
know it only makes creatures like her more nervous, sometimes
even vicious ? Where has she been since that Sunday morning at
Casalino? Who owns her now? Is he kind or cruel?
Giorgio rode Imperiale alongside Farfalla, changing his
pace to match hers. Then he rattled off his questions. Each one
was met with glum and stolid silence.
At last the man nosed the air. “I got no time to talk to a
boy with the slough of the Maremma all over him!” And he
dragged out the word “boy” to put Giorgio in his place, and also
to get rid of him. Then, digging his spurs into the mare's sides,
he made a rude sign with his thumb, and galloped off.
Day after day the two schooled their mounts along the
same road. Always the wizened groom kept his distance. It was
almost as if he might be tainted by associating with someone
from the Maremma. There were other roads about Siena,
equally good, but the man and the boy seemed drawn to this
one by some urge beyond their control, some sinister force egg-
ing them on to match their mounts and their wits.
One day the schooling gave way to a fist fight.
“Boy, go find yourself another road!" the man commanded.
And Giorgio leaned forward. “Why should I go?”
91


“Because you're a milksop; too sissy to fight!”
This was the spark that touched it off. Giorgio leaped from
his mount, tied him to a sapling, caught the man's foot, swung
him off Farfalla, and began punching with both fists.
The wiry groom ducked the blows, tossed Giorgio into the
dirt, and would have trampled him mercilessly had not Farfalla
taken this moment to fly past, her heels narrowly scraping the
man's head. It was all the advantage Giorgio needed. He caught
the groom off guard, sprang to his feet, and grasping the man's
arms, he pinned them tight to his sides. The groom lowered his
head, butting it against Giorgio's, and at the same time twisted


his shoulders, trying to wrench free. But Giorgio held fast, his
arms locked tight around the lean body.
"Look!” the groom cried in mock alarm. “Farfalla escapes!”
Giorgio turned. The two animals were quietly eating the
leaves of the sapling. After one well-planted blow, he freed the
man in great disgust. “Get on your horse!” he cried, and
watched the bowed legs scuttle off to mount Farfalla.
In this way the suspenseful days of July passed and the
August Palio drew near. A week before, Imperiale developed
a swelling on his left foreleg, had to be blistered, and was with-
drawn from the race. But Dorina again passed the trials, and
this time was assigned to the Contrada of the Porcupine. And
again, no one from any contrada approached Giorgio to say,
“Giorgio Terni, we earnestly desire you to be our fantino.” And
he could not use the reply he had rehearsed awake and asleep:
“Signore, I am honored deeply to ride in the Palio for your
contrada."
When the day of August the sixteenth came and the bell
in the Mangia Tower began tolling, Giorgio forgot he was
man-grown. With all his clothes on, even his high-laced country
boots, he went to bed like a child and pulled the covers up over
his head. But still he could hear the bell, sonorous and deep;
could see the pageant unfold in his mind, telling the beads of
history. The solemn tolling went on and on. And when he could
stand the reverberations no longer, they suddenly stopped. The
dead quiet that followed was even harder to bear. It meant the
race was on! Giorgio saw it in all its wild and glorious beauty,
heard the onlookers cheering, then roaring loud and louder until
the noise filled his room. Drenched in sweat, he burrowed deeper
into the covers. He wished he could suffocate and die. Unless he
could be part of the Palio, he would rather be dead.
93


At last exhaustion took over and he fell into a jerking
sleep. It was Signora Ramalli and Anna who wakened him,
turning on the electric bulb. He flew out of bed, embarrassed to
play the role of a sulky child.
“Giorgio," the Signora spoke in a mothering voice, "we
come with the special things you like—macaroni and coffee for
strength, and a good mocha torte to sweeten your bitterness."
She set the tray on his table and pulled out his chair. Then she
and Anna sat down on the chest to watch him eat.
Giorgio smiled his thanks. He picked up his fork and tried
the macaroni, but it stuck in his throat. He tried the frosting of
the torte, and to his relief it melted on his tongue.
“Better you were not there,” Anna said. “Our Dorina was
nearly last. Niduzza won for the Goose. But I thought a white
mare, Farfalla, had won, so close were their heads.”
Giorgio's spirits lifted. The cart horse of Casalino had
nearly won!
“Babbo says the reason Dorina failed is not because there
is weakness in her."
"Nor in her training,” Signor Ramalli added, coming into
the room. He sat on the edge of Giorgio's bed and sighed
heavily. “By now you must know, son, that the agreements of
the contradas beforehand play a vital role."
Giorgio put down his fork, listening.
“It will be enough for me to say that even the most un-
seasoned horse could win. Take any of the losers. Take Farfalla.
In today's battle she may have been deliberately held back
at the last moment. You must know," he repeated with all the
force he could summon, “that sometimes there are secret ar-
rangements between the captains of the contradas. The fantino
is given orders. He has to lose, even when his heart cries out to
win. There is no choice."
94



OVODU
The Goddess Fortuna
CHAPTER XIII
INIME in Siena is reckoned by the Palio. Trips, even im-
portant ones, are postponed until after a Palio, or
made hurriedly before. In the family Bible, births and
deaths are often recorded by it; this person was born on the
eve of the Palio of July, 1939; that one died during the August
Palio of 1880.
Giorgio, too, began counting time by the Palio. In between,
he felt himself in a vacuum. There seemed no real stuff and
substance to living. He remembered an incident when he was a
small boy. He was watching a veterinarian standing over a sick
horse, and the man had said, “This beast I do not pronounce
dead; it exists in a state of suspended animation.” Then with a
long needle the doctor injected medicine into the horse's heart,


and it began to breathe, and to live again. The Palio was a
stimulant, just like that. Even the hopes dashed and the despair
were easier to endure than the dull ticking of time between.
Signor Ramalli kept Giorgio on for the winter, but often
on Sundays he was allowed to go to Monticello. At home one
evening, with the cat purring on his shoulder and Emilio and
Teria looking on, he started work on his statue of Farfalla. It
was strange how he remembered everything about her, even to
the length of her mane and tail. As he worked, he found him-
self putting a shapeless lump on her back. He pinched and
pressed, adding clay here, taking it off there, until the lump
began to take form.
“What!” Emilio exclaimed, his eyes round in curiosity.
“What are you making there! A fantino? Is it you?”
Studying it, the mother said, “Why tear out your heart
in an aching for the Palio? Some of us are meant to dress the
table for the others to eat. They are blessed, too."
Giorgio managed a smile, but the longing for the Palio
persisted. In the slow months that followed, he sometimes
wished he had never listened to the Umbrella Man. But deep
inside he knew he did not mean it; he was glad he had the next
Palio to think of. The next one would be different. He would
be in it, and the horse he rode would be an Arabian, almost
white. And all the rest of his life the Palios would come, year
after year, one wild race for glory after another.
The next Palio was different indeed. The contest really
began on the road where the weasely groom and Giorgio waged
their continual warfare. Grimy and sweating, Giorgio was try-
ing one day to teach a mare to lead with either her right foreleg
or her left when going into a canter. Unless she could take a
curve on the correct lead, her legs might cross and she could
96


fall, endangering herself and everyone on the course.
Farfalla, with her groom sitting smug and superior, was
executing a series of perfect half-turns down the center of the
road. Every time their paths crossed, the man sniped at Giorgio
with a sharp insult. “Hey, you! To teach a donkey, is neces-
sary the teacher is less donkey than the donkey. Ha! Ha!”
Giorgio usually ignored the quips and jibes, but this one
cut deep because it was overheard by two important-looking
men beckoning him to the side of the road. One, a dignified man
with balding head, introduced himself as Signor de Santi, an
attorney, and captain of the Contrada Nicchio, the Shell.
The other, towering and magnificent in his blue uniform,
was Giorgio's friend, the Chief-of-the-Guards. In an easy, know-
ing way the Chief took hold of the mare's bridle and looked up
at the boy's dirt-streaked face. He smiled as if he had heard the
taunt but ignored it. “Giorgio!” he exclaimed, “we come with
a message for you.”
He turned to the Captain, who now cleared his throat as
if he were about to address a jury. “We of the Shell,” he in-
toned, “have sought a fantino raised in our own contrada, but,”
he cleared his throat again, "such a one cannot be found. Here
am I, therefore, wandering over the countryside, seeking.”
Giorgio was struck dumb by the importance of the two
men, and embarrassed by his own appearance. Hastily, he wiped
his face on his sleeve and with his fingers combed his hair.
The Captain boomed on. “Seeing you with your stained
shirt and disordered hair makes me think of the words of Angelo
Mentoni, who said, 'In order to make a fantino for the Palio,
three requisites are needed—age, liver, and misery.' Age you
have not; of your liver I know not; but misery you have—in a
manner only too evident!".
97


Giorgio blushed, then began to shake all over in anticipa-
tion. Trees went spinning before his eyes, the sky tilted, and the
men's faces swam before him as if they were under water. He
knew that out of respect he should dismount, but in his dizzy
excitement he might fall sprawling at their feet.
"I am of the opinion,” the Captain continued, “that you
are a boy of good future and will fight earnestly to win. Un-
fortunately, we are not a contrada of great wealth. However, in
the event of victory you will be rewarded in proportion to our
limited means." He coughed apologetically. "You must realize,
boy, that on our part this is a dangerous risk. Your . . . ah
... smallness, while an advantage when riding in the pro-
vincial races, is no advantage at all on a cobblestone course
where riders sit bareback.”
Giorgio wanted to shout: “Capitano! Chief-of-the-Guards!
I will take the risk. I will ride for no pay at all! I will pay you
if I can! I will save my fare to Monticello!” Then suddenly came
the remembrance of home of the sausage hanging from the
ceiling and the pieces of bread rubbed against it for flavor, and
he gulped. He tried to say, “Signor de Santi, I am honored deeply
to ride in the Palio for your contrada,” but the words stuck in
his throat.
The Captain took the silence for consent. “Good!” he said,
“you shall be the fantino of the Shell for the Palio of July the
second. You shall present yourself at my study on the morning
when the horses are assigned.” He reached up, grasping Gior-
gio's hand, wringing it until it hurt. Then the Chief did the
same, and their eyes met in the complete understanding of one
horseman for another.
For the first time in his life Giorgio galloped all the way
back. He brought his mount in blowing and lathered, a thing
98


he had never done before. Quickly he sloshed water over her.
He scraped off the excess. He put a blanket on her. He walked
her cool. Then he tried to walk himself cool, up and down
the Via Fontebranda, but his feet barely touched the cobble-
stones. He could not walk; he paced, he ran, he galloped. He
felt like some god of long ago, like Mercury skimming the
clouds.
That evening when Signor Ramalli heard Giorgio's news,
his face lighted in pleasure. “If this honor had come to my own
flesh and blood,” he said, “I could not be more glad. It is honor
indeed that the Captain comes to you so long before the assign-
ment of the horses. He must consider you able to handle any
mount.”
Later, in the stillness of night, Giorgio wrote to his father
and mother. “Mamma and Babbo,” he carefully formed the
letters, "to you I will dedicate my first Palio. And to Farfalla.”
Not for one instant did he doubt that Farfalla would be
chosen to run. Nor that in the drawing when the horses are
assigned to the various contradas, the Contrada of Nicchio, the
Shell, would win her. “It has to be," he told himself.
A month later, at the trials, Giorgio watched without
breathing as Farfalla nearly took a spill at the starting rope but
caught stride and finished fourth. In Giorgio's mind his arch
enemy, the groom who rode her, was entirely to blame for the
bad start. But even so, she was among the ten chosen.
Giorgio sighed in relief. This, he felt, was the first step
toward his goal, and certain proof that he would ride her in the
Palio. Was she not Bianca's successor? Were not their life
threads destined to come together?
After the trials the very air of the Piazza seemed charged
with intolerable suspense. The drawing was at hand. The hour
99



was ten-thirty, the sun striking hot on the cobblestones. Still
rankling over the clumsiness of Farfalla's groom, Giorgio joined
the throng gathering in front of the Palazzo Pubblico.
Everything was beginning to happen. Ten barbarescos or
official grooms, in the brilliant costumes of their contradas, were
taking their places before a raised platform. Ten trumpeters were
mounting the steps, lining up at the front edge, ready to blow
on their silver trumpets. The Mayor and the captains were seat-
ing themselves at a long table.
The stage was set. Two tall urns were already placed far
apart on the table. Within their opaque beauty they held the
fate of the drawing—in one the names of the contradas, in the
other the numbers of the horses. And against the Palace wall
two racks were hung, where everyone could plainly see them;
100



they were empty, waiting for the matched names and numbers.
Seemingly the whole town was on hand, each person tense,
each praying that his contrada would draw the best horse.
Already the ten were rated ... this one for speed, that one
for endurance. Giorgio listened to what people were saying.
“Ah, Belfiore is a veteran of many Palios. She knows those
sharp curves like the corners of her stall!”
“Oh, ho! Do not overlook Ravi, the little black gelding.”
“If Bruco, the Caterpillar, does not draw a good horse,"
said a man with a cracked voice, “I will go to the country.”
“Then go!” The jeers were ribald. “In thirty years your
Bruco does not win the Palio.”
.“Si, si,” taunted a gleeful young voice. “Bruco wears the
grandmother's cap.” And everyone took up the singing cry:
ΙΟΙ


“Bruco wears the grandmother's cap! Bruco wears the grand-
mother's cap!”
It was stilled only by the trumpeters blasting forth on their
silver horns. Then a hushed silence as two small pages stepped
forward to the center of the stage. In military precision they
turned smartly on their heels. One marched to the urn at the
right end of the table, and the other to the urn at the left. While
everyone watched, breathless, they took from each urn a wooden
capsule and with a deep bow presented it to the Mayor.
The Mayor's hands shook violently as he opened the first
capsule, unrolled a white slip of paper, and held it high for the
crowd to see.
“Number six!” Every voice roared as one voice.
Quick as a wink, a man scrambled up a ladder and slid a
number 6 into the top space of one rack.
Giorgio glanced into the corral nearby, where the mare
Belfiore wore a number 6 beneath her ear.
The crowd went wild. “Give us Belfiore !" they cried.
“Give us Belfiore!”
Then silence clamped down as the Mayor opened the
second capsule and held up the paper. Those nearby read
it, and almost before their lips formed the name, the man on the
ladder slid the board marked “Porcupine” into the rack beside
number six.
The Porcupines were beside themselves with joy. “Already
we have won !” they shouted.
Giorgio felt a tightening of his chest. He began to know
fear. Why had he been so sure the Nicchio would draw Farfalla?
With each capsule opened, fresh beads of sweat rolled down his
back. He could feel his shirt cling damply to him. He listened
to the pairing in an agony of suspense.
102


fore it actually touched the track. In fact, he was well in the
lead when he noticed that none of the other fantinos were
urging their mounts. They made a great to do with flapping
elbows and wild yelling, but anyone could see they were intent
on concealing their mounts' true ability.
Giorgio followed their cue. Besides, after the first spurt,
he sensed that he might have trouble with Turbolento. Although
not new to racing, the horse was accustomed to the tracks in
the provinces. The races there were run counterclockwise, while
here in the Piazza del Campo the running went clockwise. It
would take patient control of Turbolento's speed and of his leads
to prevent his switching at the turns. Before Giorgio had gone
once around the Piazza, he understood the real purpose of the
Prova. Horses and riders had to get acquainted three ways
with each other, with the dangerous slopes and curves, and with
the opposite way of running. No wonder the rehearsal races
were neither battle nor competition!
During the days of the Provas, Giorgio felt as if he had
the all-seeing eyes of a horse. Besides watching Turbolento's
every move, he managed to see what was happening to Farfalla,
whether she was ahead of him or behind. Her fantino, Ivan-the-
Terrible, went around the curves flapping his wings like a bird.
Twice he flew off into space. Luckily, Farfalla was not hurt by
entangling reins or bumps from other horses. Giorgio remem-
bered later that he had noticed Ivan was unhurt only after
he had made sure about Farfalla!
“Which horse is it you ride?" an elderly man of the Forest
whispered to Giorgio after the third Prova. “Is it your Turbo-
lento, or is it our Farfalla ?” And he winked and nudged him
in the ribs as if he wished the boy could be their fantino.
Quickly Giorgio's bodyguards closed in, wondering if the
105


