Have You Fear? Have You Fear?

Underneath his flowing wig, perspiration is streaking down Giorgio's temples, and at the nape of his neck it trickles down and wets the ruching of his collar. The great historical pageant is about to begin, and he will be in it, and Gaudenzia will be in it. But she will walk riderless, and he will ride a mighty warhorse clad in armor of steel.

Already his contrada is forming into a tight military company—the drummer first, the two flag-bearers next with their enormous blue-and-white flags, and then Captain Tortorelli in coat-of-mail with unsheathed sword, and a major page and four minor pages. And then he, Giorgio, will come on his warhorse, and last of all Gaudenzia, led by her groom.

Giorgio's whole body is on tiptoe, on the brink of a great happening. He can feel himself growing pale, the skin of his face drawing tight over his cheekbones. A dark-bearded groom is offering his hand as a mounting block, to help him climb aboard the huge warhorse.

Giorgio stiffens. If he can mount Gaudenzia bareback, he can certainly put a foot into a stirrup and swing up without help. But the real stiffening is a feeling he has, not exactly of jealousy, but of concern that someone else is handling Gaudenzia. Will the man know how to soothe, and be firm too, amidst the jostling of people and the throb of drums, and the great race only a whisper of time away?

A nudge from the groom brings Giorgio up sharply. He waves the man aside, puts the ball of his foot on the stirrup, swings into the saddle. He feels awkward with a saddle between him and the horse—like the times he straddled a chair when he was young, and made believe it was a horse.

The groom thrusts a great iron lance into Giorgio's hand. "Hold it firm!" he warns, as he anchors it in the socket of the stirrup.

"Attenzione!" The Captain booms his command. And now the whole military company moves forward, the drum beating out in somber vehemence. On both sides hundreds of people are moving with them in swirling waves, upstream toward the highest hill of Siena. Where the streets narrow, the people flatten themselves against the buildings, then come forward again, like waters rushing, receding, rushing.

Giorgio sways along on his mount like a sailor on a flat-bottom boat. The paddling gait of the warhorse is never in step with the beat of the drum; it gives him a seasick feeling. Or is the churning in his stomach a mixture of fear and joy? He glances back at Gaudenzia. She is jibbing her head, actually lifting the groom off his feet as if he were a puppet on a string. She too wants the race to start, and even now wants Giorgio's hand on her leadstrap. He feels better then, in a shamefaced way, and the seasickness leaves him.

His contrada is atop the hill now, moving past the ancient hospital where nuns and patients are craning out the windows. Before the great black-and-white Cathedral the company halts, and the flag-players fling themselves into action, paying homage to the Archbishop in a window on high. Bending, swaying, leaping over their banners, they toss their flags skyward, making the blue waves on the white silk ripple and roar like the waves of the sea.

On the wide steps of the Cathedral a great throng watches steadfast, clapping in admiration. They stand with heads uncovered to the hot July sun. Some have missed the intimate blessing within the church of their own contrada, and have come to witness this final benediction for all.

Giorgio has passed this way before, once on the warhorse of the Shell, once for the Panthers. But those other times were blurred. Then the final benediction had not seemed a direct communion from the white hand of the Archbishop way up there in the dark of the window. It had not been direct to him, but a kind of general blessing for all the contradas as they went by.

But now, on this day of July the second, 1954, Giorgio needs benediction as truly as if Time had spun back, and the year were 1260, and he was going into the Battle of Montaperti—or whatever the name of that great battle was. Now he needs the strength that the white hand up in the window can give him.

He stretches his neck, looking up, and he thinks of himself as a parched bird, head back, beak open, begging a drop of water.

There! The hand is moving. Two fingers. No, three. They are making the sign of the cross. The benediction is communion direct to him, to Giorgio Terni, and it is coming right from God, with only the Archbishop in between. Suddenly he is ready, calm and ready for battle, and he nods a little to the figure up there in the window to let him know he has received the message. His hand tightens on the lance. He sways along on his broad-backed charger and leaves the Cathedral Square; he and his whole company—the flag twirlers, and the Captain, and Gaudenzia, and all the others—and they wind down from the hill, and down, and down into the core of the city, a tight military company.

As they approach the entrance to the Piazza, the bell in the Mangia Tower begins tolling a sonorous bong, bong, bong, and the spine-tingling reverberations blot out all other sounds.

