The Shepherdess of Siena: A Novel of Renaissance Tuscany (32 page)

C
HAPTER
69

Ferrara, Covento di Sant’Antonio, Polesine

S
EPTEMBER
1581

I took my place among the novices on the wooden benches. To each side were the carved choir chairs for the nuns, inlaid with precious woods in intricate designs.

The wimpled heads swiveled to watch me as if I were a circus performer.

“Is it true you slapped Suor Adriana?” whispered a girl my age sitting next to me.

“I slapped her, yes. Then I punched her hard in her fat stomach,” I said.

“No!” said a postulant on my other side. She leaned forward slightly so I could see her sharp cheekbone jutting out from her tight head scarf. “You struck the suora!”

“Good,” said another from further beyond. The whispering had been passed down the line. “She is a mean witch of the devil. I would like to slap her myself!”

I recognized the voice. The one who had whispered “brava.”

“Shhhh, Anna Rosa!”
cried another. “Or we will all be on the floor of the refectory, the sisters dancing on our backs!”

I was deep in my dream world. I rode the swiftest horses. I fed Orione apples one after another, his lips searching my palm. We raced the Palio again, not to place third but
to win.

Drago! Contrada del Drago wins!

“Wake up, Postulant Silvia!” said a voice.

I looked up to see the face with the rose-flushed cheeks.

“Who are you?”

“I am Anna Rosa, but there is no time to speak!” she said, pulling my arms. “We both will be late to Matins. I did not see you for the first bell, so I came to wake you. The abbess will be very angry if you are not there. They will tread across your back for another week!”

“Ooooh!” I groaned, wincing as she pulled me from my cot.

I could barely move. But Anna Rosa pulled me through the dark cloisters under the starlit night, and we made the second bell for Matins.

The conversa Margherita fingered the soft leather of the boot. As she had bent over the kitchen’s hearth to burn the new novice’s clothes, she had folded the boot into her apron pocket. It was small and soft. The styling was strange. Despite its soft folds, it looked too practical, too substantial to be a lady’s shoe.

And it was heavily soiled. What lady would wear such a boot?

When she was safely home in the hovel where she lived with her mother, father, sisters, and brothers, she took out the boot.

Dried mud clung to the sole—mud and a speck of dung, threaded with grass.

She held the boot close to her nose, drawing in the smell of earth
. . .
and of horse manure.

C
HAPTER
70

Siena, Brunelli Stables, Vignano

N
OVEMBER
1581

Cesare Brunelli, the mighty smithy, his strength forged by the anvil and horse training, had turned gray and frail after the disappearance of his goddaughter, Virginia Tacci. Cesare Brunelli spent more and more time with Orione, petting the stallion with his raw, chapped hands. The old man brought treats, feeding him sweet-smelling grass by the handful.

He worked ceaselessly on Orione’s fetlock, trying to mend the injury incurred at the Palio race. He spat, thinking back to the treachery of that day.

Cesare knew the horse would never run the Palio again, but he wanted to cure the painful swelling. Then he could let the stallion retire to the fields with a herd of mares. This horse that had almost carried Virginia to victory in the Palio deserved at least that much.

The stables smelled of camphor. Brunelli bent over his boiling pot, concocting liniments with mixtures of dried flowers, peppermint, and tree saps.

He kept a store of root vegetables packed in earth and straw in a small cellar under the stable. In the cold of winter, the carrots still shone bright orange through remnants of dark soil, a white lacework of roots tangled about their flesh, their frilly stems yellowed and wilted.

He pulled out a few. Every day after doctoring Orione’s fetlock, he would offer the stallion a reward. Orione pawed at the straw of his stall. His hoof dug deep, ringing against the stone beneath.

“Ah, beauty. You are impatient, just like our Virginia. Two impetuous fools.”

He sighed, half-smiling in the perpetual twilight of the stable. He reached out the small bunch of carrots to Orione.

“You see what stubbornness gets you?” His voice trailed off. He could have said “kidnapping.” He could have said “murder.” He could have cried.

The men from the village had stopped their dice game in silent sympathy for Brunelli. If they could not quite share his pain, they understood it.

The stallion snatched the carrots greedily, crunching on the roots, the grinding of his teeth filling the cold stable air. The big horse tasted the earth still clinging to the roots. He made a bobbing motion with his head. Mud-colored froth spilled from his mouth.

“Buon appetito! A mouthful of good Senese soil.” He patted the horse’s neck. “You may not be fit to run the pastures, but our good earth will be in your belly, bringing your health back.”

Cesare’s eyes strayed upward. “And she will return one day to us, too. You cannot keep a Senese away from Siena.”

Orione never accepted being locked in the stall or being tethered to the rope line strung from wall to wall. He kicked and reared, his neighs echoing in the stone stable.

“Do not fret, my beauty,” said Brunelli soothingly. “You will gallop again. I am beginning to think that the little fetlock bone is not broken but just chipped. A little piece I can feel. And I feel scar tissue growing around it. You will be strong again.”

