Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio

by Marguerite Henry

  “It is not a whole answer, my son,” the Monsignore concluded, “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.

  Chapter XXIX

  THE THREE ACTS

  That evening when Giorgio returned to Siena, the undercurrent of the August Palio was running strong. The first act, the drawing of lots of the contradas, had already taken place, and the flags of the ten who would run were flying from the Palazzo Pubblico. As Giorgio stood in the Piazza looking, the torment in him began again. If only by some miracle the flag with the sea-shell were missing, then whichever contrada drew Gaudenzia would surely ask him to race her. But of course, the flag was there, as he knew it had to be, and he was bound irretrievably to Nicchio, the Shell.

  Feeling trapped and helpless, he hurried at once to the stable to see how Gaudenzia had fared. She was always a surprise to him each time he saw her, always belonging to him more closely—the pricked ears listening, the dark eyes asking, the nostrils fluttering in a welcome that said more than any words.

  “See!” he said quite out of breath, “I come presto, pronto, 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 pitchfork 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 spectators 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 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 the urns. Three times he had watched the Mayor’s hands tremble and the captains’ faces pale.

  And three times he had stood in this same strip of shade made by the Mangia Tower, with the ten grooms in front of him, waiting to lead away their charges in joy or sorrow, and behind him the anxious contradaioli, repeating the phrase he had grown to hate: “Fate is Queen of the Palio.”

  Like the Mayor himself, Giorgio was beginning to tremble. Not just his hands; he was shaking all over. Perspiration trickled freely down his back as the capsules were opened and the pairing began.

  “Uganda to the Snail!”

  The clamor was loud in Giorgio’s ears, growing with each announcement.

  “Dorina to the Panther!” Poor Dorina, he thought, always running, never winning.

  “Gaudenzia to the Giraffe!”

  “Rosella to Nicchio, the Shell!”

  Giorgio had heard all he needed to hear. The capsules had sealed his doom. A horrified gasp broke from his throat. It was the same sound he had made when he hit the cobblestones with Turbolento.

  The ritual of the assignment went on. But for Giorgio it was over. It was done.

  He watched Rosella and Gaudenzia going off with their grooms, each surrounded by joyful contradaioli. The spectators, too, were melting away—going home, going into cafés, returning to work. The captains and the Mayor vanished into the communal hall. Only Giorgio and the pigeons were left. And in a silent semi-circle behind him three tall youths from Nicchio had taken up their positions as his bodyguards. He turned to them. In a daze he shook their hands, and in a daze smiled crookedly at their small talk. The pigeons, in their pigeon-toed gait, waddled around them. He envied the birds, earthbound one moment, soaring into sky the next. He reached into his pocket and scattered a few kernels of oats, and watched the airborne ones come in for a landing. One perched on his shoulder, eyeing him with a shiny shoe-button eye.

  “Our fantino, he thinks he is St. Francis!” a guard laughed, not unkindly.

  Giorgio remembered the time Emilio had said almost the same words, and suddenly he longed to be at home in the two little rooms in Monticello. Forlornly, he followed the guards to his new sleeping room in the quarters of Nicchio. He had half a mind to steal out tonight and go back to the Maremma, but if he did, it would be only his body that left.

  The Captain of Nicchio, Signor de Santi, came later in the afternoon to see him. For a moment Giorgio felt a spear of hope. Perhaps Giraffa and Nicchio had exchanged fantinos, and the Captain had come with the news.

  It was a cruel hope, dashed almost as it was born. Sensing the boy’s unhappiness, the Captain said, “Son, you are a fantino, not a mere horseboy. On this mount, or that, you must win. Rosella is a big, rangy mare and she, too, has good possibilities.”

  Giorgio made no answer. Empty of feeling, he managed to live out the afternoon. Toward evening the Chief-of-the Guards came to him. “It will be some comfort,” he said, “for you to ride Gaudenzia tonight in the first Prova. Of course, you understand,” he added, “it will be in this one only.”

  But it was no comfort at all. It was like digging at a wound so that it could bleed anew. He let Gaudenzia win the first Prova, lengths ahead of the others. No one had challenged her.

  On the morning of the second day he rode the rangy Rosella. Captain de Santi gave his orders beforehand. “Make the getaway clear from the ropes, and the gallop light. In all the Provas, her strength and vigor must be preserved.”

  Time passed for Giorgio. The minutes and the hours flowed on, sunup to sundown, one Prova after another, and the pinch of pain spread until it was a dull, dull aching.

  In the Prova Generale, on the afternoon of the third day, tension tightened among the fantinos. Each wanted to show his skill, to make certain of being selected for the Palio itself. In July, Giorgio had been tortured by the fear that his name would not be made official in the archives. Now it did not matter. Again he brought Rosella in safely, as his captain had ordered.

  That evening, escorted by his bodyguard, he attended the great banquet in the hall of Nicchio. Wearing
the little jacket and the striped trousers of the race, he sat at the head table, next to Captain de Santi. There was joy and hospitality all about him . . . people eating their fill of chicken cacciatore and drinking the red wine from the grapes of Tuscany. He tried to be one of them, but he was silent as a nut in a shell, and the good food knotted in his throat. In his mind he saw Monsignor Tardini in the cool, shuttered room of the Vatican, and he saw the Umbrella Man sitting cross-legged at the fountain, and he saw Gaudenzia without wanting to see her.