man were making some secret offer. But they might have saved
themselves the trouble, for neither Turbolento nor Giorgio was
considered strong enough to win—or to help anyone else to win.
Despite his watchfulness, Giorgio failed to see the crip-
pling accident that happened to Farfalla in the last Prova on the
very morning of the Palio. Between the curves of San Mar-
tino and the Casato, the horses of the Panther and the Unicorn
were having a private race of their own. As Farfalla tried to
pass, a hoof lashed out and hit her a sharp blow, almost severing
the cartilage of her left hind foot. Ivan-the-Terrible managed
to stay on, and let her finish the race limping heavily.
Moments later Giorgio passed her in a narrow lane as she
was being led back to her stable. He turned to look at her bleed-
ing heel. “The devil pursues her!” he said to his guards. Then
his eyes blazed with a sudden thought. “They won't race her;
they can't race her this afternoon in the Palio!” he cried out.
"But they got to!" the young men answered in chorus, and
they turned on him in a torrent of explanation.
"It is a law from year seventeen hundred,” the Number One
guard said. “If an animal is lamed or dies in a Prova, it is not
permitted to replace him.”
Another guard broke in excitedly. “Why, I myself saw
one killed in a Prova, and the contrada remained horseless."
"I too saw it!" the first one said. “And in the parade before
the race the long black tail and the severed hoof of the dead one
were carried on a platter of silver.”
Now thoroughly roused, the guards were irrepressible.
“And the flags of that contrada were tightly furled in mourning
and even the strongest men wept like small children and cried
aloud.”
Giorgio felt his stomach turn over. Almost pleading, he
106


looked from face to face. “But Farfalla is crippled! There could
be a stumble, a fatal ..."
“Then it will be her time to die,” the Number One body-
guard said flatly. “She too is only mortal.” There was no cold-
ness in his voice. He was merely repeating words said to him
long ago.
Giorgio tried to shut out thoughts of Farfalla. He made
his mind go forward. He began counting. Three hours until the
blessing of the horses in the churches of their contradas. Then
the long historical parade, and at last, at sundown, the Palio!
He went with Turbolento into the stable of the Shell and
watched the barbaresco go to work, sponging him off, making
him comfortable and cool with especial attention to his head,
eyes, and nostrils. Giorgio stood by as long as he could. Then
from sheer habit he fell to his knees and hand-rubbed Turbo-
lento's legs. Unconsciously he worked for a long time on the left
hind, as if in some remote way he were helping Farfalla.
Giorgio usually had the mind of a camera. Events reg-
istered sharply with him. But that afternoon, during the long
parade in which he wore the martial costume of the Middle Ages
and rode a heavy warhorse, he felt himself an actor in a play,
an actor who did not know his part. He was bewildered by the
vast sea of faces in the center of the Piazza, and the kaleido-
scope of color in costumes and flags, and the drums beating
out a somber rhythm. Through it all he rode woodenly, like a
toy soldier.
But with the explosion of the bomb announcing the race,
he became all awareness again. With every fiber he heard the
starter call out the horses in order.
“Number one, Caterpillar!"
“Number two, Shell!"
107


“Number three, Forest!" That was Farfalla. Ignoring her
injury, she walked briskly to the starting rope. Giorgio re-
minded himself that of course the doctors had deadened her
pain.
As the horses moved to their positions, Giorgio felt his
breath coming fast. Turbolento and Farfalla were side by
side. “Is it some omen,” he asked himself, “that brings us
together?”
The starter's voice blared on: "Number four, Tower .
Number five, Snail . . . Number six, Wave . . . Number
seven, Panther . . . Number eight, Goose . . . Number nine,
Turtle !"
Now nine horses in line—pawing, dancing, heads pulling
to go. And nine fantinos with faces taut, reins taut, waiting for
the number ten horse. Not until he is called to the rope can the
race begin.
“Number ten, Unicorn!" the strident voice of the starter fills
the Piazza.
Head lowered like a bull charging, the number ten horse
gallops up, almost touches the rope. The starter springs it. It
snakes free. Ten horses, as one, leap over it!
Giorgio's fingers tighten hard around the nerbo. If he
takes the lead, he will not need it. He arrows Turbolento out
in front, sets the pace.
Forty thousand throats cry “Forza! Forza!” as the bunched
leaders pass the Fonte Gaia, pass the Casino of the Nobles, pass
the scaffold where the judges sit. Now they are thundering
toward the death curve of San Martino.
Behind him Giorgio hears the nerbos strike hollow against
horseflesh and sharp against steel helmets, but he is still in the
lead, free of the bludgeoning.
108



38


Out of the tail of his eye he sees the Wave, the Goose, the
Panther fighting it out, and behind them Ivan-the-Terrible
trying to drive Farfalla through. In the split second of his
looking, a fantino catapults into the air like a rag doll shot from
a cannon. It must be Ivan! It is Ivan! Farfalla is staggering on
by herself. All this Giorgio senses rather than sees. He is at the
curve now. Turbolento is leaning at a crazy angle; he seems to
be tiring, faltering.
From every balcony and window, from all over the Piazza,
the people of the Shell are shouting to Giorgio: “The nerbo!
The nerbo! Use the nerbo on him!”
Giorgio feels icy terror. Turbolento is trying to wheel, to run
the wrong way of the track. His left foreleg crosses his right. It
is rooted! The pack is passing him! From both sides nerbos are
raining blows on him, on Giorgio, beating them out of the way.
Giorgio lifts the horse's head, tries to get the weight on his
hocks, but it is too late! Turbolento freezes, then buckles. His
scream joins the shrieks of the crowd as he somersaults and
slides across the track. Giorgio is pitched into the air, and hits
with a thud on his back.
Hoofs go thundering past while he lies writhing, gasping,
the wind knocked out of his body. As in a trance he sees the
white-coated veterinarian rush out on the track. He hears the
crack of the bullet that ends Turbolento's life, and sees the limp-
ing form of Farfalla come within an arm's length of the smoking
pistol.
His heart beats thickly. He is suddenly afraid. A soundless
prayer escapes his lips.
“Not her, too! O Holy Mother, not her! Not her!”
: 110


from his face and he sucked air enough to walk head up. But
the pain of remembered sounds and sights bore down on him,
the sharp crack of the bullet, the instantaneous thud, the dribble
of crimson, the crazed scream cut short. Then the whole world
was a spinning blackness. What had happened afterward?
All about him a solid pack of humanity was streaming
onto the track. The race was over! Voices came at him like cross
winds, some shouting “Bravo!” and some crying in strange for-
eign tongues. He was sucked along with the crowd, stumbling,
shuffling, pulled into their meshes like a fish into a net. Over
and above the shouting came wild, deafening cheers, beating out
the syllables:
“Tar-tu-ca!”
“Tar-tu-ca!”
And so he knew that the Contrada of the Turtle had won.
And he yelled, too, but he did not know what he yelled. He had
to yell to keep from fainting, to keep from crying.
Two of his bodyguards got through the crowd to him,
linked their arms in his, supporting him, buoying him along,
questioning in his ear.
“How do you feel?”
“You all right?”
His head nodded “yes” but all of him felt numbed, dis-
graced. And his legs trembled as if at any moment they might
splay and split apart. Through the shouting and joyful singing,
he could hear remembered voices mocking:
“Hey, you runt of Monticello!”
“You, with the slough of the Maremma all over you!"
“Girl's hands . . . girl's hands ... girls hands ..."
The words jumbled in his dizziness, and he staggered along,
feeling himself littler and weaker than ever, like some fragile
I 12


moth battering its wings against the walls of the centuries. He
knew now what the Umbrella Man meant. The Palio was in-
destructible. Men could beat their fists against it. Horses and
fantinos could die for it, but it would remain forever the supreme
challenge.
He wanted to be alone in his agony. His guards under-
stood, and let him go. As he went zigzagging through the crowd,
he pressed his palms hard against his ears, trying to shut
out the singing, and the drums beating, and the inner voices
accusing. At last he stood panting before the door of Turbo-
lento's stable.
He rang the bell, summoning the barbaresco. He knocked.
No one came.
A couple walked by, arm in arm, unmindful of him. He
might have been a cat scratching to be let in. He tried the latch.
The door was open! He lurched into the dark emptiness. The
barbaresco was not there. No one was on guard. No one was
needed. He closed the door behind him, and his shaking hands
locked it. The light from a street candle came in the high barred
window, threw a splash of yellow on the strawed bed of Turbo-
lento. It was freshly made, awaiting a possible victor.
Alone in the stable, with only the faraway sounds of re-
joicing, Giorgio fell face down in the straw. “Mammina! Mam-
mina !” he sobbed, and the tears so long inheld were unloosed.
As he cried himself out, the sea of taunting faces melted away,
and in their stead his mother's face appeared, trying to soothe
him, to comfort him. “Giorgio, Giorgio, Giorgio," she called.
The next day millions of people were reading newspaper
accounts of the Palio. Sports writers from Rome, from Florence,
from Milan called it "The Race of the Broken Heart." They
113


“Number three, Forest!” That was Farfalla. Ignoring her
injury, she walked briskly to the starting rope. Giorgio re-
minded himself that of course the doctors had deadened her
pain.
As the horses moved to their positions, Giorgio felt his
breath coming fast. Turbolento and Farfalla were side by
side. “Is it some omen,” he asked himself, “that brings us
together?”
The starter's voice blared on : “Number four, Tower ...
Number five, Snail . . . Number six, Wave . . . Number
seven, Panther . . . Number eight, Goose ... Number nine,
Turtle !"
Now nine horses in line-pawing, dancing, heads pulling
to go. And nine fantinos with faces taut, reins taut, waiting for
the number ten horse. Not until he is called to the rope can the
race begin.
“Number ten, Unicorn!" the strident voice of the starter fills
the Piazza.
Head lowered like a bull charging, the number ten horse
gallops up, almost touches the rope. The starter springs it. It
snakes free. Ten horses, as one, leap over it!
Giorgio's fingers tighten hard around the nerbo. If he
takes the lead, he will not need it. He arrows Turbolento out
in front, sets the pace.
Forty thousand throats cry “Forza! Forza !” as the bunched
leaders pass the Fonte Gaia, pass the Casino of the Nobles, pass
the scaffold where the judges sit. Now they are thundering
toward the death curve of San Martino.
Behind him Giorgio hears the nerbos strike hollow against
horseflesh and sharp against steel helmets, but he is still in the
lead, free of the bludgeoning.
108


ET :
:
CSC.
.
in-
|



The Odd Pieces Again
CHAPTER XV
E was still gulping for air, but he had to move before
the horses came around again. He felt a pair of strong
hands grasping his upper arms, helping to lift him.
Feeling less hurt than humiliated, he pulled away. It was not
his body that needed help. He made his knees bend one at a
time, and he pushed himself up. And he got to his feet under
his own power and as the horses whirled past, he went tottering
alongside, clinging to the upright mattresses that lined the curve.
With his sleeve he wiped the sweat and a streak of blood

III


referred not to the death of Turbolento. That was gallant. For a
horse to be killed on the field, like a soldier in battle, was beauti-
ful. But the injury to Farfalla's leg, they said, was not only
painful to her and perilous to all, but to watch her hobbling
three times around the course to the very end was heartbreaking.
Better she, too, had been killed.
Thus, in a few paragraphs, the race passed into history.
For weeks, however, the fate of Farfalla was tossed about like a
frail boat in a storm. One doctor gave her an even chance of
going sound again. Another spoke frankly to her owner as
father to son.
“Celli,” he said, "you are a man most benevolent, but that
poor mare is suffering, and time will not lessen her pain." He
shook his head in sympathy. “I suggest you put her down, and
the sooner it is done, the better.”
Unwilling to be convinced, Doctor Celli called in a third
veterinarian, a gnomelike creature with a short clipped mus-
tache and a short clipped way of speaking. After examining
Farfalla, who was biting at her manger, he made his pronounce-
ment: “This Palio will be her last. I would at once put an end
to her sufferings. What pleasure in this life does she have?".
For hours after the veterinarian had gone, Doctor Celli
paced to and fro in the room where he kept his guns and hunt-
ing trophies. It was difficult to listen to one's heart and mind
at the same time. As a banker he was a careful man, reasoning
always with his pocketbook. A sick horse was a luxury he could
ill afford. If the best doctors were ready to sign her death
warrant, who was he to say, “No, this I will not do!" Yet he
could not help wavering.
Perhaps, he mused, someone else would have more time
to give her, more time to look in on her during the day instead
· 114


of only at sunup and sundown. Would Signor Busisi know of
someone? A talk with the old and wise man might be of help.
Feeling somewhat lifted in his heart, Doctor Celli went to
his garage, backed out his car, and sped toward Siena. He
would lay the facts in the palm of his friend and ask for a plain
answer.
Within the half hour the door to the house of Busisi was
opening wide and the sad, kindly face of the Signore was smiling
in welcome.
“Buona sera, Celli. Come in! Come in!” The old man led
the way to the dining table and pulled out a chair. “Enjoy
with me the simple pleasure of food and drink. I am alone. My
wife has gone to the church. Let us eat first. Then we talk of
Farfalla."
There was a bottle of good red wine on the table and a nice
assortment of cheeses. Signor Busisi fixed a plate of them for his
guest. Without any heart for it, Doctor Celli took a small bite
of the gorgonzola.
The old man remonstrated. “Celli, can you only nibble like
the mouse? Eat with gusto!”
"If I eat now, Signore, the food sits heavy in my stomach.
I want only to talk.” He pushed his plate aside. “Already I
have summoned three veterinarians for Farfalla.”
“And their verdict?”
“Two advise putting her down. At once."
“You have decided?”
“No. My thoughts seesaw—first one way, then the other.
You observed her in the Palio, Signore. What would you say
if she were now fretting in your stable instead of in mine?”
Signor Busisi's face was grave, deeply concerned. He made
a steeple of his fingertips and looked under them as if he hunted
115


there for the answer. “Mortals are quick to destroy,” he said
at last. Already he was ill of a heart condition, and being on
the edge of death himself seemed to give him a wisdom beyond
the common man. “It takes eleven months and five days for a
horse to be born into this world,” he said with a faraway look.
“Why do we not give the mare the same number of months
and days before we sentence her to die? Perhaps in that time
she will prove her destiny."
There was a long silence between them. The old man got
up, paced the room thoughtfully, then stood before the win-
dow. A blood-red sun was sinking behind the city wall. With
his back to Doctor Celli he said, “You are not the first to come
to me today concerning the fate of Farfalla.”
"So? Who else?”.
“The Chief-of-the-Town-Guards. You know him?”
“Si, si. The Chief is a man most compassionate. I once saw
him on a cold, bitter day restore the fallen blanket to an old
bony horse.”
“But the Chief came only as agent.”
“Agent?”
Signor Busisi nodded.
“Agent for whom?"
“For two tradesmen from Seggiano.”
“But what could they want with Farfalla?”
“In their hands she would certainly come to a pitiful end.
But ...” Signor Busisi came back to the table; he seemed
quite out of breath.
“But what?”
“I detected something in the face of the Chief,” the Sig-
nore went on. “At first it was only a flicker, then it burst into
flame, bright as the morning sun. You see, he had been charged
116


to buy Farfalla, but suddenly the truth struck him. He did not
want to forward the mare to Seggiano. He wanted to keep her
for himself.”
Doctor Celli sat on the very edge of his chair. “What did
you tell him?”
“I told him what I once told you."
“You mean about life being a puzzle with odd-shaped
pieces?”
The old man threw back his head and laughed. “My boy,
you have a remarkable memory. And I told him also what sweet
frenzy it would be for him in next year's Palio to watch two
horses—his own and that of his contrada."
Doctor Celli smiled. In the hands of the Chief, Farfalla
would be treated well. She might live to race again. She might
even ..
Signor Busisi broke into his reverie. “I must tell you,” he
said, “the Chief's money at present is low, but he is soon expect-
ing payment on an old transaction, and my advice, Celli, is for
you to wait until he comes to you, ready to buy. Remember
this, my friend, a gift horse seldom is prized.”
"I will wait! Gladly! Farfalla meanwhile can rest at my
country place, and my tenant farmer will see to her needs.”
With a deep sigh of relief he stood up and raised his glass in a
toast. “May the pieces fit again!”
Already the heaviness was lifted from his heart.
117



