The Daughter of Siena Read Online Free Page A

Te Deum in the basilica, nor a wedding; but a laying-out,
a mourning and a burial. Pia felt Berio being taken from under her hand by a groom – her hair being disentangled from the long black mane by the ostler. It was as if anyone could touch her now.
    As the sorry procession left, Pia felt a great burden lifted from her. She breathed out the death and the day; and relief, sweet and clean, rushed into her lungs. Abruptly freed from her contract, she did not know what to do. Her careful upbringing, all those lessons in the etiquette of her class, had not prepared her for this. Then she knew. She could go home. She turned to go back to her family, to the Civetta, to her hearth, but the barrel-like form of her father blocked her way. She reached out to Salvatore, feeling, now that she was touchable, that it was the day for a rare embrace.
    Instead her father took her by the shoulders, turned her determinedly round and whispered fiercely in her nape, just exactly where Vicenzo had breathed into her. ‘The Eagle still has an heir,’ he hissed. ‘There is a son yet living, so play your hand right.’
    He propelled her, with a little push, firmly in the direction of the Eagle cortège. Her treacherous sinews gave way then, and her knees buckled, and she was caught by two men of Eagle colours. One, she knew, was Vicenzo’s brother, Nello; the other, a cousin of the same blood. They grasped her by her upper arms and, in a semblance of support, marched her forth, her feet stumbling and her fancy boots dragging and scuffing in the dust. She was captive.
    Pia struggled. She heard herself saying no, no, no,
repeatedly. The crowd, witnessing all, began to seethe and bubble like a cauldron with a muted hubbub of enquiry and answer, but all contrade , for once, were united in respect for the grief they saw before them. The poor dame couldn’t accept that her betrothed was gone. She was swooning and babbling with grief. The Eagles would look after her.
    In a desperate appeal Pia twisted her head round to seek the unknown horseman, but he did not mark her. Standing in the blood, as if the dark stain was now a shadow snipped from his heels, he was wiping his hands and face with his own scarf. The gore left the scarlet of his neckerchief unaltered. But everything else was changed.
    As Pia was carried under the Bocca del Casato gate, the one through which the horseman had entered the arena, she felt a tug at her sleeve. Hopeful of salvation, she looked down and saw only the little water-carrier Zebra. He held something out to her in his hand, trotting to keep up with her. It was a black velvet pouch with the gold Medici arms stamped upon it, a purse of mourning alms from the duchess.
    As her captors snatched the purse without a word of thanks, Pia looked back one last time, far over the heads of the multitude, to the palace balcony. She might have imagined it, but she thought the duchess had raised a hand to her – a gesture of greeting, sympathy, what? – before the shadow of the architrave swallowed her.
    High above the piazza, Duchess Violante Beatrix de’ Medici watched as the struggling girl disappeared from
view. She rose, at last, to her feet. And the black-and-white Palio banner, unmarked, fell from her hand over the balustrade in a graceful fluttering arc, to rest in the blood and the dust.

2
    The Tortoise

    D uchess Violante Beatrix de’ Medici was born in Bavaria, the home of the modern fairy tale. She did not hear her first story in the crook of her mother’s arm, but in the schoolroom as a grammatical exercise. Soon after Violante’s marriage contracts with the Medici were settled when she reached the age of twelve, her mother decided she should know a little of the language of her future home. Violante was duly set to learn an Italian folk tale called La lepre e la tartaruga:
    One day a hare saw a tortoise walking slowly along and began to laugh and mock him. The hare challenged the tortoise to a race and the tortoise