It was hard not to pray for yourself. If Duccio, the great painter, could pray thus....
"O Holy Mother," Giorgio whispered, "be thou life for Gaudenzia." He did not realize it was the mare he was praying for, and not himself, so closely were they tuned.
Nine o'clock came. Time for the last Prova, the final rehearsal before the Palio. The day was windless, the sky gray and cloudy, the track still slippery from last night's rain. Giorgio resolved to take no chances. From the start to the finish he held Gaudenzia almost to a parade canter; he must save every tendon and muscle of her legs. She finished in last place.
As he returned to his room, he wondered if he had done the right thing. Had he been over cautious? Would the Onda approve? Or would they think him lily-livered, not knowing how to ride?
Torn by gnawing anxiety he washed and combed while the guards stood by waiting. In unaccustomed soberness they placed over his arm the blue-and-white jacket of Onda, the very one he would wear in today's Palio, and in his hand the steel helmet. Then as a body they marched him to the Palazzo Pubblico, not into the vast courtyard where the horses are gathered before the race, but into the formal and forbidding Hall of the Magistrates. Here they vanished, and Captain Tortorelli arose out of the gloom and indicated a chair for Giorgio beside him. Other fantinos were already there, seated about a long table, jackets over their arms, helmets in hand. And beside each was his captain.
The city officials now entered the solemnity of the room. The Mayor, in gray-suited dignity, sat down at the head of the table, the starter on his right, then the veterinarian and the Deputy of the Festival. A lean-faced clerk with a pen behind his ear took his place on the Mayor's left. He unrolled a great sheet of paper and laid it out before him. The sheet was empty, except for a margin of tiny colored emblems of all the contradas, and beside them, hair-thin lines waiting to be filled in.
With a dry cough the clerk took the pen from behind his ear and held it poised in midair like a hummingbird before it daggers into a flower.
Giorgio's heart quailed. He tried to stop the racing jumble of his thoughts: last year's death of Turbolento, last night's dream. The hoarfrost voice of the scribe cut off his thinking. Slowly the man called the roll. Each fantino stood up as his contrada was called. Carefully he held up his jacket with both hands so the emblem would plainly show, and waited for his captain to confirm him. This done, the clerk recorded the fantino's name in the big registry, writing with long, even strokes and a flourish of his pen at the end.
When it was Giorgio's turn, his foot caught in the rung of his chair, and it seemed an eternity before he could wrench free. To make matters worse, his hands were shaking so violently that when he held up his jacket the dolphin seemed mockingly alive, undulating through the blue waves of the Onda.