Before and behind are other companies. The contrada of Lupa is entering Il Campo, and Onda will be next. Yes, he will be next. And he will be really seeing the historical parade for the first time. Those other times he had moved like one in sleep. But this is real. Now he knows that the pageant is more than a parade; it is a bright fuse burning itself around the shell of Il Campo until it blazes into the fire of the Palio.

And at last, at last, he is riding into the square! His eyes blink at the awesomeness. The facades of the palaces are alive with thousands upon thousands of heads. And within the railing of the shell is a heaving sea of heads, like flowers in a pot too small—rootbound and gone riotous in bloom. And all those heads have bodies and souls, and they have come to see him and to witness battle and bravery and bloodshed; and he, Giorgio Terni, must fight off nine warriors before his white mare can capture the golden banner.

He has to do it because it is like keeping a promise to himself and to those thousands of people. There are so many he dizzies trying to separate them. And all those eyes are asking for the most beautiful Palio in history, and Gaudenzia will give it to them!

The bigness of it all makes him afraid, and then he sees the small boys who have been waiting in the sun since noon, sitting there on the white posts that fence the shell. One looks up, focusing right at Giorgio with his shiny, worshipful eyes, and Giorgio knows he wants to win for him, and he wants to win for all the little colonnini, and for Emilio back home in Monticello, and for little boys everywhere.

At thought of home a smile crosses his face, and even through the bonging of the bell and the dinning of drums he can hear his mother say: "Giorgio Terni! Tell me! Tell me! What contrada comes first? And who next? And what happens then?"

He longs for a camera, but it would be no use. He has only two hands, and one is frozen to the lance and the other guiding the reins on a warhorse big as a battleship.

All right! He will be eyes and ears for everyone at home. His gaze moving, he peers around, taking pictures in his mind, explaining.

"Mammina! Babbo! Teria! Emilio! I have a lofty perch on my warhorse. I see across heads.... I see the whole procession. The members of the parade are not the people of today, but what they look like—the people of long ago.

"First come the red mace-bearers stumping along tall and straight, like their maces. They make way for the black-and-white flag of Siena.

"Emilio, you should know this flag! It stands for Romulus, who founded Rome, and for Remus, who founded Siena. Like us they were brothers, only they were suckled not by a mamma, but by a she-wolf. One day those brothers build fires, and the one fire makes white smoke and the other black, and so the flag is for them ... black and white.

"Teria! You would like better the plumed knights and nobles in their velvet costumes, and the musicians blowing on their silver trumpets.

"And Babbo! The magistrates of the guilds you would like—the silk workers, and wool workers, and stone and gold workers, and builders, and painters, and blacksmiths, and apothecaries."

Giorgio's eyes sharpen, dart ahead with the unbroken cavalcade as it winds triumphantly around the Piazza. How can he remember it all? How can he possibly make his family see those flag-players tossing their great flags into the air, making them soar in a hundred ways? "Oh, Mamma mia, look. Look, right now! Our boys from the Onda are doing the jump of the snowflake. Look how they leap high in the air, making the great banners unfurl, horizontal!

"Oh, I give up! Some day you must come. Those boys—they send their souls up with their flags into the sky. You got to see it. Yourself!"

Giorgio stops a moment, tired, bewildered. His brain goes blank with taking pictures, as if he has run out of film. He squirms in his saddle, forces himself on.

"Yes! All this you got to see." He tries to pick one last scene to remember, and his eyes light on the very young page boys linked shoulder-to-shoulder by green garlands. "Look, Emilio, they are no bigger than you yourself. See how they separate the ten contradas who will run from the seven who will not! And, Babbo, you would laugh how much those little boys with their loops of green look like the grapevines between our fields."

Giorgio stopped. He was out of breath. A hush had fallen over Il Campo as the parade came to an end. From the tail of his eye he saw the magnificent gold carroccio winding up the procession. Was this battlecar the same one as last year, and last century? He knew, of course, that it must be, but today he saw afresh the brilliant paintings on its sides, the gilded wheels, the resplendent Palio held aloft—the banner he and Gaudenzia must bring to Onda.

The hush deepened. The rolling of the drums stopped. The bonging of the bell seemed far away in the sky, but within the battlecar the silver trumpets were weaving a dialogue, the high notes calling, the low ones answering.

Giorgio straightened in his saddle. To him the high notes were not a summons, but a question—insistent, unvaried, probing over and over and over again: