Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio

by Marguerite Henry

  With a dry cough the clerk took the pen from behind his ear and held it poised in midair like a hummingbird before it daggers into a flower.

  Giorgio’s heart quailed. He tried to stop the racing jumble of his thoughts: last year’s death of Turbolento, last night’s dream. The hoarfrost voice of the scribe cut off his thinking. Slowly the man called the roll. Each fantino stood up as his contrada was called. Carefully he held up his jacket with both hands so the emblem would plainly show, and waited for his captain to confirm him. This done, the clerk recorded the fantino’s name in the big registry, writing with long, even strokes and a flourish of his pen at the end.

  When it was Giorgio’s turn, his foot caught in the rung of his chair, and it seemed an eternity before he could wrench free. To make matters worse, his hands were shaking so violently that when he held up his jacket the dolphin seemed mockingly alive, undulating through the blue waves of the Onda.

  It brought a faint titter from the other fantinos before Captain Tortorelli broke in: “I hereby declare . . .” he paused to clear his throat. “I declare,” he repeated, “Giorgio Terni, fantino for the Onda.”

  Never to Giorgio had a man’s gruff voice or the scratchy squeak of a pen sounded so sweet. When it was all over, he went out into the vastness of the Piazza. The pigeons were putting on an aerial spectacle, spiralling into the deep sky. Giorgio felt his spirits rise with them.

  The Chief-of-the-Guards came up alongside. “I can see from your face,” he smiled, “that all is now official.”

  Giorgio nodded.

  “So you and your guards come rest at my house,” the Chief said. “For you my wife makes her special zucchini omelette. It sits light in your stomach, and so you sit light on my Gaudenzia! You have now until four o’clock to eat and rest and sip the sweet wine of anticipation.”

  Giorgio had not visited the eagle’s-nest-of-a-house for a whole month, not since the night of his arrival with Gaudenzia. Then, there had been a yellow moon-path on the hillside. Now a watery sun was breaking through the clouds, drawing moisture up in a thick curtain of mist. Only a month, he thought, but leading up to it a whole calendar of months from October to June. And before that, years of training for Signor Ramalli; and before that, Bianca, the Blind One; and before that, way in the beginning, a dusty little Umbrella Man sitting crosslegged by the fountain, reciting the deep mystery of the Palio.

  “Come inside! Come inside!” the Chief-of-the-Guards laughed. “Stop gawping. Grapevines and olive groves you have seen before. Now we eat.”

  Giorgio was glad that no one expected him to eat much, or to talk at all. After the meal Pinotto, Carlo, Enzio, and Nello took their siestas in chairs and on the sofa. But Giorgio and the Chief paced—from balcony to dining room to kitchen and back again.

  The afternoon wore slowly on. From the distance came the murmur of Tuscans and tourists pouring through the city’s gates. The swelling noise rolled into the house through doors and windows.

  An hour is very long on Palio day, and Giorgio was never good at waiting. The tick and the tock of the clock on the wall dawdled in maddening slowness, the hands barely moving. Every few minutes he went to the door to check the position of the sun, as if he could not trust the clock. When at last the bodyguards stirred to life, relief flooded through him. The waiting was over! It was time to dress for the pageant.

  As Giorgio pulled on the blue-and-white striped stockings, the blue buskins, the quilted velvet tunic with its plaited sleeves, and the flowing wig, a curious thing happened to him. He was no longer Giorgio Terni, the peasant boy of Monticello; he was a warrior, risen full-clad from some ancient grave, ready and eager for battle.

  When he arrived at the church of the Onda he saw that a change had come over Gaudenzia, too. She appeared more dazzlingly white, taller, and more elegant. She wore a spennacchiera of plumes in her headstall, and she too was adorned in medieval splendor—a blue velvet bodycloth with the dolphin embroidered almost life size in gold.

  Before the arch of San Guiseppe the people stood aside. There was no talk or whispering of any kind. Solemnly they made a corridor for her and Giorgio to enter together. The mare must be blessed within the church, for is not the Palio a religious celebration in honor of the Visitation of the Virgin? Is not the blessing of the horse an age-old custom? Then, open wide the doors! Throw out the carpet. Let her enter!

  In the perfect stillness, Gaudenzia’s hoofbeats are the measured beat of time. Slowly she and Giorgio proceed up the aisle while the congregation breathes a collective sigh at her beauty.

