The Daughter of Siena (21 page)

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Authors: Marina Fiorato

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

BOOK: The Daughter of Siena
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Pia looked at the white horse, standing still, head high. ‘Leocorno. The Unicorn. He’s well named.’ White as snow, framed by the fairytale view. ‘What’s wrong with him? Why won’t he let you ride him?’
‘I don’t know. I was hoping you might. I just know that Faustino gave him to me. He does not want me to win, so he gave me a horse that would lose.’
Pia went to Leocorno, reached out a gentle hand to stroke the white nose. ‘All I can tell you is that they bought this horse from Boli, the horse trader from Arezzo, and this much you knew already. He came to the stables the same day as the big black beast for Nello. He’s friendly,’ she said with surprise, as the horse nudged at her hand. She knew of the legends: that a maid might befriend a unicorn and she was, yet, a maid. Abused,
pummelled and bullied, yes, but as yet untouched in that way. Leocorno knew her for what she was.
‘Friendly enough when no one’s trying to ride him, yes.’
Pia ran her finger over the scar between Leocorno’s ears. ‘Poor thing,’ she said. ‘He’s been hurt. Battle scars.’
Signor Bruni stood abruptly and walked over to Pia and Leocorno. She started, as if she had angered him, but he ignored her.
‘
Battle scars
,’ he repeated softly. ‘Battle scars.’
Then, louder and more abruptly, he said, ‘Keep talking to him, right in front, where he can see you.’
Pia slid her eyes sideways to Signor Bruni, who was treading gently behind Leocorno. ‘What is it?’
‘Battle,’ he said. ‘You were right. He’s been in a battle.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. There are always wars. I was in one myself.’ The tone of his voice told Pia that there were secrets that Signor Bruni kept too. ‘Keep talking to him.’
He moved behind the horse’s left ear and clicked his fingers smartly, while Pia talked away, of nothing, of everything.
Nothing. Leocorno did not even twitch his ear. Signor Bruni trod softly around the hindquarters and clicked again, just behind the other ear. Nothing.
‘Move to the side this time,’ said Signor Bruni quietly, ‘and keep talking where he can see you.’
Pia did as she was bid, watching while Signor Bruni hunted around for a dry stick and approached Leocorno from behind again. This time he snapped the stick behind
the stallion’s ears, with a crack so loud the echo sounded around the hills. Leocorno shot forward, powering through the tufts of coarse grass, kicking up tufa dust like little clouds around his flying hooves as they spat up stones.
Pia whistled softly between her teeth – something she had never been allowed to do. ‘He’s fast.’
She looked at Signor Bruni. His eyes were narrowed, watching the horse. He nodded, clearly excited, as he saw, for the first time, Leocorno’s incredible turn of speed.
‘Will he come back?’ asked Pia.
Signor Bruni shrugged, clearly thinking the same thing. ‘I don’t know.’
Within a few heartbeats Leocorno was a tiny dot, resolving again as he turned in a dust storm and trotted back, the incomparable city hanging in the mist behind him like the backdrop of a stage. Truly, thought Pia, he suited his name today: a unicorn before this fabled landscape. He shambled to a walk as he stopped, shaking his head, blowing reproof at Signor Bruni.
Signor Bruni took his head in his hands and kissed his white nose, hard. ‘Bless you, bless you, my dear,
dear
Leocorno. I did not know that you were deaf. What was it? A cannon?’ He turned to Pia. ‘A fellow in my troop lost his hearing that way too. Blown up and landed in a tree. Couldn’t hear a thing unless you bellowed at him. Don’t fret,
caro mio
,’ this to Leocorno. ‘We’ll make all things right now.’
Pia, watching, remembered the way Signor Bruni had spoken to her when she had first fallen off her palfrey and
felt a powerful pang of longing. She watched the gentle hands and heard the gentle tones as Signor Bruni calmed the jittery horse, and she knew that the gentleness that he displayed, not just his strength and skill, was a significant part of what drew her to him. No one had ever bothered to be gentle with her in her life.
She approached the horseman and his horse, drawn to him, to be next to him. ‘Now what?’
Signor Bruni carried on stroking Leocorno. ‘I don’t know. It explains why he won’t have a man on his back – he thinks he’s going into battle. I think he was a warhorse. He may have belonged to a general or even a king – he’s a true-bred Lipizzaner with a brand. Perhaps the mount of a Spanish hussar at Milazzo – we might have been on the same campaign.’ He pulled Leocorno’s ears affectionately and chuckled helplessly. ‘How can I whisper a horse that cannot hear? My one skill is useless.’
Pia considered. ‘I think he would let you ride him if only he could hear you. Why don’t you
shout
to him? I’ll hold the head-collar while you try.’
Signor Bruni looked dubious, but Pia nodded and smiled. Clearly feeling foolish, Signor Bruni began to bellow in Leocorno’s ears, cupping his hands around his mouth, his voice echoing around the hills. The horse flicked its white ears forward and listened. Pia began to smile. Gently, Signor Bruni slipped his foot into the stirrup, still yelling, and vaulted smoothly into the saddle, gathering the reins. Leocorno twitched slightly and swished his tail. Pia and Signor Bruni exchanged a look, and Signor Bruni steeled himself for a buck. But it never
came. Signor Bruni lowered his voice gradually until he was silent. He was still in the saddle. He regarded Pia in quiet triumph.
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.

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