The Hours Before
Late on the night of the banquet, while Giorgio lay sleeping, the captains of the contradas were meeting in secret. Some were strengthening old alliances, and some were negotiating new ones. If one contrada, for example, had drawn a poor horse, it would swear to help its ally by every strategy of war.
The results of these meetings were of little concern to Giorgio, for no one, he had been told, would exact any promises from him. And so, exhausted from his speech, he had crawled into bed, and before his bodyguards had stopped joking and smoking he was asleep.
But it was not a peaceful sleep; it was shot through with a frightful dream. In writing down the name "Giorgio Terni" in the archives, the clerk broke his pen on the letter G, and the point flew up, stabbing the man in the throat. Immediately, terrifying things happened. The statue of the she-wolf atop the Palazzo came alive, came howling and hurtling down the column and put a horrible end to the clerk. Then she fell upon Giorgio, slashing him with her fangs and claws until he was unfit to race.
To the shock of crashing thunder Giorgio awoke. He jumped up, leaped over the sprawling figures of his guards, and ran to the window. He stood there, shivering, watching the storm rage. He had a strange sense that the fire-ball lightning was full of shooting stars, and they seemed to be spelling out the word—"O-f-f-i-c-i-a-l!" He stood there a long time, letting the wind and the rain wash away his dream. At last, chilled to the bone, he went back to bed. Sleep was slow in coming, and brief. At six in the morning the church bells startled him into consciousness. The first summons to the Palio!
His bodyguards, yawning and stretching, looked out in surprise at the rain-soaked land.
"How is it?" Giorgio exclaimed. "If I only turn the door-knob to my room or make tiny tiptoe steps, you hear! But crashing thunder? No!"
The guards laughed. As they dressed, they watched Giorgio fumble with the ties on his fantino uniform. "Could our boy be nervous?" they teased. "And him a veteran of two Palios!"
The bells were still playing when, minutes later, they climbed the steps of Siena's great cathedral. In the shadowy interior, with the candles winking and the faint light coming through the stained-glass windows, Giorgio and the other fantinos knelt at the altar. He glanced at Ivan-the-Terrible on his left, who was riding for the Ram, and at Veleno on his right, fantino for the Giraffe. They were like friendly schoolfellows. Could they, by evening, become enemy warriors? Would the three of them now kneeling prayerfully and peacefully side by side soon be striking each other with their nerbos?
Both fantinos were moving their lips. Giorgio wondered if they were praying to be accepted by their contradas, or praying to win. He looked up at the painting above the altar and read the inscription beneath the Virgin's feet. "O Holy Mother, be thou the fount of peace for Siena, and be thou life for Duccio because he has painted you."