The Daughter of Siena Read Online Free

– Faustino’s white head among them – joined soon by judges and marshals, an apothecary, a physician. At last the unknown horseman stood and shook his head.
    Pia rose to her feet and willed herself to join that dreadful party. She stepped past her new relatives heading down to the track. Feeling, numbly, that it was somehow her duty to be with her dead betrothed, she made her way through the crowd. She was bumped and jostled and once thrown to the ground. Her brain felt slow and stupid, her limbs as heavy as if moving through dunes of sand.
    She had spent nineteen years in a hothouse, a rare orchid untouched by human hand. She had been nurtured and raised and cherished as a marriage prize, and now the
glass of the hothouse had been broken by her betrothal and she was exposed to the violence of the elements. As of today she lived in a physical world, a world of brutality. A world where yesterday her intended could push her down and violate her, a world where today strangers shoved her to the ground. At that moment she did not know which offence against her person was worse.
    A fellow in the crowd – her father’s ostler – recognized her and the red sea parted. She straightened and called upon her dignity, feeling a fraud as the people moved aside for her, knowing her for the fallen man’s betrothed, anticipating and respecting a distress that she did not feel. She saw her father Salvatore on the fringe of people skirting the body. He did not reach out to her, but was deep in conference with Vicenzo’s brother, a pale and strange creature – Nello, was it? As if in a dream she walked past them, right to the centre of the knot of folk, and saw her first corpse.
    Pia gazed down on Vicenzo’s body. She saw the broken flesh at the throat, the bone piercing through, the blood black on the dust and the foam-flecked mouth, open a little to the flies. Only yesterday that mouth had spoken in her ear with the whisper of threat, with a promise. Then, last night, he’d made good on that threat, fulfilled the promise. That mouth had fastened itself on hers, that mouth had breathed wine-stale breath into the hair at the back of her neck, as he had tried to force himself into her. Breathed and breathed until his hot gasps distilled into sour spittle and ran into her hair. Could it be true, wonderfully, terribly true, that it would never
breathe again? It seemed impossible. Her forehead grew cold and her stomach lurched. Feeling as though she would faint she reached out to a solid shape for support.
    It was the horse Berio. Victor and murderer. The fastest in Tuscany, the horse who’d made Vicenzo punch the air with joy when he’d drawn him in the lots. She buried her hands in Berio’s black mane and lowered her clammy forehead on to the velvet bay of his neck. The horse stood under her hand, bemused, unsure; as if puzzled that no one was garlanding him with flowers, thrusting sweetmeats in his mouth. He looked curiously forlorn, shaking his head repeatedly as if bothered by a fly, looking down at Vicenzo’s still body. Pia’s eyes began to flood.
    ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. It wasn’t your fault, it was mine,’ she whispered. ‘I willed it.’
    As if comforted, the great bay stood still at her shoulder, whickering and nibbling the lobe of her ear. Pia, weighed down by her guilt, felt the great coil of her hair escaping in a cascade of hairpins as the horse nuzzled her; her black hair and his black mane mingled, tangled, became one. Her smart black-and-red hat slithered from her head to be trodden by Berio’s great feet.
    Through Berio’s black mane she saw the Eagle Faustino stagger to his feet with his child in his arms. She saw the unknown horseman place a hand for an instant on the captain’s shoulder, and Faustino turn to leave with his awful burden, followed by his contrada . The Eagles filed from the square silent as a wake, forgetting all about the banner that was theirs. Not for them the joyous victor’s