Even with her limited experience of horseflesh she could tell that Leocorno was powerful, quivering with energy. He had the breadth of muscle stock beneath his pearly skin that spelled a winner. Very, very carefully, Signor Bruni turned Leocorno’s head towards the city, the Torre del Mangia and its golden crown, the needle of a compass. He squeezed his heels into the white belly and Leocorno, with no hesitation whatsoever, raised his head and ears and took off as if winged, rushing lightly through the warm day, smoothly racing, running, his hooves scarcely touching the ground.
Pia watched with pride as they receded into the distance, becoming a dot, a speck. She was not afraid to be alone. Only one idea occupied her mind at this moment: that Faustino had made a mistake. This horse was incredible. On this horse Signor Bruni could destroy all Faustino’s plans in the single moment it took to run the Palio. She saw the horseman rein Leocorno to turn and come back for her, as she knew they would, and a second idea began to form, resolve, become a certainty.
On this horse he could beat Nello.
Violante’s dream of the twins woke her again in the early morning. She walked to the window and as she watched the sun rise over the campo she began to think about the Nine and the missing contrada. Were there eight present in the duomo that night because they had not elected a ninth? Or because they wished to petition the Giraffa to join?
She looked down at the San Martino corner, where Faustino had lost his son, Vicenzo’s blood returning to the city, seeping through the stones. And there too, by the Fonte Gaia, was the dark stain of another body – Egidio, a boy transformed to a blood eagle. She placed her palm on the window, thinking hard, then turned and rang the bell for Gretchen, her handprint melting from the glass. She thought she had found another ally.
Violante sent for Zebra to bring Signor Bruni to her but the boy told her that Riccardo had gone into the west with Pia. Long after the boy had left, Violante sat still with a hand pressed to her heart. Riccardo was riding straight into the jaws of the wolf. Pia was married and to a vicious creature who had already punished the girl for receiving a mere smile from Riccardo. Beyond this, Violante could not condone the entanglement of a married woman – she, who had suffered for so many years through Ferdinand’s infidelity. She gave herself a little shake. Such musings were not helpful. If Riccardo was gone from Siena, she would go on the mission herself.
Surrounded by her tiring women, Violante stood holding her arms wide as she was corseted and petticoated, and her heavy gown and mantua were lifted on. Her wig was placed and powdered, her stays tightened. She called for her jewels, which Gretchen brought to her lady’s table. The duchess unrolled a swag of black velvet and the jewels slithered and glittered on to the wood. Today she needed all her warpaint and finery. Unguents and ointments were rubbed into her sagging skin, her face was whitened with lead paste and a little patch applied high to her cheek. She looked in the glass afterwards and saw the same face looking out from all that finery. No artifice in the world could make her beautiful, but she looked grand, important, imposing. Only the eyes gave her away.
She called for her litter, and her footmen, in their Medici livery, then changed her mind. She called instead for Gretchen, an old riding hood and a leather half-mask. She would go alone, with no retinue – her title, and her appearance, should be enough.
She sent a runner ahead so Egidio’s father would expect her, and then Gretchen and she set out into the west of the city. It was just early enough for the heat not to have risen from the stones and the shadows were still cool enough for the heavy cloak not to be a punishment. At the doors of the house of the Panther, Violante sent Gretchen inside and waited to be admitted, knowing that she would not be refused. She turned around in the little courtyard, gazing at the wonderful court of tall, blank-walled palazzi surrounding her, with a bright hot arc of blue above, studded with the omnipresent starlings, just beginning to rise on the warm currents of the early-morning air.
The door opened and Violante entered a dark hallway. She waited, as she was bidden by the maid, outside a panelled door and spent a few moments looking at a painting of a panther at bay. Violante was then ushered into the presence chamber of Raffaello Albani. As soon as she shed her cloak and swept into the room, she knew she had no need of her finery. Albani was a broken man.
