General Barbarulli signaled the bodyguards to come to the speakers' platform. For one frozen moment Giorgio saw the scene and remembered. Yes! There was the long table on the raised flooring, and the snow-pure cloth spread over it, and the serious-faced men seated on one side only. It was like the painting of the Last Supper, the one hanging above his mother's and father's bed. Overawed, he wanted to bolt, wanted to hide behind his bodyguards, but they were gone! They had stepped down from the platform and melted into the crowd.
The General and Captain Tortorelli welcomed Giorgio with cordial handshakes. Nervously, he felt for his speech in the place where his pocket should be, but his hand felt cotton, not wool, and he looked down and saw he had no pocket! He remembered now he was wearing the uniform of the Wave, the white-and-blue fantino uniform which the contrada had sent over. His speech was still in his room, in the pocket of his good suit hanging on the peg!
The Captain shook his hand a second time. "Do not worry," he said encouragingly. "All good fantinos are nervous. Those who joke have a gross heart." Then he introduced Giorgio to the vicar, the chancellor, the captain's assistant, the steward, and all the councilors.
When the food was served, Giorgio ate, though he hardly knew what he ate. His ears heard the stirring battle songs of defiance, of threats, but all the while his mind was trying to recall those three little sentences he had painstakingly written down. They were gone from him. Gone as completely as if some other hand had formed them.
"We are all united in the warm atmosphere of this dinner. In joy and friendship...."
"Oh, Mamma mia!" breathed Giorgio, dropping his fork with a clatter. "The speeches, they begin!"
"We of the Wave," the General was intoning, "regard this, our banquet hall, as our other home, our other hearth-place of Love and Brotherhood. Many of our families have separated for the Palio, each member having gone back to the contrada where he was born. In their place, many of us are hosts to some kinsman or friend. So first we greet and welcome those who are our guests."
Of one accord the contradaioli applauded.
The General smiled affably. "The Palio lifts us out of the everyday life," he continued. "We are caught up in the golden net of hope, of ambition, of glory. In four hundred years the magnificent colors of the Wave—blue for the billows and white for the foam—have won thirty-nine victories! Will Gaudenzia and Giorgio make it forty?"
"Si! Si! Si!" Wild cries bounced from wall to wall.