TE
The Rabbit's Foot and the Horn
CHAPTER XVI
THE second Palio of 1953 was bloodless, but again
it fell short of Giorgio's dreams. Not until the last mo-
ment did any contrada ask him to ride. Then on a
cold blooded horse he raced for the Panthers. A flashy bay won
for the Forest, but of course Farfalla was not there. Things
might have been different, he thought, if he had had the right
mount. He wondered what had become of her, if she would
ever race again.
On a morning soon afterward, Giorgio set out quite early
for the weekly market held in the Piazza del Campo. He was
leaving for Monticello that selfsame day, but first he had a
purchase to make. He planned to walk all the way home to save
for his mother the few lire he had left from his year in Siena.
And since it was the season of the rains, he would need either
a raincoat or an umbrella. A raincoat would make him look
more like a successful fantino, but it would cost 5,000 lire, and
118


for that sum he could buy four umbrellas ! Besides, he had
ruined his only satchel with blistering liniments and blue
gentian for his horses, and he would need a carryall for his
clothes. By rolling them into small, bread-size bundles he could
pack them between the ribs of an umbrella. And so, for one
price, he would have a traveling bag and a canopy against the
rain.
As he trudged the steep hill of Via Fontebranda, he felt
cross-arrows of sadness and gladness. The sadness was for his
performance in the Palios. Two contradas had believed in him
and he had failed them, miserably. He had failed his family,
and himself, too. Even Signor Ramalli needed him no more;
he was selling his horses and would not start up his stable again
until spring, if then.
So now, defeated and discouraged, Giorgio was going back
home where he belonged. That was the wonderful thing about
Home. It waited patiently for you to come back, hero or failure.
In his mind's eye he was already there, his mother singing as she
whisked an egg for their soup; his father contentedly blowing
smoke rings; the children poking their fingers through them.
And pervading the whole house was the comforting, all-is-well
feeling, as if downy wings were spread wide and all who came
within were safe.
He was deep in these thoughts as he joined the procession
of men with their baskets and women with their market bags.
He decided not to make his purchase right away, but to move
through the crowd, enjoying the sights and sounds. He had to
laugh at a bearded old man in an ankle-length coat who picked
up a lady's mirror and a goose quill from a counter of trinkets
and trifles. Unmindful of anyone else, he studied his long yellow
teeth in the mirror, picked them clean with the goose quill, and
ΙΙ9


tossed both articles back on the table. Enraged, the man behind
the counter promptly smashed the mirror on the cobblestones.
“You miser! You horse's teeth!” he called out. “For you this
means worst luck.”
Giorgio walked on, still laughing. Life was fun, after all. He
stopped at another stand, fascinated by a hawker of handker-
chiefs. The man was wrapping one after another about his fist
until the bundle grew big as a pumpkin. He kept his audience in
an uproar as he wound and wound the white squares. “Peoples!"
he shouted. “A thousand uses they have! To clean the rifle. To
strain the jelly. To substitute for the diaper. To blow the nose,
even great one like Pinocchio's. Now, who wants whole bundle
for only two hundred lire. Who wants?”
Hands went up in coveys, like birds flushed from a hedge-
row. And the money poured in. Giorgio could not help wonder-
ing if men like this—men who could make so much money and
who could make people laugh, toodid they have worries inside
them?
He went on, through the maze of hardware and pink petti-
coats and flower stalls, and the stalls with bright-colored fish


and tiny talking birds. He bought two fish to give to Anna, and
a new belt for himself. At last he came to the umbrellas. Under
a bright purple awning they were hanging down like a stumpy
green fringe.
The man selling them was bent double, counting shiny lire
from his pocket into a copper pitcher on the ground. All Giorgio
could see of him was the bright green patch on the seat of his
trousers. It was the same green as the umbrellas!
When the man stopped a moment in his counting to peer
around for customers, Giorgio nearly dropped his fish.
“Uncle Marco !” he shouted. “Uncle Marco!”
With a clanking jangle the remaining money fell into the
pitcher uncounted. The man spun around, at the same time
pushing back his feathered hat and squinting his eyes to make
sure. Then he leaped over the pitcher, grabbed Giorgio by the
shoulders, and bellowed for all the world to hear. “Giorgio!
Giorgio Terni!” Fiercely, fondly, he embraced the boy, kissing
him man-fashion, first on one cheek, then the other.
A little crowd began gathering and Uncle Marco smiled
beatifically at the ready-made audience. “Signori!” he an-



Giorgio blushed, then began
tion. Trees went spinning before he
men's faces swam before him as is
kuru thai out of respect he shou
excitement he might fall sprawlin
"] am of the opinion,” the
art a boy of good future and wi
tortunately, we are not a contrad
thir event of victory you will be
limited means." He coughed apo
hov, that on our part this is a
::. smallness, while an adva
moal races, is no advantage
Mhett riders sit bareback."
Giorgio wanted to shout:
I will take the risk. I will rid
il can'l will save my fare to
The remembrance of home
soiling and the pieces of brea
he walpesi He tried to say, "S
hanner; he Palio for your
1: 111: 1:1
The captain took the
"W hat be the fantino
vinder Suid shall present
hititkorses are assi
'!li wringing it
L '
incir eyes mer
' another
! first time
Nii.. ught his


nounced, “I wouldn't believe mine eyes. Behold the little runt
from Monticello!” He spoke with reverence, with ecstasy. There
were tears in his eyes.
“This brave young fantino,” he explained, “is more Sienese
than the Sienese! Some day he will conquer curve of San Mar-
tino. You listen to your Umbrella Man! This boy will be a fantino
formidabile! The Palio ... he will win it!"
Red-faced, Giorgio pulled at Uncle Marco's sleeve.
“Please, Uncle, please! I come to buy the umbrella. An oiled-
cloth one, because they are cheaper. You see,” he stammered,
“today I go home to Monticello.”
Uncle Marco slapped his thigh and laughed until the tears
streaked down the furrows of his cheeks.
Giorgio grew angry. Was this a time to laugh? Had the
Umbrella Man gone daft?
"Ah, the sadness so sweet! So joyous!” he sighed, making
no sense whatsoever. A few bystanders nodded, as if they knew
a sweet sadness, too. One woman began sobbing softly.
Giorgio tried to back away, but Uncle Marco lifted him
bodily off his feet, giving him a bear hug, almost crushing him
in happy excitement.
"Put me down! Put me down! You spill my fish!”
Uncle Marco set him down as if he were a child. “You
listen to me,” he said. “I foresee . . .” He let the sentence
dangle teasingly in midair. Then to heighten the suspense he
whispered in a stage voice directly into Giorgio's ear. But first
he examined the ear, marveling at its smallness. “I foresee,” he
said prophetically, “to Monticello you do not go.”
"Oh, but I do! This very morning I go.”
“Ho, ho! Listen to him! So little faith has he.” Putting his
arm around Giorgio, he faced the audience, sighing deep, as if
I 22



Gaudenzia, Joy of Living
CHAPTER XVII
N EN o'clock seemed years away. To hurry the time,
Giorgio went to the public bath and gave himself a
I good scrubbing. He worked hard on the labyrinthian
creases in his ears. Perhaps Uncle Marco had examined them
for a reason.
At supper back at the Ramallis' home he ate his macaroni
in a trance, almost forgetting to say “Buon appetito” beforehand.
There was chocolate and strawberry ice cream for dessert, served
in special honor of his departure. Absentmindedly, he mashed
and melted the two colors together, toying rather than tasting.
"Is something wrong with the ice cream?” Signora Ramalli
asked in concern.
For answer Giorgio quickly shoved a spoonful into his
mouth. How could he explain his excitement when perhaps it
would amount to nothing at all?
124


After supper Anna wheedled him into a game of dominoes,
but his eye was on the clock more than on the counters. When
at last it was time to go, he grabbed his jacket and tore down
the stairs and out into the street. He ran swiftly at first; then
as the lane twisted and steepened, he had to slow to a walk.
Someone had forgotten to take a parrot inside. The cage hung
on a balcony and its occupant screamed and scolded Giorgio
as if he were to blame.
On ordinary evenings he would have talked back, but
tonight nothing could delay him. He did not even peer into the
cobbler's shop for memory's sake, nor into the public laundry.
Nor did he stop to look through the gates to the great houses.
Tonight he flew by his landmarks as he climbed the Via
Fontebranda, crossed the busy Via di Citta and came out at
last into the fairyland of Il Campo. He caught his breath at
the contrast from the morning market. The jumbled confusion
of flapping blankets and spreads and the splashing colors of
fruits and vegetables, and the hawkers screaming—all this was
gone. The Piazza was a shell of emptiness. High up in the
palace windows the winking lights seemed faraway planets, but
in the circle of shops below they burned steady and close to-
gether like a necklace of fire opals.
The night was softly warm. A score of small round tables
had been set out in front of the café near the Fonte Gaia.
Most of them were occupied. Giorgio thought he recognized
some of the people from Uncle Marco's audience. He stood
facing across the vast square to the canyon of the street where
the Chief lived. It was black as a mousehole. Like a cat, Giorgio
watched it, never taking his eyes away. It was magic how the
Chief came, as if the very looking had pulled him out of the
darkness. At first he was only a tall block of white. Then grad-
125



ually the block developed two legs, and with lithe grace they
were advancing across the square, directly toward Giorgio.
When the two met, the Chief purposely stood on the down-
slope so that he and Giorgio were more nearly the same height.
Then he glanced up at the Mangia Tower. The lone hand on
the clock pointed almost to the hour. He smiled in approval.
“We meet early, no?”.
Giorgio nodded, too breathless to speak.
“Come, my boy,” the Chief said. “See that little table apart
from the others? There the long-eared folk won't hear us.”
A waiter arrived at the table simultaneously. “Buona sera,"
he bowed. Then he wiped the chair where the Chief would sit,
and gave the table a thorough cleaning. “Now then.” He arched
his eyebrows, awaiting the order. “Would you like a chocolate?
An ice cream? Or a coffee, perhaps?”
“What will you have, Giorgio?” the Chief inquired.
“I will take a coffee, if you please.”
126



“We will each take the same, waiter."
There was no talk at all before the coffees arrived. Some-
where from the heights of a palace window came a string of
staccato notes, clear and strong. It was flute music, the “March
of the Palio."
Giorgio wiped the anxious moisture from his palms. A dis-
tant church bell chimed the hour. The time had come! And with
it the two steaming cups.
“Sugar?” The waiter held the bowl first for the Chief, then
set it down in front of Giorgio. Two spoonfuls went into each
tiny cup, and both the man and the boy stirred vigorously, as
if they had no other thought on their minds. In unison, too,
they sipped the sweet bitterness.
At last the Chief looked directly at Giorgio. “Well, boy?
Did you go today to the Street Market?”
“Si, si.”
“Did you buy the umbrella?"
127


"No, Signore.” Giorgio hesitated. “You see, Uncle Marco is
my very good friend. He said the umbrella now is not needed.
Instead, he gave me, for luck, a coral horn and a rabbit's foot.”
A smile crossed the Chief's lips. “I will start from the first.”
He set down his cup. “Now then! Two tradesmen from Seggiano
have engaged me to purchase for them the mare, Farfalla.”
Giorgio drew in a quick breath. Why did the very mention
of her name give him a shock?
“They have commissioned me,” the Chief went on, “to make
the purchase from Doctor Celli and to forward the mare to
Seggiano.”
“But why? Is it for the racing?”
The Chief shook his head sadly. "I prefer not to think of
her fate. Those men are traders in all manner of beasts."
“Could you ...” Giorgio's mind darted ahead. He grew
startled at his own daring. “Please, Signore, could you not buy
the mare yourself?”
For a moment there was stony silence. Then in a voice cold
and stern, the Chief asked, “Who told you to say this? Signor
Busisi? Doctor Celli?"
“Oh no, Signore."
“Are you certain?”
“I am certain."
The big man relaxed, and his face broke into a pleased
grin. “Good! A boy who can read a man's mind can also read a
horse's.” Then he leaned forward, punctuating his words with
excited gestures. “Already have I gone to Signor Busisi. I tell
him I am commissioned to buy the mare, but in my heart I hide
the secret hope of keeping her.”
Giorgio barely managed to get the next words out. “Is all
settled?”
128


“No, no. Nothing is settled! With her what would I do?
Where would I keep her? Who would exercise her? I have no-
body to do this. Besides, she has the nervous malady."
Giorgio's mouth went dry. He could not speak. He took a
gulp of coffee, but still no words came.
The Chief was using both hands now; his words ringing
sharp and clear. “In spite that she did not reach expectation, in
spite that she is tortured by the bad leg and the nervous tic, the
daughter of Sans Souci deserves better than to be put down.”
Suddenly the boy found his voice. “Oh, I believe it, too! I
believe !"
“The money to buy her—that I now have.”
Giorgio's heart raced. He thought he had the answer. He
knew it was the answer. "I... I will train her!” he gasped.
There was no reply. Only the flute piping in the palace
window.
Giorgio leaped to his feet, almost upsetting his chair. “Do
not worry about the stable,” he said. “In the Maremma I can
winter her. Babbo has a very nice barn. Nobody lives there,
nobody but little Pippa, our donkey.”
Still no reply.
Giorgio persisted. “Signore! I myself can ride her to
Monticello. At once!”
The Chief pursed his lips, thinking. There was worry in
his face as he mulled over the proposal. He had asked expressly
for this meeting, had hoped earnestly that Giorgio would have
the same desire to rescue the mare. But now he was appalled
by the depth of the boy's emotion. He studied the slight figure,
the young face so full of eager determination. What if the mare
were beyond help? Was the boy's faith too high a price to
pay? What would happen to him if he failed ?
129


“No, Signore.” Giorgio hesitated. “You see, Uncle Marco is
my very good friend. He said the umbrella now is not needed.
Instead, he gave me, for luck, a coral horn and a rabbit's foot."
A smile crossed the Chief's lips. “I will start from the first.”
He set down his cup. “Now then! Two tradesmen from Seggiano
have engaged me to purchase for them the mare, Farfalla.”
Giorgio drew in a quick breath. Why did the very mention
of her name give him a shock?
“They have commissioned me,” the Chief went on, “to make
the purchase from Doctor Celli and to forward the mare to
Seggiano.”
“But why? Is it for the racing?”
The Chief shook his head sadly. “I prefer not to think of
her fate. Those men are traders in all manner of beasts."
“Could you ...” Giorgio's mind darted ahead. He grew
startled at his own daring. “Please, Signore, could you not buy
the mare yourself ?”
For a moment there was stony silence. Then in a voice cold
and stern, the Chief asked, “Who told you to say this? Signor
Busisi? Doctor Celli?”
“Oh no, Signore.”
“Are you certain?”
“I am certain.”
The big man relaxed, and his face broke into a pleased
grin. “Good! A boy who can read a man's mind can also read a
horse's.” Then he leaned forward, punctuating his words with
excited gestures. “Already have I gone to Signor Busisi. I tell
him I am commissioned to buy the mare, but in my heart I hide
the secret hope of keeping her.”
Giorgio barely managed to get the next words out. “Is all
settled?"
· 128


“No, no. Nothing is settled! With her what would I do?
Where would I keep her? Who would exercise her? I have no-
body to do this. Besides, she has the nervous malady.”
Giorgio's mouth went dry. He could not speak. He took a
gulp of coffee, but still no words came.
The Chief was using both hands now; his words ringing
sharp and clear. “In spite that she did not reach expectation, in
spite that she is tortured by the bad leg and the nervous tic, the
daughter of Sans Souci deserves better than to be put down.”
Suddenly the boy found his voice. “Oh, I believe it, too! I
believe !"
“The money to buy her—that I now have.”
Giorgio's heart raced. He thought he had the answer. He
knew it was the answer. “I ... I will train her!” he gasped.
There was no reply. Only the flute piping in the palace
window.
Giorgio leaped to his feet, almost upsetting his chair. “Do
not worry about the stable,” he said. “In the Maremma I can
winter her. Babbo has a very nice barn. Nobody lives there,
nobody but little Pippa, our donkey."
Still no reply.
Giorgio persisted. “Signore! I myself can ride her to
Monticello. At once!"
The Chief pursed his lips, thinking. There was worry in
his face as he mulled over the proposal. He had asked expressly
for this meeting, had hoped earnestly that Giorgio would have
the same desire to rescue the mare. But now he was appalled
by the depth of the boy's emotion. He studied the slight figure,
the young face so full of eager determination. What if the mare
were beyond help? Was the boy's faith too high a price to
pay? What would happen to him if he failed ?
129


move to open it. “Sometimes with strangers she is quite savage,"
he explained. “Therefore, I think it imperative that you estab-
lish at once who is master. Perhaps,” he questioned, “perhaps
you wish to go in alone?”

id
Giorgio looked at the forbidding, heavy door. He drew
a deep breath, hesitated, then lifted the latch and pushed. The
creaking of the hinges sent Farfalla rearing to the rafters.
Quietly Giorgio stepped inside and closed the door. He stood
transfixed at the change in her--the ribs showing, the mantle
harsh. Her stall was big enough, but lit by only one window, too
high for looking out. It smelled of cold earth and hay and dung.
All this he sensed in some faraway place in his mind. He had
never before been alone with the mare, and he stood motionless,
making no sound.
She too was electric with curiosity, pulling in the scent of
him, blowing it out with a rattling snort.
133


“I am here,” the boy said in a quiet tone. “It's only me."
The mare's head jerked high, her nostrils flared red, her
ears flattened. “Stay back!” she warned. Fear was strong in
her, but spirit, too. When Giorgio did not retreat, she wheeled
about, took aim, and like a cat ready to spring, she gathered
herself for a mighty kick. In the split second before her heels
lashed out, he leaped against her rump, pressing his body hard
against her. She was trapped as if her hind legs had been hob-
bled! Through his clothes he could feel her break out in lather.
He too was drenched in sweat. Relief and happiness flooded
into him as her muscles relaxed. He had won the first skirmish.
He went around now to her head and gently took hold of
her halter. “You, so soft-eyed,” he said. “You could not hurt
me. Not ever. I am not afraid. Why are you afraid? Come,”
he coaxed, trying the new name softly. “Come, Gau-den-zia.”
And he led her out into the morning.
Doctor Celli could not hide his surprise. “Colombo!” he
shouted to his farmer, who was throwing a pan of soaked acorns
to the sow. “Look here! Already she knows who is master.”
The farmer and Doctor Celli stood back in amazement
while Giorgio lifted her hurt foot and held it between his knees.
Carefully he pressed his hand from her hock down her cannon
bone and along the tendon to a point just above the fetlock. To
his great relief he could tell that the tendon was not bowed.
“The leg,” Giorgio said, “should be rested if ..."
Doctor Celli nodded. “So I told you! A month, maybe.”
“No! No!” the boy spoke quickly. “If the tendon bowed
out, then she would need rest. But now we got to keep her leg
moving. The gristle otherwise will harden."
The men exchanged glances, eyeing each other with doubt-
ful, questioning looks.
134


Giorgio pretended not to notice. He spoke with a bold sure-
ness that surprised even himself. “If you please,” he said, “I
now make a poultice of flour and alum for the bruised place,
and if you don't mind, we leave at once. It is sixty kilometers
to Monticello and I must stop often to rest her.”
The farmer disappeared to fetch the flour and alum, and
Doctor Celli himself produced the bridle.
"She does not willingly take the bit,” he said. “I will help
you."
Giorgio smiled and shook his head. He led the mare inside
her stable and cross-tied her to iron rings fastened to opposite
walls. Then he saw that underneath her chin was a raw, red
place. He thought a moment, and took from his pocket the rab-
bit's foot. Much as he prized it for a good luck charm, he
skinned it and wrapped the soft fur about the chinstrap of the
bridle.
“Now, Gaudenzia,” he said as if he were talking to a small
child, “with rabbit's fur the strap will not chafe the sore spot."
It took only a little firmness to slip the bit between her
teeth and to adjust the throat latch. And she actually pushed
her leg against Giorgio's hand while he bound the poultice in
place.
For as long as he lived, Giorgio knew he would never forget
this day. Of all the masters Gaudenzia had known, she had
singled him out as the one to trust! Why else did she let him leap
aboard without bolting? Why else did she travel the moun-
tainous country with scarce any favoring of her hurt leg? Why
else did she swivel her ears to pull in his talk, or a snatch of
his song?
The trip took all day, with Giorgio walking up the hills
135


Giorgio pretended not to notice. He spoke with a bold sure-
ness that surprised even himself. “If you please," he said, “I
now make a poultice of flour and alum for the bruised place,
and if you don't mind, we leave at once. It is sixty kilometers
to Monticello and I must stop often to rest her.”
The farmer disappeared to fetch the flour and alum, and
Doctor Celli himself produced the bridle.
“She does not willingly take the bit,” he said. “I will help
you.”
Giorgio smiled and shook his head. He led the mare inside
her stable and cross-tied her to iron rings fastened to opposite
walls. Then he saw that underneath her chin was a raw, red
place. He thought a moment, and took from his pocket the rab-
bit's foot. Much as he prized it for a good luck charm, he
skinned it and wrapped the soft fur about the chinstrap of the
bridle.
“Now, Gaudenzia,” he said as if he were talking to a small
child, “with rabbit's fur the strap will not chafe the sore spot.”
It took only a little firmness to slip the bit between her
teeth and to adjust the throat latch. And she actually pushed
her leg against Giorgio's hand while he bound the poultice in
place.
For as long as he lived, Giorgio knew he would never forget
this day. Of all the masters Gaudenzia had known, she had
singled him out as the one to trust! Why else did she let him leap
aboard without bolting? Why else did she travel the moun-
tainous country with scarce any favoring of her hurt leg? Why
else did she swivel her ears to pull in his talk, or a snatch of
his song?
The trip took all day, with Giorgio walking up the hills
135


dogs nosing for game. And they saw oxen slow-footing as they
turned over the clods of earth.
They saw strawstacks, layered golden and brown, like
mocha tortes. At thought of the tortes Giorgio was suddenly
hungry. Standing at the side of the road, one arm through the
reins, he ate his bread and salami and watched Gaudenzia
graze. He wondered how far into the distance she could see.
He studied her purple-brown eyes, but all he saw in them was
his own reflection.
The sun was slipping into the folds of the mountains when
they reached the wild loveliness of the Maremma. Never had it
seemed so boundless. To Giorgio it was not lonely looking at
all. He bristled at the thought. To him the tangle of brush and
brake was beautiful, and the wild birds more plentiful than any-
where, and the autumn weeds winking bright and yellow in the
roughed-up land. He stopped at a small wayside shrine deco-
rated with a bouquet of dahlias, and asked a blessing for his
new responsibility.
As they took off again, he noticed that the mare had lifted
one of the flowers from the shrine. He laughed to the wind and
the echo rolled back to him.
At last, in the thickening twilight, they wound up the hill
to the huddled houses of Monticello. He clucked to Gaudenzia,
asking her to trot the last few meters home in triumph. Her
hoofbeats alerted the whole village.
Shutters flew open. Heads popped out. Voices shouted.
“Look! Look what Giorgio brings home! A white scare-
crow!” And the children made a sing-song of it. “A white scare-
crow! A white scarecrow!”
“Hey, Giorgio! She's got ribs like a washboard!”
“If you sell her for nothing, I wouldn't buy."
137


The jokes were all good natured, and in high spirits Giorgio
leaped from Gaudenzia's back and led her to Pippa's stable. But
Pippa was not there. In her place stood a red motor scooter
with Babbo's old cap on the handle bars.
For a moment Giorgio felt grief. Then he wiped it away as
if it were a cobweb. He had to think ahead now. "It is better
Pippa is not here,” he said to the mare. “Nobody now can be
jealous." He showed Gaudenzia around, showed her the old
donkey cart and the trunk with the oats in it and the big wide
windows. “You have only a little alley for view,” he explained,
"but nicer than Doctor Celli's stable with windows too high for
seeing out. No?”
As he took off her bridle, she rubbed her head against him
where the leathers had been. He sighed happily, feeling singled
out and special again. “At last you have come to me!” he said.
Then he went to the trunk and scooped up a measure of grain.
Before pouring it into the manger he sifted it between his fingers,
removing the dried grasshoppers and beetles.
It was late evening when his family returned home from the
farm where they had been gathering grapes. But they all had to
see the mare, and admire her points, even though she was not in
a welcoming mood.
That night when Giorgio went to bed in the family bed-
room he did not mind that Emilio, with arms and legs flung
wide, slept crosswise, taking up most of the bed. As the wind
blew cool, he pulled up the cover, making it snug about Emilio's
back. It was good to feel cozy and warm and welcome; good to
belong to a family again.
Before he dozed off, he saw through the open window a
fingernail moon far away above the mountain. A new moon, a
new mare, a new beginning ...
138



No Morning Glory
CHAPTER XIX
TO THEN Giorgio awoke the next morning he felt whole
and strong and full of purpose. He hurried at once
to the barn and set to work. He grained Gaudenzia
and gave her fresh water. Then he nailed hardwood boards
over the lower half of the two windows. “In case of kicking,”
he explained to an early visitor, “splinters of wood are better
than splinters of glass.”
Word quickly flew from house to house that “the little runt
of Monticello” was back home with a race mare. Neighbors,
relatives, friends came from far and near just to look. A few
recognized that she was Farfalla, the cart horse, but they seemed
puzzled by her fineness, awed by the Arabian head. In her

139


for Gaudenzia. She is in training for battle; we cannot stop now.
“Babbo,” he said, “every morning I take Gaudenzia to the
road that winds round the hills. We walk, and we jog, and then
we begin the gallops and ...” He broke off as a sudden thought
struck him. Instead of working Gaudenzia in the morning, he
would plant the trees, and take her out at night. Was not the
Palio held at sundown? Why not accustom her to the late hour?
He smiled. “But from now on I train her by night. Yes,
Babbo, I will go with you. We will plant the trees together."
Later that day the father proudly told the townfolk, “That
Giorgio of mine, he makes of Gaudenzia no morning glory!
Horses has time-clocks in their heads. The morning bloomers
wilt by noon. Oh, that boy, he thinks like the four-footed!”
As the days grew shorter, the workouts grew longer, more
intense. Long walks with little jogs gave way to long jogs with
little walks. By starlight, by moonlight, the white mare rounded
the curves of Mount Amiata like some floating phantom of the
night. She was never extended, never pushed. Without anyone's
telling him how or why, Giorgio knew he had to build up her
confidence in herself. Always he stopped short of what she could
do. There was plenty of time to reach the peak. The real moun-
tain, he knew, was not Amiata.
October, November, and December were torn off the cal-
endar. In January there were many days of mist and drizzle
when Giorgio still had to work, planting trees. Then no one
passed the stable for hours at a time, and Gaudenzia's nervous
twitching came on again and she took to crib-biting. One dismal
evening when he came to bridle her, she stood grunting as she
clamped her teeth on her manger, sucking air into her stomach.
Giorgio tried fastening his belt around her neck, loose enough
so that she could munch grain, but tight enough to prevent her
142


Campo is four and a half kilometers. She must go the whole way
and still be strong at the finish!”
By March she was galloping three kilometers.
On the fifteenth of May, Giorgio walked her to nearby
Casole d'Elsa and entered her in a race on a straightaway
course. She flew ahead at the start, and with no sign of diffi-
culty, led all the way. It was a stunning triumph for the mare
and her young trainer.
The whole family took a long time deciding where to hang
the little red-and-white flag she won. Teria chose the spot.
“Here,” she said, “beside the cupboard. On this wall the sun
comes just before setting.”
Often, when no one was looking, Giorgio ran his fingertips
over the painting of the white mare on the red silk. Was this
the work of a soothsayer? He read the artist's name in the
turf beneath her flying hoofs. How did the man know that a
white mare would win, and so picture her instead of a black, or
a bay? And under the date of the race was painted a golden
crown bright with jewels. Had the oracle spoken to the artist,
too? Or had he seen a boy flying in the night on a white
phantom?
Once when Babbo caught Giorgio fingering the little
humps of oil paint that made the jewels of the crown, he pulled
the boy aside. “Jesters,” he said, not wanting him to be hurt,
"sometimes wear the crown like king and queen. Maybe that
artist fellow, he dangles the carrot before Gaudenzia only to
tease.”
1 44



A Simple Plan
CHAPTER XX
VT UNE! The hallway into summer. The season for strong
happenings, the season for living. Giorgio's mind was
on tip-toe. Looking at his calendar one morning he
thought, in a flash, of the ski slide on Mount Amiata,
saw the skiers toiling up and up for one breathless whoosh into
space. Now he knew how they felt. For months he and Gau-
denzia had been toiling up and up for the wild two minutes of
glory that was the Palio.
The days of June neither dragged nor flew. They were as
alike as echoes. Walk Gaudenzia one kilometer, jog her three,
gallop her three and a half. Bandage her hind legs, bandage
her forelegs. Grain her, a handful more each day. Cut down her
145


hay. And always, the inner command pounding through him:
Don't let her reach the peak until July. Climb, climb, climb.
Bring her right up to it.
In the last week of June, the long-awaited message from
the Chief-of-the-Guards reached Giorgio. “Come to Siena! At
once!" was all it said.
By cockcrow on the morning after, boy and mare were on
their way, trotting along gay-spirited, as if the wheatfields
spattered with wild red poppies, and the hills high-rising to the
sky, and all the creatures in it were theirs. Gaudenzia wanted to
race every moving thing—a rabbit skirting the edge of the road,
a hound streaking for a bird—the bird, too. Her friskiness, her
eagerness to go filled him with a pride so strong he had to whistle
to let the steam of his happiness escape. Nine months ago, with
a bandage on her heel, she had slow-footed her way over this
same road. Now, like Mercury with wings, she was returning.
A solitary shepherd, hungry for human company, ran out
on the road and invited Giorgio to share the meal he was pre-
paring over an open fire. He pointed his crook at Gaudenzia.
“Magnifico!” he exclaimed, with a smile so wide it showed
the dark hole where two of his teeth were missing.
“Magnifica !” Giorgio laughingly corrected him. “She is a
mare!” He joined the herdsman in a meal of goat cheese and
grilled eel. And while the mare grazed, her eyes ranging with
the cloud of sheep, the lonely herder questioned Giorgio about
his plans. Then he poured out his own heart. He too had a
dream. He would teach a young boy to herd, teach him just
where to noon the sheep, and which ones to watch in a storm.
Then he would be free for a little while, and he would walk to
Siena, and there, before he died, he would witness with his own
eyes the manifestation of the Palio!
146


In Siena, too, the mare created admiration, but it was
thinned with doubts and forebodings. Entering the city through
the Arch of Porta Romana in the early evening, Giorgio could
feel at once the general air of agitation. The usual flow of prom-
enaders had given way to excited knots of men choking the
traffic. Bruco! Oca! Onda! Tartuca! The names of the con-
tradas punctuated the talk. And town eyes were staring his way.
“What a beautiful beast goes there!” a voice said. And the
same voice asked, “Boy, where did you get her? What are you
going to do with her?”
Giorgio turned and saw a grizzle-headed old man, the
center of a group. “It's a long story, Signore,” he answered.
“She used to be Farfalla, but now she”
The man did not let him finish. “Eh?” he exclaimed. “Can
this be Farfalla returned from the dead?”
And another said, “A fine parade horse she would make.
But for the race?” The shoulders owning the voice shrugged.
And then Giorgio overheard, “Would you wish to draw
her for your contrada ?”
A whole chorus answered, “No! No!” It was as if her
tortured limping in last year's Palio was a memory too fresh
to be wiped out.
Giorgio himself Alinched at the recollection. He touched his
heels to Gaudenzia and hurried her through the crowd. “How
they feel about you, I do not care,” he told himself. “It is better
so. Popular horses are nearly killed by too many sweets, too
much petting and pulling of tail-hairs for souvenir. I believe,
and the Chief believes !”
He found the Chief striding across Il Campo, heading for
his home. They saw each other at the same moment.
“Giorgio!” the big man shouted, and his arms flung wide
148


apart, as though he would clasp the boy and the mare both.
“How are you? How is it with our cavallina? Tell me all about
her! Don't keep me one minute more in this anxious waiting.”
Giorgio suddenly felt shy. He answered with two little
words. “All fine.”
"That I can see!” the Chief laughed. “The mare, she is
rekindled!” He stepped now in front of Gaudenzia, pulled off
his white gloves, and with both hands felt of her chest and
forearms. “Not even sweating,” he nodded in approval. “Come,
let us walk to the stable, and while walking you will tell me how
she goes in her work. Then, after she is bedded down, you will
come to my home where we can engage in serious talk.”
The stable was midway of a narrow downhill alley with
walls high-rising on either side. Giorgio's spirits plummeted at
its darkness. It did have a window, but it was covered by a
curtain of gunny sacking. There were two stalls divided by
heavy planking. The one nearer the door was occupied by a bay
gelding, and the other, deeply strawed, awaited Gaudenzia.
“To find stable room is very difficult,” the Chief was ex-
plaining. “But Morello here is a good horse and the two will
become friends and help each other to forget the Maremma.
He, too, comes from your wilderness.”
Across the partition Gaudenzia and Morello began at once
to get acquainted—first in screams, then nips, and at last in
low whinnies.
“How quick they make friends !” the Chief grinned. “Now
then, the hay is piled here, the grain is in the sack yonder, and
the medicines in the cabinet. Now you can take over.”
Giorgio noted the racks already filled, the water buckets
brimming. He would come back later to grain and groom Gau-
denzia and to remove the gunny-sack curtain.
149