He sat, in a single chair in a room empty apart from a few candlesticks and some paintings. He wore a simple black coat and black breeches, a white stock and silver buckles the only flash of light on his person, for there was no wig on his bald head. He raised hangdog eyes to her and she knew then that he had not slept since his son had been beaten to death and laid out in the campo for all to see. She did not even have time to offer her condolences before he began to speak.
‘He was within his rights, you know. It is allowed, you know, to use the whip on another jockey. He did not mean to kill the son of the Eagles. He was a good boy, Duchess, such a good boy. And for the Eagle to beat him as he did, take him and …’ He could not go on. ‘I thank you for your purse.’
From that moment she knew him for a decent man. To suffer under the weight of such grief, and yet to thank her for the alms she had sent, showed her a dignity and grace that she had not expected. She had met him before: the last time, in fact, on the day of the Palio when the capitani and fantini had come to pay homage to her. Then she had barely noticed him, nor his son Egidio, until he was dead and laid out like the Christ. She remembered a tall patrician man in a suit of clothes befitting a successful apothecary: elegant and aspiring. Now, she looked upon a ruined man.
She bustled forward in her heavy dress and sank down in a puff of silk and petticoat rings, clasping his hand where it held the chair hard, all decorum forgotten. In his reddened eyes she read the raw pain she knew well: the loss of a child. But for the first time, looking into those defeated eyes, she asked herself whether there might not be a more terrible loss than the one she had known. If she had grieved so much for her tiny babies, how much more terrible was it to lose a boy who had been on this earth for twenty summers, who had grown up around your table, who could converse and love and have opinions?
Tears started to her eyes, not tears of self-pity, but for this man’s sorrow. Flustered, he tried to rise, but Violante held his hand tight.
‘I want these deaths to stop. There is a way to do it, but it will take great bravery, and it will require that you dissemble and tolerate the society of the one who took your son. But if you can do this, we can bring him down utterly. Will you hear me?’
As he shook his head, his own tears spilled. ‘No. I will finish him, but I will finish him in my own way and my own time. There will be no legality in it, no quarter. I cannot, cannot be in his presence, he who was with my son when he died. I should have been with him. Me.’
He turned away to a painting on the wall. It showed a panther in a pit, at bay, snarling at his captors.
She had lost him and knew there was no more to be said.
On Sunday, Pia spent the whole of mass praying that Signor Bruni would beat Nello in the Palio. It pleased her to be in the Aquila church, praying for the downfall of the house.
She emerged from the Eagles’ church with the omnipresent Nicoletta at her heels, but mistress and maid had gone no more than three steps when Pia felt a tug on her sleeve. She turned to find Zebra, just as she had when he had given her the duchess’s purse and when he had passed to her the news of Nello’s absence. Recognizing that he brought her only good things, this time she smiled.
‘Well?’ Nicoletta snapped.
‘Begging your pardon, mum. The mistress left her prayer book.’
He handed Pia a parcel wrapped in a stole. It was intercepted by Nicoletta who unwrapped it to reveal a prayer book, bound in black buckram, tooled in gold. Grudgingly, she handed it to Pia. Pia had never seen it before and opened her mouth to say as much, when she met the boy’s hazel eyes, heavy with meaning. She thanked him and walked on. Nicoletta, the banker, gave Zebra the tiniest tin coin she could find in h
er purse.
Back in her room Pia opened the book, expecting to find a message – perhaps from Riccardo – and her heart quickened. But she got a surprise: there was a second cover underneath the first.
Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.
And it was not just any copy, but her own, with the little owl of the Civetta on the flyleaf of the quarto. She hugged it to her.
He had done this for her. She was no longer alone.
‘Signor Faustino, she is improving so much that I wondered if we might have your leave to ride outside the walls again today.’
Faustino, framed by the windows of his great hall, steepled his long white hands and regarded Riccardo with his raptor’s eyes. ‘She’s coming on well, you say?’
‘Yes, sir. She’s cantering well now. If we have your leave to go into the country, we might try a gallop.’
‘Hm.’ Faustino touched his fingertips to his thin lips. ‘And how is your Unicorn?’
