The Daughter of Siena: A Novel

by Marina Fiorato

  ‘And after? You could free her if I do this thing, I know you could. You have it in your gift to free one prisoner after the Palio.’ He was pleading now.

  She could have wept. She had given her word to a worthless man, an abductor and murderer, and must leave an innocent girl to rot. She spoke carefully, for she did not want to lie.

  ‘I cannot free her, for I have promised freedom to the man that gave you back to me: Dami, Gian Gastone’s creature.’ She could barely say his name. ‘But as duke, you will have the power to help her.’

  He was silent.

  ‘We must keep your identity secret for now. You are not safe from … your uncle Gian Gastone,’ the words were strange on her tongue, ‘as you are the bar to his inheritance of the duchy. He tried to remove you once; he will do so again.’

  He stood abruptly, turned here and there, and sat down again. He did not know where to put himself. He had lost Pia, Leocorno was dying, but he’d been given his mother back and a dukedom to boot. He shook his head.

  He wished more than anything that he could turn back the calendar six weeks, to the day before the last Palio. To unsee what he had seen: Vicenzo, Egidio, Nello. But then, he did not want to lose some of the things he had found: Pia, his horse, his … mother. He looked at her now where she sat, a good, kind, plain woman.

  ‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘I do not want any of it. I cannot be a duke.’ The idea was laughable, but he had never felt less like laughing. ‘I cannot even ride any more. Forgive me.’

  He turned and ran from her, tears stinging his eyes.

  In the daylight he took the path to his father’s house, his father who was not his father. His father was a duke, Ferdinando de’ Medici, cultured, handsome, a man of letters and music. He thought of Domenico, squat and strong, a peasant who knew nothing of music but much of horses. A man who had loved him in his way, schooled him in his way, and given him the only language he had needed to learn, the only tongue that was understood in this city: horses.

  He quickened his step, needing to be home, feeling that he owed Domenico that at least. He did not know how many more homecomings were left to him.

  Violante of Bavaria rose and followed her son from the church. She ached for the twin that was lost, but even more for the twin that was found.

  As if in a dream she walked back to the palace. She did not know what to think. If Riccardo did not ride, then the Nine would take his heritage. But would he ever be reconciled with the idea of his inheritance anyway?

  She stopped outside the palace, where the servants of the comune, preparing the terrain of the square for that evening, scattered their sand and sawdust at a respectful distance around her feet. She looked up at the roundel on the walls: IHS, a reminder of her faith. And below that, a pagan symbol: the she-wolf suckling the twins, one feeding and one looking out, as they always did, as her own had done. In the legend, Romulus had founded Rome and died; Remus lived to father a son Senius, who founded Siena.

  But Romulus was not dead. He was alive, and coming for her city. Romulus was the puppetmaster of the Nine.

  She woke from her dream, her mind shifting from the personal to the political. Romulus. She began to walk, faster this time, and with purpose. Here was another statue and another.

  Back in the palace, having walked some miles and counted twelve statues, she took a map of the city from the map chest and began to mark the locations of the dozen statues. They were at key strategic points about the city – thoroughfares, city gates; they surrounded the heart of Siena, the citadel and palace, and cut it off. She wondered that she had not seen it before. Did Romulus intend to use these locations somehow?

  Avoiding her brother-in-law for the rest of the day, Violante watched the remaining horse trials from the palace windows but did not see Riccardo. Determined to be ready for whatever happened tonight, she forced herself to eat a small meal, which she took in her room, and lay herself down on her bed, willing sleep, which did not come. She rose again and went to the library, her harbour and solace, but today she did not reach for the Morte d’Arthur. She thought that if Riccardo did not come back she would never read it again. Instead she took down her copy of Dante, bound in buckram the red of blood. She took it back to her room, lay on her bed and leafed through the pages to Purgatory, where the Pia of old dwelled; and where the Pia of today dwelled too. Violante suddenly needed to remind herself of the story of the first Pia of the Tolomei.

  She needed to remember how Pia had died.