He followed the Chief to his home, which perched on a
ledge of rock like an eagle's nest. The view was miniature com-
pared to the world of the Maremma. Below was a tiny dim
valley, and climbing the opposite hillside were busy little farm
plots. But the same deep sky was overhead and the same stars
beginning to punch holes in the blue.
The Chief's wife and daughter greeted Giorgio with polite-
ness and relief. “The supper is ready,” the Signora said with a
hot-stove smile. “I would not want the chicken to cook a
moment longer.”
The meal was a feast such as Giorgio had not tasted since
his days at the Ramallis’. First there was a piping hot broth of
chicken with tiny pearls of dough swimming along the bottom.
Then came a beautiful plate of antipasto—black olives, and
mushrooms in oil, and little white onions, and small green
peppers, and anchovies curved into tight nests, with a caper on
each. Giorgio was encouraged to take something of everything.
And still he had room for a drumstick and breast of chicken,
and a baked tomato stuffed with ground beef.
All of this he sluiced down with a red Chianti wine which
he thriftily diluted with water as though he were at home.
The Chief helped himself to the food sparingly, and in
silence. He seemed preoccupied, brooding. But Giorgio ate
heartily. The Signora beamed at him. “For a small man, as you
are,” she said, appreciatively, "you have un bel appetito.”
Giorgio felt his face flush and his ears redden at the half-
and-half compliment.
With the dessert of fruit and cheeses on the table, the
wife and daughter disappeared into the kitchen. The silence
grew heavy. The Chief pushed back his plate without touching
the food. At last the moment for talk had arrived.
150


But the words did not come. He ran his finger around the
inside of his collar and cleared his throat. He got up and stood
at the open door, looking out upon the night. He came back and
sat down again. Then, gripping the edge of the table, he blurted
out, “My boy, the Palio is not going to be as we dreamed it."
Giorgio swallowed whole the apricot in his mouth. It was
as though an icy hand had gripped his throat.
“You see, the people want beautiful horses such as Gaudenzia,
but the judges, no!"
Giorgio's voice sank back so deep inside him it was scarcely
audible. “But why?”
The Chief took a breath. For the boy's sake he wanted to
sound matter-of-fact, to ease him gently into disappointment.
“The news of Gaudenzia's win at Casole d'Elsa has spread to
Siena. All at once she is known as the get of Sans Souci, a full-
blood Arab. And the full-bloods are not wanted.”
“But, Signore, she is only half-bred. Her dam was a farm
horse.”
“I know, I know,” the Chief answered in irritation. “But
because she is now too beautiful, too well-trained, the rejection
may come.”
Giorgio waited in numbness.
“High-mettled Arabians have caprices, the judges say. Be-
sides, the turns of the course are too perilous and the layer of
earth over the cobblestones too thin for a full-blood with the
delicate toothpick legs."
There was a momentary pause as the Chief's daughter
brought in two small cups of coffee.
“You see, Giorgio, we Sienese are like moles burrowing,
always digging into our past. I have heard the judges say, as if
only yesterday it happened, how in the year 1500 Cesare Borgio's
151


big stallion reared on his hind legs and in coming back to
earth hit the starting rope so hard he could not run in the Palio.
And in 1885, the purebred La Gorgona cracked up in the last
Prova, her legs brittle like eggshell. And you, Giorgio, you must
remember Habana ? You remember when she flew into the
fence, and broke the boards to splinters!”
“But Signore! It happens with the mixed blood, too. Have
they forgot Turbolento?"
“He fell, Giorgio. But the others? One might say they des-
troyed themselves.”
Anger lit Giorgio's eyes. “Signore! This you should have
told me before! Why did you send for Gaudenzia and me? Why
did you let me nourish all the hopes to win?”
The Chief wiped his face tiredly. “I do not know, truly.
Perhaps the hope is in me, too. Perhaps the hope is stronger than
the reality. I fear, Giorgio,” he said again, “the Palio is not
going to be as we dreamed it.”
“Signore! Shake yourself!” Giorgio's anger turned to wild
appeal. His words tumbled out bravely, recklessly. “Something
we can do! Something we must do! Think !” He took hold of
the man's sleeve, actually shaking him in his eagerness.
The Chief closed his eyes thoughtfully. “What comes to
mind,” he said at last,“is a very simple plan. Maybe too simple.”
“Tell me! Tell me!”
Something of the old vigor crept into the Chief's voice.
“Listen well, my boy. In the trials when the horses are selected,
you must make Gaudenzia appear mature, sensible; an average
beast.”
Giorgio nodded, listening with every fiber.
“And in her workouts she must appear tranquil.”
“That is easy! Easy! What else?"
152


“Wherever you make talk, you must say how her dam was
a poor old farm horse and how she herself was a cart horse for
many years, and her colts were nothing at all, good only for
the slaughterhouse.”
“I will!”
“Margherita,” the Chief called to his daughter, “our coffees
are now cold.” He turned back to Giorgio. “Only one thing is in
our favor. You see ..."
There was a pause as the coffees came and he liberally
spooned sugar into both cups. “Because all the contradas think
her nervous, unpredictable, none will ask for agreement from
you to help another horse to win.”
Giorgio sighed in deep relief. “Of that I am glad. When I
am on Gaudenzia I am simpatico only to her. But why is it no
one has ever come to me to make the secret agreement?”.
· The Chief could not help chuckling. “ “The runt of Mont-
icello', they say, 'is young and green like new spear of wheat.
We do not make agreements with a boy so little he has to have
double lining in his helmet to keep it on.'"
The man suddenly went silent. What if Giorgio were not
asked to ride Gaudenzia in the Palio? He held his tongue. The
boy had had enough worries for one night.
153



Half-bred
CHAPTER XXI
(UESDAY, June 29. Morning. The whole city seething
in warlike impatience. Il Campo in battle array.
- Everything ready for the trial of the horses. The stout
railing around the shell to keep the people from spilling onto
curves. The tiers of seats rising in front of the palaces and
cobblestones. The mattresses, upright, lining the treacherous
curves. The tiers of seats rising in front of the palaces and
shops. The high platforms for the judges and dignitaries. The
bomb cage on stilts, looking like an oversized parrot cage, ready
for the charge of gunpowder.
And people converging from all directions, talking ex-
citedly with their hands, their voices. Which horses will be
chosen to run? Surely not the old one who has twelve years!
Surely not the little one with the ewe neck ? Surely not Gauden-
zia with the hot blood in her veins?
The lone hand on the clock of the Mangia Tower points to
nine. Within the courtyard of the Palazzo Pubblico seventeen
horses and riders are ready. Giorgio is ready. He has done every-
154


others are moving in a bunch. “Oh, Mamma mia! Don't let
her win! Don't let her!”
She is third at the curve of San Martino, and third at the
Casato. Suddenly she asks to arrow out in front, but she feels
the bit pulling up into her mouth, exerting more and more pres-
sure on her tongue. She slows. She lets Giorgio hold her. She
obeys!
Out of the first realization, like the first glint of sunlight
from behind a cloud, Giorgio feels an unutterable joy. Twice
around, and three times around, she lets him hold her! In third
place she finishes, all her fire inheld. The trials are over !
While the judges pondered and debated their decisions,


Giorgio rode into the cool courtyard of the Palazzo. Here were
only the sweating horses and the men, all of them bound to-
gether in the misery of waiting.
The Chief-of-the-Guards, immaculate in his starched white
uniform, looked in and strode over to Giorgio. There was a
smile of incredulity on his face.
“I salute you!” he said. “Gaudenzia's disguise was bellis-
sima! When first I saw her at the starting rope, it seemed I
dreamt with open eyes. Even a sculptor, I think, could not have
done a better work on living skin.”
He made no effort to hide his happiness, for already he
knew the results of the trials. Already a deputy was fastening
a disc numbered 10 to Gaudenzia's cheek strap to show that she
had been chosen.
The Chief led Giorgio and the mare out into the Piazza,
into a corral where the ten horses would be on display as at an
auction. The big difference was that here a horse could not be
bought; not for any price. It was assigned to a contrada as
irrevocably as a child is born to certain parents. Here all was
luck. A miniscule slip of paper in a tiny capsule would tell
which contrada would win the best horse.
Suspense was growing intolerable. There was wild shout-
ing for the favorites. Voices came piercing and crashing around
Giorgio.
“We want Ravu!”
“We want Uganda!”
“We want Rosetta!”
An official groom shoved Giorgio to one side, took hold
of Gaudenzia. There was now no need for Giorgio. And then, in
a flash, he realized there was no need for him anywhere! The
awfulness struck him. For nine months he had been blindly
157


running up a dead-end street. Feeling sick and bereft, he went
back into the empty courtyard. He picked up Gaudenzia's rub
rag, hung it on a peg. He made meaningless motions of tidying
up. But even here, away from the crowd, he saw the whole
scene in his mind—the Mayor and the captains at the long table,
the urns containing the capsules, the pages and trumpeters
waiting. And then, as in a storm, when thunder rumbles and
ricochets from rock to rock, the voices came booming against
the Palazzo wall and into the very courtyard :
“Number seven, Ravu, to the Ram!”
He could hear the Rams roaring with joy for the favorite.
“Number nine, Pinocchio, to the Giraffe !”
Men and boys howled in derision, “Long Neck gets Long
Nose! Long Neck gets Long Nose.”
The roaring was uncontrolled; it subsided only while the
capsules were being opened.
“Number one to the Wolf !”
“Number five to the Dragon!”
“Number two to the Tower!”
“Number ten to Onda, the Wave!”
Giorgio shot out of the courtyard, but the way to the corral
was blocked. By the time he could wriggle through, the drawing
was over! And, suddenly, there was trumpet music, and drums
beating wild, and the barbaresco of the Onda was leading Gau-
denzia to their stable. In an agony of emptiness Giorgio melted
into the throng, went tagging along like some outsider. With no
halter or bridle to hold, his hands felt awkward, useless. A piece
of his heart was going away with Gaudenzia.
Should he catch up with the barbaresco and tell him about
the crib-biting? Should he offer his belt? Should he offer to
clean Gaudenzia's stable tomorrow, and tomorrow ?
158


No, everything was out of his control now. In the next
moments he lived a lifetime. No contrada had asked him to be
their fantino. Why should they? In two Palios he had not won.
A fight started in the crowd. A young boy from the Dragon
and one from the Tower began with friendly roughness, yanking
each other's caps, then grabbing contrada scarves, then arms
swinging, and fists pummeling. Giorgio wanted to join in, to
throw one and then the other flat on the ground. Anything
would be better than having nothing to do. Someone in the
crowd recognized Giorgio, pointed a finger at him. “Hey, fan-
tino! Afoot now? Ha! Ha!”
Giorgio leaped at the lanky fellow, ready to land a left
jab, when suddenly his arm was wrenched behind him. A
strange, deep voice commanded : “Hold there, Giorgio! Let
up! Street fighting is for boys. You face the real battle, the
battle of the Palio.”
Giorgio looked into the eyes of a gentleman. At once he
recognized the man. He had just seen him on the platform
with all the officials. “You!” he gulped for air. “You are Gen-
eral Barbarulli, leader of the Onda !"
The General smiled. Then he linked his arm into Giorgio's,
and above the din spoke into his ear: “The Chief-of-the-Town-
Guards tells me it is you who trained Gaudenzia.”
Giorgio nodded, scarcely breathing.
"A stroke of chance has given her to the Onda, but,” the
General slowed his words, emphasizing each one, “but with
Giorgio Terni as her fantino, that is not luck. That is destiny."
159


The boys agreed. “But we must also protect you from
street fights,” Enzio explained. “We must save your hands. They
are small as ..."
“I know.” Giorgio bit his lips, then supplied the missing
words. “Small as girl's hands!"
It was scarcely any relief to swing up on Gaudenzia and
ride twice a day in the Provas. For even then he was not free.
He knew that he was being carefully observed, his every action
noticed and weighed.
Why, he asked himself, did it take two Palios to teach him
all the rules and regulations leading up to the big race? He an-
swered himself honestly. Turbolento and Lirio, the horses he
had ridden last year, had been little more than names to
him—no, they had almost been nameless. But Gaudenzia was a
part of his very life.
So now, for the first time, he was terrified by a rule that
had not really concerned him before. According to a proclama-
tion of the Grand Duke in 1719, the choice of the fantinos is
not made final and official until the day of the Palio. If through
Giorgio's carelessness Gaudenzia were kicked and lamed as in
last year's Prova, he could be dismissed abruptly. He had been
hired, yes, but he could still be replaced, even on the very morn-
ing of the Palio!
Thus, tortured by uncertainty, he took great care to keep
Gaudenzia clear of the other horses, and to bring her in slowly
at the finish of each Prova.
At night, however, he and Gaudenzia knew no restraints.
When the moon rode high, he took secret delight in waking his
bodyguards, who slept on mattresses in his room.
“Wake up, or I go alone!” he told the sleepy young giants.
Grumbling, they dressed and went out with him into the
161



Loom
“The Provas are nearly over, son. Already there have been
four. If all goes well in the last two, you will be fantino for the
Contrada of the Wave, and tomorrow your name will be in-
scribed in the archives, officially.”
Giorgio managed an anxious nod. He waited for the Gen-
eral's next words.
“Thus far she has not won a single Prova.” Something in
the man's voice told Giorgio that he was in no way displeased.
“Tonight,” he went on, “is the banquet before the Palio.
As you know, it is the great meeting of our people. You must
163


come and you will be seated between Captain Tortorelli and
myself. Your bodyguards will bring you at the hour of eight.
From you only a short speech will be expected.”
“A speech ! Me? A speech!” Giorgio grabbed a handful of
Gaudenzia's mane as if he might topple off. The bodyguards
came up then to accompany him to the stable. His lips moved
drily. “A speech I must make,” he mumbled in deep misery.
All that afternoon Giorgio struggled with pencil and paper.
As the result of his labors he produced only three small sen-
tences. These he copied neatly on a clean sheet and folded it into
the breast pocket of his good suit.
Promptly at the stated hour Pinotto, Carlo, Enzio, and
Nello led him toward the church of the Wave. He felt like a
prisoner on his way to execution, as they wound in single file
through the narrow streets, through the arch of San Guiseppe,
then through the doors of the church itself, and down the wide,
winding staircase into another world deep under the sanctuary.
Giorgio stood gaping at the splendor. The banquet hall
was high-vaulted and vast. Already many people were seated
in their places at the rows of tables, but some were still standing
in clusters, deep in conversation. With the entrance of the burly
guards towering over the slight figure of Giorgio, all faces
turned in his direction.
“Look! Our fantino! He comes!”
General Barbarulli signaled the bodyguards to come to the
speakers' platform. For one frozen moment Giorgio saw the
scene and remembered. Yes! There was the long table on the
raised flooring, and the snow-pure cloth spread over it, and the
serious-faced men seated on one side only. It was like the paint-
ing of the Last Supper, the one hanging above his mother's and
164


kinsman or friend. So first we greet and welcome those who are
our guests.”
Of one accord the contradaioli applauded.
The General smiled affably. “The Palio lifts us out of
the everyday life,” he continued. “We are caught up in the
golden net of hope, of ambition, of glory. In four hundred years
the magnificent colors of the Wave-blue for the billows and
white for the foam-have won thirty-nine victories! Will Gau-
denzia and Giorgio make it forty?”
“Si! Si! Si!” Wild cries bounced from wall to wall.
Giorgio listened in an agony of suspense. He could feel his
chest going in and out against the place where his pocket and
his speech should have been. “Please, O Mother of Perpetual
Help, let him talk on and on! Let him forget I am here. Or
maybe you could make an earthquake ... or an eruption
like Vesuvius ..."
But the only eruption was a burst of applause as the Gen-
eral sat down and Captain Tortorelli arose.
Giorgio closed his eyes.