Riccardo made a quick calculation: if he maintained that he still could not mount the stallion, Faustino might conclude that there was no need for him to fill his time with Pia. If he revealed that he could now ride the horse, Faustino might want him to spend more time with Pia and less on practising for the Palio.
‘Well, too – I’m schooling him now, and he’s got quite a turn of speed.’
Faustino’s black eyebrows shot up into his white hair. ‘In truth? Well. Well. If you draw him in the Palio, we shall see. It’s all about what happens on the day, and that, my dear Riccardo, is in the hands of chance.’
He’s not as worried as he should be, thought Riccardo, and wondered why.
‘I think, then, as to that other matter, it would be well for you to take young Pia out of the city again.’ The amber eyes flicked upwards, suddenly aflame. ‘Why don’t you take her into the Maremma? There are some fine gallops in the salt marshes, near our castle.’
Riccardo gave a brief bow and left the hall. He ran out into the stableyard like a child.
The presence of an actual child in Zebra, holding his mount, sobered him a little.
‘Zebra,’ he said, ‘could you ask around about this horse, Leocorno? Try to get hold of Boli, or someone who knows him, and find a little about his history?’
Zebra looked doubtful. Riccardo sighed. ‘There’s coin in it.’
Zebra’s grin spread from ear to ear. He handed over the reins with a courtly ‘signor’, and ran. Shouting the comforting words needed to precede each mount, Riccardo vaulted up on to Leocorno.
The Morte d’Arthur transformed the lonely hours Pia spent in her room, and even her troubled nights were now filled with dreams of knights and faithless ladies and adventure. She was careful to keep the book’s existence a secret from Nicoletta, knowing the maid would make sure some accident befell it.
Nicoletta continued to exert her malign and bullying presence. Each night she would extinguish the light as she left Pia to sleep, pinching at the candle as assiduously as any mother putting her babe to sleep. But one night at dinner, Pia had spied a tinderbox, squat and silver, sitting on the great oak sideboard. She had swept it, unseen, into her skirts. On the nights when she read into the small hours, she made sure that the heavy drapes were closed without the tiniest gap so no chink of light could give her away.
Riccardo had given her a world between two covers. In her desire to reciprocate his kindness, she scoured the pages for references to Arthur’s churches, but there were many mentioned in the volume and she would have returned to her next riding lesson with nothing to report, had she not chanced, on her way back from shrift, to be waiting outside the apothecary’s shop for Nicoletta.
The maid, in her usual inversion of their roles, had insisted that they go home by the Strada Romana. The hospital-church of Santa Maria Maddalena had a fine apothecary shop there, where she would buy a salve for her bunions. Pia, waiting, knew better this time than to run. She did, though, cross the street to find shade in the loggia of a tall palace. The palace of San Galgano.
She fiddled absent-mindedly with one of the many horse-stays set into the exterior wall, lifting the heavy iron ring and letting it drop back against the stone with a clang. Lift drop, lift drop, lift drop. Only on her third go did she notice the design of the thing. It was a sword, buried in stone, with a little man’s head growing out of the hilt where a jewel might sit. She stepped back into the sun and looked up to the second-storey loggia. The piano nobile was placed on a level with the church opposite, to compensate for the fact that the church stood on a slight hill. And outside the elegant, double-arched window were a number of friezes of the saint who gave the palace its name.
Pia had heard of Saint Galgano and his relics, which lay dry-boned and silent somewhere in the hospital-church across the street. In one relief, he was doing great deeds as a knight. In another, he was taking a great sword out of a stone.
Pia looked about. She saw two moneylenders setting up their tables in the shade of the palace, piling their coins on their banco benches. They must live locally, for their strongboxes would not stand to be carried far. She greeted them, quickly, one eye on the apothecary’s door for the returning Nicoletta.
‘Why the sword, do you know?’
The men were puzzled.
‘Beg pardon, miss?’ said the first.
Pia repeated, ‘Why is there a sword on the horse-stays, on the friezes?’
