The Daughter of Siena Read Free Page A

rival from the Eagle ward. Vicenzo did not, Pia reflected, compare well. The fantini , the jockeys, lined up below Duchess Violante’s balcony, each one eyeing her with matching insolence, in a pantomime of resistance to the Medici overlords that had been enacted for ten years now, ever since the duchess had come to the city.
    All save one.
    The unknown horseman alone of the pack slid his tricorne from his head and fixed his eyes to the ground with something akin to respect for the duchess’s sex, if not for her rank. Pia’s heart warmed a little, but chilled again
when she turned her eyes on her betrothed. Vicenzo was peering up at the duchess with marked insolence. He had not removed his tricorne. How she hated him, Pia thought. This tiny thing, that he could not remove his hat for a lady – this elementary lack of good breeding – invited her contempt almost more than the outrages he had visited on her last night.
    Next to Vicenzo stood his father. Faustino Caprimulgo, captain of the Eagle contrada, was tall and wiry, dark and swarthy of feature but with the whitest hair curled in a close cap to his head. His high cheekbones, cavernous cheeks and long, hooked nose made him resemble nothing so much as the eagle of his banner. Faustino always stood drawn up to his full height, an eagle in his eyrie, with the confidence that came from being the head of the oldest family in Siena. Despite the pomp and posturing of the Medici, all of Siena knew that in reality it was the Caprimulgi who ruled the city. They had ruled it in the days of the Nine – the ruling council of the old republic – and ruled it in all but name still. The son stood shoulder to shoulder with his father, fixing the duchess with the same hawklike stare, a merlin beside a falcon, a smaller, meaner version of the sire.
    Pia watched as the war chariot of the Palio drew up alongside the palace, drawn by four milk-white oxen carrying the Palio itself – a vast black-and-white banner in the colours of the city, emblazoned with the figures of the Virgin and the pope. Attendants folded and handed the flag to last year’s victor, Ghiberti Conto, captain of the Snail contrada , who knocked three times and was
admitted to the palace doors. Moments later he appeared on the balcony next to the duchess and gave up the banner to her. The duchess took it with a nod – custodian for a few short moments before she would give it to this year’s victor. Pia, without feeling the slightest disloyalty, reached for the coin of the Owlet where it hung around her neck and prayed that the winner would be the unknown horseman and not Vicenzo.
    Pia sat forward and searched for the horseman in the Tower colours among the other jockeys below at the canapi starting ropes, all detachment gone. She saw the fantini whisper to each other from the sides of their mouths, last-minute threats or promises, as their bright silks whispered too. At this moment pacts were being made or broken as vast amounts of money changed hands. The other horses were circling and bumping shoulders; one reared and threw its rider – the green-and-white Oca colours of the Goose contrada , she noted, not he.
    She realized that the stranger must have been drawn as the di rincorsa rider in the outside position at the ropes, and so it proved. He rode to the cord later than the others, but seemed to have no interest in the benefits of his good fortune. Usually the di rincorsa position was used to an unscrupulous jockey’s advantage, to jostle rival contrade into a bad position at the start. But Pia saw him, seated absolutely still on his horse’s bare back, speaking to no one, his eyes seeing far into the distance, making no attempt to jostle or harry. His stallion also stood unmoving amid the mêlée, the pair resembling in their stillness
the bronzes of the mounted Cosimo the Great that she had seen on her one and only trip to Florence. Pia willed him to beat Vicenzo with a violence that surprised her, her