Giorgio made no answer. Empty of feeling, he managed to live out the afternoon. Toward evening the Chief-of-the-Guards came to him. "It will be some comfort," he said, "for you to ride Gaudenzia tonight in the first Prova. Of course, you understand," he added, "it will be in this one only."
But it was no comfort at all. It was like digging at a wound so that it could bleed anew. He let Gaudenzia win the first Prova, lengths ahead of the others. No one had challenged her.
On the morning of the second day he rode the rangy Rosella. Captain de Santi gave his orders beforehand. "Make the getaway clear from the ropes, and the gallop light. In all the Provas, her strength and vigor must be preserved."
Time passed for Giorgio. The minutes and the hours flowed on, sunup to sundown, one Prova after another, and the pinch of pain spread until it was a dull, dull aching.
In the Prova Generale, on the afternoon of the third day, tension tightened among the fantinos. Each wanted to show his skill, to make certain of being selected for the Palio itself. In July, Giorgio had been tortured by the fear that his name would not be made official in the archives. Now it did not matter. Again he brought Rosella in safely, as his captain had ordered.
That evening, escorted by his bodyguard, he attended the great banquet in the hall of Nicchio. Wearing the little jacket and the striped trousers of the race, he sat at the head table, next to Captain de Santi. There was joy and hospitality all about him ... people eating their fill of chicken cacciatore and drinking the red wine from the grapes of Tuscany. He tried to be one of them, but he was silent as a nut in a shell, and the good food knotted in his throat. In his mind he saw Monsignor Tardini in the cool, shuttered room of the Vatican, and he saw the Umbrella Man sitting cross-legged at the fountain, and he saw Gaudenzia without wanting to see her.
When it came his turn to stand up and face the members of Nicchio, he did not fumble in his mind or in his pocketless jacket for any prepared speech. He just got up and stood quiet a while. Then, remembering his talk with the Monsignore, he said: "To Nicchio I will be loyal." It was as if another's voice were speaking for him as he went on, "And the orders of my Captain I will obey."