  Book in hand, the priest greets them at the altar. “Almighty and everlasting God,” his resonant words roll out, “let this animal, Gaudenzia, receive Thy blessing, whereby it may be preserved in body, and freed from every harm by the intercession of the blessed Saint Anthony, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  Whispered “Amens” ripple through the crowd like muffled drums as the priest sprinkles holy water on Gaudenzia’s head. The ceremony is over! And all at once the silence explodes in a deafening burst of joy. The clamoring rises to delirium.

  Out in the street again, a tumultuous wave of humanity surrounds Gaudenzia. People from all walks of life want to touch her, or even the embroidery of her bodycloth. A man still wearing his shepherd’s smock wedges himself in close to Giorgio. His face breaks into a grin, showing the dark hole where two of his teeth are missing. He points his shepherd’s crook at Gaudenzia. “Magnifica!” he laughs in rapture.

  And the crowd takes up the cry. “Magnifica!”

  Chapter XXIV

  HAVE YOU FEAR? HAVE YOU FEAR?

  Underneath his flowing wig, perspiration is streaking 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 company—the drummer first, the two flag-bearers next with their 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.

  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, making 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 uncovered 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—or whatever the name of that great battle was. Now he needs the strength that the white hand up in the window can give him.

  He stretches his neck, looking up, and he thinks of himself as a parched bird, head back, beak open, begging a drop of water.

  There! The hand is moving. Two fingers. No, three. They are making the sign of the cross. The benediction is communion direct to him, to Giorgio Terni, and it is coming right from God, with only the Archbishop in between. Suddenly he is ready, calm and ready for battle, and he nods a little to the figure up there in the window to let him know he has received the message. His hand tightens on the lance. He sways along on his broad-backed charger and leaves the Cathedral Square; he and his whole company—the flag twirlers, and the Captain, and Gaudenzia, and all the others—and they wind down from the hill, and down, and down into the core of the city, a tight military company.

  As they approach the entrance to the Piazza, the bell in the Mangia Tower begins tolling a sonorous bong, bong, bong, and the spine-tingling reverberations blot out all other sounds.

  Before and behind are other companies. The contrada of Lupa is entering Il Campo, and Onda will be next. Yes, he will be next. And he will be really seeing the historical parade for the first time. Those other times he had moved like one in sleep. But this is real. Now he knows that the pageant is more than a parade; it is a bright fuse burning itself around the shell of Il Campo until it blazes into the fire of the Palio.

  And at last, at last, he is riding into the square! His eyes blink at the awesomeness. The facades of the palaces are alive with thousands upon thousands of heads. And within the railing of the shell is a heaving sea of heads, like flowers in a pot too 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 procession. The members of the parade are not the people of today, but what they look like—the people of long ago.

  “First come the red mace-bearers stumping along tall and straight, like their maces. They make way for the black-and-white flag of Siena.

  “Emilio, you should know this flag! It stands for Romulus, who founded Rome, and for Remus, who founded Siena. Like us they were brothers, only they were suckled not by a mamma, but by a she-wolf. One day those brothers build fires, and the one fire makes white smoke and the other black, and so the flag is for them . . . black and white.

  “Teria! You would like better the plumed knights and nobles in their velvet costumes, and the musicians blowing on their silver trumpets.

  “And Babbo! The magistrates of the guilds you would like—the silk workers, and wool workers, and stone and gold workers, and builders, and painters, and blacksmiths, and apothecaries.”

  Giorgio’s eyes sharpen, dart ahead with the unbroken cavalcade as it winds triumphantly around the Piazza. How can he remember it all? How can he possibly make his family see those flag-players tossing their great flags into the air, making them soar in a hundred ways? “Oh, Mamma mia, look. Look, right now! Our boys from the Onda are doing the jump of the snowflake. Look how they leap high in the air, making the great banners unfurl, horizontal !

  “Oh, I give up! Some day you must come. Those boys—they send their souls up with their flags into the sky. You got to see it. Yourself!”

  Giorgio stops a moment, tired, bewildered. His brain goes blank with taking pictures, as if he has run out of film. He squirms in his saddle, forces himself on.

  “Yes! All this you got to see.” He tries to pick one last scene 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, probing 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.”

  Chapter XXV

  BEHOLD, THE PALIO!

  Seven o’clock. Time spinning itself out. Time throwing its shadows up and up the tower. Excitement mounting with the shadows. The knights and nobles, having completed the turn of the track, seat themselves on the benches in front of the Palazzo. The rich colors of their costumes make a 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 contradas. 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 dampness 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 performing a sacred rite, uses the flat of his hands to wet the mare’s withers, her back, her barrel, her flanks.