"Dorina to the Panther!" Poor Dorina, he thought, always running, never winning.
"Gaudenzia to the Giraffe!"
"Rosella to Nicchio, the Shell!"
Giorgio had heard all he needed to hear. The capsules had sealed his doom. A horrified gasp broke from his throat. It was the same sound he had made when he hit the cobblestones with Turbolento.
The ritual of the assignment went on. But for Giorgio it was over. It was done.
He watched Rosella and Gaudenzia going off with their grooms, each surrounded by joyful contradaioli. The spectators, too, were melting away—going home, going into cafés, returning to work. The captains and the Mayor vanished into the communal hall. Only Giorgio and the pigeons were left. And in a silent semi-circle behind him three tall youths from Nicchio had taken up their positions as his bodyguards. He turned to them. In a daze he shook their hands, and in a daze smiled crookedly at their small talk. The pigeons, in their pigeon-toed gait, waddled around them. He envied the birds, earthbound one moment, soaring into sky the next. He reached into his pocket and scattered a few kernels of oats, and watched the airborne ones come in for a landing. One perched on his shoulder, eyeing him with a shiny shoe-button eye.
"Our fantino, he thinks he is St. Francis!" a guard laughed, not unkindly.
Giorgio remembered the time Emilio had said almost the same words, and suddenly he longed to be at home in the two little rooms in Monticello. Forlornly, he followed the guards to his new sleeping room in the quarters of Nicchio. He had half a mind to steal out tonight and go back to the Maremma, but if he did, it would be only his body that left.
The Captain of Nicchio, Signor de Santi, came later in the afternoon to see him. For a moment Giorgio felt a spear of hope. Perhaps Giraffa and Nicchio had exchanged fantinos, and the Captain had come with the news.
It was a cruel hope, dashed almost as it was born. Sensing the boy's unhappiness, the Captain said, "Son, you are a fantino, not a mere horseboy. On this mount, or that, you must win. Rosella is a big, rangy mare and she, too, has good possibilities."