Foreword
For months I wrote the story of the Palio in my mind. I pictured a fearless boy rider in this wildest of all horse races, a boy who dared defy the ancient rules and willed his horse to win—in spite of the strict orders of his captain.
When I finally went to Siena and faced the real battle of the Palio, I had to scuttle my preconceived plot. No rider, no matter how brave, would ever defy the ancient rules of the race. They are as firm and immutable as the walls of the city.
But the story I found was of heroic proportions, much bigger than the one I had dreamed. A peasant boy, named Giorgio Terni, and a half-bred Arabian mare seemed pawns of fate, doomed to a life of tragedy. Their battle to outwit destiny is a drama of human and animal courage.
The secret plotting of the Palio is so strange that I had to journey from America to Siena three times in order to understand the inner workings. There is a need in the people to relive the past, a need so intense that they change themselves into knights and noblemen of the Middle Ages for a brief moment each year.
While I was there, I myself became embroiled in the passion of the Palio. I attended the solemn ritualistic banquet on the eve of the race, and afterward I went with Giorgio Terni and his bodyguards to listen to music in the heart of the Piazza, and I went with him into the stable of the mare, Gaudenzia. I wanted to study this courageous youth who was fully aware that tomorrow his blood and that of his mount might crimson the race course.
I visited with Giorgio's parents, too, and with his brother and sister in the huddled village of Monticello, far away in the Maremma country. Because I spoke no Italian we had to communicate in pantomime, but it was more exciting than any game of charades. It concerned life, and death.
Twice I watched spellbound the pageant-parade on Palio day, and twice I shouted and prayed during the breakneck race that Gaudenzia would sweep wildly through the pack to victory.
Dozens of people—cobblers and captains, peasants and princes—gave of their time and energy to help make this book an authentic recreation of the oldest horse race in the long history of the sport of kings.
At last I understood that the Palio is a fire banked but never quenched. Every summer it blazes anew into a festival of such drama and color that the characters who take part might have stepped out of the Middle Ages.
Marguerite Henry