  16

  The Tower

  In Dante’s Purgatorio, the poet meets a young and beautiful woman who had come there following her murder.

  ‘Deh, quando tu sarai tornato al mondo,

  e riposato de la lunga via’,

  seguitò ’l terzo spirito al secondo,

  ‘Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;

  Siena mi fé, disfecemi Maremma:

  salsi colui che ’nnanellata pria

  disposando m’avea con la sua gemma.’

  ‘Ah, when you have returned to the world, and rested from the long journey,’ followed the third spirit after the second, ‘remember me, the one who is Pia; Siena made me, Maremma undid me: he knows it, the one who first encircled my finger with his jewel, when he married me.’

  The Palio.

  A year of planning, ten men and horses, three circuits of the piazza, and all of it over in one single moment.

  The Palio was the centre, the Palio was Siena. Once you knew that, you knew all.

  Siena was punishingly hot that August day but, despite the heat, the numbers assembled to catch a glimpse of the Palio dell’Assunta seemed greater than ever. On other days the beauteous shell-shaped Piazza del Campo lay as serene and empty as a Saint Jacques scallop, but today it was crammed with a thousand Sienese, drumming their drums and waving their flags. Even the starlings gathered to watch in the hot blue circle of sky high over the track. They wheeled around the tower-tops, to gather in smoky clouds and break apart again, dissipating like ink in water, all the time screeching with excitement.

  Everyone else had their role, their task on this day of days, from the greatest degree to the least. Pia of the Tolomei felt the lowliest of them all, but she had her role too. She was, again, merely a spectator, required to cheer for her husband and nothing more. But she had no intention of cheering for her husband, oh no. Pia of the Tolomei was going to watch her husband ride in the Palio and pray that, during the course of it, he would be killed.

  It was the sixteenth day of August, the day after the feast of the Assumption, a feast she had celebrated in her cell with a crust of bread, a cup of water and a friendly Sienese rat. It was blisteringly hot but this month her bodice and stays were not tight; they hung from her loosely, and her shorn locks did not weigh down her head as her heavy coil used to. She was wearing the black-and-yellow plumage of the Eagles, for the very last time. She knew that, by the next Palio, Nello would have a new wife to wear these borrowed feathers.

  Pia looked across the square to her father’s benches of the Owlet contrada. Her father’s face was obscured by a roiling tempest of waving banners and flags in the Civetta colours of red and white. But this month she did not wish herself back there with him. She gazed instead, with longing, at the benches of the Tower contrada, with their banners of burgundy and blue, sitting in the merciful shadow of the gnomon that was the Torre del Mangia, the tower that gave them their name. She wished with all her heart that she was sitting there, perhaps with Domenico, Riccardo’s father, a man she had never met. She scanned the faces – kindly, excited, pent-up, but could not see any man who resembled Riccardo. In fact, Domenico was there, looking out for the son he loved, wearing an expression no one could name.

  As they both watched, along with a thousand other pairs of eyes, the horses and riders circling the track, a lone horseman walked his mount, slowly and with complete control, through the Bocca del Casato gate, the arch of the architrave framing him like a painted angel. She did not know him a mont
h ago; she knew him now. He led a white horse Pia also knew well (for he had become a particular pet of hers): Leocorno, the Unicorn – and he wore the colours of the Tower contrada. But it was not his horse or his dress that drew her gaze, nor that he was still the most beautiful living human she had ever seen. She knew that she’d thought him noble, a month ago, and to have a greatness to him. His actions, in that month, had defined him. He was kind, brave and loyal. He was the best person she’d ever met.

  Pia did not know, of course, that he had the birthright to match his noble actions, the right to sit on the palace balcony above her head, in the place of the homely duchess who was his mother. All she knew was that she loved him, he loved her, and today he rode for her as her champion. But he was no character from legend for a maiden to sigh over. The stakes were very real. He wore Cleopatra’s coin, not as a mere token of her favour, but as a symbol of her whole being. She felt as if her whole life hung about his neck.

  ‘The capitani, Duchess, and the fantini.’