Captain Tortorelli half-closed his eyes, too, but he was in
ecstasy. “How beautiful is the Piazza of Siena with ten fantinos
in battle!” His voice resounded through the great hall. “Some
call them ten assassins. Yes, the eyes of an assassin are danger-
ous, but in the danger they are fiercely beautiful.”
Giorgio began to shake all over. The Captain was making
a half turn toward him, was facing him now, speaking to him,
and the force of his breath caused the hairs on Giorgio's head
to quiver. “Fate is Queen of the Palio!” the voice rolled on.
“We can prepare for victory, morally and materially, but never
certainly. Only Fate and the fantino can decide between victory
and defeat.
“Some tasks,” he concluded, “need a big man. Others, a
small one. Some fantinos are big and strong, but some are bird-
light and think more of their mount than of their own safety.
Giorgio Terni, you are such a one.” He raised his glass in a toast
to the boy at his side. “Our fate is in your hands."
“Bravo! Bravissimo!” the councilmen and contradaioli
cheered. Then all about there was a great gaping silence—full


of eyes, full of question marks. What would the boy say? What
promises would he make?
“Speak! Speak!” the people shouted in encouragement.
Giorgio rose to his feet. In the dead silence he nodded to
the Captain, and then to the audience. He opened his mouth, but
no sound came. He glanced imploringly into the sea of faces,
but no one could prompt him. His eyes swept the room, took in
the marble angels on either side of the stage. Their cornucopias
were sending forth pink and red carnations, but not help. And no
help came from the painted dolphin on the wall, its mouth
dripping red beads of blood as if it had been caught by some
fisherman's hook. And as he stood helpless the silence grew
deeper, until it was a roaring in his ears. In desperation he
looked upward to the vaulted ceiling, and followed the arches
that came together in a central point. It was like the chalice of
an Easter lily; no, it was more like the inside of an umbrella.
An umbrella! Suddenly the face of the Umbrella Man
loomed in front of him, and in spite of his terror he felt strength
welling up in him. Now he wanted to talk.
“Signori of the Wave !” he began in a voice that had an odd
kind of dignity in it. “Gaudenzia and I, we were both reared in
the Maremma, and we fit well to each other. Tomorrow we go
into battle together. Fear does not choke our courage. For us it is
not victory or defeat. We think only the one thought—"
“Vic-to-ry! Vic-to-ry! Viva Giorgio!”
The crowd had finished his speech for him.
168



The Hours Before
CHAPTER XXIII
ATE 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
169


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-1!” 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 con-
sciousness. 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 crash-
ing 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 fan-
tinos 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
170


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 fan-
tino'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.”
1 172


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 body-
guards 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 spennac-
chiera 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 meas-
174



Have You Fear? Have You Fear?
CHAPTER XXIV
TNDERNEATH his flowing wig, perspiration is streak-
ing down Giorgio's temples, and at the nape of his neck
it trickles down and wets the ruching of his collar. The
great historical pageant is about to begin, and he will be in
it, and Gaudenzia will be in it. But she will walk riderless,
and he will ride a mighty warhorse clad in armor of steel.
Already his contrada is forming into a tight military com-
pany—the drummer first, the two flag-bearers next with their
176


enormous blue-and-white flags, and then Captain Tortorelli in
coat-of-mail with unsheathed sword, and a major page and four
minor pages. And then he, Giorgio, will come on his warhorse,
and last of all Gaudenzia, led by her groom.
Giorgio's whole body is on tiptoe, on the brink of a great
happening. He can feel himself growing pale, the skin of his face
drawing tight over his cheekbones. A dark-bearded groom is
offering his hand as a mounting block, to help him climb aboard
the huge warhorse.
Giorgio stiffens. If he can mount Gaudenzia bareback, he
can certainly put a foot into a stirrup and swing up without
help. But the real stiffening is a feeling he has, not exactly of
jealousy, but of concern that someone else is handling Gaudenzia.
Will the man know how to soothe, and be firm too, amidst the
jostling of people and the throb of drums, and the great race
only a whisper of time away?
A nudge from the groom brings Giorgio up sharply. He
waves the man aside, puts the ball of his foot on the stirrup,
swings into the saddle. He feels awkward with a saddle between
him and the horse—like the times he straddled a chair when
he was young, and made believe it was a horse.
The groom thrusts a great iron lance into Giorgio's hand.
“Hold it firm!” he warns, as he anchors it in the socket of the
stirrup.
“Attenzione!” The Captain booms his command. And now
the whole military company moves forward, the drum beating
out in somber vehemence. On both sides hundreds of people
are moving with them in swirling waves, upstream toward the
highest hill of Siena. Where the streets narrow, the people flatten
themselves against the buildings, then come forward again, like
waters rushing, receding, rushing.
177


Giorgio sways along on his mount like a sailor on a flat-
bottom boat. The paddling gait of the warhorse is never in step
with the beat of the drum; it gives him a seasick feeling. Or is
the churning in his stomach a mixture of fear and joy? He
glances back at Gaudenzia. She is jibbing her head, actually
lifting the groom off his feet as if he were a puppet on a string.
She too wants the race to start, and even now wants Giorgio's
hand on her leadstrap. He feels better then, in a shamefaced
way, and the seasickness leaves him.
His contrada is atop the hill now, moving past the ancient
hospital where nuns and patients are craning out the windows.
Before the great black-and-white Cathedral the company halts,
and the flag-players fling themselves into action, paying homage
to the Archbishop in a window on high. Bending, swaying,
leaping over their banners, they toss their flags skyward, mak-
ing the blue waves on the white silk ripple and roar like the
waves of the sea.
On the wide steps of the Cathedral a great throng watches
steadfast, clapping in admiration. They stand with heads un-
covered to the hot July sun. Some have missed the intimate
blessing within the church of their own contrada, and have come
to witness this final benediction for all.
Giorgio has passed this way before, once on the warhorse
of the Shell, once for the Panthers. But those other times were
blurred. Then the final benediction had not seemed a direct
communion from the white hand of the Archbishop way up there
in the dark of the window. It had not been direct to him, but a
kind of general blessing for all the contradas as they went by.
But now, on this day of July the second, 1954, Giorgio
needs benediction as truly as if Time had spun back, and the
year were 1260, and he was going into the Battle of Montaperti
178


small-rootbound and gone riotous in bloom. And all those
heads have bodies and souls, and they have come to see him and
to witness battle and bravery and bloodshed; and he, Giorgio
Terni, must fight off nine warriors before his white mare can
capture the golden banner.
He has to do it because it is like keeping a promise to
himself and to those thousands of people. There are so many
he dizzies trying to separate them. And all those eyes are asking
for the most beautiful Palio in history, and Gaudenzia will give
it to them!
The bigness of it all makes him afraid, and then he sees the
small boys who have been waiting in the sun since noon, sitting
there on the white posts that fence the shell. One looks up,
focusing right at Giorgio with his shiny, worshipful eyes, and
Giorgio knows he wants to win for him, and he wants to win for
all the little colonnini, and for Emilio back home in Monticello,
and for little boys everywhere.
At thought of home a smile crosses his face, and even
through the bonging of the bell and the dinning of drums he can
hear his mother say: “Giorgio Terni! Tell me! Tell me! What
contrada comes first? And who next? And what happens then?”
He longs for a camera, but it would be no use. He has only
two hands, and one is frozen to the lance and the other guiding
the reins on a warhorse big as a battleship.
All right! He will be eyes and ears for everyone at home.
His gaze moving, he peers around, taking pictures in his mind,
explaining
"Mammina! Babbo! Teria! Emilio! I have a lofty perch
on my warhorse. I see across heads . . . I see the whole proces-
sion. The members of the parade are not the people of today,
but what they look like—the people of long ago.
180


to remember, and his eyes light on the very young page boys
linked shoulder-to-shoulder by green garlands. “Look, Emilio,
they are no bigger than you yourself. See how they separate the
ten contradas who will run from the seven who will not! And,
Babbo, you would laugh how much those little boys with their
loops of green look like the grapevines between our fields."
Giorgio stopped. He was out of breath. A hush had fallen
over Il Campo as the parade came to an end. From the tail of
his eye he saw the magnificent gold carroccio winding up the
procession. Was this battlecar the same one as last year, and last
century? He knew, of course, that it must be, but today he saw
afresh the brilliant paintings on its sides, the gilded wheels, the
resplendent Palio held aloft—the banner he and Gaudenzia
must bring to Onda.
The hush deepened. The rolling of the drums stopped. The
bonging of the bell seemed far away in the sky, but within the
battlecar the silver trumpets were weaving a dialogue, the high
notes calling, the low ones answering.
Giorgio straightened in his saddle. To him the high notes
were not a summons, but a question—insistent, unvaried, prob-
ing over and over and over again:
“Have you fear? Have you fear.”
And the silver-blown answer piercing the air:
“Courage is the law of the Palio."
184


dazzling design, like jewels in a crown-rubies and emeralds,
sapphires and amethysts.
With the other fantinos Giorgio guides his charger into the
big courtyard of the Palazzo. He takes a quick look back. The
track is empty now except for the flag twirlers of all the con-
tradas. His eyes are glued to them. They look like gnomes
playing with sheets of fire, flinging their furled staffs thirty feet
into the air until each one bursts in a blaze of crackling color.
Before he has looked enough, the groom prods him along.
“Come! Do you forget the race?"
Within the high-vaulted court all is disciplined order. Ten
pages are leading the war chargers away. Ten grooms are tying
their race horses to iron rings around the walls. Ten fantinos,
with the help of their costume boys, are changing clothes—from
suede buskins to rubber-soled shoes, from velvet tunics to cotton
jackets, from plumed headgear to steel helmets. Giorgio runs his
finger inside the rim of his helmet. Yes! It has been padded to
fit. He sees that his hands are trembling. He wipes their damp-
ness on a rag which the groom tosses him. He casts sidelong
glances at the other fantinos. Ivan-the-Terrible glares at him,
carrying on the feud from last year.
The starter picks up his megaphone, barks out rules and
warnings: “Attenzione! It is permissible to ward off your enemy
with the nerbo, but never grasp the bridle of an enemy horse.
The eyes of the world are upon you. Represent well the spirit of
Siena, and of your contrada. Be brave!”
Only a few minutes to go. The barbaresco of Onda carries
out his final duties—checks the bridle of Gaudenzia, her cheek-
strap, her chinstrap, her reins; last of all her spennacchiera ...
is it anchored solidly in case her fantino should fall? He dips
his hands in a basin of water and solemnly, as if he were per-
· 186


With a rush she will come up to the rope and trigger the race.
The starter raises his megaphone. His voice shrills : “Num-
ber ten, Onda! Come on!”
Giorgio's heart beats with a wild gladness. Now it is! The
time for action! He lifts Gaudenzia's head; she leaps forward.
The rope drops at the split instant she touches it. It rolls free,
coiling up on itself, almost onto her pasterns. As it falls to the
track, ten horses are off like gunshot, Gaudenzia in the lead!
With Montone hot on her heels, she travels fast in spite of
the sticky track. Landmarks spin by—the Fonte Gaia, the casino
of the nobles, the palaces of Saracini and Sansedoni. Giorgio
sucks in all the air his lungs can hold. Ahead lies the sharp right-
angle turn of San Martino, the waiting ambulance in plain
sight.
From bleachers, from balconies, from all over the Piazza
Gaudenzia's enemies are shrieking for blood. In full stride she
goes up the incline. A moment of terror! She stumbles, breaks
gait. Ivan, for Montone, tries to crowd her into the posts. But
Giorgio grasps her mane, squeezes his right leg into her flanks.
Squeezes tighter. It works! She recovers; she's safe!
“Bravo . . Bravissimo!” The crowd is crazed with emo-
tion.
Only the red jacket of Montone is anywhere near as
Gaudenzia flies along the straightaway to the narrows of the
Casato, and uphill for the strangles of that curve. Using her tail
as a rudder, she veers around the curve, gallops down the
stretch to pass the starter's box, still holding the lead.
The blood sings in Giorgio's ears. He clucks to Gaudenzia
for the second lap, forgets he has a nerbo. The piston legs of
Montone pound on relentlessly, press forward, gain on her at
the fountain, gain going around San Martino. Almost to the


ances, her plumes nodding, her hoofs painted with gold.
At last, when the candles were guttering and the morning
stars beginning to wink out, Giorgio's bodyguards rescued him
and took him to his room to sleep.
Safe in his cool bed, Giorgio wanted nothing but to lie quiet
in the gray darkness and live it all over again. With his eyes
closed, he saw the figure of Gaudenzia rise up before him. “Look
at you!” he spoke to her. “In your yesterdays you were just a
poor work horse, pulling the rickety cart. Today you are ...
you are . . .” He tried to fight off sleep, to savor the delicious-
ness of victory, but his very bones seem to melt into the mattress,
and the shutters of his mind closed.

At eight o'clock on the morning of July third, General
Barbarulli was already in the heart of the city, waiting for the
news-stand to open up for business. The morning papers had
just arrived, and the ancient vendor, an Ondaese, was flinging
the rope-bound stacks up on the counter as if he were still giving
vent to his joy. When the ropes were cut and everything was in
order, he leaned toward the General, honored to have him as
the first customer. “Which paper is it you would like?"
193


Giorgio read faster now, skimming as best he could. What
was wrong with the name he had? What was wrong with Giorgio
Terni ? The second paper said nothing about a name. He turned
to the third and read, “Young Giorgio Terni, peasant boy from
the Maremma, is now crowned with a new name. Sienese every-
where speak of him as Vittorino, the little victor of the Piazza."
Giorgio's heart quickened. Maybe some people would call
“Vittorino” a nickname, he thought, but to me it seems a very
nice title.
“The battle was not as fierce as expected,” the article went
on. “The fantinos did not use their nerbos, for Gaudenzia was
first from beginning to end. The masterful performance of horse
and rider together has given the youngest fantino in the Palio
his new name. Henceforth he will be known as Vittorino.”
“Vit-to-ri-no!” the boy tasted it on his tongue.
General Barbarulli beamed. “It pleases you? No?”
“Si, si! It is better than Professore or Dottore or even ..."
the boy reddened.
“Better even than Generale?" the General's eyes twinkled.
“I agree! It is a beautiful laurel, invisible, to wear with honor
and pride. And now we have many weeks for rejoicing." He
sighed happily as he folded his own newspapers. “Then in Sep-
tember, when nights are cool, we will hold our Victory Dinner
right in the middle of Via Giovanni Du Pré. A thousand places
will be set under the stars, and Gaudenzia will be the guest of
honor. At the head table she will be served! And you, Vittorino,
can feast your eyes and your stomach without even making a
speech. It will be your and Gaudenzia’s grand triumph. Now,
then, I have much to see about and must be on my way.”
He shook hands briskly, turned on his heel, and went
lightly down the stairs.
195


would keep her stall cleaner than a kitchen, and her mantle
spotless. And if he worked on a new training program for her,
he might be too busy to worry.
This time he did not bother with a calendar. He had only
to ease her off from the pinnacle of July second, then build her
right back up again.
The Chief-of-the-Guards was too happy to notice how
silent Giorgio had grown. He lived in a state of blissful pride,
for Gaudenzia seemed in no way weakened by racing on the
treacherous course.
“If anything, she is now more strong,” he said time and
again. “Legs firm and trim. No puffy swellings around the
joints. No cuts from overreaching or crossfiring. And no bruis-
ing or splitting of her hoofs. As for the corners of her mouth,
they are soft like a young filly's. Who could recognize her as the
sad bag-of-bones we rescued from the sausage maker. Eh, son?”
The Chief was aware that other contradas would now
want the famous Vittorino to ride for them, but his contrada,
Nicchio, had asked first. He refused to think that in the next
battle the boy might have to ride another horse and so fight
against Gaudenzia. Surely, whoever drew Gaudenzia would buy
Giorgio from the Nicchio.
Giorgio, however, did not have this assurance. And when-
ever he tried to voice his fears, the Chief seemed so happy that
the words died unspoken.
But if the boy had grown broody and silent, Gaudenzia
was just the opposite. She felt intensely alive. Let out of her
stable, she tried to rake the sky for sheer joy in living. She felt
good! Never was she alone, not even on rainy days; her fantino
was groom and companion, too, steadfast as the earth. And so
she thrived.
197