Then he murmured, “It is good that you jumped the first boards. Otherwise you would have surely fallen hard by the last. You saved her life, Orione. Our precious Virginia.”

“And who will ride him now?” said the cobbler, venturing to break the silence.

“Giorgio will ride him, you will see,” said Cesare. “He will be in excellent shape when Virginia returns.”

The men stared down. A mouse skittered across the stones, making a break for the open door.

A horse whinnied outside.

“Ho, now!” Giorgio entered the stable, leading a mare to be teased before breeding with the black stallion.

“What’s this silence?” he said, leading the mare near Orione. “Why are you not busy gossiping and losing your wages to one another with the roll of the die?”

“Niente,
”
said the cobbler. Nothing.

Orione nickered at the scent of the mare, stretching his neck over the stall door. The mare turned her rump to him and kicked hard. Orione reared back in his stall, his penis stiffening.

“That a girl!” Cesare said. “You have his interest.”

The mare lifted her tail and kicked again, slamming her iron shoes against the wooden door.

“You are really going to breed him to that mare?” asked the baker.

Giorgio pulled at the rope, moving the mare away.

“Enough now!” Giorgio said to the mare. “Certo. Of course she will be bred to him. We will continue Orione’s bloodline with our best brood mares. What other horse has the heart and strength of this stallion?”

“That is what I told them,” said Cesare, smiling at his son. “The best blood of the Maremma mingled with the strongest of Siena. What foals he will sire! They shall be my legacy when my bones are turned to dust.”

Giorgio made as many trips as he could, searching for Virgnia, but he could not leave Brunelli’s stables for long. Then it became impossible to leave at all.

His father was very ill.

He realized it one night when he returned from a journey to convents surrounding Florence. Giorgio led his storm-soaked horse into the stables, blinking away raindrops. He saw a wizened man bent over a pot, stirring its contents with a wooden spoon. White, wrinkled skin clung to the bones of the old man, the muscles loose and flaccid.

He heard the wretched cough of the stranger echo through the stable.

The old man turned. His face fell in sorrow.

“Ah, figlio,” he said. “Son, you did not find her.”

Giorgio couldn’t speak. This ancient man was his father. He stood in silence, rainwater dripping from his coat.

“No, Babbo,” he said at last. “I did not find her.”

“Then I wonder if I shall ever see her again,” whispered Cesare. “I am growing old. And weary of this world.”

C
hapter 71

Ferrara, Convento di Sant’Antonio, Polesine

M
ARCH
1582

I believe I would have died in the convent that first year, had I not remembered a story my mother had told me. It was the story of a six-year-old Senese—Santa Caterina—seeing a vision of God on the roof of San Domenico.

Santa Caterina’s vision came to her on the brick road leading up from Fontebranda into the city of Siena. I had walked that same road, the raised brick steps on the steep incline making it possible for horses, donkeys, and oxen to enter the city. Just paces from her home, the little girl saw her first vision.

She froze, stunned, gazing at a vision no one else could see. In that moment, her life was forever changed.

I saw no vision of God or Jesus. When I closed my eyes to pray, I saw a horse—a black horse with a twisted white star—leading all the other horses in a race up Via di Città. I knew I had lived that vision, that dream. How many other souls could claim to have accomplished their life’s ambition at age fourteen?

Orione recovered, stumbling to his feet over the boards thrown from a roof above us. We galloped toward the piazza and Siena’s towering marble Duomo. The shadows of Via del Capitano were a tunnel between what could have been and what now had to happen. In the distance, I could hear the roaring crowd, see the dazzling sun on the marble cathedral, the flap of the drappellone just ahead. I pressed my face close to Orione’s mane, letting his head free to gallop the last strides of the race.

We emerged into the bright light of the piazza and the roar of the crowds, the flap of contrada banners, whistles, and cheers.

Ferrara’s Palio took place on the 23rd of April in honor of the city’s saint, San Giorgio. I gathered what information I could from the nuns and novices.

“The course is along the river Po, just outside our walls,” Suor Loretta told me. “Fedele brays when he smells the horses.”

I breathed deep.

“Can we see it?”

“Oh, no, child,” said Suor Loretta. “But you can hear the excitement, the people gathered along the Via Grande. The best riders in the world race our Palio.”

“No,” I said stubbornly. “The best riders in the world are the Senese
. . .
and perhaps the horsemen of the Maremma.”

The old nun shook her head.

“You are very proud of your homeland, Silvia,” she said. “But you must make room in your heart and head for the rest of us. Our Ferrara Palio is the oldest. In 1259, horses ran this same course.”

Three hundred years ago sounded like a long time, but was not Siena’s Palio even more ancient? I set my jaw to argue, but I could not remember dates. What use would I have for them? I never cared how old the Palio was
. . .
I only wanted to win it.

And I almost had.

I saw that Suor Loretta was growing weary, and I needed to harness the donkey before the other nuns complained I was behind in my work loading the vegetables.