  Violante rose from her seat at once at Gretchen’s whispered reminder. According to rank, it was now Gian Gastone’s duty to greet the captains of the contrade and the jockeys that were shortly to run this Titans’ race. But one glance at him, slumped on a velvet couch – for there was not a single chair in the palace that would take his bulk – told her he would not stir until he saw Dami freed.

  She was happy to step into the breach, for now she would see Riccardo again. She would go down and greet her son. In the space of one short month she had become, at last, a Sienese; perhaps because she had given birth to one of the city’s own – a horseman. She was grateful for the brief retreat into the cool dark palace, with its long deserted passages and high, airy salons. Her numerous household and servants had all quit the place for an hour, and she knew better than to deny them leave for this short time.

  She emerged, head high, into the courtyard, where the baying, heated crowd now took note of her – so different, she thought, from last month. The acclaim reminded her of ten years before when she had entered the city, newly widowed but fêted and welcomed by all. It was a small balm to her wounded heart, but she was canny enough to know the power of comparison. Offered Gian Gastone in her stead, a drunk and a boor from the ancient enemy Florence, who would likely let the city descend into further crime and avarice, the people loved her once more. She wondered now, with a lurch of her stomach, how they would welcome Riccardo as duke, one of their own. She looked them all in the eye, those contrade that defied her, the little group who had cheated and lied to be here. The She-Wolf, the Goose, the Owlet. The Caterpillar, the Giraffe, the Porcupine. The Wave, the Dragon. And the Eagle.

  The Nine.

  They believed that in a few short moments they would rule here, not she. She feared them, and they knew that too. Beside each man stood his fantino, his jockey, each one eyeing her with matching insolence. All save one: Riccardo, tallest of all, the only one of the pack to fix his eyes to the ground with something akin to respect for her sex, if not for her rank. Her heart warmed a little, but chilled again when she laid eyes on her greatest adversary. Faustino Caprimulgo, captain of the Eagle contrada, was standing with his jockey, his younger and only son Nello. For a moment she pitied Faustino. The Medici line lived on in the flower of youth and beauty – she had succeeded in her duty to provide an heir. Ferdinando had had a son in his own image, to stand at his shoulder like a younger self, but Faustino had only this runt of the litter with his strange skin and eyes, his mop of unnatural black hair. Faustino had lost one son just as she had. But the flower of her womb had lived, not the runt.

  The company waited in uneasy silence as the war chariot of the Palio drew up alongside the palace, drawn by four milk-white oxen with the banner of the Palio. Attendants folded and handed the flag to last month’s victor, Faustino, who reluctantly gave up the banner in turn to Violante. And so the black-and-white banner returned to her hand once more, after a month of trial and suffering, pain and joy. She took it – custodian for a few short moments before she would give it to this year’s victor.

  She stole another look at Faustino. Like all the other captains he wore the colours of his contrada around his neck, painted on to a silken scarf, knotted loosely about his throat. Like all the other captains he stood steadfast, refusing, once again, to remove his cap for her. Violante averted her eyes, unwilling to face the hatred she saw writ in his. Instead she gazed on the bareheaded Riccardo with such fondness that she did not see Nello follow her gaze, his face a mask of frozen hatred.

  Suddenly Nello’s long arm shot out and tore the burgundy-and-blue scarf from Riccardo’s neck. Some sort of chain fell sparkling to the floor, where it lay still, to be crushed underfoot by the ensuing scuffle. Riccardo grabbed his neckerchief and Nello’s hand all at once, holding both in a crushing grip. The crowd near enough to the incident stilled and stared. All knew of the insult that had been given to Riccardo: to tear the colours of a man’s contrada from his person – that meant death.

  Violante, like the She-Wolf herself, leaped to Riccardo’s side and to his defence. She gathered her guards with one glance, but they were too slow. It was Faustino who stepped forth, Faustino who held the hand and the scarf for many long heartbeats, as Nello raised his eyes and looked the older man full in the face.