From fast work she went to slower and longer work. She
walked and trotted one week, two weeks. Then gradually Giorgio
intensified her training. More trotting and galloping, less walk-
ing. More grain, less hay.
“For you, your life will always be mountains and valleys,”
he told her one morning as they jogged along a country byway.
“Always between Palios comes the easing off, the nice rest. Then
you must start all over again and make the steep climb to new
peaks."
A fluffy seed blew into her nose. She blew it out again
with a loud snort.
“Yes, you can snort away your little troubles. But me?"
Sighing, he ran his eye along the distance, along the tufted
terraces of olive gardens, and he followed the aerial maneuvers
of a pair of swallows snapping insects on the wing. By keeping his
mind busy he hoped to wear blinders to what was bothering
him. But it was no use. The worry kept eating at his heart.
Maybe he would feel better if he put it into words, instead of
letting it run around in his head like a mouse in a mill.
"Listen, Gaudenzia,” he spoke into the fine pricked ears,
“for one little month you are Queen of the Palio. But you won
your crown without ..."
His talk sounded silly against the shimmer of distance. He
clucked to the mare. A faster pace might make the words come
faster, easier.
He tried again to make his voice strong, to empty his
thoughts. “Gaudenzia! You won the July Palio without real
battle, without the nerbo, without the secret arrangements.” The
words flowed faster. “Now you are marked. You are the one to
beat. You and I—in the next Palio we could be separated. The
contrada which draws you could already have engaged some
198


-
==شد
- - -
.
"
-
-
ک ند
شود باز می
شی می
سب سے مختلف
نے اس سے
-- کل توست و مو
بس
دينا


“Monsignor Tardini!”
“Si.”
“Why, he is a great man at the Vatican. He stands next
to the Pope himself !”
The mother went to the cupboard and took out plates and
cups to set the table. "Soon now the pizzas will be done,” she
said, “and Babbo and the children will come from the farm, and
we eat."
“But why does the Monsignore understand especially boys?”
“Because, in a pine grove on the skirts of Rome, there sits
a beautiful villa for orphans. It is called Villa Nazareth, and
Monsignor Tardini, he is the guiding spirit. Even the grown
boys, after they go out into the world, bring their troubles
to him.”
“But, Mamma, how do you know all this?"
"I know because young Arturo, a boy from the Maremma,
is there. He says so.”
"You mean I should go all the way to Rome? To the Vati-
can?"
The mother nodded. “You should go, even if it costs dear.
In the sugar bowl there is money. Yours and Gaudenzia's," she
smiled, “from the victory of Onda.” She stopped to pinch off
a few faded flowers from the pots in the window. Then she
went back to the stove. “There comes a time,” she said, turning
to look right at Giorgio, “when to make a pilgrimage is neces-
sary for peace of the mind.”
A far look crept into the boy's eyes. Suddenly he burned
with the urge to go to Rome.
202



All Roads Lead to Rome
CHAPTER XXVIII
VWO days later, back in Siena, Giorgio dressed at dawn
and went to say good-bye to Gaudenzia. She gazed
steadfastly at him as if he had made the morning sun-
beams slant westward for the day, as if he had made the grain
she ate, and the air she breathed. “Do not have fear," he told
her. “I return presto, pronto, subito. I return this night.”
Already he felt better. The mere prospect that today he
could unburden his worries was like strength in his blood. He
filled Gaudenzia's hayrack and water pail. He stripped her
stall of bedding and swept the floor. He brought in sheaves of
bright straw and shook them and padded them and banked
them around the walls.
A friendly groom came in as he was putting the fork away.
The man was big and brawny with sad, red-rimmed eyes like
a hound dog's. He clapped Giorgio on the back.
“Ah, Roma! Bella, bella Roma!” he sighed, rolling his eyes
heavenward and kissing his fingertips. “My favorite of cities!
203


Nearby, the driver of a carriage, a sparrowy man with a
tall hat, dropped his newspaper and was at Giorgio's side in
an instant. “For one thousand lire I take you to the Vatican,"
he offered.
“One thousand lire!”
Suddenly the driver saw in the young boy a pilgrim come
to the Holy City, a boy all alone with trouble. A strange re-
semblance to his own grandson made him say, “Jump up! You
sit here beside me. We fly together.” He waved Giorgio onto the
high front seat, slapped the lines over the rump of a bony mare,
cracked his whip, and the cart took off with Giorgio sitting
alongside the grinning driver.
Up and down the streets of the great city the gaunt crea-
ture clattered at a lively pace. The time clock in her head told
her it was almost time for the nosebag. The sooner she delivered
her passenger, the sooner she could plunge her muzzle into a
bagful of cut-up greens. Onlookers laughed and cheered them
on as if they were in a race. Nearing St. Peter's Square, the
driver tried to pull her down to a sedate walk, but she was no
respecter of religion. And so, lathered and blowing, she swung
at break-neck speed through the gates of the Holy City.
The wide piazza of St. Peter's with its obelisk and gushing
fountains was alive with movement—nuns sailing in their
starchy wimples, priests billowing in black robes, sailors and
soldiers and pilgrims from everywhere clicking cameras, feed-
ing the pigeons, gazing up at the great dome of the church.
The driver pulled up in front of the basilica. He shook
hands with Giorgio as with an old friend. “Boy,” he directed,
“that way you go! No, not up the center to the church. To the
right wing! Up the steps and through the bronze portal. To you
I wish best luck; and now, arrivederci, my son.”
206


guards read the letter and said, “Come this way,” or “Go that
way.” Nor did he remember how many frescoed passages he
walked, nor how many glass-enclosed elevators he rode, nor
how many grand staircases and minor staircases he climbed.
He moved as one in a dream, through marble halls, and around
and around, and up and up and up, until he found himself in a
magnificent courtyard open to the sky. He crossed its immen-
sity, feeling antlike beside the gigantic statues of the apostles
towering above him. Then he was ushered into an empty cham-
ber that seemed a trinket in size, yet was more beautiful than
any he had ever known.
“You may be seated,” the guide said, and disappeared.
Perching gingerly on the edge of a settee, Giorgio felt less
secure than if he were riding bareback on a runaway horse. He
mopped his brow and folded his handkerchief. He looked about
him. The room was all red and gold. The gold chairs were
covered in a rosy red, like the colors worn by the Ram in the
Palio. And the walls were the same rosy red.
Everything was quiet. Occasional wisps of conversation
drifted in, but these only emphasized the stillness. For a moment
he wanted to bolt. He knew now how Gaudenzia felt when left
all alone, with no familiar hands or voice.
And just when the silence grew terrifying, a young clerk
beckoned him across the hall and into a room with half-closed
shutters. It was pleasantly dark and cool. “The Monsignore will
see you now," the young man said.
And there, coming to meet Giorgio, was Monsignor Do-
menico Tardini, Pro-secretary of State for Extraordinary Af-
fairs.
Giorgio looked up at him, tongue-tied. The face was all
faces in one—kindly and penetrating, old and very young, smil-
208


you must do. The Palio is war. Contradas form alliances as
countries do, to help each other fight a common enemy.”
Giorgio sat silent at the desolating words.
“But of course”—the Monsignore took off his spectacles, and
now he spoke eagerly, earnestly—“the unforeseen can happen!
Have you forgotten,” he asked, “the grand element of uncer-
tainty? The horse knows nothing of the clouds of intrigue gath-
ering while he eats happily his grain. He knows only that he is
the servant of man, who sometimes betrays him.”
The Monsignore had not finished. His gaze went past the
boy's head, through the walls and beyond. “Perhaps that is why
the humble St. Francis of Assisi wished to be Protector to Ani-
mals.”
His eyes then came back to Giorgio and flashed warmly.
“As fantino, you must know that the probability of winning the
Palio is based on the speed of the horse, the skill of the fan-
tino, and the diplomacy of the captain. But it cannot be said
that even with all these favorable, the victory is secure. Man
tries to fix and arrange, but ah, the horse ... he knows only
the one law, and that is to win. It is the most beautiful and
bittersweet lesson of the Palio.”
A young clerk came into the room and placed a sheaf of
papers on the desk. Giorgio sensed that affairs of state were
piling up.
“It is not a whole answer, my son,” the Monsignore con-
cluded, “but it is the best I can do.”
Giorgio stood up to go. Already he began to breathe more
easily, as if something of the great man's spirit had passed over
into him. “Thank you,” he said quietly. Then he pressed the
horseshoe into the blue-veined hands, kissed them both and fled
from the room.
212


subito. For you, too, was this day endless like eternity?" He
let the mare lip his shirtsleeve, not minding the warm wetness
nor the greenish tint from the hay she'd been munching. “I got
to tell you,” he said soberly, “there is now only one chance in
ten you will have me for fantino in the August Palio. If Nicchio
does not draw you ...” He turned away and grabbed a pitch-
fork with both hands. The mare was already bedded for the
night, but with slow, forceful motions he shook up and freshened
the straw. Then he waited until she buckled her knees and lay
down in contentment before he left her and went to his own bed.
The days until the Palio were cut to a pattern and moved
on schedule. Seven days before, the workmen dumped cartloads
of yellow-red earth and tamped it down on the track. Four days
before, carpenters put up tier upon tier of seats in front of the
palace buildings, and the chest-high railing to fence the specta-
tors within the shell.
Three days before came the second big act of the Palio
the trials to determine which horses were strong and stout
enough to negotiate the course. The day was clear, the air still
fresh with morning. An expanding crowd was filling up the
newly erected seats. There was no shrieking or yelling yet. The
people were murmuring, waiting.
At the express wish of the Chief-of-the-Guards, Giorgio
rode Gaudenzia in the trials. Again he held her in, and again
she obeyed, acting almost sedate in her performance. Some of
the new horses shied at the ropes, were afraid to enter between
them, and some lurched and sprawled at the hairpin curves. And
so the heats, in batteries of five, had to be run again and again
until the judges were ready to make their decisions. Then behind
closed doors the secret voting took place while the fantinos
214


waited tensely in the court of the Palazzo and the crowd in the
Piazza began chanting for the favorites:
“Give us U-gan-da!”
“Give us Gau-den-zia !”
“Give us Pin-noc-chio!"
At last a deputy stepped importantly into the courtyard
with a page at heel like a well-trained dog. At a command
from the deputy, the page took numbered discs from a box and
fastened one on the cheekstrap of each of the ten horses chosen.
At the moment he fastened the number 6 on Gaudenzia's bridle,
a horseboy took hold of her reins. He almost had to pry Giorgio's
hands loose. “Let go!” he said in annoyance. “Let go!"

Giorgio, with the other fantinos, was ordered into the
Piazza. They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the long table
with the two urns on it. Three times he had witnessed this third
act before the Palio—the assignment of the horses. Three times
he had watched twin pageboys draw the wooden capsules from
215



Duel Between Horse and Man
CHAPTER XXX
INHE hours of night flowed over Giorgio's sleeping room.
He and his guards were trying to settle down, but each
heart was groping alone in the dark, wondering which
contrada would win tomorrow's Palio.
Giorgio knew that somewhere in remote and quiet places
throughout the city the captains were meeting in secret, making
their agreements, planning their strategy. Overnight the whole
aspect of the Palio could change. And tomorrow, he thought
with a surge of hope, Captain de Santi will come to me and say:
“We of Nicchio generally live in a state of neutrality. But last
night we formed an alliance with Giraffa. Therefore, your pre-
cise order in today's joust is to hinder the others and help our
219


moves forward. He enters the square, sees again the many-
headed multitude in the shallow basin of the Piazza. He thinks:
“So solid are they packed one could walk across their heads
without having to leap."
His mind and body are far apart. No longer does he want
to be a Sienese. He is an intruder, belonging neither to the pres-
ent nor to the past, but suspended in time. Staring hopelessly, he
watches the figures of the pageant move around the Piazza like
wooden people on wooden horses on a merry-go-round. He sees
the mare Gaudenzia, proud-headed. She is the only white one,
the only Arabian. He feels a moment of pride.
Then the flags cut her off from sight and the numbness
clutches him again, and the merry-go-round figures go on and
on until his head dizzies with looking. At sight of the four great
oxen pulling the gilded battle car, he sighs in welcome relief.
The merry-go-round is at last coming to a stop.
The sun, too, is completing its orbit, shedding a soft light
over Il Campo. The multitude waits. Inside the courtyard
Giorgio wants an end to things. It seems a hundred hours, a
hundred days, a hundred years since the fateful orders were
imposed. All right, then, let's go. Change costumes! Put on the
little jacket, the coarse pants. Eye your opponents. Swing up,
bareback. Take the hard nerbo in your hard hand. Line up!
Remember, it's war! Contrada against contrada! Not rider,
not mount, not flesh and blood, but symbols . . . Eagle against
Owl, Dragon against Panther, Snail against Wave, Giraffe
against me.
All right, then. Touch off the gunpowder! Let the flame
belch! Let the deafening percussion jar the ancient stones loose.
Let the starter spring the rope.
It is happening! Now!
222


Ten horses bursting into life, breaking from the ropes.
Together! Ten horses like a sudden blast of wind. But look! The
swirling gust is breaking apart, three horses striking through-
two browns, one white. The browns are the Snail and the Wave,
the white is Gaudenzia. Under a hail of blows the three in the
lead round the easy curve beyond the Fonte Gaia, begin their
drive to the death-jaws of San Martino.
Sixty thousand throats shriek in horror. The Snail and the
Wave are heading crazedly for a crash. They collide! Two fan-
tinos are spewed into the air, go rolling ahead like tumbleweeds.
Gaudenzia’s rider pulls her back, swerves her sharp around the
bodies. She's in first place!
Coming up from behind, Giorgio snakes Rosella between
the riderless horses, takes the curve, catches Gaudenzia on the
straightaway, passes her.
Did her nostrils pull in his scent as he went by? Did her ears
pull in his voice? If not, why is she jibbing her head; why is she
weaving at the lesser curve of the Casato? Tiring? She can't be!
Not on the first round with the whole width of the curve to her-
self.
For endless seconds she is unpredictable. Then she rears
up, savagely rakes the air, deliberately tosses her fantino! She's
free! With a wild spurt she tries to catch Giorgio. The duel
between horse and man is on!
“Attento! Attento!” Nicchio fans are screaming in frenzy,
imploring Giorgio: “Give it to us! Give us the Palio!”
But who knows the mind of a horse? Is some inner urge
compelling Gaudenzia to spend all of her fleetness and blood ?
Is the thunder and ecstasy of the crowd like fierce music in her
ears? Who can know?
For the entire second round she battles Giorgio for the lead,
223


With a look of understanding the man nodded his consent.
“This Palio must have been for you like a bang in the stomach,"
he said.
Silently Giorgio tore the length of linen into strips. He
sopped several in the solution of boric acid. He wrung them out.
He doused them again, wrung them out again.
“How many times you going to do that?” the barbaresco
asked. “How is it you can face San Martino, but not her? Some
time you got to do it.”
Miserable, torn by conscience, Giorgio walked tremblingly
toward her. Staring at the floor, still unable to look up, he took
one step and then another. He felt himself grown suddenly old
and bent under his burden of guilt. He wished the distance
between them would stretch out and with each step courage
would flow into him, but already he was so close he could feel
her breath. He closed his eyes, prayed, then forced them to focus
on her, and he almost cried, he felt so happy. Even with the red
welts she was still beautiful! There was a new quality about her,
a kind of spiritual quality, as if she had come through a fire,
untouched. Her eyes were fixed on him and they were soft and
amber-lit, and the nostrils fluttered and made a little sound,
and the ears asked for talk as if this reunion were just like all the
others—warm and wonderful and good.
Giorgio gulped. If only she had laid back her ears and
come charging at him, or taken a bite through his shirt, fierce
enough to show for a lifetime. And though he wanted to sink
down upon his knees, and laugh and cry both, and beg forgive-
ness, yet at sight of the barbaresco watching he went to work
like some veterinarian. He washed the cuts across her forehead,
and the cross-cuts behind her ear. Then, with the gentlest of
fingers, he rubbed the grease into them.
227