  When it came his turn to stand up and face the members of Nicchio, he did not fumble in his mind or in his pocketless jacket for any prepared speech. He just got up and stood quiet awhile. Then, remembering his talk with the Monsignore, he said: “To Nicchio I will be loyal.” It was as if another’s voice were speaking for him as he went on, “And the orders of my Captain I will obey.”

  Chapter XXX

  DUEL BETWEEN HORSE AND MAN

  The 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 precise order in today’s joust is to hinder the others and help our ally to win. Since they have drawn Gaudenzia, you are fortunate, thus, to fight for your mare. No?”

  Or, better still, the Captain might say: “Vittorino! In the dark watches of the night we changed our tactics. Our Rosella, it appears, could finish maybe second or third, but not first. Therefore, we release you to ride Gaudenzia for Giraffa, and we will engage a new fantino.”

  In Giorgio’s mind the Captain’s speech grew long and lofty. “You see, son,” (he could even hear the tone of voice) “Giraffa has in the past done us favors. We therefore hold in high esteem their sacred friendship. It will be a beautiful sacrifice we make.”

  Hugging these hopes to him, he slept away what was left of the night.

  • • •

  August 16, 1954. The day is new. Sky murky. Sun trying to tear the clouds apart. Church bells tolling. Giorgio cannot run away now; does not want to run away. There is still the hope. He prays with the other fantinos, feels with them the pressure and the tension mounting. He rides in the Provaccia, the last rehearsal. Bodily he is on Rosella; heart and soul he rides Gaudenzia. Last night’s hopes will come true; must come true! Perhaps at the last moment in the Hall of the Magistrate it will happen. Captain de Santi will lean over and whisper into his ear. He can do it easily. The hall is vast; two people can feel alone.

  But when the time came, there was no whispering; only the bold pronouncement that Giorgio Terni, known as Vittorino, was official fantino for Nicchio.

  At half past two in the afternoon the embers of his hope flickered again as the Captain strode into Giorgio’s room.

  “Vittorino!” The name slow-spoken as in the dream, and the syllables far apart, like drops of rain when the storm begins.

  Now it comes. Now he will say: “You, Vittorino, must give help to Gaudenzia. The others you will block. With the nerbo you will fight them fiercely, hinder them.” The boy holds his breath. He takes a step closer. He does not want even the guards to overhear. He cants his head like a dog, begging, awaiting directions . . . listening . . . eyes beseeching.

  The Captain clips out his orders, wanting the guards to hear: “Break first from the rope! The hot bludgeons of the nerbo we wish you both to escape.”

  There is still the hope; it is not yet dead.

  “And during the last meters of the race”—the voice is grim—“you will nerbo every opponent who threatens our victory. Every opponent who threatens . . .”

  A wild sickness churns in the boy. He wants to escape and run and run and run, but where to go? Fate has trapped him. Fate, the Queen of the Palio.

  Minutes and seconds wear themselves out. Numbly he puts on the long stockings, the high buskins, the deep blue doublet with the emblem of the white shell, the burnished sleeves of mail, the heavy helmet of mail with the chinstrap too tight. He thinks wistfully of the rabbit’s fur he had once wrapped around Gaudenzia’s chinstrap. How long ago that seems!

  He is ready. He goes to the church of Nicchio with Rosella. He hears the priest invoke God’s protection for horse and rider, hears the people shout: “Go, Rosella! Come back victorious!”

  Then, mounted on his parade horse, he receives the general blessing of the Archbishop, his mind dazedly repeating the Captain’s orders. He makes his way to Il Campo, awaits his turn to enter. The bell in the tower begins its tolling. His company 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 present 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 battlecar, 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!

  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 fantinos 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 herself.

  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 s
pend 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, catching him on the straightaways, thundering alongside him, only to drop back when he blocks her at the curves.

  “Forza, Gaudenzia! Forza!” Strangers and Sienese alike are yelling for Gaudenzia.

  Only the Nicchio fans are her enemies. “Knock off her spennacchiera!” they cry to Giorgio. “Knock it off!”

  Fifty meters to go! She is holding her own, pounding on, eye to eye with Rosella.

  In sickening guilt Giorgio remembers his orders . . . lifts his nerbo, aims at her spennacchiera. He misses! He feels the thud of his blow against her neck. She falls back a moment, but immediately comes up again. Desperately aiming higher, he strikes once more. The nerbo draws a line of blood close to her ear, but the spennacchiera holds fast. Again she falls back, and again she comes up, her strength intensified.

  Doubled over, wincing, the boy strikes again, and then again, and sees the bloody trail grow. Tears spill down his cheeks. “Only a few meters left!” he cries inside. “Only one blow more.” And before the screaming, cursing multitude he deals it.

  Bleeding and bewildered, Gaudenzia tries to pass on the outside, but Giorgio blocks her. The flag of arrival is just ahead. He lifts his nerbo, this time in the sign of victory, but to the gasps of the multitude she cuts around behind him, knifes her body between Rosella and the fence, thrusts her nose under his upraised arm—to win! By the length of her red-scarred head she wins.

  It is over. The duel is done. Giorgio falls sobbing into the waiting arms of the Chief-of-the-Guards. The big man is sobbing, too. “Don’t cry, Giorgio. Don’t look like that. You had to do it. You just had to!”

  Chapter XXXI

  AT THE VICTORY DINNER