  He is afraid, thought Violante, her heart thudding as her guards sprang from the shadows to break the men up. Even only moments away from the completion of all he had planned, it seemed that Faustino could not forget that it was Riccardo who had sprung to help Vicenzo a month past. Around this knot of silence the two parties of the Eagle and the Tower began to shout at each other, almost climbing over the guards to assault the other contrada. And all the while, as their fellows dragged them clear, the two young men fixed their gaze upon each other, one promising death and the other defiance, and would not look away. The confrontation dissolved as the Eagle party claimed Nello, and the Torre citizens began to pull Riccardo away.

  Momentarily alone, Violante bent down to the dust and picked up the chain that had dropped, unmarked, turning it over in her hand. It was a coin pendant on a chain, fashioned in gold with an owlet on one side and the head of a queen on the other.

  An Egyptian queen. Cleopatra, of the Ptolemy.

  Now, Violante understood. Now her heart thudded with fear, her palms prickled with sweat and her stomach churned. For Riccardo, the one man in the city – in the world – who meant anything to her, was surely doomed. The race was dangerous enough with just the usual rivalries, but he had worn against his skin a trinket that must belong to Pia of the Tolomei. Such a thing would not have been lost or stolen; such a thing was freely given by the wearer. Pia had given it to Riccardo, her champion, and, along with it, her heart. If Nello knew of this, Riccardo would be lucky to finish alive. Even so, Violante did not want him to ride without the favour he had been given.

  ‘Signor Bruni.’ She called the horseman back and held out her hand in a fist, thumb down, the pendant hidden within. ‘I believe this is yours.’

  He held out his hand and she dropped the chain and coin into it, with no more than a swift secret flash. Riccardo looked at his palm then at her. She gave a tiny nod, akin to a blessing. He closed his hand, opened his mouth to thank her, but said instead: ‘Romulus rode in a carriage with crossed keys. He had a ring of the same design.’

  He smiled at her once in the old way, a smile of complicity and comradeship and affection that cleaved her heart. Then he was gone, swallowed by the crowd.

  Violante turned into the courtyard. As soon as she was safely back inside the palace, she picked up her skirts and ran along the passages and up the grand stair.

  ‘Duchess?’ Gretchen called far behind her.

  She did not turn. As she reached the balcony, she leaned on the doorframe, gasping to regain her composure, before she emerged again and seated herself decorously. Only then did she realize she was shaking.

  She searched for Riccardo in the Tower colo
urs, among the others below at the canapi starting rope. The jockeys whispered to each other out of the sides of their mouths: last-minute threats or promises. She knew at this moment pacts were being made or broken, vast amounts of money changing hands. This time these bets had a special significance: to enrich nine contrade and beggar the rest.

  The horses were circling and bumping shoulders; one reared fit to throw its rider. It was a white stallion rising out of the sea of horseflesh like a statue, the horse and rider resembling the bronzes of the mounted Cosimo the Great she had seen in Florence. For a heartbeat she could see Riccardo, on the rearing Leocorno, displaying the physical imprint of his heritage, for Cosimo was his namesake and forefather. She saw Pia of the Tolomei standing at once, hand to her mouth. Something was wrong.

  As if time had slowed, she saw Riccardo fall.

  Zebra was in a distant quarter of the city on business of the Duchess’s. He had been told where to wait and watch. Walking, as he had been instructed, from one statue of the She-Wolf to another, he had also been told what he might see: groups of men, in dark fustian cloaks, long enough to conceal swords or pistols, gathering in groups of six to a dozen. Each statue had its little band of men, men not dressed in the colours of any contrada, men who were not of Siena, men who looked resolutely at the ground or huddled together when someone passed. Each band was not great enough in number to excite comment on this busiest of days, but together they would number a multitude.

  Disguised better by the crowds heading to the Palio than by their own art, they did not notice the little messenger boy among them and dropped their guards enough to speak with the southern dialect of Rome.

  Riccardo was in trouble. Leocorno, skittering and sweating, had reverted to his old tricks. He would not let Riccardo mount him. Bumped and harried by the other horses on all sides, his eyes were wide and his tail switched from side to side, his hard hooves shifting on the track.