But if the boy had grown broody and silent, Gaudenzia was just the opposite. She felt intensely alive. Let out of her stable, she tried to rake the sky for sheer joy in living. She felt good! Never was she alone, not even on rainy days; her fantino was groom and companion, too, steadfast as the earth. And so she thrived.
From fast work she went to slower and longer work. She walked and trotted one week, two weeks. Then gradually Giorgio intensified her training. More trotting and galloping, less walking. More grain, less hay.
"For you, your life will always be mountains and valleys," he told her one morning as they jogged along a country byway. "Always between Palios comes the easing off, the nice rest. Then you must start all over again and make the steep climb to new peaks."
A fluffy seed blew into her nose. She blew it out again with a loud snort.
"Yes, you can snort away your little troubles. But me?" Sighing, he ran his eye along the distance, along the tufted terraces of olive gardens, and he followed the aerial maneuvers of a pair of swallows snapping insects on the wing. By keeping his mind busy he hoped to wear blinders to what was bothering him. But it was no use. The worry kept eating at his heart. Maybe he would feel better if he put it into words, instead of letting it run around in his head like a mouse in a mill.
"Listen, Gaudenzia," he spoke into the fine pricked ears, "for one little month you are Queen of the Palio. But you won your crown without...."
His talk sounded silly against the shimmer of distance. He clucked to the mare. A faster pace might make the words come faster, easier.
He tried again to make his voice strong, to empty his thoughts. "Gaudenzia! You won the July Palio without real battle, without the nerbo, without the secret arrangements." The words flowed faster. "Now you are marked. You are the one to beat. You and I—in the next Palio we could be separated. The contrada which draws you could already have engaged some other fantino." He burst out shouting: "What if you have to be beaten and slashed back? By me!"
The sweat broke cold on his face. He pulled the mare to a halt, and she stood trembling at his tone as if already she were beaten over the head with his nerbo. Thinking of her nervous tic, he quickly dismounted and quieted her.