‘Ah,’ said the second, pinching his spectacles on to his nose like a schoolteacher. ‘Because our blessed San Galgano buried a sword in the stone, in the round church of Montesiepi, above the abbey of San Galgano.’
Pia thanked them and crossed the street just as Nicoletta emerged from the apothecary’s. For once, her smile was almost as wide as her maid’s.
The next day Pia called Nicoletta to her chamber. She sat hunched on her bed, and as the maid loomed over her she clutched her pelvis.
‘Nicoletta, I know you have a good care of me and look after me as if I were your own. Indeed, I know you have a care of me like one of your own kin. And perhaps you will not be surprised then that I come to you, now that I am in great pain.’
Nicoletta, clearly delighted to hear it, sat heavily beside her mistress on the bed, causing Pia to steady herself lest she roll into her bulk.
‘Well, my pet, tell Nicoletta all. Is it your women’s courses? For I have noted, sure, that you have been bleeding wondrous heavy.’
Pia gripped her stomach harder and made herself speak in gasping, groaning tones. ‘It is. The pain is most severe, and the bleeding comes and goes more than once in the month. I thought perhaps … I know you go to that hospital-church we passed the other day – Santa Maria Maddelena, was it? And that if you seek solace there, the sisters must be very learned for I know you have a great knowledge of medicine.’
Nicoletta simpered at the compliment. ‘That is true. I do go there sometimes, for they have the best physick, mayhap because they have some blessed relics in their holy house.’
Pia was careful to keep her eyes low so Nicoletta could not see them flare. ‘Of San Galgano?’
‘’Tis so. And it is true there are sisters who do have the knowledge you speak of, of female troubles and such. But if you’re sufferin’ in your women’s parts, ’twill pass soon enough. With the wax of the moon the cramps will go. Might get worse for a little, afore it gets better.’ This prospect stretched her smile even further.
Pia flicked her a look, and sighed.
‘Well, perhaps you’re right. I must bear it as well as I can. But in truth, I have been worrying that this malaise may prevent me from carrying a child, and you must know that my dearest wish is to do my duty.’
She rose slowly and limped, doubled-up, to the window, all the time watching her maid keenly in the glass.
‘But you are right; and there is no need for my father-in-law to know of it, lest it get worse and then, perhaps, I must ask him to call for his physician. But do not fret, my dear Nicoletta. There will be no need for h
im to know that you did not see the necessity to act early …’
Nicoletta’s smile snapped back small. ‘Well … I might have cause to step that way this week, for my poor foot will need a fresh poultice. Perhaps I’ll mention it to the sister hospitaller, have her send some novice along.’
Pia grasped the windowsill in genuine relief. ‘Oh dear, dear Nicoletta! I knew I could rely on you.’
Nicoletta was as good as her grudging word. The very next morning a nun from Santa Maria Maddalena was shown into Pia’s chamber. She was wearing the black habit and the characteristic white wimple of the hospital sisters, the starched snowy linen of the headdress reaching skywards like gull’s wings.
When Pia saw the nun’s face her heart sank, for Nicoletta had grasped back some points in their game by supplying a novice no older than Pia herself. Had Pia really been suffering, this slip of a nun would have been of trifling help, but she was more concerned that the girl would know little of the real matter on which she sought enlightenment. But when the nun sat on the bed as she was invited, Pia was encouraged. Although her eyes were sad, her expression serious, the young nun’s face was intelligent and her discourse was lively. She took just a moment to introduce herself as Sister Concetta, before she launched into detailed questions about Pia’s last bleeding, the colour, duration and amount of her flux. Pia held up a hand.
‘Sister, I won’t lie to you. By the grace of God, my health is good. But this city needs physick. I need you to tell me as much as you can of your patron saint and the foundation of San Galgano. Now, you can walk from this room this moment and tell my father-in-law what I have asked you. But I beg that you will not, as lives may be saved if you tell me what I need to know.’
She watched the nun’s eyes search her face and travel over her head, to her temples and ears where the scratches from Nello’s shears were barely healed. The novice’s next utterance was completely unexpected.
The Daughter of Siena: A Novel Page 17