As the day of Ferrara’s Palio grew nearer, there were more visitors to the abbey. I, of course, had no one to visit me, but my friend Anna Rosa’s family came to see her. I watched her visit with her family through the iron grille in the chapel. The abbess would not let me share in any of the other novices’ visits.

It was not a joyous occasion, even though they brought a trunk of woolen blankets, fine linen, candlesticks, and beeswax candles. They were obviously a wealthy family from Ferrara. Blessed with twelve children, the faithful woman had dedicated one of the girls to be a bride of Christ.

Whether she liked it or not.

Anna Rosa kneeled at her mother’s feet, weeping in her lap. I could see her shoulders shaking under her cloak.

“You must accept God,” coaxed her mother. “For your sake and the family’s. It would shame us were we not to keep our promise to the Holy Church.”

Among the family members crowded into the visiting room was an elegantly dressed young man wearing riding boots. He was about the same age as Giorgio, tall and well built, his hair sandy blond. He kissed Anna Rosa on both cheeks and squeezed her hand. I realized he must be her brother.

Later, I questioned her. I did not stop to think that she was heartsore from the visit.

“Your brother, the fair one. He wore riding boots.”

“Yes, he did not take the coach with the family. He rode his mare here. He is an accomplished horseman. He owns at least five Palio horses.”

“
Palio
horses?”

“Yes. He could barely make time to see me, but the occasions I am allowed visitors are so few. The Feast of Saint Giorgio is an important one for us.”

“But your brother. Perhaps since he knows the Palio, he might know me, have heard of me—”

Anna Rosa turned to me, her face questioning.

“Heard of you, Silvia?”

“No, of
me
. Virginia Tacci. The girl who rode the Palio.”

“Basta!” she hissed, looking over her shoulder. “Enough!”

I thought no word had ever pierced my heart as sharply.

Wounded at my friend’s disbelief, I sought solace with Fedele the donkey. The old suora had obtained permission for me to sleep in the tiny stable with the beast. With the training for the Palio, the streets smelled of horse, and Fedele brayed constantly, keeping the nuns from the few hours of sleep they were allowed.

The sweet smell of hay comforted me, and my company stopped Fedele’s braying. I stuck a blade of straw between the gap in my teeth, teasing it with the tip of my tongue, making it flick up and down.

Sometimes in Ferrara, I caught a whiff of the sea. It was miles away, but the salt flats encroached far enough inland that when a strong wind blew, it carried the salty aroma. I had never seen the sea, only heard tales of it, the blue waters beyond the Maremma in Tuscany. Once, when I sunk my nose into Orione’s thick fur, the old cobbler from Vignano asked me, “What elixir draws you to bury your nose into that colt’s neck?”

I could not describe the smell of a horse to one who does not know its power. I asked Giorgio later that evening.

“How can you describe the scent of a horse?”

He thought a moment, pausing as he curried a mare. “Warm animal in the sunshine mixed with the perfume of the sea.”

The sea. Now I was closer to the sea than I was to Orione or Siena. I had no mooring; I was left adrift with a false name and no past. Sometimes I wondered whether I was mad, if I really knew my own identity, since no one believed me.

I flicked the piece of straw about in my mouth with the tip of my tongue.

Anna Rosa found me on my knees in Fedele’s straw, remembering Orione and the night he was born.

“You look as if you are actually praying,” she said, startling me. “Sincerely, I mean. Except for that piece of straw in your teeth. Do you move it with your tongue?”

“What are you doing here? You will be punished,” I whispered.

“No, I will not. You will never see me punished. The abbess would not dare.”

I did not reply, though looking back, I should have questioned her. But that night, I was too far down the deep well of my sorrow.

“I came to see you,” said Anna Rosa. “I am—sorry—for what happened between us.”

“You do not believe me!” I said, turning away from her. “I raced Siena’s Palio of the Assumption. No one believes me—”

She grasped my hand, pulling me to face her. “I do, Virginia. I do believe you.”

I looked up at her.

“I do, you know,” she said. “It is just that you suffer so much at the hands of the abbess. I cannot bear to see you punished! But I believe you. You
are
Virginia Tacci. And I believe you rode the Palio, as impossible as it sounds.”

I braced my hand against the donkey’s shoulder and stood up.

“Why do you believe me when no else does? They think I am mad or a liar.”

“Why should you lie? You are locked in here, the same as me. What good is a lie when you are a prisoner anyway?

“And,” she added, “the bright spark in your eyes when you say your name. The defiance. The name suits you, Virginia. You do not look like a Silvia to me.”

I sighed, closing my eyes. Outside I heard the shouts of the Palio crowd.

“They will be starting a practice run any moment,” I said, my ear cocked to familiar sounds of horses snorting and nickering.

Fedele began to bray, forcing us to cover our ears. He kicked at the wall of his stall.

I slipped a halter over his head.

“Do you want to stand near the wall with me and listen?” I asked. “At least we can hear the hoofbeats.”

Anna Rosa pressed close to me, and we waited long moments in silence. Our patience was rewarded with the roar from the crowd and the pounding of galloping hooves.