“Gaudenzia!” he said when he had finished ministering.
“Now there should be no scars. Those reminders I could not
bear. Do you know," he added under his breath, “do you
understand that you won all by yourself—like the little clay
model in Monticello?”
The mare pricked her ears. Whatever it was the boy had
said made a nice melody. She raised her head and let out a
whinny that bounced back and forth from the stone walls again
and again until it faded in a trembly echo. “I bear you no ill
will,” it said, more plainly than any words.
A few stars were still winking bright and alive when
Giorgio left Gaudenzia and walked purposefully to the post
office. He had often sent night telegrams for Signor Ramalli.
Now he would send one for himself.
The pen on the counter was forked and rusty and the ink
lumpy, but the words uncorked themselves like strong wine.
YOUR EXCELLENCE MONSIGNOR TARDINI. I LOST BUT
GAUDENZIA WON. BY HERSELF. SHE PAID NO AT-
TENTION TO ARRANGEMENTS. CAN YOU ATTEND HER
VICTORY DINNER FOR ONDA NEXT MONTH? SHE WILL
EAT AT HEAD TABLE WITH OFFICIALS AND ME. IF YOU
HAVE FORGOT ME I AM GIORGIO TERNI ALSO VITTORINO.
The sleepy-eyed clerk squinted out from behind the win-
dow of his cage and accepted the message with a loud yawn.
As he read it, he snapped sharply awake. “To Monsignor Tar-
dini!” he gasped. “Is it urgente? And have you the money?”
Giorgio felt in his pocket. “Si, si!” he laughed. “At once it
must go."
228


too was like the sea, catching all the rays of light and sending
them out again. At its sides two dolphins swam in an ocean of
blue, their tongues spurting living flames. And under the banner
and the sweeping arc of lights, and under the flags flying, and
the flowers cascading from windows and balconies, hundreds of
tables were laid with snowy-white cloths. But no one was seated.
People were milling about, milling and singing and shouting.
Giorgio suddenly found himself pulled into their midst,
and friends and strangers alike were pumping his hand and
slapping his back and saluting him on both cheeks. General
Barbarulli stood laughing at his bewilderment. He beckoned
him to the head table, for coming up a side street was Gau-
denzia with her barbaresco.
The crowd made a little corridor for Giorgio to pass, and
another for Gaudenzia, so that soon they would meet at the head
table. But Giorgio arrived first and he saw her coming toward
him with that wonderfully long stride of hers. She looked more
like a painting than real, with the embroidered velvet horsecloth
thrown over her body and the blue-and-white plumes nodding
in her headstall. But what made his heart leap was that her scars
did not show!
Nearby and far off, the contradaioli shouted, “Behold our
Queen!” And in their fervor they rushed to kiss her, to fling their
arms about her, but she flattened her ears and laid her teeth
bare. The crowd applauded, admiring her spirit. “Let her fan-
tino greet her for us,” an old man called out.
Giorgio went to her, and eye to clear eye was threaded. For
a long second he let her snuff the quiet of his hands. Then with
her barbaresco he accompanied her to the manger at the head
table. It was brimful of oats, with apples and carrots sliced in
among the plump kernels. Knowing her love of salt, he picked
231



up a shaker from the table and salted her dinner well.
“Buon appetito!” someone cried, and immediately Gauden-
zia plunged her muzzle into the manger as if she understood the
toast.
Joy rose to incredible heights. Fingers that failed to touch
Gaudenzia now reached out and touched Giorgio as he took his
place between Captain Tortorelli and the General.
At last the feast that was weeks in the preparing was
brought in-plates of antipasto, platters of steaming chicken,
and bowls of spaghetti in meat sauce. It surprised Giorgio that
he was heaping his plate high, eating with gusto, and singing
between mouthfuls, singing at the top of his lungs.
“Of you we are proud!” the General beamed. “You eat and
232


When the roar and thunder subsided, the General grew
serious. “The time has come,” he said thoughtfully, earnestly,
"to reflect upon the ancient yet always new spectacle of the
Palio. Already the victory of July seems far away, and already
we know the noble results of the August Palio. But,” he leaned
toward the multitude, his eyes glistening, “in nine months and
twenty-nine days the yellow-ochre earth will again cover the
cobbles of the Piazza, and again memory and hope will kindle
the massive heart of Siena. This Palio is forever written into
the archives. Now we turn to a new page.”
The victory feast was ended. The band players were striking
up once more the sweet, haunting “March of the Palio.” People
were running toward the banner to kiss it in homage. The waiters
were clearing the tables. The barbaresco was leading Gaudenzia
away. Giorgio gave the man his moment of glory. Tomorrow
would be time enough to call for her from the fine stable of
Onda and walk her back home to the Maremma. Yes, tomorrow
would be time enough. ...
The echo of drums accompanied Giorgio as he walked
down into the city for a last look at Il Campo. A harvest moon
bulged out from behind the Mangia Tower, washing the palaces
in a pale red glow. He listened a while to the fountain playing
its tinkly tune in the vastness.
“Nine months and twenty-nine days is not so very far
away,” he thought. “Why, that is less time than it takes a mare
to foal a colt!”
234 :



OCCO


Strangely enough, Gaudenzia is famed, too, for not racing. Because
of her spectacular record she was excluded from both Palios in the fol-
lowing year. She was too great a threat to the other contenders. But the
next year, in deference to the will of the people, they allowed her to
race again. And again she won.
Where is Gaudenzia now? As befitting a queen, she lives in a medi-
eval castle near Siena, one with a history longer than the Palio. In this
eventful place where pacts were made and wars were plotted, she has
her stable-home. It is big and high-ceilinged, with windows that open
wide upon the sweeping hills of Tuscany.
Is she lonely there? Perhaps. But in the months to come there may
be a colt for her to nurse, and to teach to race. Meanwhile, she has a
hunting dog for company, a groom to exercise her, and visitors from near
and far-as far away as America. Most of them she eyes in an aloof and
regal manner, permitting none to touch her. She seems always to be look-
ing through and beyond them, looking for a familiar slight-built figure.
Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon her looking is rewarded, for among
the visitors comes Giorgio, man-grown now.
Nostrils fluttering, she sifts the mixture of scents, sorting and discard-
ing until she finds the right one. Then with a small whicker of remem-
bering, she reaches out to welcome him.
Always their reunion is the same. Giorgio extends his open hand, and
after she has licked the salt from it, she playfully nips his shirtsleeve and
snuffs his hair. Always it is like this. Never any demanding, “Where
were you last Sunday ?” Only her eyes holding his, and her ears flicked
for the tone of his voice.
“Gaudenzia," he tells her, "the others cannot hold the candle to you.
You are still the pride of the Palio, and I'll be back to see you again,
maybe in the time of the little fingernail moon or when the moon is full.
Maybe both times!”
And usually he is.
237


For helping her understand the mystery and meaning of the Palio,
the author is grateful to:
Lelio BARBARULLI, Chief Magistrate of the Contrada Onda, and his
daughter GLORIA, Siena
GIUSEPPE Bosi, guide, Siena
Ezio Cantagalli, President of Ente Provinciale per il Turismo, Siena
Tamı GUROVICH CASCINO, Professor of Literature, Siena
Giorgio Celli, Doctor of Accounting, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena
Mario Celli, Manager of the newspaper Il Campo di Siena, and his
daughter Paula, Siena
Mario CHIGIOTTI, Manager of Ente Provinciale per il Turismo, Siena
Angelina CIAMBELLOTTI, President of Centro Italiano Femminile, Siena
EGIDIO CORSINI, Vicar of the Contrada Giraffa, Siena
Mario Costanti, Castello Medioevale di Bibbiano Buonconvento, Tuscany
Dorotha DAWSON, Supervisor of School Libraries, and Julia Coe, Detroit,
Michigan
Fini Demolito, Captain of the Contrada Giraffa, Siena
VITTORIO DE Santi, Captain of the Contrada Nicchio, Siena
ETTORE FONTANI, owner of many Palio horses, Siena
Benito Giachetti, Chief of the Guards, Siena
Vasco Giusti, Contrada Giraffa, Siena
GIOVANNI GOVERNAto, interpreter and Doctor of Accounting, Banca Monte
dei Paschi di Siena
Guido GUIDARINI, official starter of the race, Siena
Ruth HARSHAW, conductor of “Carnival of Books” radio program, Chicago
VERONICA HUTCHINSON, author and book buyer, Halle's, Cleveland, Ohio
RICHARD A. KNOBLOCK, Colonel, U.S. Air Force, American Embassy, Rome
ALDO LENZI, Doctor of Veterinary Science, Siena
KATHERINE LINDSAY, translator, Wayne, Illinois
Aldo LUSINI, editor of the periodical Terra di Siena
CONTE GOFFREDO MANFREDI, Rome


TOMMASO MASINI, Secretary to the Mayor of Siena
Della McGREGOR, Chief of Youth Services, Public Library, St. Paul,
Minnesota
Mario Neri, President of Cine Club, Siena
ALFREDO PIANIGIANI, owner of many Palio horses, Siena
VINCENZO Ramalli, owner of many Palio horses, and
his daughter Anna, Siena
Mario Rossetti, Doctor of Accounting, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena
Nello Sainati, Westchester, Illinois, who vividly re-created the Tuscany of
his boyhood
Renato Senesi, Manager of the Azienda Autonoma del Turismo, Siena
Erica STOPPINI, counselor and friend, and her daughter Maria Luisa, Siena
ROBERTA SUTTON, mentor, Chicago, Illinois
DOMENICO CARDINAL TARDINI, Secretary of State of the Vatican
Giorgio TERNI, his mother, his father, his sister Teria and
his brother Emilio, Monticello Amiata
The Most REVEREND Mario TOCCABELLI, Archbishop of Siena
ADRIANO TORTORELLI, Captain of the Contrada Onda, Siena
All the boys of Villa Nazareth and their teachers, Rome
WILLIAM WINQUIST, horseman, Wayne, Illinois
RAIMONDO Zalaffi, journalist, Siena

PRINTED IN U.S.A.






UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
110-up
3 9015 02408 6335
About MARGUERITE HENRY
Newbery Award Winner, 1949
Ever since she was a small girl, Marguerite Henry has
known that she wanted to be a writer. She was born
in Milwaukee, and attended Milwaukee State Teach-
ers College, intending to go into journalism. But
shortly after graduation she met and married Sidney
C. Henry and moved to Chicago, where she turned
to writing in her spare time.
In all, Marguerite Henry has written more than
thirty books for boys and girls. Six of them—THE
LITTLE Fellow, Justin MORGAN HAD A HORSE, Mis-
TY OF CHINCOTEAGUE, ALBUM OF HORSES, BRIGHTY
OF THE GRAND CANYON, and MULEY-Ears—have
been Junior Literary Guild selections. KING OF THE
WIND was awarded the Newbery Medal for 1949, and
both Justin MORGAN and Misty were runners-up in
other years. BRIGHTY was honored with the 1956 Wil-
liam Allen White Award.
Marguerite Henry's books are almost always based
on actual fact, which means that she has to do a great
deal of research. When she was writing GAUDENZIA;
she made three trips to Italy and interviewed dozens
of people to gather material for the story.
Mr. and Mrs. Henry now live in the village of
Wayne, Illinois, just west of Chicago.
About LYND WARD
Caldecott Medal Winner, 1952
Lynd Ward's robust and richly decorative illustrations
have added distinction to over one hundred books,
both adult and juvenile. He was born in Chicago, be-
gan his art education at Columbia University, and
then went on to further study at the National Acad-
emy for Graphic Arts in Leipzig, Germany. On return-
ing to the United States, he became particularly well
known for his woodcuts, and was the first to introduce
the pictorial novel done in woodcuts. His wood en-
gravings have won awards in many national shows,
and are in the collections of the Library of Congress,
the Smithsonian Institution, and other museums.
In 1952 he won special recognition in the field of
children's books when he was awarded the Caldecott
Medal for THE BIGGEST BEAR, which he both wrote
and illustrated
Mr. Ward's home is in Cresskill, New Jersey; he is
married and has two daughters.
DO NOT REMO
OR
MUTILATE CAR


When the roar and thunder subsided, the General grew
serious. “The time has come,” he said thoughtfully, earnestly,
"to reflect upon the ancient yet always new spectacle of the
Palio. Already the victory of July seems far away, and already
we know the noble results of the August Palio. But,” he leaned
toward the multitude, his eyes glistening, “in nine months and
twenty-nine days the yellow-ochre earth will again cover the
cobbles of the Piazza, and again memory and hope will kindle
the massive heart of Siena. This Palio is forever written into
the archives. Now we turn to a new page.”
The victory feast was ended. The band players were striking
up once more the sweet, haunting “March of the Palio.” People
were running toward the banner to kiss it in homage. The waiters
were clearing the tables. The barbaresco was leading Gaudenzia
away. Giorgio gave the man his moment of glory. Tomorrow
would be time enough to call for her from the fine stable of
Onda and walk her back home to the Maremma. Yes, tomorrow
would be time enough. ...
The echo of drums accompanied Giorgio as he walked
down into the city for a last look at Il Campo. A harvest moon
bulged out from behind the Mangia Tower, washing the palaces
in a pale red glow. He listened a while to the fountain playing
its tinkly tune in the vastness.
“Nine months and twenty-nine days is not so very far
away,” he thought. “Why, that is less time than it takes a mare
to foal a colt!”
234



And Now...
ITH all of his heart Giorgio Terni believed that Gauden-
zia's first victories were only a beginning. And so they were.
Proving herself queen, she went on to win the Extraordi-
nary Palio that fall, held in honor of the Marian Year.
Giorgio was again her fantino. Thousands of people shuddered as she
flung herself at the starting rope, then leaped over it before it touched
the ground. From that moment on she won the race majestically, un-
challenged. It was her third victory in succession. In all of Palio history
no horse had ever done this before !
236


ат
Strangely enough, Gaudenzia is famed, too, for not racing. Because
of her spectacular record she was excluded from both Palios in the fol-
lowing year. She was too great a threat to the other contenders. But the
next year, in deference to the will of the people, they allowed her to
race again. And again she won.
Where is Gaudenzia now? As befitting a queen, she lives in a medi-
eval castle near Siena, one with a history longer than the Palio. In this
eventful place where pacts were made and wars were plotted, she has
her stable-home. It is big and high-ceilinged, with windows that open
wide upon the sweeping hills of Tuscany.
Is she lonely there? Perhaps. But in the months to come there may
be a colt for her to nurse, and to teach to race. Meanwhile, she has a
hunting dog for company, a groom to exercise her, and visitors from near
and far—as far away as America. Most of them she eyes in an aloof and
regal manner, permitting none to touch her. She seems always to be look-
ing through and beyond them, looking for a familiar slight-built figure.
Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon her looking is rewarded, for among
the visitors comes Giorgio, man-grown now.
Nostrils fluttering, she sifts the mixture of scents, sorting and discard-
ing until she finds the right one. Then with a small whicker of remem-
bering, she reaches out to welcome him.
Always their reunion is the same. Giorgio extends his open hand, and
after she has licked the salt from it, she playfully nips his shirtsleeve and
snuffs his hair. Always it is like this. Never any demanding, “Where
were you last Sunday?" Only her eyes holding his, and her ears flicked
for the tone of his voice.
“Gaudenzia,” he tells her, “the others cannot hold the candle to you.
You are still the pride of the Palio, and I'll be back to see you again,
maybe in the time of the little fingernail moon or when the moon is full.
Maybe both times !”
And usually he is.
237





For helping her understand the mystery and meaning of the Palio,
the author is grateful to:
Lelio BARBARULLI, Chief Magistrate of the Contrada Onda, and his
daughter GLORIA, Siena
GIUSEPPE Bosi, guide, Siena
Ezio CantagaLLi, President of Ente Provinciale per il Turismo, Siena
Tamı GUROVICH Cascino, Professor of Literature, Siena
Giorgio Celli, Doctor of Accounting, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena
Mario Celli, Manager of the newspaper Il Campo di Siena, and his
daughter Paula, Siena
Mario ChigioTTI, Manager of Ente Provinciale per il Turismo, Siena
ANGELINA CIAMBELLOTTI, President of Centro Italiano Femminile, Siena
EGIDIO Corsini, Vicar of the Contrada Giraffa, Siena
Mario CostANTI, Castello Medioevale di Bibbiano Buonconvento, Tuscany
Dorotha Dawson, Supervisor of School Libraries, and Julia Coe, Detroit,
Michigan
FINI DEMOLITO, Captain of the Contrada Giraffa, Siena
VITTORIO DE SANTI, Captain of the Contrada Nicchio, Siena
ETTORE FONTANI, owner of many Palio horses, Siena
BENITO Giachetti, Chief of the Guards, Siena
Vasco Giusti, Contrada Giraffa, Siena
Giovanni GOVERNATO, interpreter and Doctor of Accounting, Banca Monte
dei Paschi di Siena
GUIDO GUIDARINI, official starter of the race, Siena
Ruth Harshaw, conductor of "Carnival of Books” radio program, Chicago
VERONICA HUTCHINSON, author and book buyer, Halle's, Cleveland, Ohio
RICHARD A. KNOBLOCK, Colonel, U.S. Air Force, American Embassy, Rome
Aldo Lenzi, Doctor of Veterinary Science, Siena
KATHERINE LINDSAY, translator, Wayne, Illinois
Aldo LUSINI, editor of the periodical Terra di Siena
Conte GOFFREDO MANFREDI, Rome